Peukert, Helge --- "Gustav von Schmoller (1838-1917)" [1999] ELECD 48; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 41

Section Title: Gustav von Schmoller (1838-1917)

Author(s): Peukert, Helge

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

41 Gustav von Schmoller (1838-1917)
Helge Peukert


The man and his time
Schmoller, the main representative of the younger German Historical School,
was born on 24 June 1838 in Heilbronn, where his father had been
Karneralvenvalter of the Wurttembergische fiscal interests since 1833, a
family tradition deeply influencing young Schmoller and which goes back to
1651, when an ancestor became a public servant. After finishing Gymnasium
in Stuttgart in 1856, he stayed for one more year in the office of his father,
learning a lot about financial and administrative law. In 1857, he began to
study financial, state and administrative law at the University of Tubingen as
the start of a career as a civil servant. Furthermore, he attended lectures in
philosophy, history (under Duncker) and even the natural sciences (for his
biographical background, see Balabkins, 1988, chs 1-4; Kaufhold, 1988).
The combination of economics (called `national economics' at the time)
and history is already manifest in his first major scientific undertaking
`Untersuchungder volkswirtschaftlichenAnschauungen zur Reformationszeit',
written in 1860. It is a study of the economic conceptions of the Reformation
period, with which he won first prize in a competition and for which he was
awarded his PhD. In this study the main question of his intellectual life
already played a major role: the tension between the necessity of an indi-
vidual sphere and a strong, market-regulating state. The second part of his
time as junior barrister he passed at the Wurttembergische statistical office
headed by his ...