Peukert, Helge --- "Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917)" [2005] ELECD 177; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420321

Section: Chapter 53

Section Title: Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917)

Author(s): Peukert, Helge

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

53 Gustav von Schmoller (1838­1917)
Helge Peukert


The man and his time
Gustav von Schmoller, the main representative of the younger German His-
torical school, was born on 24 June 1838 in Heilbronn, where his father had
been Kameralverwalter of the Württembergische 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 his father's office,
learning a lot about financial and administrative law. In 1857, he began to
study financial, state and administrative law at the University of Tübingen as
the start of a career as a civil servant. Furthermore, he attended lectures in
philosophy, history (under Max Duncker) and even the natural sciences (for
his biographical background, see Balabkins, 1988, chs 1­4; Kaufhold, 1988).
The combination of economics (called `national economics' at the time)
and history is already manifest in his first major scientific undertaking
`Untersuchung der volkswirtschaftlichen Anschauungen 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 ...