CHAPTER 10 Further Students of Menger and Other Supporters

With only a few exceptions, the old Austrian School was made up of members who had studied under Carl Menger directly. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser received their Habilitation from Menger, although they had not studied under him. Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen studied under Böhm-Bawerk and received his Habilitation from him. Having independently arrived at an understanding of value theory and methodology similar to Menger’s, Emil Sax was the only one already to have had teaching qualifications. In his retirement application to the Ministry for Education in 1903, Menger listed all the post-doctoral students he had supervised. The only one missing was Gustav Gross (cf. Ikeda 1997, pp. 1–2).

Robert Meyer (1855–1914; Habilitation 1884)¹

After studying law in Vienna and Berlin, the native Viennese pursued an exemplary career as a civil servant in finance administration, where he reached the position of Sektionschef.² In 1910 he was made president of the Statistische Zentralkommission (“Central Commission for Statistics”) and, for a short time, finance minister. After that he went into retirement. A year later he was again asked to be president of the Statistische Zentralkommission, and retained this office until his death.

As an expert on finance, whose teaching qualification was extended in 1887 to include political economy, Robert Meyer lectured at the University of Vienna and at other Viennese educational institutions. In his Habilitation treatise, the subjectivist value theoretician justified progressive taxation (Meyer 1884, pp. 332–333), which he, as a senior civil servant and along with Böhm-Bawerk, was actually able to implement during the reform of direct personal taxation (cf. Tomo 1994, pp. 147–153, 164–178). From 1911 onward, he served as co-publisher of the journal Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Socialpolitik und Verwaltung (“Journal of Economics, Social Policy, and Administration”). He was a champion of full-blown statism on social and economic policy matters.

Gustav Gross (1856–1935; Habilitation 1884)³

Originally from Reichenberg (today Liberec, Czech Republic), Gustav Gross was the son of a railway director. After studying law in Vienna and Berlin and working at the governorship of Lower Austria, he received his Habilitation with a thesis on economist Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1783–1850) (cf. Deschka 1966, p. 6; Gross 1883). Gross, who published a treatise on business profits (Gross 1884a) and the first academic biography of Karl Marx (Gross 1884b and Gross 1885), among other things, devoted himself primarily in later years to social and taxation questions. From 1889 onward he was a representative of the Deutsche Fortschrittspartei (literally, “German progressive party”).

Gross, who considered himself part of a tradition established by Albert Friedrich Eberhard Schäffle and Adolph Wagner (cf. Gross 1888, preface), was not mentioned in the list of Habilitation students Menger compiled when he became a professor emeritus (cf. Ikeda 1997, p. 2). In what he called the public sector (“Gemeinwirtschaft”) of the state economy, Gross saw laws at work that differed fundamentally from those in the private sector (Gross 1900, p. 165), and he supported Wagner’s thesis concerning the steady expansion of the state’s functions which were, in his view, limited only by the family in the long term (ibid., pp. 168–189). What Richard S. Howey otherwise wrongly said of the less well-known “Austrians,” namely, that they hardly wrote anything or nothing at all about the theory of marginal utility (Howey 1960, pp. 163–164), applies to Gross.

Gross taught as an unsalaried lecturer at the University of Vienna until 1897, and finally, as an untenured professor. He was elected the last president of the monarchy’s House of Representatives when the war economy had fully expanded into central bureaucratic planning toward the end of World War I.

Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg (1858–1917; Habilitation 1884)⁴

The descendant of an Austro-Bosnian family of officers, Philippovich grew up with only one parent still living, graduated from the Theresianum Academy, and studied law in Vienna. After periods of study in Berlin and London he received his Habilitation for research on the Bank of England (cf. Philippovich 1885).

After a non-tenured, and later a tenured, professorship at the University of Freiburg, Philippovich, who was only thirty-five years old at the time, was offered a position in Vienna. He was aligned with the historical–ethical school on economic policy, having already strongly oriented himself toward Menger’s ideas on methodological and value-theoretical questions during his time in Freiburg (cf. Mises 1926, p. 54; cf. Philippovich 1886). In 1896, as a member of the Viennese Fabian Society—a circle of those advocating ambitious social policy aims—he became a co-founder of the Sozialpolitische Partei (“Socio-Political Party”). He served for one term as one of its four representatives in the Niederösterreichische Landtag, the regional parliament of Lower Austria, of which the city of Vienna was a part. A subtle academic, he was not apt at defending himself against the polemics and rude attacks of his political opponents (cf. Holleis 1978, pp. 58–59).

In 1905, Philippovich became president of the University of Vienna. In 1909, he became a member of the Herrenhaus, the House of Lords of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Correspondingly important was his role as promoter of the Austrian School, which he actively advanced with his successful textbook Grundriß der Politischen Ökonomie (1893) (“Compendium of Political Economy”). For many years, he acted as chairman of the Gesellschaft der Österreichischen Volkswirthe, and from 1904 to 1917 he was co-publisher of the journal Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Socialpolitik und Verwaltung (“Journal of Economics, Social Policy, and Administration”).

Viktor Mataja (1857–1934; Habilitation 1884)⁵

After a commercial apprenticeship and law studies in Vienna, Mataja, who was working for the Vienna chamber of commerce at the time, received a Habilitation for a thesis on ground rent and business profits (cf. Tomo 1994, p. 74). Among his diverse publications, one work in particular stands out: his trailblazing Recht des Schadenersatzes vom Standpunkt der Nationalökonomie (1889) (“Indemnity Rights from the Viewpoint of Economics”), which prepared the way for the modern economic analysis of law on the basis of the theory of marginal utility. In 1890, Mataja became an untenured, and two years later, as Böhm-Bawerk’s successor, a tenured professor at the University of Innsbruck. Later that same year, however, he returned to Vienna to establish a “Department for Trade Statistics” and “Labor Statistics” in the ministry for trade (cf. Pellar 1986, pp. 165–166). In later years he was one of the first in the German-speaking world to deal with the “nature of advertising” and, with Die Reklame (1910/1926) (“Advertising”), created the seminal document of the modern science of advertising. Toward the end of his life he published a textbook for economic policy, Lehrbuch für Volkswirtschaftspolitik (1931) (“Textbook of economic policy”), which included some of his own contributions.

Mataja was a bureaucrat through and through. He was first a head of directorate, twice a minister of trade (1909 and 1911), and finally, president of the Statistische Zentralkommission (1914–1917 and 1919–1922). By the end of the war he had served in turn as minister of trade, minister without portfolio, and minister for “social welfare”—the first in an industrialized, European nation. His statistical work made this versatile and original thinker a valued partner for representatives of employers and employees; the “third camp” appreciated his German-Austrian centralism. Of all things, it was thus that a representative of the Austrian School created the core of what would later become industrial relations (cf. Pellar 1986). Mataja’s career enriched us with the remarkable insight that “welfare” and “warfare” can easily derive from the same doctrine of the state.

Robert Zuckerkandl (1856–1926; Habilitation 1886)⁶

The son of a Jewish family from Györ (Raab), Hungary, Robert Zuckerkandl received his Habilitation from Carl Menger after finishing his law degree. Prior to his accreditation as Hof- und Gerichtsadvokat⁷ in Vienna, he published Zur Theorie des Preises (1889) (“On the Theory of Price”), his only monograph on doctrinal history. In 1894, he became Emil Sax’s successor as an untenured professor, alongside Friedrich von Wieser, at the Deutsche Universität Prag, and received his tenured professorship in 1896. Zuckerkandl’s teachings, his main work, and other published articles contributed significantly to the dissemination of Austrian School ideas (literature overview at Howey 1960, pp. 165–166; and HdStW, 3rd ed., 1911, vol. 8, p. 1084).

Johann von Komorzynski (1843–1911; Habilitation 1890)⁸

At the age of twenty-six, Johann von Komorzynski was reputedly only unable to accept an appointment at the University of Vienna because of “external circumstances” (cf. Komorzynski 1911). After working successfully as a Hof und Gerichtsadvokat for over twenty years, Komorzynski became the founder and president of the Wiener Advokatenclub (“Viennese Lawyers Club”). He received his Habilitation for a paper on value theory, linking it to an earlier effort on the same subject (Komorzynski 1869). In his later works he resolutely opposed von Thünen’s wage theory and Marx in particular (Komorzynski 1893 and 1897). Die nationalökonomische Lehre vom Credit (1903) (“The Doctrine of Credit in Political Economy”), which he published in the last decade of his life, was rejected by the Austrian School, as it was incompatible with Wieser’s imputation theory and Böhm-Bawerk’s theory of interest (cf. Meyer 1904, p. 103).

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen (1861–1931; Habilitation 1889/1892/1895)⁹

In 1889, after having practiced law, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen, a born Tyrolese, received the venia legendi¹⁰ to teach economics at Innsbruck. In 1892 this permission was carried over to the University of Vienna, where in 1895 it was extended to the teaching of all aspects of political economy. He subsequently worked in the Statistische Zentralkommission (“Central Commission for Statistics”) in Vienna and in 1899 held professorships for economics at the Technische Hochschule (“University of Technology”), the Hochschule für Bodenkultur (today University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) and, from 1915 on, at the University of Innsbruck. From 1903 to 1905 he held the office of president at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna, and from 1922 to 1925 that of president at the University of Innsbruck. In later years, Schullern zu Schrattenhofen, who in his youth had still vehemently advocated the theory of marginal utility (Schullern-Schrattenhofen 1885), turned to agricultural policy and history. His easy-to-read economics text book, Grundzüge der Volkswirtschaftslehre (1911) (“Main Features of Economics”), is founded on the subjectivist theory of value.

Julius Landesberger (1865–1920; Habilitation 1895)¹¹

He completed his law studies at the University of Vienna in 1889 with a doctorate, for which he received the highest distinction, sub auspiciis imperatoris.¹² Self-assured, he published his doctoral address right away (Landesberger 1889), followed up by going into attorneyship, and over time published a number of articles on monetary and currency policy. After his Habilitation, Landesberger became a sought-after business attorney with expert knowledge in anti-trust law. After being bestowed with the title, “von Antburg” in 1906, he was appointed to the general council of the Anglo-Österreichische Bank, where he rose to the position of president. At the German Juristentag¹³ of 1902, borrowing the English word “concern,” he coined the term Konzern, which in German is used to this day (cf. Nörr 1994, pp. 22–23).

Eugen Peter Schwiedland (1863–1936; Habilitation 1895)¹⁴

Schwiedland came from a scholarly, Protestant family in Budapest and studied law in Vienna. After some years of having worked as a lawyer, he taught economics and economic policy at the Technologisches Gewerbemuseum¹⁵ from 1890 on, and eventually received his Habilitation from the University of Vienna (Schwiedland 1894). In 1902 he was made an untenured professor at the University, and in 1904 a tenured professor at the Technische Hochschule. From 1908 to 1921 he functioned as a high-ranking advisor in the Ministry for Public Works and in the General Commission for War Economy and Transition Economy. In his easily-readable text books (Schwiedland 1909 and 1910; Schwiedland 1918 and 1922–1923) he described the subjectivist value theory as the psychological foundation of the economy (cf. Schwiedland 1910, pp. 117–130). He kept his distance from Menger, both personally (cf. Nautz 1990, p. 89) and intellectually. After World War I, Schwiedland shifted toward “romantic-organic” economics.

Siegmund Feilbogen (1858–1928; Habilitation 1895)¹⁶

The son of a Moravian rabbi family, Siegmund Feilbogen completed his law degree in Vienna and in the early 1890s made a name for himself with several works on Adam Smith, Jacques Turgot, and David Hume (Feilbogen 1889, 1890, and 1892). In 1895 he received his Habilitation from the University of Vienna and subsequently taught economics at the Viennese Exportakademie.¹⁷ Initially Feilbogen also supported the Zionist movement.

A peculiar story ended his career abruptly. On April 9, 1908, Feilbogen, along with his wife and sister-in-law, attended an Easter Mass celebrated by Pope Pius X in Rome. Witnesses apparently observed Feilbogen disposing of the consecrated Host in a handkerchief. This incident became widely known. Feilbogen’s assurances and avowals of respect for the Catholic Church fell on deaf ears in a Vienna turned noticeably anti-Semitic (cf. Reichspost of April 22 and 23, 1908, p. 3). He was subsequently dismissed from his position as teacher at the Exportakademie. Isolated and virtually ostracized, he continued to teach to the smallest of audiences at the University of Vienna.

Rudolf Sieghart (1866–1934; Habilitation 1900)¹⁸

A rabbi’s son from Troppau (present-day Opava, Czech Republic), Rudolf Sieghart, with only one parent living, had to pay to study law in Vienna himself. In 1895 he converted to Catholicism, married the daughter of Carl Samuel Grünhut (1844–1929), a professor for trade law at the University of Vienna, and joined the finance ministry. With his treatise on public gambling, Die öffentlichen Glückspiele (1899), Sieghart earned his Habilitation and subsequently went into politics. As the closest associate of Prime Minister Körber (1850–1919), he played a powerful and sometimes controversial role, particularly in regard to personnel decisions concerning top-level positions in the bureaucracy (cf. Nautz 1990, 112). In 1912 he became a member of the Herrenhaus and, as governor of the Boden-Credit-Anstalt, with its associated industrial concerns and newspapers, remained an influential leader in the business world well on into the First Austrian Republic.

Richard Schüller (1870–1972; Habilitation 1903)¹⁹

Carl Menger’s “favorite pupil” (cf. Nautz 1990, 89) and last postdoctoral student, Richard Schüller came from a Jewish family in Brünn. Because his parents’ company had gone bankrupt, he had to pay for nearly all of his university education himself. With his first work, Die klassische Nationalökonomie und ihre Gegner (1895) (“Classical Economics and Its Enemies”), Schüller demonstrated once more the fighting spirit of the Methodenstreit. With Schutzzoll und Freihandel (1905) (“Protective Tariff and Free Trade”), he at last received his Habilitation and was thus the first of the Austrian School to venture into the terrain of foreign trade policy. As an untenured professor he published two noteworthy contributions on workforce demand and on the employment market (Schüller 1911/1971). After Menger’s death, he supported the publication of the second edition of the Principles (Menger 1871/1923) with a very personal foreword.

Schüller made his career in the ministry of trade. He was promoted to the position of Sektionschef shortly before the abdication of Emperor Karl I. States and monarchs may be transient, but once obtained, the legal status of an Austrian civil servant is not: Schüller remained in this position until his retirement and contributed significantly to the foreign trade policy of the First Austrian Republic (Nautz 1990). He lectured at the University of Vienna up until 1928, and from 1930 to 1937 was co-publisher of the Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie (“Journal of Economics”). Nevertheless, he distanced himself noticeably from the Austrian School (cf. Schüller 1936). Schüller was forced to immigrate to the USA in 1940, where he continued teaching until 1952.

Statisticians and Economists of Public Finance²⁰

Menger routinely assisted with Habilitierungen in areas related to his field of expertise (cf. Ikeda 1997, p. 2), as with the commercial law specialist Karl Adler (1865–1924; Habilitation in 1893), the public finance economist Gustav Seidler (1858–1933; Habilitation in 1883), and the statisticians and public finance economists Isidor Singer (1857–1927; Habilitation in 1885), Ernst Mischler (1857–1912; Habilitation 1885 in Prague, 1887 in Vienna), and Ignaz Gruber (1842–1919; Habilitation in 1893). These practitioners and university lecturers had no direct influence on the teaching body of the Austrian School, but they shaped the intellectual milieu of the Austrian School in as much as they reinforced proximity to the state bureaucracy. Since each of his postdoctoral students was required to spend some years in actual administration (cf. Tomo 1994, p. 75), Menger himself had promoted institutional closeness between political economy and state bureaucracy.

Students of Menger as Contributors to Professional Journals²¹

In the 1880s and 1890s, Carl Menger also brought people into his seminar who had graduated and were already employed and interested in economics. Many of them later played a part in disseminating the teachings of the Austrian School by publishing articles in professional journals. One of the most outstanding of these students was the Hungarian-born Julius Friedrich Gans von Ludassy (1858–1922), who as editor of various papers, regularly reviewed economics books and himself wrote an impressive, methodological work of over 1000 pages called Die wirtschaftliche Energie (1893) (“The Economic Energy”). Noteworthy are his early criticism of the mechanical image of homo oeconomicus (cf. ibid., pp. 403–425) and his conclusion that “economics … [is] the science of action” (ibid., p. 982). Ludwig von Mises, without ever referring to Ludassy explicitly, would further develop this action-oriented approach five decades later.

Another professional editor from the milieu of Menger’s circle was the native-born Czech Franz Cuhel (1862–1914), who, like Ludassy, is largely forgotten today. The lawyer and royal-imperial government councilor in Vienna constructed one of the first mechanical calculators and published an extensive work on needs, in which he defined twenty-nine categories of needs (with altogether seventy-three further sub-categories) (Cuhel 1907).

In his biography of Menger, Friedrich A. von Hayek identified a further group of Menger students (Hayek, Introduction to Menger 1950/2007, p. 35 n. 1). Only the following, however, as publishers of professional journals, are mentioned here: Moriz Dub (1865–1928), who from 1891 was editor for economics at the Neue Freie Presse; Richard Reisch (1866–1938), a finance lawyer with Habilitation, who in the First Austrian Republic was president of the Austrian National Bank; Markus Ettinger, attorney for cartel, competition, and economic administration law, and the first to predict the failure of any centrally planned economy, on grounds that “only the market price [is] a reliable regulator” (cf. Ettinger 1919, p. 10); Wilhelm Rosenberg (1869–1923), lawyer and expert on banking and finance who is credited with stabilizing the currency after World War I (cf. Mises 1923); Hermann Schwarzwald (1871–1939), highest-ranking civil servant in the ministry of finance and author of several articles on currency and economic policy; and Ernst Seidler (1862–1931), who applied the principle of marginal utility to the sentencing of criminals in a groundbreaking paper (Seidler 1890). As professor for public law, he tutored the heir to the throne, Karl, and in 1917 became minister and subsequently prime minister, or rather, the last chairman of the monarch’s cabinet. Others mentioned by Hayek either never published anything of significance, were no longer grounded in the Austrian School, or were successful as scientists in other areas, such as Christian Richard Thurnwald (1869–1954), who devoted himself to ethnology permanently.

---

¹See Plener 1914, ÖBL 1972, vol. 5, pp. 442–443 with further information, and Blumenthal 2007. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 262–263.

²I.e., Head of Directorate, the highest civil service rank within an Austrian ministry.

³See ÖBL 1957, vol. 2, p. 73, and Deschka 1966 with further sources. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek 1926, col. 178.

⁴See ÖBL 1983, vol. 8, pp. 43–44; Milford 2001; HdStW, 1925, vol. 6, pp. 864–865; Mises 1926; Palgrave, vol. 3, pp. 856–857. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 88–89, 288–290.

⁵See ÖBL 1975, vol. 6, pp. 135; Höbelt 1990; HdStW, 1910, vol. 6, pp. 622–623. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, col. 251–252.

⁶See HdStW, 1928, p. 1183; HdStW, 1911, p. 1084. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 405–406.

⁷A Hof und Gerichtsadvokat is a trained lawyer who was admitted to the bar as well as legitimated to act for his clients with the governmental authorities and the imperial court.

⁸See Komorzynski Nachruf [Obituary] 1911, ÖBL 6 (1966): p. 103 with further sources. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek 1 (1926): columns 223–224.

⁹See ÖBL 11 (1995): 33 of. with further sources. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek 1 (1926): columns 336–338.

¹⁰Ed.: A successful habilitation requires that the candidate be officially given the venia legendi, Latin for “permission for lecturing,” or the ius docendi, “right of teaching” a specific academic subject at universities for a lifetime.

¹¹See Reichspost of June 6, 1920: p. 3; WZ of June 22, 1920: p. 5; and UA, Personalblatt Landesberger. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 229–230.

¹²Sub auspiciis imperatoris was a rare honorary title, awarded when a doctor’s degree was acquired with extraordinary distinction.

¹³Ed.: Convention of lawyers.

¹⁴See ÖBL, 2005, vol. 12, pp. 56–57, with further sources. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 96, 243, 345–350, 670–671, and 740.

¹⁵Well-known school for higher education (college) focused on the promotion of science and industry.

¹⁶Uncertain data; DBE, vol. 2, pp. 323, 357; and UA, Personalblatt Feilbogen. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 161–162.

¹⁷Founded in 1898 in order to provide professional training to future businessmen, in the import and export business in particular. It became today’s “Vienna University of Economics and Business,” the largest university focusing on business and economics in Europe in terms of enrollment.

¹⁸See ÖBL 2005, vol. 12, p. 239; Ableitinger 1964 and Strejcek 2003. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, cols. 355–356, 740.

¹⁹See Bös 1974 and Nautz 1990. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, col. 335.

²⁰See ÖBL with further verification. Regarding the publications see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926, under the respective authors.

²¹See ÖBL with further verification. Regarding the publications of the individual authors, see Katalog der Carl-Menger-Bibliothek, 1926.