Adolph Wagner (economist)

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Adolph Wagner, 1899
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Adolph (also: Adolf) Wagner (born March 25, 1835 in Erlangen , † November 8, 1917 in Berlin ) was a German economist and financial scientist . He is considered a representative of state socialism . Along with Gustav Schmoller, Adolph Wagner is one of the most important economists of the Bismarck era. He was a member of the Association for Social Policy and Rector of the Friedrich Wilhelms (today's Humboldt) University in Berlin.

Life

Adolph Wagner was born the son of Rudolf Wagner . His brother was the geographer Hermann Wagner .

He studied law and political science, in 1858 he became a teacher of economics at the commercial academy in Vienna, 1863 in Hamburg, 1865 full professor in Dorpat , 1868 in Freiburg and 1870 in Berlin. In the first years of his activity he was particularly busy with banking and currency.

He published articles on the doctrine of the banks (Leipzig 1857); The money and credit theory of Peel's bank files (Vienna 1862); The Austrian currency (Vienna 1862); The organization of the Austrian state budget (Vienna 1863); Russian paper currency (Riga 1868); System of the German card bank legislation (Freiburg i. Br. 1870, 2nd edition. 1873) and the card bank reform in the German Empire (1875).

He also turned his interest to statistics , as shown in his work The Law in Apparently Arbitrary Human Actions (Hamburg 1864). His influence on Ferdinand Tönnies was significant here .

In October 1871 he gave a lecture on the social question at the Free Church Assembly of Protestant Men , in which a profound difference between his views and those of the German free trade school emerged. HB Oppenheim found in this speech, as in related rallies, the reason for the keyword “ Kathedersozialisten ”, to which Wagner replied in an “Open Letter” (Berl. 1872).

While Wagner found strong support for the position he held in men like Schmoller, Held, Nasse and Brentano until 1872 , he soon went beyond the same, so that he resigned from the board of the Verein für Socialpolitik and wrote an afterword to his report on the "municipal tax question" (Berlin 1877) presented his different point of view. In various kinds of public meetings he declared his conviction of the need for a radical change in the existing economic order. The edition of Rau's textbook on political economy (Leipzig 1870 ff.), Which he took over in association with E. Nasse, turned out to be a completely new work in which he endeavored to give the economy new legal-philosophical documents. In it, he was probably the first financial scientist in the German-speaking area to formulate certain taxation principles . He was also very active for the Tübingen “ Zeitschrift für Staatswissenschaft ”, for the Hildebrandschen “ Jahrbücher ” and others and wrote a large number of pamphlets.

Wagner was also one of the leading figures in the Conservative Central Committee (CCC), which was constituted in 1881 . The CCC soon formed into the anti-Semitic Berlin movement , in which Wagner worked with Adolf Stoecker , among others .

For the Reichstag election in 1884 Wagner formulated a program in which he spoke out in favor of the monarchy and against parliamentarism and in which he called for strong regulation and control of the economy as well as a stock exchange tax, among other things.

From 1882 to 1885 Wagner was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and from 1910 a member of the Prussian manor house .

It was not until autumn 1916, at the age of over 80 and after four and a half decades as a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, that Wagner retired from teaching because of an eye problem. Werner Sombart and Hermann Schumacher were appointed as his successors .

Seriously ill for a long time, Wagner underwent abdominal surgery for the second time within a year in autumn 1917. He did not recover from this. He died on November 8, 1917 at the age of 82 in his apartment in Berlin. At the memorial service, which took place on November 12th in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Gedächtniskirche and was led by Reinhold Seeberg , Albrecht Penck and Max Sering spoke words of appreciation for the deceased. Then the burial took place in the cemetery III of the Jerusalem and New Church in front of the Hallesches Tor . Adolph Wagner's grave has not survived.

The painter and graphic artist Cornelia Paczka-Wagner was his daughter.

Think

Wagner formulated the law of increasing government spending .

His work prepared the development of the monetary and credit system in Germany and had a major influence on central bank policy and financial practice before the First World War .

student

Hermann Bahr , Heinrich Dietzel , WEB Du Bois , Erich Eyck , Wilhelm Hasbach , Wolfgang Heine , Karel Kramař , Jules Storme, Gustav Stresemann and Werner Sombart sat in his seminar .

Honors

Wagner was a member of the Academies of Science in Milan, Naples, Rome, Venice and Vienna, an honorary member of the Royal Statistical Society in London and the International Statistical Institute, and a member of the Association of Economic and Tax Reformers. He was an honorary member of the Berlin and Leipzig associations in the Association of German Student Associations .

Fonts

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Printed in: Collection of sources for the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 . I. Department: From the time when the Empire was founded to the Imperial Social Embassy (1867–1881). 8th volume: Basic questions of social policy in public discussion: churches, parties, clubs and associations. edited by Ralf Stremmel, Florian Tennstedt and Gisela Fleckenstein. Darmstadt 2006, No. 29.
  2. ↑ Printed in: Collection of sources for the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 . I. Department: From the time when the Empire was founded to the Imperial Social Embassy (1867–1881). 8th volume: Basic questions of social policy in public discussion: churches, parties, clubs and associations. edited by Ralf Stremmel, Florian Tennstedt and Gisela Fleckenstein. Darmstadt 2006, No. 39.
  3. ↑ Erich Dombrowski : Adolph Wagner † . In: Berliner Tageblatt , November 9, 1917, morning edition, pp. 2–3. Adolph Wagner † . In: Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , November 9, 1917, morning edition, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Berliner Tageblatt , November 9, 1917, morning edition, p. 3. Adolph Wagner † . In: Vossische Zeitung , November 9, 1917.
  5. ^ The funeral service for Adolf Wagner . In: Daily Review , November 13, 1917.
  6. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 247.
  7. ↑ Marc Zirlewagen : Biographies of the clubs German students . BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2014

Remarks

  1. ↑ In this work, Wagner criticizes Karl Marx , which prompted him to reply in his marginal glosses to Adolph Wagner's “Textbook of Political Economy” (Marx / Engels Werke MEW 19, pp. 355–383), see also On the history of the origins of Marx's capital .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Adolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wagner, Adolph Heinrich Gotthilf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and statistician
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH gain
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1917
Place of death Berlin