Recent Developments in German Economic History

Abstract

In 1928 Hans Proesler, whom we shall meet in the course of this study, assumed the presidency, that is, became the Rector, of what can 1928 Hans Proesler, whom we shall meet in the course of thisbe described as the Niirnberg school of economics (Hochschule für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften). The address he delivered on that occasion can properly serve as the starting point for my own presentation, for it dealt with German economic history, its development and problems. In his talk Proesler pointed out that it was the eighteenth-century enlightenment that opened the road to economic history by assigning to studies pointing in this direction a niche in the lecture hall of general cultural history. In Germany such men as Justus Möser, Gottfried Herder, and some members of the then-famous Göttingen school of historians, Schlözer, Gatterer, Heeren, von Anton, and Fischer, are considered by the historian of economic and social history as having stood at the cradle. Although German Romanticism had done much for historiography in general, its role for economic history was very limited. Romanticist historians were not primarily interested in things economic, although in the frame of legal and constitutional history on the one hand, and in connection with classical studies on the other, scholars of that period and the decades following made contributions to this field of knowledge. I might mention Savigny, Eich-horn, Waitz, Böckh, Otfried Müller, Mommsen; and a few minor figures, such as Hüllmann and Hannssen, even devoted themselves to special problems in the area, that is, financial and agrarian history, respectively. Georg von Below, the renowned German historian, treating Proesler's topic a few years before the latter, emphasized the contribution of the Prussian archivist, Georg Wilhelm von Raumer (1806-1856). Not only did the latter take an interest in matters economic but his ideas even tended toward what we would today call a materialistic interpretation of history.