References and further reading

Beyerhaus, G. (1926), ‘Hermann Heinrich Gossen und seine Zeit’, Zeitschrift fur Volkswirtschaft und Sozialpolitik, new series, 5: 522-39.

Blum, K.R. (n.d.), ‘Hermann Heinrich Gossen: Eine Untersuchung uber die Entstehung seiner Lehre’, unpub­lished manuscript.

Bousquet, G.H. (1958), ‘Un centenaire: L’oeuvre de H.H. Gossen (1810-1858) et sa veritable structure’, Revue d’economiepolitique, 68: 499-523.

Chipman, J.S. (2005), ‘Contributions of the older German schools to the development of utility theory’, in C. Scheer (ed.), Die Altere Historische Schule: Wirtschaftstheoretische Beitrage und wirtschaftspolitische Vorstellungen. Studien zur Entwicklung der okonomischen Theorie XX, Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, pp. 157-259.

Cournot, A. (1838), Recherches sur lesprincipes mathematiques de la theorie de la richesse, Paris: L. Hachette.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1983), ‘Hermann Heinrich Gossen: his life and work in historical perspective’, in H.H. Gossen (1983), The Laws of Human Relations and the Rules of Human Action Derived Therefrom, trans.

R.C. Blitz, introduced by N. Georgescu-Roegen, Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, pp. xi-cxlv.

Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1985), ‘Time and value in economics and in Gossen’s system’, Rivista internazionale di scienze economiche e commerciali, 32: 1120-40.

Gossen, H.H. (1854), Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs, undder daraus flieβenden Regeln fur menschliches Handeln, Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg and Sohn.

Gossen, H.H. (1927), Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs, undder daraus flieβenden Regeln fur menschliches Handeln, with an introduction by F.A. von Hayek, Berlin: R.L. Prager.

Gossen, H.H. (1983), The Laws of Human Relations and the Rules of Human Action Derived Therefrom, trans.

Jevons, W.S. (1879), Theory of Political Economy, 2nd edn, London: Macmillan.

Kraus, O. (1910), ‘Gossen’, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 55, Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, pp. 483-8.

Krelle, W. (1987), ‘Uber Gossens “Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs”’, in W. Krelle and H.C. Recktenwald (eds), Gossen und seine “Gesetze” in unserer Zeit. Vademecum zu einem fruhen Klassiker, Dusseldorf: Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen GmbH, pp. 13-42.

Kurz, H.D. (2008), ‘Hermann Heinrich Gossen (1810-1858)’, in H.D. Kurz (ed.), Klassiker des okonomischen Denkens, vol. 1, Munich: C.H. Beck, pp. 196-215.

Kurz, H.D. (2009), ‘Wer war Hermann Heinrich Gossen (1810-1858), Namensgeber eines der Preise des Vereins fur Socialpolitik?’, Schmollers Jahrbuch, 129 (3), 473-500.

Liefmann, R. (1910), ‘Hermann Heinrich Gossen und seine Lehre’, Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik, 40: 483-98.

Liefmann, R. (1927), ‘Neuere Literatur uber H.H. Gossen’, Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 83, 500-517.

Linder, S.B. (1970), The Harried Leisure Class, New York and London: Columbia University Press.

Mas-Colell, A., M.D. Whinston and J.R. Green (1995), Microeconomic Theory, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pantaleoni, M. (1889), Principii di economiapura (Pure Economics), English trans. 1898, London: Macmillan.

Riedle, H. (1953), Hermann Heinrich Gossen, 1810-1858, Winterthur: Keller.

Schumpeter, J.A. (1954), History of Economic Analysis, New York: Oxford University Press.

Spiegel, H.W. (1952), The Development of Economic Thought, New York: Wiley.

Steedman, I. (2001), Consumption Takes Time. Implications for Economic Theory, in The Graz Schumpeter Lectures, London: Routledge.

Steiner, P. (2011), ‘The creator, human conduct and the maximisation of utility in Gossen’s economic theory’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 18 (3), 353-79.

Stigler, G.J. (1959), ‘The development of utility theory’, in two parts, Journal of Political Economy, 58, 307-327, 373-96, reprinted in G.J. Stigler (1965), Essays in the History of Economics, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Varian, H.R. (1978), Microeconomic Analysis, New York and London: W.W. Norton.

Walras, L. (1885), ‘Un economiste inconnu: Hermann-Henri Gossen’, Journal des economistes, 4th series, 30, 60-90; a shortened English version is contained in H.W. Spiegel (1952), The Development of Economic Thought, New York: Wiley.

Winston, G.C. (1982), The Timing of Economic Activities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bruno Hildebrand is known as one of the three founders of the German Historical School. His book Die Nationalokonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft (The Economics of the Present and the Future) became a classic in the history of economic thought (Hildebrand 1844). He was born on 6 March 1812 in Naumburg (Saale, Thuringen), of modest origins. He participated at the age of 14, without the knowledge of his parents, in a competition for admission to the famous elite school Schulpforta and succeeded, being accepted with a grant. The thorough knowledge of the ancient languages and of history obtained there remained important in his later life as a basis for his studies of the eco­nomic history of the ancient world and for his understanding of history. His liberalism was inspired by classical ideals of humanity and citizenship, but also by the intellectual currents of his time; it was less based on individualism and the desire to minimize state action than the liberalism of the classical English economists. He participated in the student movements, which fought for constitutional government. He studied theology only briefly at Leipzig, then philosophy, languages and history, obtained his doctorate in 1836 and, having taught at a gymnasium, became Extraordinary Professor in 1839 and was called to Marburg as Full Professor of Staatswissenschaften (Economics) in 1841.

Hildebrand served as Vice Rector of the University of Marburg in 1845, parliamentar­ian in the National Assembly in 1848 and in the Parliament of Kurhessen, representing Bockenheim 1845 and 1850. He was persecuted for his political activities and went into exile in Switzerland, the only country in Europe where the revolution of 1848 really had succeeded. He was made Professor of the University of Zurich (and honorary citizen of the city) and later moved to the University of Berne where he founded the Swiss Statistical Office. He returned to Germany with his family in 1861 and became Professor at Jena. He founded the Jahrbucher fur Nationalokonomie und Statistik in 1863 and the Statistical Office of Thuringen. He died in Jena on 29 January 1878. His oldest son Richard Hildebrand became a respected economist in turn; another son a famous sculptor, who was ennobled (Adolf von Hildebrand). Hildebrand’s practical work was connected with his economic convictions. His work for the railways combined entrepre­neurship and the creation of infrastructure; thanks to him, Jena, as the last university town in Germany, was linked with the railway network. His belief in the importance of the institutions of credit for economic development led him to help founding country banks, to support credit cooperatives and pension funds for widows. A quite different background to his writings is his acquaintance with the nascent communist movement. Hildebrand visited the Club of German Communists in London in 1846. They hotly dis­puted whether the state or private initiative should build up the mechanized industries, which, as both sides hoped, would eventually free the workers from drudgery.

Some minor writings by Hildebrand deserve attention. His inaugural speech as Vice Rector of the University of Marburg in 1845, in Latin, focuses on Xenophon and tries to reconstruct a Socratic theory of economics.

of credit and quotes Ciceronian passages to show that credit cannot exist without mutual trust, which must be restored after crises of confidence.

Hildebrand is remembered for his theory of stages, which he maintained up to the end of his life, asserting that economic development leads to higher levels of culture. His theory of stages distinguished a natural economy, a money economy and, ultimately, a credit economy. The first stage could be identified with the economy of the Middle Ages, when there was little trade and much of that was based on barter and when the surplus was produced by the labour of the serfs or delivered in kind. The money economy emerges in the early modern period, and Hildebrand believed that the credit economy would dominate the future.

The stage theory, which at first looks like a sequence of different states of the economy, characterized only by their instruments of circulation, was proposed to demonstrate the link between economics and ethics and culture. The natural economy of the medieval period was based on direct personal relationships of authority and loyalty. Money made the individuals independent and gave them freedom to pursue their own interests, but it led to large discrepancies in the distribution of income, and the poor were left to their own devices. The credit economy gave the hope of uniting the solidarity of the earliest period with the possibilities of independent action of the second, in that credit would be given, not only for deferred payment as in earlier times, but, more fundamentally, as a means to undertake. Hence, credit could be given, within a limit, without securities other than the good character of the borrower, whom the lender judged to be an able entrepreneur.

The core idea was developed in later publications (Hildebrand 1864), but it was first formulated in his book of 1848, which was published in the same year as the Communist Manifesto; surprisingly, passages of the book are similar in expression to the flowery sentences by Marx and Engels.

Various criticisms of this theory of stages have been advanced. Hildebrand himself tried to overcome the contrast between what he knew about credit in ancient Rome and his thesis that the credit economy was primarily a matter of the future. He formulated the hypothesis, in a paper in 1869, that the primary assets, which the rich could buy in antiq­uity, were slaves and land, so landlords were the main capitalists (Hildebrand 1869).

His 1848 book shows that Hildebrand shared a certain predilection for the social cohe­sion of the Middle Ages with romantic authors such as Adam Muller or Sismondi, but Muller suffers, in Hildebrand’s eyes, from the illusion of being able to restore feudalism. A critical assessment of the achievements of Adam Smith follows. His system is regarded as ingenious but historically specific. Friedrich List has the merit of having understood Smith, but also of having shown that the Smithian doctrine needed to be modified for backward countries like Germany. Much of the remainder of the book is a critique of Engels’s Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England, which had been published in Leipzig in 1845. Hildebrand is first concerned with Engels’s theory in his paper “Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalokonomie”; the so-called “contradictions” could not be solved by eliminating private property, since even a socialist society would require rules for distri­bution in accordance with the social need to organize production. Hildebrand proposes instead that bonds, which had existed in the natural economy and had been dissolved by the money economy, could be restored in a credit economy by a reaffirmation of ethical principles. Some modern interpreters praise this vision as prophetic, others regard it as naive. Hildebrand here affirmed the belief, so typical of the later Historical School, that the growth of technology, economic progress, ethical improvement and cultural refine­ment belonged together and all had to be objects of policy.

Hildebrand never published the second volume in which he would have had to describe his political strategy, but it is clear that he was an uncompromising advocate of economic freedom, coupled with state action to raise the productive forces and improve education. His 1848 book is indispensable for understanding the common concerns felt and the divergent solutions proposed at the time when the heritage of cameralism and liberalism bifurcated and the Historical School and Marxism originated.

Bertram Schefθld

See also:

Historical economics (II); Friedrich List (I); Marxism(s) (II); Adam Smith (I).