Lujo Brentano


Ludwig Joseph Brentano was an eminent German economist and social reformer.

Biography

Lujo Brentano, born in Aschaffenburg into a distinguished German Roman Catholic intellectual family, attended school in Augsburg and Aschaffenburg. He studied in Dublin, Münster, Munich, Heidelberg, Würzburg, Göttingen, and Berlin.
He was a professor of economics and state sciences at the universities of Breslau, Strasbourg, Vienna, Leipzig, and most importantly, Munich. With Ernst Engel, the statistician, he made an investigation of the English trade unions.
In 1914, he signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three. After the revolution of November 1918, he served in minister-president Kurt Eisner's government of the People's State of Bavaria as People's Commissar for Trade, but only for some days in December 1918.
Brentano died in Munich in 1931, aged 86.

Legacy

Brentano was a Kathedersozialist and a founding member of the Verein für Socialpolitik. His influence on the social market economy, and on many Germans who would be leaders just after the end of World War II, can hardly be overrated. He also influenced later economists, such as his doctoral student Arthur Salz.
Note: It is often mistakenly claimed that Brentano was called Ludwig Joseph, and that "Lujo" was a kind of nickname or contraction. This is incorrect; while he was given his name after a Ludwig and a Joseph, Lujo was his real and legal first name.