Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, “Wie man am besten sein Vermögen anlegt” (1906)

This file is a single review essay from the Neue Freie Presse on Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s L’art de placer et gérer sa fortune. Inama-Sternegg treats the book as more than a manual for investors: it becomes an occasion to ask whether political economy should serve private security alone or educate capital toward a social and productive function.

The opening contrast is between a merely “practical” economics, reduced to recipes for individual advantage, and a national economy still conscious of its social obligations. Inama-Sternegg warns that the French individualist tradition can slip into a doctrine of private money-making, yet he also grants that Leroy-Beaulieu’s work is saved from triviality by breadth of experience and clarity of exposition.

Das soziale Prinzip der Wirtschaftsordnung ist aber hier doch so entscheidend zur Geltung gekommen, daß individualistische Einzeligkeiten unschädlich bleiben.

English translation: But the social principle of the economic order has here come so decisively into effect that individualistic peculiarities remain harmless.

He therefore refuses a simple dismissal of popular economic writing. The book may be addressed to ordinary property-holders, but it is not shallow. Its maxims—avoid speculation, distrust financial adventurers, limit debt, prefer liquidity and safety, and do not enter investments one cannot competently supervise—are deliberately plain. Their force lies not in theoretical novelty but in disciplined judgment.

Zwar, es ist eine durchaus populäre Schrift, aber sie ist damit noch lange nicht eine seichte Arbeit.

English translation: To be sure, it is a thoroughly popular writing, but that by no means makes it a shallow work.

The review repeatedly distinguishes the authority of the practical observer from that of the system-building economist. Leroy-Beaulieu appears less as a theorist than as a financial guide whose long contact with markets enables him to speak usefully to rentiers, small capitalists, widows, heirs, and cautious savers. Inama-Sternegg accepts that such advice has social value when it protects inexperienced people from fraud and imprudence.

Nicht der Theoretiker spricht hier zu seinem Publikum, sondern der Geschäftsmann, der alterprobte Chefredakteur des „Economiste Français“, der, wie kaum ein zweiter, in der Welt der Geldgeschäfte sich auskennt und daher ein berufener Führer ist.

English translation: It is not the theorist who here speaks to his public, but the businessman, the seasoned editor-in-chief of the "Économiste Français," who, as few others, is at home in the world of financial affairs and is therefore a well-qualified guide.

Yet the essay’s center is critical. Inama-Sternegg recognizes that older supposedly secure forms of property—land, houses, mortgages, even some municipal or corporate securities—have become dependent on management, law, market conditions, construction costs, and specialized knowledge. The passive owner can no longer assume that property naturally preserves itself. Security itself has become a function of competence.

Die Renten, und in gewißem Maße auch ihr Kapitalwert, werden künftig einen mehr persönlichen Charakter an sich tragen und vielmehr von den Qualitäten des Wirtschafters abhängen.

English translation: Rents, and to a certain extent also their capital value, will in future bear a more personal character and will depend rather on the qualities of the economic manager.

From this follows the tension that gives the review its significance. Leroy-Beaulieu’s advice is prudent for the individual rentier, but dangerous if elevated into a national economic ethic. A whole class trained to seek only safe coupons and effortless income may conserve private fortunes while starving industry, enterprise, and international competitiveness. Inama-Sternegg thus turns a handbook on investment into a critique of rentier quietism.

Dann wird sich aber auch dieser Quietismus an der französischen Volkswirtschaft, ja auch an der Machtstellung Frankreichs hundertfach rächen.

English translation: But then this quietism will avenge itself a hundredfold upon the French national economy, and indeed upon the power position of France itself.

The essay closes by shifting the problem from personal investment technique to political economy. The question is not merely how a cautious person should preserve wealth, but what role capital must play in a modern nation. Inama-Sternegg respects thrift and financial sobriety, but he insists that capital withdrawn into passive security loses part of its social vocation. The review’s lasting argument is that popular economics becomes harmful when it teaches only the art of not losing money, and not the harder civic art of making wealth productive.