Carl Menger, “Nachruf auf Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk” (1915)

Carl Menger’s obituary is both a memorial portrait and an intellectual appraisal of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. It moves from biography, public service, and academic honors to the deeper question of Böhm’s place in the reconstruction of economic theory. Menger gives full weight to Böhm’s ministerial achievement, especially his fiscal discipline in Austria.

Seine Verdienste als Finanzminister würden allein genügen, ihm einen ehrenvollen Platz in der Geschichte Österreichs zu sichern.

English translation: His merits as Minister of Finance alone would suffice to secure him an honorable place in the history of Austria.

Yet the obituary makes clear that Böhm’s central vocation was scientific. His public career repeatedly interrupted his research, but did not define it. Menger depicts him as a forceful polemicist whose intellectual combativeness remained compatible with personal generosity.

Obzwar eine streitbare Natur und unablässig in Polemiken verwickelt, hatte er wohl zahlreiche Gegner, indes sicherlich keinen einzigen Feind.

English translation: Although a combative nature and continually entangled in polemics, he had indeed numerous opponents, but certainly not a single enemy.

The core of Menger’s judgment concerns Böhm’s method. Böhm did not leave a total system of political economy; his greatness lay in monographic concentration, in making sharply delimited problems illuminate the foundations of the discipline.

Ein systematisches, das ganze Gebiet der Wirtschaftstheorie umfassendes Werk hat er indes nicht veröffentlicht. Er hat sich auf die Publikation von Monographien beschränkt, zum nicht geringen Teile von solchen, deren Thema eng begrenzt war.

English translation: He did not, however, publish a systematic work encompassing the entire field of economic theory. He confined himself to the publication of monographs, in no small part on subjects narrowly delimited in scope.

Menger first stresses Böhm’s analysis of rights and relations in goods theory. Böhm sought to distinguish true economic goods from legally or socially mediated claims, warning against double-counting the relation and the object to which it refers.

Die nationalökonomische Güterlehre, »der wirtschaftliche Gutsbegriff«, müsse somit von dieser Kategorie von Pseudogütern gereinigt werden.

English translation: The economic theory of goods, »the economic concept of goods«, must accordingly be purged of this category of pseudo-goods.

The obituary then presents Böhm as a decisive expositor and defender of the subjective theory of value. Menger does not claim that Böhm originated the whole doctrine, but credits him with giving the new psychological economics clarity, persuasive force, and international standing against older cost- and labor-centered traditions.

The climax is Böhm’s theory of capital and interest. Menger treats Geschichte und Theorie des Kapitalzinses as Böhm’s principal achievement: at once a historical critique of prior doctrines and a positive theory grounded in the higher valuation of present over future goods. From this temporal preference, reinforced by the productivity of roundabout production, Böhm derives interest and its forms.

Aus dieser Grundtatsache ergeben sich, Böhm zufolge, »der Kapitalzins und die verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen desselben«.

English translation: From this fundamental fact there follow, according to Böhm, »capital interest and its various forms of appearance«.

Menger acknowledges that Böhm’s theory provoked serious objections, especially from English and American critics, but the controversy itself confirms the work’s importance. The obituary’s final image is of a statesman-scholar whose lasting legacy was not merely administrative probity, but the sharpening of economic analysis: goods, value, capital, and interest had to be rethought after Böhm-Bawerk.