Richard Reisch · 1912
Richard Reisch’s expanded lecture treats the dispute over cameralistic and commercial bookkeeping as a question of public economic responsibility, sharpened by the controversies around the Austrian state railways. His thesis is that accounting systems have administrative consequences: if the state has become an industrial entrepreneur, its accounts must reveal capital, depreciation, debt use, and real operating success, not merely whether authorized credits were spent.
Ich will durchaus nicht für oder gegen eine der beiden Rechnungsmethoden, sondern nur gegen wirtschaftliche Mängel aus bestehenden Rechnungslegungen Stellung nehmen.
English translation: I do not wish at all to take a position for or against either of the two accounting methods, but only against economic deficiencies arising from existing forms of accounting.
The work first distinguishes the two systems by their proper spheres. Cameralistics suits hierarchical spending administrations: it compares order and execution, budget estimate and cash result. Commercial bookkeeping suits enterprises because it asks whether the original wealth has been preserved and what surplus has arisen. Reisch’s key conceptual move is to show that the same term, “success,” means different things in the two systems.
der Ausdruck Erfolg in der kaufmännischen und in der kameralistischen Verrechnungsmethode bedeutet daher grundverschiedene Dinge.
English translation: The term 'success' in the commercial and in the cameralist method of accounting therefore signifies fundamentally different things.
Reisch grants that cameralistics was historically appropriate to the eighteenth-century state and useful for constitutional budget control. But Austria’s state now runs railways, monopolies, mines, postal, telegraph, and telephone services. A system that records cash movements and budget rubrics while neglecting assets becomes economically blind. The central demand is therefore a Vermögensrechnung, an accounting of property and countervalue.
ohne Rechnungslegung auch über das Vermögen gibt es keine klare Orientierung über die tatsächliche Entwicklung der Wirtschaftsführung des Staates.
English translation: without accounting also with respect to assets, there can be no clear orientation regarding the actual development of the state's economic management.
Much of the essay’s force comes from concrete examples. Buying public buildings appears as mere expenditure, while renting burdens the budget less visibly; telephone investment is discouraged because cables and apparatus cannot appear as assets; public debt is shown as borrowing without systematic evidence of what was acquired. Even if a balance sheet revealed overindebtedness, Reisch insists, disclosure would not create the fact but only make it administrable.
Die Insuffizienz des Vermögens gibt gewiß nicht das Recht, auf eine Verrechnung des Vermögens überhaupt zu verzichten!
English translation: The insufficiency of assets certainly does not confer the right to dispense with the accounting of assets altogether!
He then dissects the Austrian Zentralrechnungsabschluß, especially the opaque “kontokorrentmäßige Verrechnung” and the category of “schwebende Posten.” These can conceal very different operations—internal transfers, claims against provinces, bank placements, or unbudgeted purchases—under the same provisional form. Against cameralists’ claim of superior clarity, Reisch argues that the system may obscure even elementary facts.
daß nicht einmal die Höhe der Kassenbestände zuverlässig festgestellt werden kann!
English translation: that not even the level of the cash holdings can be reliably ascertained!
The state railways form the decisive test case. Reisch acknowledges the ministry’s recent “kaufmännische Bilanz,” but calls it formal rather than substantive because assets remain valued at acquisition cost and depreciation is not regularly charged. The fatal confusion is between expansion and mere replacement:
die Vermögenserhaltung mit der Vermögensvergrößerung
English translation: the preservation of assets with the augmentation of assets
Without depreciation, ministers can flatter budgets by postponing replacement of locomotives, wagons, rails, and buildings, then finance ordinary wear by extraordinary credit. This produces inflated results, aging equipment, higher repairs, irregular procurement, and creeping debt. Reisch’s analogy is blunt: the state resembles a merchant who refuses to write down worn assets.
er täuscht sich über die Höhe des verfügbaren Ertrages, zehrt von seinem Vermögen und verfällt dadurch mehr und mehr in Schulden.
English translation: he deceives himself about the level of available yield, consumes his capital, and thereby sinks more and more into debt.
The remedy is accounting adaptation: state enterprises should be treated as distinct economic units whose final figures enter the general budget, while their detailed accounts use balance sheets, profit-and-loss statements, depreciation, reserves, and replacement funds. Parliamentary control would thereby become more real, not weaker. The essay’s lasting relevance lies in its early argument for accrual-like public enterprise accounting and debt transparency.
die Verrechnung nicht Selbstzweck, sondern nur Mittel zum Zweck sein dürfe
English translation: accounting must not be an end in itself, but only a means to an end
This work was divided into 6 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 6 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian