Geleitwort

Richard Reisch’s “Geleitwort” is a brief orienting foreword to a systematic study of recent bookkeeping reforms. It treats accounting literature as a sign of broader economic change: new methods arise because enterprises, law, taxation, administration, and business science place new demands on the books. Reisch’s argument is historical but not antiquarian. Double-entry remains the foundation of bookkeeping, yet its practical forms must be reshaped when economic life becomes faster, larger, more differentiated, and more dependent on timely information.

Reisch first looks back to the period around 1900, when accounting had to make itself intelligible beyond the counting house. Jurists, administrators, tax officials, and legislators needed accounting knowledge; accounting theory, in turn, had to respond to the legal forms of corporations, cooperatives, and limited-liability enterprises. He sees genuine progress in this earlier effort to connect bookkeeping with law and public administration, but the present task has shifted inward: bookkeeping must modernize its own organization.

Die Sorge gilt wieder der Ausgestaltung des eigenen Hauses, dessen innere Einrichtung zu modernisieren und den geänderten Bedürfnissen der Zeit anzupassen ist.

English translation: Concern now turns again to the arrangement of one's own house, whose internal furnishings are to be modernized and adapted to the changed needs of the times.

The central pressure is functional rather than merely formal. Reisch does not describe reform as a rejection of the old system, but as an adaptation of its inherited architecture to new practical burdens. Modern bookkeeping must be less ceremonial, more rapid, and more informative. It must serve not only as a record of completed transactions but also as an instrument for managing a complex enterprise in motion.

Die Buchführung unserer Zeit arbeitet weniger formell, dafür aber viel rascher, gleichzeitig muß sie aber auch inhaltlich viel mehr leisten als bisher.

English translation: The bookkeeping of our time works less formally, but instead much more rapidly; at the same time, however, it must also accomplish much more in terms of content than before.

The foreword’s most important conceptual expansion comes through Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Reisch presents business administration as turning bookkeeping from retrospective accountability toward ongoing managerial guidance. Accounts should disclose results not only after the fact, and not only for the firm as a whole, but for particular branches and activities. Bookkeeping thus becomes a means of internal orientation, cost awareness, and operational control.

Reisch also widens the frame beyond the individual enterprise. When linked with statistics, bookkeeping can contribute to the observation of economic conditions. The firm’s accounts become small-scale indicators whose aggregated signals may support broader conjunctural research. This move gives bookkeeping a diagnostic role: it belongs not only to legal recordkeeping and business management, but also to the empirical study of the economy.

So verbindet sich die Buchhaltung mit der Statistik und dient womöglich als Konjunkturenbarometer im kleinen, aus dessen Angaben dann die Konjunkturforschungsinstitute ihre großen Wetterberichte zusammenstellen können.

English translation: Thus bookkeeping combines with statistics and possibly serves as a business-cycle barometer in miniature, from whose data the business-cycle research institutes can then compile their great weather reports.

The foreword finally explains the usefulness of the work it introduces. Because new tasks have produced numerous proposals, many advertised as “new systems,” Reisch values a careful survey that orders, compares, and tests them. His tone is neither hostile to innovation nor credulous toward novelty. Reform is necessary, but only time and critical judgment can separate lasting improvements from transient fashions.

Auch hier wird erst der Ablauf der Zeit das Wertvolle und dauernd Brauchbare von den Scheinreformen des Augenblicks zu sondern gestatten.

English translation: Here too, only the passage of time will make it possible to separate what is valuable and permanently useful from the pseudo-reforms of the moment.

Thus the “Geleitwort” frames bookkeeping reform as a disciplined modernization of an enduring intellectual structure. Pacioli’s double-entry remains foundational, but the modern office, the modern enterprise, and modern economic science require bookkeeping to become quicker, more analytic, and more closely connected with management and statistics.