This file is a single methodological farewell address: Schumpeter’s 20 July 1932 speech before the Bonn Staatswissenschaftliche Fachschaft, transmitted through a later, not fully verbatim transcript. Its scope is disciplinary self-interpretation. Schumpeter asks where economics stands and where it is going, but deliberately not as politics or policy advice. The very possibility of posing the question scientifically is, for him, a sign that economics has begun to free itself from party, interest, and doctrine.
Und dieser Umstand des objektiven Interesses ist für eine Wissenschaft wesentlich.
English translation: And this circumstance of objective interest is essential to a science.
The main thesis is that economics must become an autonomous empirical science without denying its practical relevance. Schumpeter calls practical interest the discipline’s “crown of thorns”: it explains both economics’ public importance and its intellectual weakness. The science may be useful, even remunerated, but it must not sell its standards to immediate demands.
Je me fais payer, mais je ne me vends pas – das gilt auch von der noch so jungen Nationalökonomie.
English translation: I let myself be paid, but I do not sell myself — that applies also to economics, however young it may still be.
As a farewell lecture, the address is also a self-portrait. Schumpeter refuses the role of school-founder: the teacher should offer stimuli, not discipleship. This anti-sectarian stance frames the whole argument against “schools,” metaphysical slogans, and academic factionalism.
The lecture’s structure is a sequence of methodological theses. First, economics is an ethically indifferent empirical special science: it is not prophecy, moral preaching, or philosophy from the lectern. Its professional task is description and conditional foresight.
Es ist meine persönliche Ansicht, von der ich glaube, daß sie sich etabliert hat, daß Ökonomie treiben in unserem Sinn, in dem das Wort Wertfreiheit wesentliche Bedeutung hat, heißt, in erster Linie sagen, was ist und was sein wird, und nicht zu werten.
English translation: It is my personal view, one which I believe has become established, that to pursue economics in our sense—in which the term value-freedom has essential significance—means first and foremost to say what is and what will be, and not to make value judgments.
This does not make economics naïvely “lifelike.” Like mechanics, it abstracts and describes; it cannot reproduce the stream of life itself.
Wir können nur eine Beschreibung des Lebens geben, nicht dieses selbst.
English translation: We can give only a description of life, not life itself.
Second, economics has the same logical nature as other sciences, so mathematical and formal means need no special apology. Third, its material is peculiar: economists can “understand” action, but their quantitative data shift with changing norms rather than stable experimental orders. Fourth, economics must stop becoming a philosophy of the economy.
Wir müssen weniger philosophieren, um als Ökonomen leistungsfähiger zu werden.
English translation: We must philosophize less in order to become more effective as economists.
Fifth, the future lies in uniting facts, statistics, and theory. Schumpeter’s program points toward a more historical-quantitative economics, especially through time-series work.
Im Besonderen scheint mir Trendanalyse die Zukunftsaufgabe zu sein.
English translation: In particular, trend analysis seems to me to be the task of the future.
His diagnosis is neither despairing nor complacent. Economics already possesses analytical instruments that answer many large questions qualitatively, but the decisive construction still lies ahead.
Zwar, der wirklich große Bau auf unserem Gebiet kommt erst: was wir tun, das ist lediglich Schutt wegräumen.
English translation: To be sure, the truly great edifice in our field is yet to come: what we do is merely to clear away rubble.
The practical advice follows: students should master theory, statistical methods, and sources early. The charged political aside on Germany in 1932 shows how urgently Schumpeter thought economic technique mattered, even amid non-rational mass politics. Yet the lecture remains methodological: political force does not abolish the need for disciplined economic understanding.
The final movement turns empirical friction into theoretical renewal. Industrial monographs, time-series charts, and practical reports expose the inadequacy of inherited apparatuses such as Walrasian equilibrium when used as complete descriptions.
Die Dinge klappen nicht, die Menschen handeln anders, als nach dieser Theorie anzunehmen wäre.
English translation: Things do not work out; people act differently from what would have to be assumed according to this theory.
The response should not be anti-theoretical despair, but reconstruction.
Nun folgt daraus aber nicht verzweifelte Kritik, sondern die Frage: Wie mache ich es besser?
English translation: But what follows from this is not despairing criticism, but rather the question: How do I do it better?
The address’s lasting relevance lies in this ethos: economics should be value-free but not sterile, formal but empirically exposed, historically attentive but theoretically ambitious. Its animating pleasure is discovery against authoritative impossibility.
Das Faszinierende an der Wissenschaft ist im Grunde nur der Spaß, den man hat, wenn man tut, was beste Autoritäten für unmöglich erklären; nur die Jagd nach solchen Gelegenheiten ist etwas wert.
English translation: What is fascinating about science is at bottom only the fun one has in doing what the best authorities declare to be impossible; only the hunt for such opportunities is worth anything.
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