Schumpeters Brief an die Prenzlauer Zeitung. Bonn, 31. März 1932

This file is a short primary-source document: Joseph A. Schumpeter’s letter of 31 March 1932 to the Prenzlauer Zeitung. Its scope is narrow but revealing. Schumpeter responds to a newspaper attack on his article in Lloyds Review, insisting that the paper has reproduced a hostile interpretation without checking the argument itself.

Schumpeter’s central claim is that his position on German “tribute” payments has been inverted by selective reporting. He begins by identifying the immediate offense: the newspaper, unlike others, at least openly admits that it has relied on a source unfriendly to Germany rather than making its own examination.

Vom Herrn Dekan der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Bonn empfing ich die Ausgabe der Prenzlauer Zeitung, in welcher Sie – zum Unterschied von anderen Zeitungen wenigstens aufrichtig sagend, dass Sie sich ohne jede eigene Prüfung die Lesart einer bekanntermaßen Deutschland wenig freundlichen Quelle zu eigen machen – mich wegen eines Aufsatzes in der Lloyds Review angreifen, welcher Aufsatz zwar in der Hauptsache anderen Fragen gilt, daneben aber auch versucht, in Kürze die Unmöglichkeit weiterer Tributzahlungen nachzuweisen.

English translation: From the Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Bonn I received the issue of the Prenzlauer Zeitung in which you—unlike other newspapers at least frankly admitting that you have adopted, without any examination of your own, the reading of a source known to be little friendly to Germany—attack me on account of an article in Lloyds Review, an article which in its main thrust deals with other questions, but which alongside also attempts to demonstrate briefly the impossibility of further tribute payments.

The conceptual move of the letter is logical clarification. Schumpeter explains that to prove the impossibility of further payments one must first state the conditions under which such payments would be possible, and then show that those conditions do not obtain. The newspaper has treated the conditional premise as if it were Schumpeter’s endorsed conclusion.

Es liegt im Wesen eines solchen Nachweises, dass man sagt: der Tribute wäre nur unter diesen und diesen Bedingungen möglich, diese Bedingungen sind nicht erfüllt, folglich ist er unmöglich.

English translation: It lies in the very nature of such a demonstration that one says: the tribute would be possible only under these and these conditions; these conditions are not fulfilled; consequently it is impossible.

The letter’s sharpest passage accuses the report of extracting only the first step of the argument and thereby reversing its meaning. For Schumpeter, the issue is not merely political disagreement but the corruption of argumentative form.

Reißt ein feindlicher Bericht das erste Glied heraus und lässt er die Bedingungen, deren Unmöglichkeit die Unmöglichkeit des Tributs erweist, weg, so ist das Argument in sein Gegenteil verkehrt.

English translation: If a hostile report tears out the first link and omits the conditions whose impossibility proves the impossibility of the tribute, then the argument is turned into its opposite.

He then turns from logic to journalistic responsibility. Since the editors could have known that such a view was unlikely from “ein deutscher Lehrer,” and could have telephoned him, their error appears as credulous negligence rather than unavoidable misunderstanding.

Das haben Sie gläubig hingenommen, obgleich Sie wissen mussten, dass es wenig wahrscheinlich sei, dass ein deutscher Lehrer die von Ihnen angegriffene Stellung einnehmen würde und telefonische Rückfrage bei mir doch möglich gewesen wäre.

English translation: This you accepted on faith, although you must have known that it was hardly likely that a German teacher would take the position you attack, and although a telephone inquiry with me would certainly have been possible.

Schumpeter closes by framing his demand for correction as compatible with the editors’ possible good faith. If their attack arose from patriotic indignation, he expects them to correct the record once the misreading is exposed.

Wenn, wie ich nicht zweifle, ehrliche Entrüstung Ihren Angriff bewirkte, so darf ich wohl Berichtigung erwarten.

English translation: If, as I do not doubt, honest indignation prompted your attack, then I may surely expect a correction.

The letter’s relevance lies in its compact display of Schumpeter’s public posture during the reparations crisis: nationalist in tone, formally argumentative in method, and sensitive to the dangers of mediated quotation. It is less a policy memorandum than a defense of intellectual and journalistic accuracy under political pressure.