Bericht über die Tätigkeit des nationalökonomischen Seminars an der Universität Graz, Studienjahr 1912/1913

This brief administrative and pedagogical report, dated Graz, 10 July 1913, records Joseph A. Schumpeter’s conduct of the national-economic seminar at the University of Graz in 1912/13. Its scope is concrete: enrollment, attendance, seminar routine, topics treated, quality of work, and the institutional conditions under which economic study was possible. Its central argument is practical and sharp: the seminar had begun to form habits of reading, presentation, and discussion, but serious research was blocked by the university’s lack of books, journals, rooms, and assistance.

Im Wintersemester 1912/13 habe ich wöchentlich zweistündige Seminarübungen abgehalten, in die 88 Herren, darunter mehrere Doktoren, inskribiert waren. Ungefähr dreißig davon haben regelmäßig an den Übungen teilgenommen und die meisten von diesen haben kleinere Arbeiten übernommen oder zum mindesten Buchreferate.

English translation: In the winter semester of 1912/13 I held two-hour seminar exercises weekly, in which 88 gentlemen, including several doctors, were enrolled. Approximately thirty of them regularly attended the exercises, and most of these undertook smaller pieces of work, or at least book reviews.

Schumpeter’s opening move is quantitative, but the numbers serve a pedagogical distinction. Formal enrollment is large; genuine participation is smaller and defined by regular attendance, written work, and book reports. The seminar is therefore presented less as a lecture audience than as a working group being trained into scholarly practice.

Allwöchentlich hat ein Herr einen etwa 40 Minuten langen Vortrag gehalten, über den sodann diskutiert wurde.

English translation: Every week one of the gentlemen delivered a lecture of about 40 minutes, which was then discussed.

The structure he describes is deliberately modern: student presentation, collective discussion, reports on recent publications, and attention to current economic events. The topics ranged widely—from banking credit, cartels, interest and monetary organization, coal production, Lassalle, tariffs, statistics and sociology, rail nationalization, American social-policy programs, to urban migration. This breadth shows Schumpeter treating economics as a field spanning theory, institutions, statistics, policy, and contemporary economic life.

Mit Rücksicht auf die Kürze der Zeit, die dem Studierenden für ökonomische Studien zur Verfügung steht, ferner auf das Fehlen aller Ermunterung durch solche Studien etwa belohnende äußere Vorteile und auf die Tatsache, dass die ökonomischen Seminarübungen an dieser Universität erst seit dem Sommer 1912 bestehen, kann die Art der Arbeiten und der Diskussionen als befriedigend bezeichnet werden, obgleich fast alle Teilnehmer noch mit dem Erlernen der Sache kämpfende Anfänger waren.

English translation: Considering the brevity of the time available to students for economic studies, the further absence of any encouragement in the form of external rewards for such studies, and the fact that economic seminar exercises have existed at this university only since the summer of 1912, the character of the papers and discussions can be described as satisfactory, although almost all participants were still beginners struggling to learn the subject.

This is the report’s evaluative center. “Satisfactory” is not an abstract standard but a judgment calibrated to scarce time, weak incentives, and the newness of the seminar itself. Schumpeter’s conceptual move is to define intellectual achievement relationally: student performance cannot be separated from the institutional setting that makes study possible or impossible.

The second part turns from achievement to constraint. The report becomes an infrastructure critique of economic science at Graz.

Der Seminarbetrieb litt in der bedauerlichsten Weise an dem fast völligen Mangel aller Behelfe, an dem auch der beste Wille der Teilnehmer oft scheitern musste.

English translation: The running of the seminar suffered in the most regrettable way from the almost complete lack of all resources, against which even the best will of the participants had often to founder.

Books, journals, rooms, and assistants appear not as conveniences but as preconditions for research. Schumpeter’s complaint about resources is therefore also a claim about how economics becomes a discipline: through access to literature, regular discussion, and supervised independent work.

Die Anschaffung jedes Buches ist eine zeitraubende Angelegenheit, die Anschaffung neuer Zeitschriften aber unmöglich.

English translation: The acquisition of every book is a time-consuming affair, and the acquisition of new journals is impossible.

The emphasis on journals is especially revealing, since the seminar’s routine depended on engagement with current scholarship and economic events. A field oriented toward “scientific daily questions” cannot function when new periodicals are unavailable.

Das Fehlen jeder Hilfskraft bringt es mit sich, dass auch die kleinste Arbeit für den Seminarleiter einen unverhältnismäßigen Zeitaufwand bedeutet, da dem Anfänger ja jede Kleinigkeit langsam mundgerecht gemacht werden muss.

English translation: The absence of any assistant means that even the smallest task represents a disproportionate expenditure of time for the seminar director, since every little thing has to be slowly spoon-fed to the beginner.

The report ends by making the administrative burden intellectually consequential: under these conditions, deeper independent investigations cannot be undertaken, and the most promising students must be directed to better-equipped universities, especially Prague. Its relevance lies in showing Schumpeter as an institutional realist at an early stage of his career. He presents economic education as a collective practice requiring material support, not merely individual talent; the seminar’s promise and its limits are inseparable.