Joseph A. Schumpeter, “Bericht über die Tätigkeit des nationalökonomischen Seminars” — Summary

This file is a short institutional activity report, not a theoretical essay or edited collection. Its scope is the work of Schumpeter’s national-economics seminar at Graz in 1913/14, substantively centered on the summer semester of 1914. The report’s thesis is practical but pointed: the seminar had real intellectual demand and output, yet its development was constrained by the absence of basic scholarly infrastructure.

Die nationalökonomischen Seminarübungen wurden im abgelaufenen Sommersemester von 61 Studierenden und in der Praxis tätigen Herren belegt, wozu noch einige kamen, denen die Teilnahme ohne formelle Inskription gestattet wurde.

English translation: During the past summer semester the seminar exercises in political economy were enrolled in by 61 students and gentlemen active in practice, to whom were added a few others who were permitted to participate without formal enrolment.

Schumpeter presents the seminar as a research workshop linking literature, current economic events, student papers, and discussion. The range of subjects—marriage frequency and wheat prices, Oppenheimer, Stammler, crises, French trade unionism, German foreign policy, Egyptian development, American banking reform—shows economics as a wide social science crossing theory, policy, history, and public affairs. He also singles out Hermann Manger Ritter von Kirchsberg’s work on Styrian regional railways and notes an additional beginners’ group discussing Steffen’s Probleme der Demokratie.

The report then turns from record-keeping to institutional argument. Its central evaluative sentence makes scarcity, not ability, the limiting factor:

Unter den gegebenen Verhältnissen, die es mit sich brachten, dass wenigstens die Hälfte der beabsichtigten Arbeiten trotz besten Willens der Studierenden an dem Mangel an Material scheiterten, kann dieses Resultat als befriedigend betrachtet werden.

English translation: Under the given circumstances, which entailed that at least half of the intended pieces of work, despite the best will of the students, foundered on the lack of material, this result may be regarded as satisfactory.

This is the core conceptual move: seminar productivity is treated as a function of material conditions. Schumpeter’s complaint is not merely administrative; he defines access to journals, books, bibliographies, correspondence, and assistance as conditions of participation in “scientific life.”

Ohne solche Mittel ist unsere Universität ja förmlich vom wissenschaftlichen Leben abgeschnitten.

English translation: Without such means our university is virtually cut off from scholarly life.

The two requested supports—funds for literature and a paid scholarly assistant—would allow the seminar to become differentiated by level and field, serving both practical training and theoretical research. Schumpeter imagines economics as simultaneously professional, empirical, and theoretical: useful for banking, trade policy, forecasting, administration, journalism, and the sciences of economy and society.

Würden die Mittel zur Erfüllung beider Desiderata gewährt, so könnte man dafür garantieren, dass Erfreuliches geleistet würde.

English translation: If the means for fulfilling both desiderata were granted, one could guarantee that gratifying results would be achieved.

The report’s relevance lies in how it links a local Graz resource problem to the future of Austrian economics. Schumpeter argues that intellectual leadership cannot be maintained by founding ideas alone; it requires institutions capable of “building further.”

Vor allem aber möchte ich darauf hinweisen, dass Österreich durch die Tat einiger hervorragender Männer in der Nationalökonomie eine viel größere Rolle spielt als in vielen anderen Wissenschaftsgebieten, und dass es überaus bedauerlich wäre, wenn diese Stellung infolge der Unmöglichkeit weiterzubauen – was viel größere Mittel erfordert als die Gewinnung der grundlegenden Gesichtspunkte und Programme es tat – verloren gehen müsste.

English translation: Above all, however, I should like to point out that Austria, through the achievements of a few outstanding men, plays a much greater role in political economy than in many other fields of scholarship, and that it would be extremely regrettable if this position were to be lost as a result of the impossibility of building further — which requires far greater means than were needed to arrive at the fundamental points of view and programmes.

Thus the document is a compact statement of Schumpeter’s early view of research organization: economics advances through disciplined seminar practice, current empirical engagement, debate, publication, and infrastructural support. Dated July 1914, it also captures the fragility of academic modernization on the eve of war.