Emil Kauder, “Jastrow, Ignaz” (1974)

Emil Kauder’s Neue Deutsche Biographie entry presents Ignaz Jastrow (1856–1937) as a scholar whose historical formation informed economic research, social reform, and academic institution-building. Genealogy and a concise account of his career precede an assessment of his publications; lists of works, secondary literature, and portraits complete the entry. Its organizing judgment is the breadth and practical orientation of Jastrow’s scholarship:

J. war ein großer akademischer Lehrer und Pädagoge und ein vielseitiger Gelehrter: Historiker, Nationalökonom, Sozialreformer und Jurist.

English translation: J. was a great academic teacher and pedagogue and a versatile scholar: historian, economist, social reformer, and jurist.

Kauder traces this breadth to historical training under Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch and work as Ranke’s assistant, followed by qualifications in history and political-economic sciences. Jastrow’s role in founding the Berlin Handelshochschule in 1906 and serving as its first rector connects the scholarly portrait to educational practice.

The account’s substantive center is the relationship between economics, administration, and reform. Kauder identifies Jastrow’s unfinished Sozialpolitik und Verwaltungswissenschaft as an attempt, drawing on the cameralist tradition, to incorporate social policy into administrative science. This conceptual alignment finds a practical counterpart in his advocacy:

In seinen Veröffentlichungen vor dem 1. Weltkrieg hat er sich für die Anerkennung der Gewerkschaften, für die Koalitionsfreiheit, für die Verkürzung der Arbeitszeit und für die Förderung der Gewerbegerichte eingesetzt.

English translation: In his publications before the First World War he advocated the recognition of the trade unions, freedom of association, the shortening of working hours, and the promotion of industrial courts.

Kauder also records Jastrow’s wartime demand for a general levy on wealth, judging its governmental implementation severely diminished. His labor-market reporting receives a different kind of recognition: its quantitative treatment of supply and demand, together with food-cost tables, makes it a precursor of business-cycle reporting. Jastrow’s relevance thus rests both on reform proposals and on methods for observing economic conditions.

The final paragraph turns from social policy to economic theory and historical synthesis. Studies of Copernicus, natural law and Adam Smith, and the monetary principles underlying revaluation debates establish the range of Jastrow’s theoretical interests. Yet Kauder’s highest estimate is reserved for his late world history:

J.s Alterswerk, die „Weltgeschichte in einem Bande“ (1932), ist wahrscheinlich sein bedeutendstes Buch, das die Darstellung der großen Zusammenhänge mit der Beschreibung der wichtigen Einzelheiten auf klassische Weise verbindet und in dem besonderer Wert darauf gelegt wird, die gegenseitigen Einwirkungen der Weltkulturen zu zeigen.

English translation: J.'s work of old age, the "World History in One Volume" (1932), is probably his most significant book; it combines in classical fashion the presentation of the great connections with the description of the important particulars, and in it special value is placed upon showing the reciprocal influences of the world's cultures.

This closing judgment gives coherence to the entry’s portrait: Jastrow’s achievement lies in connecting large structures with concrete particulars, whether in economic observation or in the reciprocal relations of world cultures. Kauder offers a compact intellectual biography whose evaluative emphasis falls on the conjunction of historical learning, empirical inquiry, and public purpose.