Carl Menger, Emil Steinbach (1907)

Carl Menger’s obituary offers a deliberately provisional assessment of Emil Steinbach’s intellectual significance. Moving from the formation of his social-policy outlook to his legal work and comparisons with other Austrian jurists, Menger combines recognition of Steinbach’s reforming achievements with criticism of their conceptual limits.

Steinbach’s outlook emerged during the ascendancy of social reform over economic liberalism in German economic literature. Menger attributes that victory partly to liberalism’s own failures: its defenders excused the harmful consequences of unrestricted economic freedom instead of establishing the legitimate scope of freedom and capital. The reformers exposed genuine abuses, but their success also fostered an ill-defined distrust of economic liberty and capital as such. Steinbach embodied both the moral force and the unresolved boundaries of this reaction:

Hierin lag die Stärke, aber auch die Schwäche des ausgezeichneten Mannes.

English translation: Herein lay the strength, but also the weakness, of this outstanding man.

Menger credits Steinbach with combating exploitation and commercial immorality and insisting on the duties attached to property and public office. His objection concerns the absence of a clear stopping point: Steinbach never adequately distinguished justified restrictions on economic freedom from opposition to “capitalism” more generally. The obituary thus makes the failures of liberal apologetics part of the explanation for reformist one-sidedness.

This distinction governs Menger’s assessment of Steinbach’s jurisprudence. Public office and legal study made civil-law reform the principal vehicle of his social commitments. Although Menger recognizes his acuity and extensive learning, he locates his historical importance elsewhere:

Seine geschichtliche Stellung ist indeß die eines Sozialpolitikers — nicht die eines Forschers auf dem Gebiete der Jurisprudenz.

English translation: His historical position, however, is that of a social politician — not that of a researcher in the field of jurisprudence.

The comparison with Unger clarifies the criterion behind this judgment. Unger assimilated the achievements of German jurisprudence into a unified treatment of Austrian civil law, enabling Austrian research and teaching to advance alongside their German counterparts. Steinbach’s achievement was more specific and reform-directed. Social changes had shaken his confidence in existing law; he interpreted social evils chiefly through obsolete legal norms and legislation serving capitalist interests. His writings consequently attacked particular institutions without developing a systematic statement of his position. Menger suggests that demanding offices, official responsibility, and the pursuit of practicable measures also restrained its fullest expression.

The closing comparison places Steinbach beside Anton Menger, identifying reforming purpose and persuasive power as his distinguishing merits while retaining the critical qualification:

Will man Steinbach mit einem der hervorragenderen österreichischen Juristen in eine Parallele stellen, so müßte dies mit Anton Menger geschehen, mit dem er die sozialreformatorische Tendenz, den Glanz und die Eindringlichkeit der Darstellung, ein nicht geringes Maß von Originalität und wohl auch von überzeugter Einseitigkeit teilt.

English translation: If one wishes to draw a parallel between Steinbach and one of the more eminent Austrian jurists, it would have to be with Anton Menger, with whom he shares the social-reforming tendency, the brilliance and the impressiveness of presentation, no small measure of originality, and probably also of convinced one-sidedness.

The obituary’s significance lies in this calibrated separation of ethical achievement, practical reform, and systematic scholarship. Steinbach’s opposition to abuse earns genuine praise; neither its sincerity nor its effectiveness, however, resolves the theoretical question of the proper limits of economic freedom.