Rezension: Dierschke und Müller (Hg.), Die Notenbanken der Welt

Fritz Machlup, Rezension: Dierschke und Müller (Hg.), Die Notenbanken der Welt (1927)

Machlup’s brief review evaluates a two-volume reference work published in 1926. His judgment distinguishes its documentary achievement from the uneven theoretical quality of its contributions. He begins by acknowledging the labor of assembling its material:

Dieses Werk gehört zu jenen Arbeiten, an welchen man zunächst den Fleiß bewundern muß, der den ungeheuren Stoff bewältigen konnte.

English translation: This work belongs to those labours in which one must first of all admire the industry that was able to master the enormous material.

The review then explains the compilation’s organization: Dierschke and Müller worked with eleven other contributors to cover the history, statutes, organization, and activities of 28 European note-issuing institutions in the first volume and 29 non-European institutions in the second. For Machlup, collective authorship was necessary to bring such extensive coverage to a common, reasonably recent endpoint. Yet this division of labor produced substantial differences in theoretical outlook and insight.

His criticism remains measured:

Theoretische Fehlurteile lassen sich aber in einem Werk, das seine Entstehung 13 Verfassern dankt, wohl nicht vermeiden.

English translation: Theoretical misjudgements, however, can hardly be avoided in a work which owes its origin to 13 authors.

Machlup identifies no particular theoretical error. Instead, he argues that such shortcomings do little to diminish the work’s usefulness. The review moves from admiration for scholarly labor, through the costs of collaborative production, to a strongly favorable assessment of the result as a reference work. Its central evaluative move is to separate theoretical consistency from documentary utility: despite uneven interpretation, the compilation supplies an important and usable resource, genuinely filling the gap its editors intended to address.