Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk on Inama-Sternegg’s Deutsche Wirthschaftsgeschichte (1883)

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s brief review recommends the first volume of Carl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg’s Deutsche Wirthschaftsgeschichte (1879), which traces German economic history through the Carolingian period. Its argument moves from the importance of economic history to the methodological achievement of reconstructing a remote past from uncertain evidence, before closing with a recommendation to readers across several disciplines.

Böhm-Bawerk establishes the book’s significance largely through quotations from Inama-Sternegg’s preface. These locate the centre of national life in internal development rather than warfare and governmental action, and connect inadequate historical understanding with deficiencies in scholarship and public life. Most pointedly, Inama-Sternegg questions whether economics has supplied the evidential foundation its professed historical orientation requires:

Insbesondere habe ich es immer lebhaft empfunden, dass die Wissenschaft der National-Oekonomie, zu welcher auch ich mich bekenne, obwohl sie seit lange eine historische Richtung von sich aussagt, doch noch ganz des festen Fundaments einer quellenmässig begründeten, erschöpfenden und zusammenhängenden Geschichte unserer volkswirthschaftlichen Zustände und Einrichtungen entbehre.

English translation: In particular I have always keenly felt that the science of political economy, to which I too profess allegiance, although it has long claimed a historical direction for itself, nevertheless still wholly lacks the firm foundation of a source-based, exhaustive and connected history of our economic conditions and institutions.

Böhm-Bawerk explicitly endorses this diagnosis. The review thus presents economic history as foundational work: a coherent, source-based account of institutions and economic conditions is necessary both for economics and for understanding contemporary public affairs.

His principal evaluative claim concerns how Inama-Sternegg handles the first volume’s particularly difficult evidence. Early Germanic economic life presents gaps and unreliable sources; historical reconstruction therefore demands inference without surrendering critical restraint:

Indem er auf der einen Seite die Lückenhaftigkeit der direkten Quellen durch feine Schlussfolgerungen und Combinationen aus unscheinbaren, aber charakteristischen Anhaltspunkten geschickt ergänzt, auf der anderen Seite aber bei diesen Ergänzungen, wie überhaupt bei Ausnützung der häufig unverlässlichen Quellen mit grosser kritischer Sorgfalt vorgeht, gelingt es ihm, von den wirthschaftlichen Zuständen unserer Vorfahren ein Bild zu entwerfen, das den Vorzug der Vollständigkeit und Lebensfrische mit dem nicht geringeren der Glaubwürdigkeit und Treue vereint.

English translation: Since on the one hand he skilfully supplements the gaps in the direct sources by fine inferences and combinations drawn from inconspicuous but characteristic clues, while on the other hand he proceeds with great critical care in making these supplements, as indeed in exploiting the frequently unreliable sources, he succeeds in sketching a picture of the economic conditions of our forefathers which unites the merit of completeness and vividness with the no lesser merit of credibility and fidelity.

The balance matters: Böhm-Bawerk praises neither documentary accumulation alone nor imaginative synthesis alone, but their disciplined combination. Apparently minor clues support a vivid and comprehensive reconstruction because their use remains subject to critical scrutiny.

The review does not develop a detailed assessment of the book’s individual findings; Böhm-Bawerk expressly sets that task aside. Its concluding recommendation instead identifies the work’s reach beyond professional economists to statesmen and jurists, particularly specialists in German law. His wish for an equally accomplished second volume completes the review’s central judgment: Inama-Sternegg has begun to furnish a necessary historical foundation while exemplifying the evidential care such an undertaking requires.