Carl Menger, Das Studium der Politischen Oekonomie in Deutschland und Oesterreich (1893)

Menger’s review examines Ernest Mahaim’s account of economics teaching in Berlin and Vienna and Henri St.-Marc’s broader study of German and Austrian universities. It connects foreign assessments of academic life with teaching freedom, institutional resources, examinations, and economic method. Its guiding distinction is between the value of firsthand observation and the sustained study required to judge intellectual achievements.

Menger situates these investigations within French and Belgian efforts to develop university instruction in political economy. He treats their interest in German-speaking institutions as a serious search for useful experience, rejecting the suspicion that visitors principally seek grounds for disparagement:

Um uns zu verkleinern oder zu verunglimpfen, dazu bedarf es nicht erst einer Reise nach Deutschland oder nach Oesterreich.

English translation: In order to belittle or to disparage us, no journey to Germany or to Austria is first required.

This welcome does not make foreign testimony an unquestionable endorsement. Sympathetic visitors may exaggerate the excellence of what they encounter. Menger’s characterization of the French observer identifies admiration itself as a possible distortion:

Ja, er ist zur Ueberschätzung unserer Capacitäten und Einrichtungen geneigt, denn das Gegentheil hievon entspricht nicht den vornehmen Instincten der Franzosen und würde ihnen unbedeutend, jedenfalls nicht merkwürdig genug erscheinen.

English translation: Indeed, he is inclined to overestimate our capacities and institutions, for the opposite of this does not accord with the refined instincts of the French and would appear to them insignificant, at any rate not remarkable enough.

The review therefore combines appreciation of outside attention with scrutiny of the institutions praised. Mahaim’s response to Vienna begins with its physical setting:

Schon das Wiener Universitätsgebäude macht auf den belgischen Gelehrten einen bedeutenden Eindruck.

English translation: The Vienna university building alone makes a considerable impression upon the Belgian scholar.

Menger moves beyond this architectural impression to the organization of instruction. He emphasizes the breadth of courses and the contribution of private lecturers, but also the inadequacy of seminar libraries. Extensive compulsory lectures can divert students from specialized teaching. Additional extraordinary professorships and financial support would help sustain the latter. His endorsement of Mahaim’s advocacy of freedom in teaching and learning thus has a material dimension: academic liberty requires staffing, books, and opportunities for sustained participation.

St.-Marc extends the comparison to nine universities, considering the intellectual character of economics, its teaching, and its relation to French arrangements. Menger appreciates his portraits of scholars, especially Conrad, Böhm-Bawerk, and Mataja, while questioning whether personal acquaintance adequately supports judgments about their work. St.-Marc’s preference for economics within law faculties rests on the interdependence of legal and economic knowledge. His account of Austrian examinations likewise raises the question of economics’ substantive place in professional education.

Here Menger turns the review into an intervention in Austrian university policy. Proposed legislation would abolish the substitution of doctoral examinations for state examinations. He argues that the existing arrangement effectively adds a fifth year of mature revision to four years of study: students return to the curriculum as a whole and participate more intensively in seminars. An arrangement developed through the needs of the legal profession therefore possesses educational value that administrative reform could destroy.

Menger nevertheless recognizes the burden examinations impose on professors. He supports lower doctoral fees and exemptions for poor students, but distinguishes these improvements from shifting examinations toward commissions of officials and practitioners. Such a transfer might relieve academic workloads while weakening advanced university study. Professors’ interests as researchers and students’ interests as learners do not automatically coincide.

The closing assessment applies similar discrimination to St.-Marc’s treatment of economic schools. His association with Gide and Cauwes and opposition to French classical economics may encourage excessive sympathy with German critics of classicism. For Menger, a common opponent does not establish agreement on fundamentals. Yet he credits St.-Marc with resisting uncompromising historicism, particularly its neglect of philosophical questions. Historical investigations cannot indefinitely replace coherent doctrine; systematic construction would expose disagreements concealed by shared preparatory work.

The review links institutional criticism to a methodological demand for substantive judgment. Firsthand reporting deserves recognition, but assessing economic literature requires sustained textual study. Impressive buildings and formal curricular provision likewise do not alone establish educational strength. Specialized teaching, supported seminars, and examinations encouraging mature understanding provide the practical conditions in which university economics can flourish.