[Rezension zu] Robert Wilbrandt: Der Alkoholismus als Problem der Volkswirtschaft

Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Robert Wilbrandt’s Der Alkoholismus als Problem der Volkswirtschaft (1925)

Schwiedland’s brief review presents Wilbrandt’s 1924 booklet as an economic argument for the German Temperance Movement. It moves from the wartime decline in alcohol consumption and associated institutional burdens to renewed drinking and inadequate legislation:

But now the consumption of alcoholic liquors is again greatly increasing, and no legislative measures sufficiently effective are taken against these abuses.

The central conceptual move is to treat drinking as a collective economic loss, extending beyond expenditure on liquor. Schwiedland reports Wilbrandt’s estimate of three billion gold marks annually before the war, increased by half when indirect costs to policing, justice, and hospitals are included. Agricultural land devoted to alcohol production adds a further claim on productive resources.

Alcoholism creates want, dearness and waste of energy, as more work could be done in proportion with less drinking.

This formulation links temperance to purchasing power and labor productivity. The review concludes with Wilbrandt’s hope that abstinence among German youth will reverse these losses. Its significance lies in this concise presentation of alcohol as a problem of national economic capacity; Schwiedland reports the advocacy without independently testing its figures or causal claims.