The archive.

Luxury and forced labour stand side by side in Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s brief review of Richard Thurnwald’s Psychologie des primitiven Menschen. Praising Thurnwald’s ethnological account, Schwiedland foregrounds two sources of economic change: desires that exceed material necessity and the power to make others work. Shells, beads, and stones acquire value through distinction or supernatural associations; slavery and tribute, in his account, expand production and differentiate occupations. The review offers a compact encounter with an approving interpretation of Thurnwald in which technical limits, symbolic value, and coercion all shape economic life—and in which the language of “progress” accommodates domination as well as invention.

Against theories that lodge value in labor, cost, or the object itself, this short monograph — later folded into Schwiedland's Volkswirtschaftslehre — grounds value in a subjective consciousness of dependence on useful and scarce goods. Utility, he argues, names an objective suitability, whereas value is the felt dependence of the economizing subject; hence his correction of both 'objective value' language and the Austrian preference for 'Grenznutzen.' Price, by contrast, is external, negotiated, social — an actual counter-performance received in exchange, one requiring not equal values but divergent valuations, so that barter enriches both sides. Translating usefulness and scarcity into supply and demand, Schwiedland tracks seller competition in abundance, buyer competition in shortage, hoarding, panic selling, cartels, and monetary policy, yet ends in methodological modesty: no single theory can capture every real price.

Wert ist ein Gefühl, Preis eine tatsächliche Gegenleistung: die Menge von Gütern, die man beim Austausch für andere empfängt.

English translation: “Value is a feeling, price an actual counter-performance: the quantity of goods one receives in exchange for others.”

The entrepreneurs capable of rebuilding industry may also acquire the power to bend national policy to private ends. This tension gives Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s 1923 review of Herbert von Beckerath’s book its focus. In presenting Beckerath’s account, Schwiedland explains why postwar shortages and mismatched resources favoured integrated industrial combines rather than cartels of separate firms. He then presses the question of leadership: can roughly two dozen powerful figures supply the judgement these vast organizations require, accommodate workers, and ease international antagonisms? His explicit insistence that economic problems are also ethical questions sharpens the review’s interest. Readers encounter an argument for entrepreneurial coordination whose confidence in practical competence stops short of confidence in the responsible exercise of power.

Can geography explain both the formation of nations and the growth of world wealth? In this brief 1923 review of O. D. von Engeln’s Inheriting the Earth, Eugen Peter Schwiedland finds stimulating material without being persuaded that it forms a unified account of economic development. He reports Engeln’s claim that shared surroundings, rather than race, language or religion, create nations, but reserves his strongest appreciation for the factual discussion of resources and exchange between temperate and tropical regions. The review’s interest lies in this selective judgement: Schwiedland questions the book’s coherence while welcoming the knowledge and prospects offered by its treatment of tropical cultivation, migration and settlement colonies.

Opposition to Marxism does not necessarily imply a defence of liberalism: this distinction frames Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s affirmative 1923 review of Mises’s Die Gemeinwirtschaft. Writing in English, Schwiedland places the book against German nationalist alternatives that reject liberalism alongside Marxism. He foregrounds Mises’s shift from the unequal distribution of wealth to the conditions of its production: could socialism increase output, and could it calculate rationally without market prices? His account also presents consumer choice, rather than control of the workplace, as the basis of economic self-determination. This short review offers a concrete instance of Mises’s early reception, showing which arguments a sympathetic contemporary selected and why he regarded a liberal defence of capitalism as a distinctive intervention.

What becomes of economic self-interest when prestige depends on giving valuables away? In this 1923 review of Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Eugen Peter Schwiedland treats Kula exchange as a challenge to textbook accounts of early economic life. He emphasizes how custom, ceremony, and public recognition organize exchange without eliminating the desire for gain. His distinctive concern is what economists can learn from ethnographic observation: generosity and acquisitiveness need not be opposing explanations, and practical usefulness cannot alone account for value. The review offers a compact encounter between fieldwork and economic theory, while Schwiedland’s bourgeois-versus-Bolshevik comparison exposes the contemporary political categories he brings to Malinowski’s findings.

Protection against inflation appears here not as social relief but as a “curious monopoly” enjoyed by wage-earners and salaried employees. That reversal captures the standpoint of Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s 1923 review of Siegfried Strakosch’s book on Austria’s economic crisis. Strongly endorsing Strakosch’s practical and scientific authority, Schwiedland argues that socialist labour protections weakened production and burdened business. He also acknowledges the destructive effects of the peace settlement, new frontiers, trade barriers and currency instability. The interest of this short review lies in how these explanations are weighted: readers can see an economic indictment of labour policy taking shape around business uncertainty and middle-class losses, even while the reviewer describes pressures extending far beyond domestic legislation.

Shell valuables that must be passed on rather than kept pose a precise problem for economic explanation: what makes temporary possession desirable, and what binds a recipient to give in return? In this short 1923 review of Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Eugen Peter Schwiedland approaches Kula exchange through social obligation, rank, and recognition. He emphasizes a distinction easily lost when every transfer is called trade: ceremonial gifts are not bargained over, yet their circulation stimulates canoe-building, voyages, and ordinary commerce. His comparisons with European jewels make prestige and attachment intelligible without equating them with practical usefulness. The review offers a compact examination of how custom governs reciprocity—and how giving wealth away can itself become a way of enjoying it.

Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s brief review of the sixteenth edition of Viktor Cathrein’s Der Sozialismus distinguishes critical force from documentary scope. He locates Cathrein’s opposition to socialist doctrines and their implementation within his Jesuit allegiance to Roman Catholic teaching and papal encyclicals, describing the criticism as both acute and inflexible. Schwiedland also notes the sharp treatment of the Marxian economic interpretation of history without rehearsing its argument. His concluding qualification gives this compact notice its particular value: the updated documents and facts are useful, but the account of the recent socialist movement extends only to Germany. Readers encounter a concise appraisal that identifies both the standpoint and the limits of Cathrein’s revised work.

Did printing money drive the German mark’s collapse, or did it follow a collapse already under way? In this short English review of the sixth edition of Karl Helfferich’s Das Geld, Eugen Peter Schwiedland endorses the latter explanation, contrasting the growth of note issuance with the far steeper rise of the dollar and import prices. His sympathetic assessment brings the practical demands of paying wages and sustaining enterprises into a dispute over monetary causation. It also questions who actually benefited from depreciation: debt relief offered governments little comfort, while industrial profits could mask the consumption of productive assets. The review gives readers a compact, pointed account of an exchange-rate-centred explanation of German inflation and the economic losses concealed by nominal gains.

Can monetary cooperation preserve the sovereignty of states whose economies remain interdependent? In this English-language review of Elemér Hantos’s Das Geldproblem in Mitteleuropa, Eugen Peter Schwiedland brings that institutional difficulty into focus. Hantos proposes a currency convention among six successor states of Austria-Hungary: national issuing banks would retain distinct policies while accepting common supervision, potentially by the Bank of England. Schwiedland’s measured reconstruction distinguishes the countries’ experiences of inflation and draws attention to the unprecedented arrangement envisioned for their recovery. This short review offers a concrete encounter with the tension between monetary stabilisation and national autonomy—and with a proposal that sought regional coordination without a single issuing bank.

The cost of drinking extends beyond the price of liquor in Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s brief 1925 review of Robert Wilbrandt’s temperance booklet. Schwiedland foregrounds Wilbrandt’s economic case: expenditure on alcohol, burdens on police and hospitals, agricultural land diverted to its production, and labour lost through diminished productivity. Against the reported wartime fall in consumption, renewed drinking appears as a drain on Germany’s strained resources. The review offers a compact account of how temperance advocacy could frame abstinence as a question of national productive capacity rather than private conduct, while conveying Wilbrandt’s claims and hopes for German youth without independently testing his estimates.