The archive.

An economist may anticipate later discoveries without transforming how economic life is understood. This distinction drives Siegmund Feilbogen’s 1889 comparison of James Steuart and Adam Smith. Against attempts to explain Smith’s achievement through borrowed doctrines or historical circumstances, Feilbogen sets a demanding test: Steuart shared many of the same formative influences and offered striking insights of his own. Why, then, did their economics diverge? Feilbogen locates the difference in Smith’s organizing concepts of labour, capital, and distribution, contrasting them with Steuart’s recurring reliance on an exceptionally capable statesman. His defence is not unqualified: Steuart’s methodological caution earns praise, while Smith’s glorification of self-interest draws criticism. The article offers a concrete way to distinguish intellectual priority from explanatory originality—and fidelity to a thinker from repetition of his conclusions.

An idea’s first appearance does not explain its power to reshape a discipline. In this 1890 essay, Sigmund Feilbogen asks why Adam Smith transformed political economy when David Hume had already advanced many similar propositions. His answer shifts attention from priority to proof, conceptual organization, and economic judgment. Hume, he argues, defended commerce chiefly for its contribution to state power and cultural refinement; Smith made productive efficiency a criterion for assessing it. Feilbogen respects Hume’s humane opposition to slavery and commercial hostility while questioning whether refinement can settle economic disputes. The comparison offers a concrete account of how argumentative order, evidence, and a focus on production can turn dispersed insights into a science—rather than merely a collection of anticipations.

Can a fairer distribution of wealth durably relieve poverty without a substantial increase in production? This tension anchors Siegmund Feilbogen’s 1891 review of the first half of N. G. Pierson’s second textbook volume. Feilbogen admires Pierson as an independent reader of Menger who combines theoretical judgement with experience as director of the Netherlands Bank. His approval centres on a discriminating position: unrestricted self-interest leaves needs unmet, yet neither redistribution nor the abolition of private capital ownership offers, in Pierson’s account, a sufficient lasting remedy. The review shows what Feilbogen values in economic criticism—openness to reform coupled with scrutiny of its productive effects—made concrete in Pierson’s resistance to protective tariffs and support for English-style tenant protections.

What makes methodological discussion useful in teaching economics? In this brief 1891 review, Siegmund Feilbogen assesses the first installment of the second edition of F. W. Neurath’s textbook through its promise of conceptual clarity. He singles out the precise definition of induction, the examination of inner intuition as a source of knowledge, and the exposure of a common fallacy in applying the law of large numbers. His praise remains provisional: one installment suggests a substantially new work but cannot establish the character of the whole. The review offers a compact view of Feilbogen’s pedagogical priorities—accessible explanation and methodological distinctions that can support lectures and stimulate further inquiry.

Can a statesman depart from private moral rules while remaining answerable to morality’s highest purpose? In this brief review of F. W. Neurath’s 1891 pamphlet, Siegmund Feilbogen isolates precisely that distinction. He reports Neurath’s proposed end—a realm of perfected spirituality and love—and places it within an idealistic worldview grounded in Kantianism and Darwinism. Feilbogen offers exposition rather than sustained criticism; the review’s interest lies in this compact account of a position that separates political judgment from individual moral prescriptions without abandoning an ethical goal.

How could two thinkers arrive at nearly identical ideas while only one founded a science? Feilbogen builds his whole inquiry on that contrast between Adam Smith and Turgot, Smith's most advanced predecessor, arguing that the practical individualism usually blamed on Smith was in fact stated more radically by the Frenchman—that so-called Smithianism is a moderated Turgotism. Against reducing the Wealth of Nations to laissez-faire, he insists its organizing principle is labor, not freedom or egoism, and that Smith's liberty is social and conditional rather than an absolute natural right. Drawing on Menger, Roscher, and Hasbach and applying Mill's method of difference to intellectual history, he locates Smith's true superiority in the transformation of the physiocratic revenu net into the net product of labor.

Die Arbeit rühmen heisst das Volk rühmen; die Arbeit belauschen heisst das Volksleben belauschen.

English translation: “To praise labor is to praise the people; to listen in on labor is to listen in on the life of the people.”

A decade after the Methodenstreit, Feilbogen registers a shift: abstract theory, so often declared dead by the historical school, is undergoing a renaissance in the value and price work of Gossen, Jevons, Menger, Walras, and Clark. This sketch situates the historical school itself historically, as a necessary phase whose anti-theoretical reflexes are now spent, and argues for the mutual control of induction and deduction rather than the victory of either. It weighs the growing use of mathematics while warning against false precision in measuring pleasure and value, defends marginal utility against Lexis, and faults Jevons for neglecting entrepreneurial profit—an omission, Feilbogen suggests, that left theoretical openings for socialist doctrines of surplus value and crisis.

Auf die Thatsache der Werthschätzung allein kann nur eine Statik, nie eine Dynamik der Volkswirthschaft gegründet werden.

English translation: “Upon the fact of valuation alone only a statics, never a dynamics, of the national economy can be founded.”

A wealth of historical examples is not yet a history of property rights. In this brief 1895 review of Parts II and III of Ludwig Felix’s Entwicklungsgeschichte des Eigenthums, Siegmund Feilbogen tests the relation between cultural breadth and legal precision. Felix’s accounts of custom and religion—from changing attitudes toward enslaved people to sacred protection of possessions—earn praise for their range and humane judgment. Yet Feilbogen asks how such material connects to ownership’s legal content, limits, and protections. His criticism cuts both ways: jurists, too, risk losing sight of the living purposes behind their concepts. The review offers a compact account of what cultural and legal approaches to property need from one another, while reserving final judgment for Felix’s projected volume on law and the state.

Proudhon’s declaration that property is theft was not his last word on private ownership. This complication anchors Siegmund Feilbogen’s 1895 review of the first two parts of Karl Diehl’s study: how can a thinker’s position be established when his writings repeatedly revise it? Feilbogen values Diehl’s careful excerpts and comparisons for making those changes legible, particularly Proudhon’s rational acceptance of property despite his continuing emotional resistance. He also highlights Diehl’s question of whether Proudhon belongs among the socialists, while explicitly attributing to Diehl the judgement that reconciling individual freedom with modern social demands is hopeless. The review offers a concise encounter with Proudhon beyond the familiar slogan—and distinguishes a dependable guide to his economic thought from an accessible introduction to his life.

Industrial production alone could not secure Austria’s place in world markets: who would train the merchants able to connect factories with foreign buyers? In this 1899 essay, issued separately from the Export-Akademie’s first annual report, Siegmund Feilbogen writes as both its historian and one of its professors. He presents commercial education as a meeting point of practical discipline and intellectual independence, drawing on the Handels-Museum’s collections, market intelligence, and teaching experience. Founding proposals and ministerial decisions expose the negotiations behind that ambition—including the removal of “Colonial” from the academy’s proposed name because Austria possessed no colonies. The essay offers a concrete account of how educational ideals acquired funding and institutional form, while insisting that schooling could not substitute for commercial initiative or coordinated trade policy.

A collection of Oriental objects became an institution offering exporters tariff advice, commercial contacts, and professional training. In this twenty-five-year history, published under the editorship of the museum’s Curatorium, Siegmund Feilbogen explains why that transformation mattered: manufacturing skill alone could not secure foreign sales. His account follows the practical work of turning samples, consular reports, and overseas connections into usable commercial knowledge, especially for medium-sized exporters. Institutional advocacy meets an instructive limit, however: the museum could count inquiries but could not reliably measure the business its assistance generated. Readers can discover how a publicly supported museum sought to make market intelligence freely available—and how difficult it was to demonstrate the returns on that service.

Cheaper international transit need not entail permanent foreign control over railway policy. That distinction drives Siegmund Feilbogen’s 1910 critique of the proposed Gotthard Convention. Germany and Italy had helped finance the railway; Feilbogen asks whether that contribution entitled them to lasting concessions after its purchase by the Swiss state. He accepts tariff reductions as potentially beneficial through increased traffic, but opposes extending perpetual most-favoured-nation treatment to the entire Swiss network. His objection exposes a paradox: a guarantee of equal treatment could discourage Switzerland from offering concessions to other neighbours, thereby obstructing trade rather than freeing it. This short article offers a concrete examination of where reciprocal commercial advantage ends and an indefinite constraint on national decision-making begins.