2,793 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
Can a diagnosis of cultural decline be useful when its claim to inevitability is rejected? In this 1923 review essay on Spengler’s second volume, Siegmund Feilbogen separates historical warning from political fatalism. He challenges the elastic chronology behind Spengler’s cultural life cycles and exposes a tension in his admiration for aristocratic instinct and military action: if creative culture makes a people an agent of history, what of the thinkers, poets, scholars, and inventors who produce it? Writing in defence of democracy, Feilbogen nevertheless credits Spengler with making symptoms of decay visible. This compact critique shows how a reader can take those warnings seriously without accepting either inevitable collapse or the authoritarian remedies Feilbogen finds in Spengler’s politics.
Could Switzerland honour its international railway commitments without binding its entire network to perpetual foreign privileges? In this 1911 article, Siegmund Feilbogen defends rejection of the proposed Saint-Gothard convention while resisting both financial retaliation and disruption of European transit. His distinction is precise: material concessions may be negotiable, but permanent limits on political independence are not. Reading the earlier treaties against demands for repayment of foreign subsidies, he argues that state acquisition need not extinguish existing guarantees—or enlarge them into rights over all Swiss railways. The article offers a concrete encounter with treaty interpretation under unequal diplomatic pressure, showing how an ambiguous provision about railway mergers could, in Feilbogen’s view, turn a limited infrastructure obligation into an indefinite constraint on national autonomy.
Industrial growth need not eclipse agriculture, nor commercial expansion displace concern for national independence: these are the balances Siegmund Feilbogen values in his short review of A. de Navay de Földeak’s study of Hungary’s economic role. He praises the author’s statistical precision and restraint, drawing on Levasseur’s preface to place industrial gains alongside the country’s continuing dependence on the land. His strongest endorsement, however, goes to the connection between material development and the preservation of national rights. Five French-backed industrial enterprises give concrete support to his approval of Földeak’s appeal to French merchants. The review shows how Feilbogen’s judgement of an economic survey joins measured assessment of development to sympathy for Hungarian autonomy and Franco-Hungarian trade.
A tax assessed on yesterday’s prosperity may fall due in a year of hardship. Such practical difficulties give substance to Siegmund Feilbogen’s portrait of Robert Meyer, the Austrian finance administrator and scholar commemorated in this July 1914 obituary, introduced by Yves Guyot. Feilbogen connects Meyer’s conceptual precision with his concern for fair treatment of taxpayers, while acknowledging his inability to overcome privileges enjoyed by great landowners. Particularly striking is Meyer’s argument, as presented here, that progressive taxation rests primarily on fiscal productivity rather than justice. The tribute offers a compact encounter with the uncertain boundaries of taxable income—and with Feilbogen’s understanding of conscientious public service, where sound definitions matter but political constraints remain.
Peasants who negotiate a lease by excluding the Civil Code’s provisions supply the telling example in Siegmund Feilbogen’s brief review of Eugen Ehrlich: enacted law and rules actually followed need not coincide. Writing for the Journal des économistes, Feilbogen foregrounds Ehrlich’s challenge to faith in legislative remedies and draws out its affinities with economic liberalism. Yet he does not reduce legal sociology to an argument against state intervention. His closing judgement locates Ehrlich’s scientific contribution in the relationship between social change and legal change. The review offers a compact encounter between a liberal economist’s concerns and a conception of law grounded in observed practice, showing both their common ground and the broader inquiry Feilbogen acknowledges beyond his own emphasis.