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Streissler, Erich --- "Wilhelm Roscher (1817-94)" [1999] ELECD 46; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen (ed), "The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999)

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781858985169

Section: Chapter 39

Section Title: Wilhelm Roscher (1817-94)

Author(s): Streissler, Erich

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

39 Wilhelm Roscher ( 1817-94)
Erich Stre issler


Life and work
Wilhelm Roscher was born in 1817 in Hannover (in a German kingdom then
still in personal monarchical union with Great Britain), the son of a high-
ranking civil servant in the Ministry of Justice. After studying and early
teaching at the University of Gottingen (doctorate 1838, university lecturer
1840) he became in 1848 professor of history and social sciences in Leipzig,
a university distinguished by its law faculty. He served in this position up to
his death in 1894. He is the main German-language textbook author of
economics in the second half of the 19th century, the term `textbook', how-
ever, by far understating the scientific importance of his comprehensive
treatises. In its tripartite structure (theory - policy - public finance) roughly
following the innovative framework of Karl Heinrich Rau, his predecessor as
the dominant German economist a quarter of a century earlier, Roscher's
System of Economics treats theory in a first volume, called `Foundations of
National Economics' (1854), a book which ran to 26 editions up to 1922;
secondly, agricultural economics (that is, economic policy, part I), first pub-
lished in 1859, a book of 14 editions; thirdly, published only in 1881, commerce
and industry (that is, economic policy, part 11), running to eight editions;
fourth, public finance, published in 1886 (five editions); and, finally, as a fifth
volume, `System of the Poor Laws and the Policy towards the Poor', pub-
lished in 1894 (three editions), a third ...