Introduction
Ludwig Joseph Brentano (; German: [bʀɛnˈtaːno]; 18 December 1844 – 9 September 1931) was an eminent German economist and social reformer.
Biography
Lujo Brentano, born in Aschaffenburg into a distinguished German Roman Catholic intellectual families (originally of Italian descent), attended school in Augsburg and Aschaffenburg. He studied in Dublin (Trinity College), Münster, Munich, Heidelberg (doctorate in law), Würzburg, Göttingen (doctorate in economics), and Berlin (habilitation in economics, 1871).
He was a professor of economics and state sciences at the universities of Breslau, Strasbourg, Vienna, Leipzig, and most importantly, Munich (1891–1914). With Ernst Engel, the statistician, he made an investigation of the English trade unions.
In 1914, he signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three. After the revolution of November 1918, he served in minister-president Kurt Eisner's government of the People's State of Bavaria as People's Commissar (Minister) for Trade, but only for some days in December 1918.
Brentano died in Munich in 1931, aged 86.
Legacy
Brentano was a Kathedersozialist (reform-minded) and a founding member of the Verein für Socialpolitik. His influence on the social market economy, and on many Germans who would be leaders just after the end of World War II, can hardly be overrated. He also influenced later economists, such as his doctoral student Arthur Salz.
Note: It is often mistakenly claimed that Brentano was called Ludwig Joseph, and that "Lujo" was a kind of nickname or contraction. This is incorrect; while he was given his name after a Ludwig and a Joseph, Lujo was his real and legal first name. (See his autobiography, Mein Leben..., below, p. 18.)