Lujo Brentano (18 December 1844 – 9 September 1931) was a German economist and social reformer.

Biography

Lujo Brentano, born in Aschaffenburg into a German Catholic intellectual family (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 1872, he became involved in an extended dispute with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Brentano accused Marx of falsifying a quotation from an 1863 speech by William Ewart Gladstone. 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 a few days in December 1918. Brentano died in Munich in 1931, aged 86.

Legacy

Brentano was a Kathedersozialist, a professor advocating social reform, and a founding member of the Verein für Socialpolitik. He influenced the social market economy and many Germans who were leaders immediately after the end of World War II. He also influenced later economists, such as his doctoral student Arthur Salz.