Robert Zuckerkandl (1856-1926)

“Es ist nicht nötig, die Lehre vom Wert, wie sie sich bei Marx findet, weiter zu verfolgen. Was bisher angeführt wurde, genügt, um die Stellung zu kennzeichnen, welche Marx in der Geschichte der Wertlehre gebührt. Diesbezüglich wird man nicht zu verkennen vermögen, dass, so radikal und weitgehend Marx in seinen praktischen Lehren sein mag, er in der Wertlehre die Irrtümer und Vorurteile der orthodoxen Nationalökonomie vertritt und überdies in seinem Vertrauen auf Deduktionen aus erdichteten Voraussetzungen, die alles, nur nicht die Wirklichkeit wiedergeben, noch viel weiter geht als Ricardo.”

Robert Zuckerkandl

TAKE AWAY

It is 2026, and lest we forget that Robert Zuckerkandl, one of Carl Menger’s most dedicated students and professor of economics, died in Prague exactly 100 years ago. Widely overlooked, Zuckerkandl belonged to the prolific 2 nd generation of the Austrian School, which successfully disseminated Menger’s groundbreaking work far beyond the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With his classic work, Zur Theorie des Preises mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Lehre (Vienna 1889), and his teaching at the German Karl-Ferdinands University in Prague, Zuckerkandl made several significant contributions. Even though Zuckerkandl published relatively little, his works must be considered important and are finely polished gems in the specific literature of the Austrian School.

Biographical background and academic formation

Born in 1856 in Raab (now Győr, H), a small town some 70 miles southeast of Vienna, Zuckerkandl grew up in a family that could let claim to an exceptional academic, intellectual and business tradition. Among other luminaries within his extended family, both, his oldest brother Emil and his younger brother Otto became leading surgeons, pioneers in microsurgical techniques and professors of anatomy at the University of Vienna. His only slightly older brother Viktor grew to be one of the leading entrepreneurs, art collectors, and patrons of the arts in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Along with other institutions in 1901 Viktor founded the famously innovative medical sanatorium in Purkersdorf, at the outskirts of Vienna. Robert’s sister-in-law, Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps was the daughter of Moritz Szeps and established one of the last literary salons in Vienna. A close confidant of Crown Prince Rudolf of Habsburg and the publisher of the liberal Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Szeps commissioned several of Rudolf’s anonymous political essays. Hired by Empress Elisabeth (1837-1898), Carl Menger (1840-1921) and Moritz Szeps (1835-1902) significantly contributed to the Crown Prince’s ingenious socio-economic classical liberal positions. In addition to Robert Zuckerkandl’s illustrious pedigree, there was also his aunt, Gertrude Zuckerkandl, a celebrated painter and the daughter of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel, who founded with Sigmund Freud Vienna’s first psycho-analytic society, and also Emile Zuckerkandl (1922-2013), one of the pioneers in the field of molecular evolution who introduced, with Linus Pauling, the concept of the molecular clock, enabling the neutral theory of molecular evolution. And there was even a family relationship with the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.

After attending the local schools in Győr, Robert Zuckerkandl began studying law at the University of Vienna in 1877. Alongside Eugen von Boehm Bawerk (1851-1914), Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926) or Viktor Matja (1857-1933), he became one of Carl Menger’s most enthusiastic students. In 1881, he received his doctorate from Menger (1840-1921) and two years later completed his habilitation (venia legend). Lacking a suitable position, Zuckerkandl initially worked not only as a Konzipient (trainee lawyer) in a Viennese law firm but also, from 1882 to 1888, as the editor and later as publisher of the influential Austrian Railway Journal (Oesterreichische Eisenbahn-Zeitung). As a chief engineer in the kuk Ministry of Railways, Arthur von Mises, the father of Ludwig v. Mises occasionally published in this “Journal of the Club of Austrian Railway and Shipping Officials”. In 1887, Zuckerkandl married Therese Kern in Vienna.

While gaining practical experience in the law office and even prior to his admission to the bar in Vienna, his first and most important book, Zur Theorie des Preises mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Lehre (1889) was published in Leipzig (Germany). Menger praised the book and reviewed it favorably in the academic section of the Wiener Zeitung that same year. Shortly before the Nazi regime began to supervise and take charge of all academic work, it was reprinted in 1936. In 2015 and 2017 it was reprinted again and is available as paperback.

In 1894, he was appointed associate professor at the venerable Charles University in Prague, succeeding Emil Sax (1845–1927), and began teaching Value-and Price Theory there alongside the towering scholar Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926). Just two years later, Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830-1916) appointed him full professor. Due to the simmering national conflict, the Charles University, founded in 1348 by King Charles IV, was divided by law in 1882 into the ‘German Karl-Ferdinand University’ and the ‘Czech University Karl-Ferdinand,’ thus creating two independent institutions on the same site. Among many other prominent figures, Albert Einstein and Franz Brentano also taught there briefly. The numerous young students who flocked into Zuckerkandl’s classes included among many other exceptional talents, the famous writers Franz Kafka, Max Brod and Oskar Engländer (1876–1936). Engländer, became a member of that prolific 3 rd generation of the Austrian School of Economics and published several important books among them, Bestimmungsgründe des Preises (1921), Theorie der Volkswirtschaft, Band 1 (1929), Theorie der Volkswirtschaft, Band 2 and Prices and Business Cycles: Contributions to Crisis and Price Theory (1931).

Zuckerkandl’s Theory of Price and Value

Zuckerkandl’s best known work Zur Theorie des Preises mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Lehre (Vienna 1889), set a milestone. As the first comprehensive history of Price- and Value Theories, the greater part of this inspiring book is devoted to the analysis of these doctrines. He sharply criticizes those authors who proceeded from the idea that values ​​are determined not by the relationship between people and goods, but by external factors such as changes in supply. Their bias led to incorrect “mechanical”; theories, which Zuckerkandl divided into three categories: accordingly price adjustments can be explained either by supply and demand, by changes in production costs, or as in Karl Marx’s theory, by labor costs. Zuckerkandl however, builds on the theories of Carl Menger and argues that prices are not determined by inherent properties of goods or pure production costs, but exclusively by the subjective value judgments of acting human beings.

The assessments of the economic importance of goods for satisfying needs are playing a crucial role. Zuckerkandl’s classic work significantly shaped the shift from the classical, cost-based understanding of price to the modern theory of marginal utility and offers a theoretical analysis of how prices arise through the exchange of goods, where the parties have differing subjective valuations. In the same year, his book on the Das Neue Österreichische Anerbenrecht  (New Austrian Inheritance Law) was published in 1889 and addresses the legal aspects of transferring land and buildings. He analyzes Austrian inheritance law and the associated regulations for the inheritance of land and agricultural holdings. Zuckerkandl explains in detail the historical development of inheritance law in Austria and compares it with the new legal provisions that reform and modernize traditional inheritance law. This reference work soon became a standard but was outdated after the inheritance law was revised.

Just one year after the publication of his second book, his essay on “Classical Value Theory and the Theory of Marginal Utility” (1890) appeared in Vienna. With this decisive contribution Robert Zuckerkandl entered the so-called ‘Methodenstreit’ and unequivocally and eloquently sided with his teacher. This important dispute about research methods between the Austrian School and the Younger German Historical School commenced in the mid 1880s and raged for well over a decade. This major intellectual and at times rather polemical debate had Carl Menger and Gustav von Schmoller (1838-1917) as the main protagonists. It was von Schmoller who coined the term ‘Austrian School’ with the condescending intention to portray Austrian scholars as somewhat provincial, ignorant and rather backwoods. Consequently, Gustav von Schmoller and his political ally Friedrich Althoff (1839-1908) publicly declared that members of the Austrian School were unfit to fill a teaching position in any German university. Their academic as well as political influence was powerful and sufficient to sustain the almost complete exclusion of adherents to Menger’s methodology from academic positions well into the 20 th century. And yet, despite their aggressive efforts the Austrian School’s ideas rapidly began to spreading worldwide.

When the Währungs-Enquete-Kommission met in Vienna from March 8 to 17, 1892 in order to prepare the transition of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to the gold standard (the introduction of the Crown as the common currency), Carl Menger as head of the commission appointed Zuckerkandl as an expert. Zuckerkandl provided the theoretical justification for the efforts to introduce the gold standard in the monarchy and served as editor of the ‘Stenographic Records of the Sessions of the Währungs-Enquete-Kommission Convened in Vienna from March 8 to 17.’ His detailed overview and critique of the literature on the monetary question was published later that same year (Yearbook for Nationalökonomie und Statistik , 1892).

Later writings and intellectual legacy

Inspired by his work in and for the Währungs-Enquete-Kommission, Zuckerkandl wrote a widely noted article on “The Currency Change in British India” in 1894. Due to the falling price of silver, the British government in India decided in 1893 to close the mints to free silver trading and began preparations for the later introduction of the gold standard. This work was followed by a rather small, commissioned work on the “Die Kosten der Handschuh Industrie in Dobrisch und das angrenzende Gebiet” which Zuckerkandl published in Brünn (Brno) in 1899.

On February 28, 1900 when Carl Menger celebrated his 60 th birthday, Zuckerkandl with gratitude and respect quoted his frequently quoted tribute in the ‘Neue Freie Presse’. He summarized his teacher’s seminal work with the famous short paragraph that soon became a classic: “This fundamental doctrine, which solved a riddle that research had long grappled with unsuccessfully, is expressed in its basic outlines in a few, extremely simple sentences. It proceeds from the fact that if the supply of a good is insufficient to meet demand, as is the case with all non-free goods, then every such economic, concrete good is the condition for a satisfaction that would otherwise be unavoidable”.

This homage was followed in 1907 by Zuckerkandl’s last major work, which was a summary of “Consumption Taxes in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise”, which he published in Vienna. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the so-called ‘Ausgleich’ was a state treaty that transformed the Austrian Empire into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. It arose as a reaction to the defeat of Austria at the hands of Prussia in the Battle of Königsgrätz (now Czech Republic) in 1866. Hungary gained sovereignty and equal status as a result, and the Habsburg Monarchy was thus divided into two equal halves (Cisleithania and Transleithania) under Emperor Franz Joseph I. Considered a standard reference at the time, Zuckenkandl examines here the history and development of consumption taxes in the kuk monarchy. He describes the significance and role of these taxes in the country’s economy and fiscal policy and analyzes their impact on society and trade. The book also provides insight into the political and social conditions that led to the introduction and reform of consumption taxes.

Although Zuckerkandl published less than most of his contemporaries, his contributions, especially his work on price- and value theory must be regarded as important and as finely polished gems in the specific literature of the Austrian School.