IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/icr/wpicer/04-2010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Collapse of Interwar Vienna: Oskar Morgenstern’s Community, 1925 - 1950

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Leonard

Abstract

From the perspective of science, art and intellectual life in general, Interwar Vienna was one of the most vibrant communities in modern European history. Within the field of economics, it was home to, amongst others, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Hans Mayer, Gottfried Haberler, Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern, Karl Menger and Abraham Wald. The community flourished after the end of World War I, and then began to suffer in the early 1930’s as a result of growing political instability and rising anti-semitism. With the Anschluss of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938, it collapsed completely, never to recover. Drawing on the personal papers of two key participants, Oskar Morgenstern and Karl Menger, and also on the archives of the Rockefeller Foundation, this paper provides a portrait of that community, chronicling its evolution and dramatic collapse. Particular attention is paid to the milieu surrounding Morgenstern, both as director of the Rockefeller-funded Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research and as philosophical “dissident”. In collaborating with mathematicians Menger, Wald and, later, John von Neumann, he gradually forsook his Austrian theoretical legacy. The account detailed here shows conflict and tension to have been central to both the life and death of this fabled community.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Leonard, 2010. "The Collapse of Interwar Vienna: Oskar Morgenstern’s Community, 1925 - 1950," ICER Working Papers 04-2010, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:04-2010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.biblioecon.unito.it/biblioservizi/RePEc/icr/wp2010/ICERwp04-10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilbert W. Bassett, Jr., 1987. "The St. Petersburg Paradox and Bounded Utility," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 19(4), pages 517-523, Winter.
    2. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226320625 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Hayek, F. A., 1999. "Good Money, Part 1," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226320953 edited by Kresge, Stephen, April.
    4. Punzo, Lionello F., 1991. "The School of Mathematical Formalism and the Viennese Circle of Mathematical Economists," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-18, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Robert Leonard
      by kevin quinn in EconoSpeak on 2010-06-15 21:16:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kolev, Stefan, 2021. "Ein Baltendeutscher bei den Preußen des Balkans: Oskar Anderson und das Sofioter Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (SWIFO)," HWWI Research Papers 198, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Móczár, József, 2017. "Ergodic Versus Uncertain Financial Processes – Part II: Neoclassical and Institutional Economics," Public Finance Quarterly, Corvinus University of Budapest, vol. 62(4), pages 478-501.
    2. Arthur Brackmann Netto, 2017. "The Double Edge of Case-Studies: A Frame-Based Definition of Economic Models," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2017_21, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    3. Becchio Giandomenica, 2009. "A historical reconstruction of the connections between the Viennese neopositivists and the American pragmatists: economic theory in the project for the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science," CESMEP Working Papers 200904, University of Turin.
    4. Hans Haller, 2013. "On the Mixed Extension of a Strategic Game1," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 1(2), pages 163-172, December.
    5. repec:lan:wpaper:3312 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. K. Vela Velupillai, 2016. "Seven Kinds of Computable and Constructive Infelicities in Economics," New Mathematics and Natural Computation (NMNC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(03), pages 219-239, November.
    7. Tibor Neugebauer, 2010. "Moral Impossibility in the Petersburg Paradox : A Literature Survey and Experimental Evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 10-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    8. Balter, Anne G. & Chau, Ki Wai & Schweizer, Nikolaus, 2024. "Comparative risk aversion vs. threshold choice in the Omega ratio," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    9. Paniagua Pablo, 2016. "The Stability Properties of Monetary Constitutions," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 22(2), pages 113-138, December.
    10. Michael Cain & David Law & David Peel, 2008. "Bounded cumulative prospect theory: some implications for gambling outcomes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 5-15.
    11. repec:lan:wpaper:3582 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. K. Vela Velupillai, 2012. "Bourbaki's Destructive Influence on the Mathematization of Economics," ASSRU Discussion Papers 1201, ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit.
    13. Zalai, Ernő, 1999. "A közgazdaságtan metodológiájáról és a matematikai közgazdaságtanról a Neumann-modell ürügyén [On the methodolgy of economics and on mathematical economics, under the pretext of the Neumann model]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 600-628.
    14. Mathieu Marion, 2005. "Sraffa and Wittgenstein: Physicalism and constructivism," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 381-406.
    15. Móczár, József, 2006. "Arrow-Debreu-modell és a Kornai-kritika harminc év után [The Arrow-Debreu Model and Kornai s critique, thirty years after]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 175-194.
    16. Becchio Giandomenica & Marchionatti Roberto, 2005. "Teoria economica,filosofia e matematica. La riflessione a Vienna nel Wiener Kreis e nel Mathematische Kolloquium, 1922-1938," CESMEP Working Papers 200508, University of Turin.
    17. André Legris, 1995. "La théorie économique italienne de l'entre-deux-guerres. Enquête sur un oubli historiographique," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 46(1), pages 91-113.
    18. Marchionatti, Roberto & Mornati, Fiorenzo, 2014. "Economic Theories in Competition. A New Narrative of the Debate on General Economic Equilibrium Theory in the 1930s," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201436, University of Turin.
    19. Douglas A. Irwin, 2011. "Anticipating the Great Depression? Gustav Cassel's Analysis of the Interwar Gold Standard," NBER Working Papers 17597, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Giandomenica Becchio, 2008. "The complex role of Karl Menger in the Viennese economic theory," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 61-79, March.
    21. repec:lan:wpaper:3216 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Roberto Marchionatti Author-Email: roberto.marchionatti@unito.it & Fiorenzo Mornati Author-Email: fiorenzo.mornati@unito.it, 2016. "Economic Theories in Competition A New Narrative of the Debate on the General Economic Equilibrium Theory in the 1930s," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 63(5), pages 503-523, December.
    23. T.A. Boylan & P.F. O'Gorman, 2007. "Axiomatization And Formalism In Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 426-446, July.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:icr:wpicer:04-2010. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Daniele Pennesi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/icerrit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.