Brinkmann, Carl
Brinkmann, Carl
Carl Brinkmann, whose work encompassed the fields of history (especially social and economic history), sociology, economic theory and policy (the latter with an emphasis on problems of agriculture), history of economic thought, and public finance, was born in 1885 in Tilsit into a distinguished family. His paternal grandfather had been a jurist and for a time a member of the Prussian diet and his father had been a mayor in Berlin. His maternal grandfather was a Protestant clergyman. Brinkmann studied at Breslau, Göttingen, Oxford, and Berlin, and in 1913 became Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg in Baden. In 1923 he went to Heidelberg as a full professor to succeed Eberhard Gothein, and in 1942 he moved to Berlin. In 1946, after the German collapse, he was teaching in Erlangen, but in 1947 he again became a full professor, at Tübingen, where he remained until his death in 1954.
The author of more than 170 books and papers, Brinkmann was widely recognized, successful, and influential. A glance at the bibliography below will reveal the breadth of his interests. Although he was one of those who found it distasteful to specialize, this did not mean that his work was superficial; whatever he undertook he treated with thoroughness and insight. His strong bent toward history, which he retained all his life, was typical of the German social scientists of his generation and reflected the influence of Gustav Schmoller and Adolf Wagner. His views on the relationship between history and economic theory were some-what similar to those of his older contemporary, Arthur Spiethoff.
Brinkmann in his early years considered himself a historian, although even in those years he was attracted to sociology. He was deeply impressed by Max Weber, without becoming a blind follower, for he was equally influenced by Scheler, Litt, and Pareto. Furthermore, he recognized the importance of the American writers on social psychology for sociological studies.
His work in economics was, on the one hand, unlike that of the pure theorists, for Brinkmann had started as a historian and had come to economics by way of sociology and then of Wirtschaftssoziologie. Thus he was attracted to border areas between the social sciences and saw the importance of the state in setting the stage on which men live and do business. For heuristic and didactic reasons he thought historical studies should take precedence over model building, an outlook which again distinguished him from the pure theorists. On the other hand, his emphasis on the importance of the state in economic life led him to study public finance, a field in which his work gained great importance. Yet he did not neglect research on economic problems and on the thought of individual economists.
Brinkmann’s apparent roaming over the whole field of the social sciences was in no way haphazard. Since he thought of theory as a category of history, it was natural that he would be simultaneously concerned with both fields. In the same way the fact that he was interested in all the social sciences reflected his belief in their common goal: the discovery of uniformities, regularities, and trends. Through continually changing his perspective and through systematically combining the observations he obtained, Brinkmann tried to approach the totality of the subjects he dealt with. It was his hope that it would be possible to achieve a synthesis of the social sciences, a synthesis in which sociology would be the key discipline around which the other social sciences pivoted.
Fritz Redlich
[For the historical context of Brinkmann’s work, see the biographies ofSchmoller; Wagner; Weber, Max.]
WORKS BY BRINKMANN
1912 Freiheit und Staatlichkeit in der älteren deutschen Verfassung. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
1919 Versuch einer Gesellschaftswissenschaft. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
1924 Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Leipzig: Teubner.
1925 Gesellschaftslehre. Enzyklopädie der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaft, Abteilung Staatswissenschaft, 48. Berlin: Springer.
(1927) 1953 Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte. 2d ed. Göttingen (Germany): Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht.
1937 Gustav Schmoller und die Volkswirtschaftslehre. Stuttgart (Germany): Kohlhammer.
1939 Das Problem der sozialökonomischen Synthese. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 50:435–445. → Reprinted in Brinkmann 1944.
(1944) 1950 Wirtschaftsformen und Lebensformen: Gesammelte Schriften zur Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik. 2d ed. Tübingen (Germany): Mohr.
1948a Soziologische Theorie der Revolution. Göttingen (Germany): Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht.
(1948b) 1953 Wirtschaftstheorie. 2d ed. Göttingen (Germany): Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht,
1949 Friedrich List. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
1952 Soziologie und Leben: Die soziologische Dimension der Fachwissenschaften. Tübingen (Germany): Wunderlich.
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beckerath, Erwin von (1955) 1962 Carl Brinkmann. Pages 52–64 in Erwin von Beckerath, Lynkeus: Gestalten und Probleme aus Wirtschaft und Politik. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr.
LÜtge, F. 1956 Carl Brinkmann. Historische Zeitschrift 181:734–735.
Montaner, Antonio 1954 Carl Brinkmann in Memoriam. Finanzarchiv New Series 15:205–211.
Weber, Adolf 1954 Carl Brinkmann. Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften [1954]: 202–206.
Weippert, Georg 1959 Carl Brinkmann: Zur Frage der Verknüpfung ökonomischer und soziologischer Betrachtung. Jahrbuch für Sozialwissenschaft 4–10:8–37.