ABSTRACT
Like Georg Lukacs, the other Eastern prodigy among Max Weber's friends and collaborators, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, born in Moravia in 1883 and educated in Vienna, was a member of the generation that was formed intellectually in the closing years of the nineteenth and the opening decade of the twentieth century. Its first literary attempts were published at the same time as the masterpieces of the older generation were coming off the press. The publication of Schumpeter's earliest article coincided with that of Max Weber's first essay on the protestant ethic. Schumpeter's first book, Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalokonomie [The Nature and the Principal Doctrines of Theoretical Economics], was published in 1908. 1 It was favourably received in Britain and France, but had only a limited impact on economics in Austria and Germany. 2 His second book, The Theory of Economic Development (1911), 3 which he never surpassed as a creative achievement, established Schumpeter's international fame. It was widely discussed and studied, also by Max Weber, whose annotated personal copy has survived. 4 After the death of Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk in 1915, Schumpeter enjoyed the reputation of being the foremost economic theorist writing in the German language. He retained this stature after he left Vienna in 1925 to take up a chair in Bonn, later moving to Harvard University in 1932.
