ABSTRACT
In Germany, methods of teaching and research had been rapidly improved in the period of the Weimar Republic (1918-32). Historical work and work on current problems (of the kind cultivated by the Verein fur Sozialpolitik) went on as before; as noticed in Part Iv, chapter 4, these types of work gradually lost their anti-theoretical methodological bent, and both interest and competence in 'theory' increased, the spreading use of Cassel's treatise 2 being equally significant as an effect, a cause, and a symptom; in addition there were the autochthonous messages of such teachers as von Gottl, Liefmann, Oppenheimer, and Spann, to which even their most severe critic cannot deny the merit of having stimulated many minds; and there were, more accessible to Anglo-American understanding (and to my own), the performances of Diehl, Eucken, and others and, above all, those of Spiethoff and Sombart. The Viennese group, under the leadership of Professor L. von Mises, though it retained a vital individuality until it was, for the time being at all events, dispersed in the 1930's, entered into closer relations than before with the rest of German economists and was thus in a position to assert its own distinctive doctrines.
