ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the more important German contributions to the development of the classical approach to value and distribution in the century spanning from the publication of Ricardo's Principles in 1817 up to the beginning of the Great War in 1914. It discusses some specific characteristics of the German economic discourse in the nineteenth century and of the role of the historical school in the demise of Ricardian economic theory. Sartorius also put forward some shallow criticisms of Ricardo's theory of rent. Ricardo's theory of rent is said to be 'unmistakably wrong', because 'it is not primarily the natural fertility of the land but rather the supply and demand of land which determines the real rent'. Hermann fully endorsed Ricardo's theory of differential rent and clearly abandoned the physiocratic idea, which to some extent had still been present in Smith, of rent as a pure gift of nature.
