Lederer, Emil, 1882-1939

Dr. Lederer was born July 22, 1882, in Pilsen, Austria. He was graduated from the Pilsen Gymnasium and went on to study at the University of Vienna, which Menger, Bhmm-Bawerk and Wieser were making famous as the center of the marginal utility school of economic theory. At the University of Berlin, he specialized in law and economics. He took his doctorate in jurisprudence at Vienna and in political science at Munich.

In 1907-12 he was secretary of the Netherland-Austrian Workingmen's Organization in Vienna. In 1910 he became co-editor with Werner Sombart of the Archiv fuer Sozialwissienschaft, und Soziaipolitik (a scientific periodical of the followers of Max Weber) of which he later became publisher. In 1912 he was appointed an instructor in economics at the University of Heidelberg. That same year his book, White Collar Workers in the Modern Economy was published. This was the first book to call attention to the problem of this special group of employees.

After World War I, Lederer was a member of the Federal Socialization Commission in Germany and was chief of the Economic division of the Austrian State Commission for Socialization. He also practiced as a consulting economist and was economic counsel for leading trade unions and industrial organizations in Germany.

He became an associate professor at Heidelberg in 1918 and a full professor in 1922. During this period, he wrote many publications aiming, at a synthesis of the psychological theory of the Austrian School of Böhm-Bawerk and the objective theory of Karl Marx, drawing his training at Vienna, which was noted at that time for critical analysis of Marxian economics. His chief work, Principles of Economic Theory, was first published in 1922. From 1923 to 1925 he was a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo in Japan, where he made a study of the Japanese economy, and in 1931 be became Professor of Political Science in Berlin.

Lederer was the chief aide of Alvin Johnson, director of the New School for Social Research, in the organization of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School. They had become acquainted while Dr. Johnson was associate editor of The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, when Dr. Lederer contributed many articles to that publication. In the spring of 1933, when the Nazis began dismissing internationally known scholars from German universities, Dr. Johnson conceived the idea of establishing in New York a "university in exile" which would preserve German methods and contributions in a coherent unit. He invited Dr. Lederer to New York that June and made arrangements with him. Dr. Lederer returned to Europe and assembled the faculty, which became a nucleus of a group of German, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish scholars. Dr. Lederer, who was professor of Economics, was elected first dean of the Graduate Faculty and served for two years.

Dr. Lederer was one of the important contributors to modern German economic theory. He was a follower of Max Weber and was himself the leader of an important school of economic thought, combining orthodox theory with the Marxist-revisionist, orientation. He was the author of more than a score of works in German, most of them centering, around three themes: the problems of the white-collar workers, his synthesis of the Böhm-Bawerk and Marxian systems of economic: theory, and his study of the Japanese economy.

During his years in the United States he published two books, Japan in Transition, with Emy Lederer-Seidlar, his first wife, issued in 1938, and Technical Progress and Unemployment, a comprehensive study issued by the International Labor Office at Geneva. He also contributed many articles to Social Research, a scholarly quarterly, of which he was an editor.

His first wife died a year after they came to this country. He was survived by his second wife, the former Frau Gertrud von Eckardt, whom he married in 1936, and two children of Mrs. Lederer by her first marriage, Ursula and Wolfgang von Eckardt; also a brother, a resident of Vienna, and a nephew, Dr. Walther Lederer, a member of the faculty of the University of Delaware.

Emil Lederer (22 July 1882 – 29 May 1939) was a Bohemian-born German economist and sociologist. Purged from his position at Humboldt University of Berlin in 1933 for being Jewish, Lederer fled into exile. He helped establish the "University in Exile" at the New School in New York City.

Lederer was born in 1882 to a Jewish[1] merchant family. He studied law and national economy at Vienna University. Among others, his professors were Heinrich Lammasch, Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, Franz von Juraschek, Carl Menger, Friedrich von Wieser, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Eugen von Philippovich, while Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, Felix Somary, Otto Bauer and Rudolf Hilferding were among his fellow students.

In 1905, Lederer received Dr. iur. in Vienna, and in 1911 Dr. rer. pol. at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The next year, he habilitated at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg with his thesis "Die Privatangestellten in der modernen Wirtschaftsentwicklung".

In 1918, he was appointed assistant professor by Heidelberg University, but Lederer remained in Austria until 1920. In early 1919, he was appointed member of the German Socialisation Commission in Vienna, along with Hilferding and Schumpeter.

At Heidelberg University, Lederer became assistant professor for social politics in 1920, and a full professor in the same year. From 1923 to 1925 he held lectures as guest professor at Tokyo Imperial University. From 1923 to 1931, Lederer and Alfred Weber were directors of the Institute for Social- and State Sciences. In 1931, he succeeded Werner Sombart at the German Faculty for national economy and finance sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin.

As was the case with almost all so-called "Heidelberger economists", Lederer was suspended by the Nazis on 14 April 1933 according to the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums until a final decision would be made. This affected all activities in connection with his offices. The salary was to be paid fully in the meantime.[2] In addition, university members apparently had denunciated Lederer for being a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (since 1925) and for being "non-Aryan".

Lederer escaped to London, afterwards coming to the United States, where (in 1933) he co-founded the "University in Exile" at The New School for Social Research in New York City, which would become the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science. Emil Lederer was its first Dean until his sudden death in 1939, in the aftermath of an operation.