Karl Schlesinger (January 19, 1889 – March 12, 1938) was an Austrian-Hungarian economist and banker. He was born in Budapest. He studied law and economics at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

, obtaining a doctorate under Eugene von Böhm-Bawerk in 1914. Schlesinger's work, which made significant use of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, would go on to be influential, but it was not received well by his fellow contemporary

Austrian economists The Austrian school is a Heterodox economics, heterodox Schools of economic thought, school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result primarily from the motivat ...

. He moved from Budapest to Vienna 1919, escaping Bela Kun's

communist revolution A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, the term socialism can be used to indicate an intermediate stage between ...

. He established a bank in Vienna. He participated in

Ludwig von Mises Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; ; September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian-American political economist and philosopher of the Austrian school. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the social contributions of classical l ...

's Austrian economics seminar. He hired

Karl Menger Karl Menger (; January 13, 1902 – October 5, 1985) was an Austrian-born American mathematician, the son of the economist Carl Menger. In mathematics, Menger studied the theory of algebra over a field, algebras and the dimension theory of low-r ...

as his tutor in mathematics in 1931 and hired

Abraham Wald Abraham Wald (; ; , ; – ) was a Hungarian and American mathematician and statistician who contributed to decision theory, geometry and econometrics, and founded the field of sequential analysis. One of his well-known statistical works was ...

in 1932 as his tutor. He committed suicide on March 12, 1938, as he expected persecution by the Nazis with

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

, Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria. Schlesinger was Jewish.

References

1889 births 1938 deaths Austrian economists Jewish Austrian writers Jewish economists {{Austria-economist-stub