Max Wirth (
Breslau, 27 January 1822 —
Vienna, 18 July 1900) was a German
journalist and
economist.
Life
Max Wirth is the son of
Johann Georg August Wirth
Johann Georg August Wirth (20 November 1798 – 26 July 1848''Das große Pfalzbuch'', Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, Neustadt an der Weinstraße 1976, p. 591.) was a German lawyer, writer and politician during the Vormärz period that preceded t ...
, a
Bavarian
writer and organizer of the
Hambach Festival
The Hambacher Festival was a German national democratic festival celebrated from 27 May to 30 May 1832 at Hambach Castle, near Neustadt an der Weinstraße, in present-day Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The event was disguised as a nonpolitical co ...
in 1832. Max studied law and political economy at the
University of Heidelberg, where he joined the
Corps Rhenania. Later he became a journalist in
Frankurt, where he founded the weekly magazine ''Der Arbeitgeber'', a publication about the labour market, but also used to progress Wirth's personal views. He was part of various economic congresses and industrial associations. Between 1865 and 1873, he was director of the Swiss Statistical Bureau. Afterwards, he worked as a journalist again, first for the ''
Neuen Freien Presse'', later as
Viennese correspondent for
The Economist.
Work
Max Wirth is mostly known his work ''Geschichte der Handelskrisen'', a history of economic crises. The book went through four editions, the last editions appearing in 1890. He also wrote a book on the banking history of
Germany and
Austria-Hungary.
His name is cited disparagingly by Marx in Capital vol. I as 'Herr M. Wirth' to exemplify to the reader the 'run-of-the-mill vulgar economist and propagandist', being a name known to many German readers at the time.
References
German economists
Journalists from Wrocław
German male journalists
German expatriates in Austria
People from the Province of Silesia
1822 births
1900 deaths
19th-century German journalists
19th-century German male writers
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