Lujo Brentano

Biography

Lujo Brentano, born in Aschaffenburg into a German Catholic intellectual family (originally of Italian descent), attended school in Augsburg and Aschaffenburg. He studied at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Münster, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Heidelberg University (doctorate in law), the University of Würzburg, the University of Göttingen (doctorate in economics), and Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (habilitation in economics, 1871).

He was a professor of economics and state sciences at the University of Breslau, the University of Strasbourg, the University of Vienna, Leipzig University, and most importantly, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (1891–1914). With Ernst Engel, the statistician, he made an investigation of the English trade unions.

In 1872, he became involved in an extended dispute with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Brentano accused Marx of falsifying a quotation from an 1863 speech by William Ewart Gladstone.

In 1914, he signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three. After the revolution of November 1918, Brentano served in minister-president Kurt Eisner's government of the People's State of Bavaria as People's Commissar for Trade and Industry (Volkskommissar für Handel und Industrie) on 7 December 1918. He requested dismissal on 13 December and, after repeating his request, resigned on 16 December (a tenure of nine calendar days).

Brentano died in Munich in 1931, aged 86.