16 Facts About Franz Oppenheimer

Franz Oppenheimer was a German sociologist and political economist, who published in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state.

Franz Oppenheimer was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1864.

In 1909, Franz Oppenheimer earned a PhD in Kiel with a thesis about economist David Ricardo.

From 1909 to 1917, Franz Oppenheimer was a Privatdozent in Berlin, then for two years Titularprofessor.

Franz Oppenheimer's son was Hillel Franz Oppenheimer, a professor of botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an Israel Prize recipient.

In 1907, Franz Oppenheimer published Der Staat, translated into English in 1922 as The State.

Franz Oppenheimer saw the state as the original creator of inequality.

Franz Oppenheimer considered himself a liberal socialist and has been described as pro-market; he thought that nonexploitative economic arrangements would work best in a collectivist environment.

Franz Oppenheimer spent much of his life advising people who wished to set up a voluntary, communitarian setting.

Franz Oppenheimer rejected the view of anarchists and revolutionary socialists as unnecessarily pessimistic.

Franz Oppenheimer's ideal was a state without class or class interests in which the bureaucracy would become the impartial guardian of the common interests.

Franz Oppenheimer, who died in 1943, saw Nazism and Bolshevism as representing last-gasp attempts to resurrect ancient tyranny.

Franz Oppenheimer hoped that their downfall would provide the prelude to a truly liberal epoch.

Franz Oppenheimer was the teacher of German chancellor Ludwig Erhard who rejected his collectivism, but attributed to his professor his own vision of a European society of free and equal men.

Franz Oppenheimer recognized that "capitalism" leads to inequality, that it creates inequality outright, although he certainly did not advocate dreary sameness.

Franz Oppenheimer created an extensive oeuvre of approximately 40 books and 400 essays which contain writings on sociology, economics, and the political questions of his time.