The article offers a foray into the life, work and influence of Gustav von Schmoller.

„One can approach Schmoller from two perspectives. One can view him in a time-bound manner as one who sought a monarchy, albeit a social one, and as a chauvinist who supported German naval rearmament, a mental colonialist and proponent of a growth economy, etc. Although I would rather define myself as a political leftist with an ordoliberal bent, Schmoller always struck me as a model of a historical institutionalist who wanted to put the political bodies on the command bridge to control and moderate the expanding economic circles and who demanded and promoted the construction of an effective social system. Schmoller emphasized the importance of a broad middle class for a bourgeois society and drafted a pioneering stakeholder concept for large corporations. He developed a hermeneutic research style, preferring factual knowledge to model platonism. His writings always reflected the political-practical design issues of his time.“ (H. Peukert)