Albert Schäffle
German economist, 1871 Austrian minister of trade (1831–1903)
Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle (24 February 1831 – 25 December 1903) was a German sociologist, political economist, and newspaper editor.
Biography
Early years
Albert Schäffle was born at Nürtingen in Württemberg on 24 February 1831. In 1848 he became a student at the University of Tübingen.
Career
He had studied for the ministry, but started out in journalism as his career. From 1850 to 1860 he was attached to the editorial staff of the Schwäbische Merkur in Stuttgart, and in the latter year accepted a call to the chair of political economy at the University of Tübingen.
From 1862 to 1864 Schäffle was a member of the Württemberg diet, and in 1868 he received a mandate to the German Zollparlament. During this year he was appointed professor of political science at the University of Vienna.
In 1871 Schäffle resigned his professorship to join the cabinet of Count Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart as minister of commerce for Austria. The government fell in that same year, however, and Schäffle took up residence in Stuttgart, where he devoted himself entirely to literary work.
Schäffle's magnum opus, a treatise called Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (Construction and Life of the Social Body) was published in four volumes from 1875 to 1878.
The public source identifies “Albert Schäffle” as german economist, 1871 Austrian minister of trade (1831–1903). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Albert, Schäffle and German.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q70650. VIAF identifies the subject as 49357405. The Library of Congress control number is n87896571. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1831, 1903, 1848 and 1850.
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This entry incorporates text from “Albert Schäffle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.