Introduction

Carl Menger died on February 26, 1921 in his home in Vienna, three days after his eighty-first birthday. He lived an eventful life that led him from the fringes of the Austrian Empire to its center, not only geographically, but also academically and politically. The occasion of the centenary of his death offers an opportunity to reflect on Carl Menger’s contributions to economics and the significance of his ideas for today’s economics.

Menger was born on February 23, 1840, in Neu-Sandez or Nowy Sącz, in today’s Southern Poland, which at the time was part of the Austrian Crown land of Galicia and Lodomeria, at the northeastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents moved to the Silesian city of Biała shortly after Menger’s birth. They had ten children, but only six survived childhood, three girls and three boys: Bertha, Maximilian (Max), Carl, Anton, Marie, and Caroline. The three brothers, Max, Carl, and Anton, would eventually lead successful careers in Vienna. Anton and Carl became professors at the University of Vienna. Their childhood, however, was not easy. Their father died in 1848 and their mother had to raise them alone, under modest circumstances. The Menger children spent much time during their youth at the estate of their maternal grandparents in Maniowy in Western Galicia.