Sombart, Werner

Related Category: Economics: Biographies

(vĕr´nər zôm´bärt), 1863–1941, German economist. In 1917 he became professor of economics at the Univ. of Berlin. Influenced by Marx's historical approach to economics, he produced several analyses of capitalism, including Der moderne Kapitalismus (Vol. I and II, 1902; Vol. III, 1928) and Der Bourgeois (1913, tr. The Quintessence of Capitalism, 1915). He later turned toward German romanticism, becoming eventually, in Deutscher Sozialismus (1934; tr. A New Social Philosophy, 1937), an exponent of the authoritarian state, accepting Nazism.

See study by M. J. Plotnik (1937).