Jan Loevenstein

Jan Loevenstein was a significant figure in Czech economic sciences at the turn of the twenties and thirties. He was a supporter of the economic school of Karel Engliš. However, before his talent could show in its full range, his well-developing career was stopped by his death at the age of  forty-six.

He was born on 20 October 1886 in Hradec Králové. He graduated from the Law Faculty of the Czech university in Prague. He made a research journey to the USA and summarised the findings in the work Banking of Circulation in the United States and Its Most Current Form (1915). His professional development was temporarily stopped by the First World War. In 1919 after the founding of Masaryk University (MU) in Brno and when Engliš left  the Polytechnics in Brno for the new university as its first rector, Jan Loevenstein took over the vacancy of professor of economics and financial science. In fact at the same time he started to work at  MU with professor Engliš, firstly as a docent, and since 1926 as a professor. Between 1928 and 1929 he was a dean at the Law Faculty of the MU. He wrote several papers in the Science Year-book of the law faculty of the MU. He himself, apart from other things, published Direct and Indirect Taxes (1917), Income Taxes and The Progressive Method of Taxation (1927), For Uniform Construct of Financial Science, Notes on Engliš' Criticism (1929), Identifying the Problem of World Crisis and its Remedy, Capitalism at the Crossroads (1931 – posthumously published also in English), Formal Science Branch of  Teleological Thought (1932). He died on 1st May 1932 in Brno.

Loevenstein in particular dealt with theoretical issues of financial science, and methodology and noethics of  economic science. He inclined to Engliš' teleological perspective, however he differed from him in details and he argued with him about it. In 1931 Engliš had to react several times in the Economic Horizon to Loevenstein's critical notes to his teleology as a form of scientific knowledge. Loevenstein defined his view of teleology in his major work Grand Theology. However, it was published posthumously in 1934, thanks to his students.

Mgr. Vladimír Seidl

On this page there can be found the following from the works of J. Loevenstein: