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German literature on location—the works of L¨sch, Weigmann, Engl¨nder,
Pred¨hl and others” and was able to grasp fully the scope and depth of this
literature. For the English speaking community, a summary of the main
contributions was produced in Isard (
1949
).” (Isard
2003
, 7). The mentioned review
is Isard's
The General Theory of Location and Space-Economy
in the
Quarterly
Journal of Economics
(Isard
1949
) where he extensively reviews the works of three
out of the four mentioned authors: Pred
¨
hl, Weigmann and L
¨
sch. The other
Germans referred to in the paper are Roscher and Sch¨ffle, two prominent
representatives of the so-called
Older Historical School
, Ritschl, a less prominent
scholar close to the so-called
Younger Historical School
and, of course, Weber,
Th¨nen and Launhardt, besides L¨sch the three most famous German scholars in
spatial economics.
One thus can compile an “Isard-list” of German scholars who have been seminal
to the emergence of Regional Science. I put them in historical order, with years of
birth and death, and with year of main publication in bold:
Johann Heinrich von Th¨nen, 1783-1850,
1826
Albert Sch¨ffle, 1872-1903,
1873
Wilhelm Roscher, 1817-1894,
1878
Wilhelm Launhardt, 1832-1918,
and
1882
1885
Alfred Weber, 1868-1958,
1909
Andreas Pred¨hl, 1893-1974,
1925
Oskar Engl¨nder, 1876-1937,
1927
Hans Ritschl, 1897-1993,
1927
Hans Weigmann, 1897-1944,
and
1931
1935
August L
¨
sch, 1906-1945,
1940
Two important names are missing on this list: Walter Christaller (1893-1969)
who published his famous topic about central places in southern Germany in 1933
(Christaller
1933
), and Erich Schneider (1900-1970) who made important
contributions to the theory of spatial pricing (Schneider
1935
). Both do appear in
Isard's topic
Location and space-economy
(Isard
1956
), but only in the margin.
L¨sch is the author most extensively (on six pages) dealt with in the 1949 article.
This is understandable, because L¨sch's
Die r
aumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft
(L¨sch
1940
) was the most ambitious attempt in the German literature to develop a
comprehensive theory of location, and little was known about it in the Anglo-Saxon
world at the time. The English edition only appeared 5 years later (L¨sch
1954
).
Regarding the other authors, however, the focus of the paper is surprising, given
that Isard aimed at summarising the essentials of German “Raumwirtschaft” (a term
used by Isard (
1956
, p. 27) in German): five pages are devoted respectively to both,
Weigman and Pred¨hl, the former being completely forgotten (for good reasons, as
I will show) and the latter being almost forgotten today. Weber receives two pages,
Th¨nen and Launhardt receive seven and four critical lines, respectively, and
Roscher and Sch¨ffle jointly just four footnote lines.
This article reconsiders the main contributions of German spatial economics
until Isard's kick-off paper of Regional Science. There is not enough space for
reviewing all authors in the above list. Th¨nen, Launhardt, Weber and L¨sch are
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