Oppenheimer, Franz (1864–1943)

Abstract

Franz Oppenheimer, the son of a rabbi, was born in 1864, in a Berlin suburb. At first he studied medicine which he practised for some time after earning an MD from Berlin University (1895). But his attraction to political and economic matters was already evidenced by his 1896 work about the agrarian settlement reforms. After several other similar works, in 1908 Oppenheimer obtained a doctoral diploma in the field of his new devotion. As was then the custom, he began as a non-salaried lecturer at Berlin University (1909), from where in 1919 he moved to a chair of sociology and economics at Frankfurt University. The political developments in Germany prompted him during 1933 to move to France, then to Palestine, and finally to the United States. He died in Los Angeles in 1943.