Lorenz von Stein

Lorenz von Stein (1815 to 1890) was a German economist, sociologist and public administration scholar from Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein. He studied philosophy and jurisprudence at Kiel and Jena and at Paris, taught at the University of Kiel from 1846 to 1851, and was dismissed in 1852 after advocating independence for Schleswig. From 1855 until his retirement in 1885 he was professor of political economy at the University of Vienna. His 1848 book on socialist and communist movements introduced the term social movement into scholarly discussion, and his history of the French social movement (1850) presented it as a movement from society to the state, created by economic inequality. Applying Hegel's dialectic to public administration and the national economy, he analysed the class state of his time, stressed the social question of the industrial worker, and advocated a liberal constitutional state combined with a welfare state, for which he has been called the intellectual father of the welfare state. As an adviser to Meiji period Japan, his views influenced the wording of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan. He died at home in Vienna in 1890.