Wilhelm Vleugels

Franz Wilhelm Vleugels was born on 17 October 1893 in Saarburg and, after the First World War, studied at the University of Cologne, newly founded in 1919. There he was awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) in 1921 and completed his habilitation in 1923 with a work in economic theory. A formative influence on his sociological thought was Leopold von Wiese, who held the first German chair of sociology in Cologne and directed the Research Institute for Social Sciences; Vleugels is counted among the early Cologne School of sociology. In economics, Vleugels positioned himself early as a defender of the Austrian theory of marginal utility. In 1925 there appeared 'Das Ende der Grenznutzentheorie? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Franz Oppenheimer' (The End of Marginal Utility Theory? A Critical Engagement with Franz Oppenheimer), a polemic against Oppenheimer's land-law critique of the marginal utility doctrine. In 1930 followed 'Die Lösungen des wirtschaftlichen Zurechnungsproblems bei Böhm-Bawerk und Wieser' (The Solutions to the Economic Problem of Imputation in Böhm-Bawerk and Wieser), published in the writings of the Königsberg Learned Society (Schriften der Königsberger Gelehrten-Gesellschaft). The work was reviewed in 1935 in the Viennese Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie (Journal of Economics) and earned him recognition within the closer circle of the Austrian School, without any institutional tie to Mises's private seminar or the Geist-Kreis. In 1928 Vleugels became an associate professor in Cologne and, in the same year, was appointed full professor at the University of Königsberg. In Königsberg he came into conflict with the National Socialists, who classified him as politically unreliable because his institute could not be used in their interest for an aggressive policy towards Poland. In 1934 he moved to the chair of sociology at the University of Bonn. In December 1937 he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and was a sponsoring member of the SS, but, according to the biographical secondary literature, increasingly distanced himself from National Socialism. Besides his writings on mass sociology and economic theory, Vleugels also published, under his full name Franz Wilhelm Vleugels, literary verse renderings of Roman poets, among them an edition of the Elegies of Sextus Propertius. He died on 19 March 1942 in Bonn at the age of 48.