Beer, Max (1864–1943)

Abstract

Journalist and historian of socialism and economics. Born in the Polish district, Tarnobrzeg, of the then Austrian province of Western Galicia, he migrated to Germany in 1889 to work as journalist on the Volkstimme, a socialist newspaper. Subsequent political persecution, including a jail sentence, forced him to leave Germany for London in 1894. There he became one of the first students at the London School of Economics (1895–6) and until his return to Germany in 1915 he worked as London correspondent of Vorwarts. He made brief visits to Paris (1899) and New York (1900–1901). The triumph of National Socialism in 1933 caused his second period of political exile in London, where he died in 1943.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman