MEMORANDUM

European man.” A vote was taken over proposals put forward and Schumpeter won
handsomely over Gustav Cassel and Edwin Cannan. 188
Schumpeter’s erudition, charisma and social skills made an impact on Harvard leaders,
not least President Lowell and the new economics department chairman Harold H. Burbank.
They were concerned about finding a way of luring Schumpeter back to Harvard. The
sudden death of Allyn Young at 53 years of age in 1929 led President Lowell to offer
Schumpeter a chair at Harvard. Schumpeter knew how to play his hand and suggested to
President Lowell that he could meet Harvard halfway, enabling “…me to take some share
in Harvard’s great work whilst keeping up part of my duties here”. Burbank then took over
and offered Schumpeter to have a visiting position for half a year every year, an offer
which Schumpeter agreed to. Under mild pressure from the Prussian Ministry of Education
which supervised the Prussian universities Schumpeter did not go to Harvard in 1929 but
came for the fall term 1930. After Schumpeter’s failure in getting a chair in Berlin he
approached Harvard about a permanent position. After some negotiation the outcome was
that Schumpeter moved permanently to Harvard. 189
Thus at the time of Schumpeter’s letter to Leontief in October 1931 quoted above,
Schumpeter was still hoping to get the chair in Berlin and hoped that Leontief was heading
for a career in Germany after his fling with Harvard.
When Leontief wrote to Schumpeter again on the middle of December, he was at
Harvard on his second visit. He could tell Schumpeter that it had been decided that he
would address the Harvard Economic Seminary in the spring term. He had decided on the
title, “Positive and Normative Approaches in Economic Theory,” and worked on it in a
history of economic thought perspective. It had been suggested to him that the lecture
could be published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. 190 He would speak about his
current research in a separate lecture, he referred to it as “elasticity matters”
(Elastizitätsangelegenheit),
Leontief emphasized again that he liked to be at Harvard, comparing it with his
impression of Columbia University which he had visited a couple of times. At Columbia
he had found the ambience strange and unsympathetic while at Cambridge he had felt
comfortable and secure. 191 But Leontief also vaguely felt Harvard that nurtured some farreaching
intensions involving him. At the visit in December 1931 he heard rumors that
188 Swedberg (1991, p.23).
189 See McCraw (2007, pp.193ff).
190 Leontief to Schumpeter, 15 December 1931, transl by ob. The seminar lecture was given (in
March 1932) but it does not seem to have been published.
191 Leontief to Schumpeter, 15 December 1931, transl. by ob. The difference in mood at Harvard
and Columbia was well known: “…Columbia was impersonal and not very collegial in character.
Faculty and students did not socialize much. One does not get the feeling … that creating a band of
faithful followers was ever part of the Columbia ideal.” (Rutherford 2004, p.70).
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