Leopold Caro
Leopold Caro was a Polish historical school economist, international sociologist working with Gustav von Schmoller's Verein für Socialpolitik, and a lawyer. Caro functioned as an advocate for rights of oversea migrants and the establishment of economic cooperatives. Broadly conceived, he was a conservative symphatizer of the Sanation movement in Polish interwar politics, especially of its technocratic wing under Kazimierz Bartel, while he also maintained some contact with Narodowa Demokracja. First and foremost, Leopold Caro acted as a Catholic economist, who had strong ties with the church hierarchy and Catholic institutions. He is largely seen as a proponent of etatism, though he was a vocal critic as well as in-depth researcher of both National socialism and Soviet communism. He was a Jewish convert to Christianity of distant Sephardic origin who became a staunch anti-Semite.
Life and work
His father, Henryk Caro, participated in the January Uprising and worked as a clerk at the local Mortgage Bank. Leopold was raised by his mother, Amelia Maria née Kolscher. He spent his childhood and youth in Lwów, at the time Hapsburg Lemberg of Galicia province, today Lviv in Ukraine. In 1881, he graduated with honors from the C.K. IV Junior High School in Lwów. In 1885, he studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lwów. Two years later, he also obtained a diploma from the Faculty of Philosophy and a doctor of laws degree at the same university. For further studies, this time in economics, he went to the University of Leipzig, where he participated in the seminar of Professor August von Miaskowski. There, under the influence of the German historical school and French social solidarism, as well as Wagnerian thought, his economic and sociological views were shaped. There he also came into closer contact with Catholic social teaching. Before this period, he dealt mainly with legal issues. Only after returning from Leipzig, using his comprehensive education, did he expand his scientific interests to include social, economic, sociological, philosophical and historical issues.In 1894, Caro passed the bar examination, after which he settled in Kraków, where he worked as a lawyer until 1914, while also working in the Society for the Cultivation of Social Sciences. In his works at that time, he focused on the problems of agricultural development and the situation of the rural population. He also conducted in-depth studies on the issues of emigration and emigration policy, which were praised by Karl Rathgen, among others. At the same time, he attacked the ethics of Judaism. Concerning Galicia, he criticized the widespread practice of usury, arbitrage and excessive brokerage within the poor economy as well as human trafficking to the Americas by criminal associations like Zwi Migdal. Condemnation from many Jewish circles was the final reason for Caro's conversion to Catholicism in 1903. In the first decade of the 20th century, he became associated with the Catholic social movement. Before, he had worked with both left leaning social reformers such as Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska and more conservative agrarian reformers like Adam Krzyżanowski, who, as an adherent of neoclassical economics, became his main rival among Second Republic top class economists.
On November 10, 1896, Caro married Salomea Chelińska, who functioned in welfare and educational organizations.
After the outbreak of World War I, Caro was drafted into the army. He served in the military judicial corps; first in the Imperial and Royal army, then - voluntarily - in the Polish army, in which he reached the rank of colonel. Demobilized in 1920 after the end of the Polish-bolshevik war, he returned permanently to Lwów and devoted himself entirely to scientific work. From 1920–1939 he was a professor of economics and law at the Politechnika Lwowska. There, he put an emphasis on two subjects: accounting and engineering economics, which he helped to popularize in interwar Poland. Among his academic students was the later secretary of industry and trade, Antoni Roman, who wrote a habilitation thesis under his guidance. Caro was a productive scientist, both in terms of the number of publications and societal activities. In 1932, he became vice-chairman of the Social Council of the Primate of Poland.
Caro contributed significantly to the formation and development of the movement of Polish economists. During the 1st Congress of Polish Economists in Poznań in 1929, he served as vice-chairman. There he delivered a speech on cartels and cartel legislation, which turned out to be an important trigger for legislation. He was also a member of the Consultative Work Committee of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, culminating in the development of 11 detailed agendas, and was a member of the Lwów Scientific Society. Frequently, Caro was delegated to international congresses and scientific meetings, for example in Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Prague, Budapest and Bucharest. He was a regular member of the "Casino" cultural club and the Literary and Artistic Circle in Lwów.
Leopold Caro died on February 8, 1939, in Lwów. He was buried at the Lychakiv Cemetery in Lwów. Caro is featured with a commemorative coin from 2020 in the series "Great Polish Economists" of the Narodowy Bank Polski. He received three renowned state orders in his lifetime, among them the Commander's Cross of Polonia Restituta.