A. (Albert) Schäffle

Born in Nürtingen, Württemberg, on February 24, 1831, Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle studied at the University of Tübingen and first worked in journalism, including on the Schwäbische Merkur. He later became a professor of political economy at Tübingen and then at Vienna, building a reputation as a wide-ranging writer on economics, politics, and society.

Schäffle also spent a short time in public office, serving briefly in 1871 as Austrian minister of commerce and agriculture. Although his political career was short, his intellectual work was much more lasting: he wrote extensively on the structure of society, the state, and social reform.

He is especially associated with Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (Structure and Life of the Social Body), a major work that treated society through the metaphor of an organism. That approach made him an important early figure in sociology as well as political economy. He died in Stuttgart on December 25, 1903.