Vogelsang, Karl, Baron of

VOGELSANG, Karl, Baron of. - Catholic sociologist, b. Sept. 3, 1818 at Liegnitz (Silesia), d. at Vienna on Nov. 8, 1890.

He studied law and political science at Bonn, Rostock and Berlin, then entered the service of the Prussian State. Dissatisfied with the yielding conduct of Frederick William IV toward the Revolution of 1848, he left the State service and devoted himself to the administration of his estates in Mecklenburg. He occupied himself greatly with the religious-social questions of the time and from then on became an advocate of corporatism on the basis of social reforms. In 1850, under the influence of Emmanuel, baron von Ketteler, the future bishop of Mainz, he was converted, entering the Catholic Church at Innsbruck. Since living together with his Protestant relatives and fellow countrymen in Mecklenburg thus became impossible for him, after years of wanderings and privations, in 1864 he moved to Austria, where he found a second homeland. At Vienna in 1875 he took over the editorship of the conservative Catholic newspaper Vaterland. In 1879 he founded the Österreichische Monatsschrift für Gesellschaftswissenschaft und Volkswirtschaft. With M. Schindler, Karl Lueger and Prince Louis von Lichtenstein he introduced the Christlich-soziale Bewegung. V. is considered the father and inspirer of this movement in Austria. He was one of the most brilliant theoreticians of Christian socialism and of the organic ordering of society. He was a man who looked at life with an integrally Catholic mind and considered the Church as the vital principle of human society, placing this thought at the basis of his social ideas. A bitter enemy of the capitalist economy, together with his contemporary Karl Marx, he was one of the most notable critics of the capitalist system. As an opponent of State absolutism and bureaucratic centralism, he advocated a society harmoniously divided into classes. With word and with writings V. contributed much to the clarification of Christian social doctrine, and great was his influence on the Catholic social movements in Central and Eastern Europe. A year after his death appeared the encyclical Rerum novum, whose teachings largely agreed with the demands of V. He never set out his social program in a systematic work, but developed it in the daily press, following the course of events.

Giovanni Baur