VOGELSANG, Karl, Baron von. — Catholic sociologist, b. 11 Sept. 1818 at Liegnitz (Silesia), d. in Vienna 8 Nov. 1890.
He studied law and political science at Bonn, Rostock and Berlin, then entered the service of the Prussian state. Dissatisfied with Frederick William IV’s compliant attitude toward the Revolution of 1848, he left state service and devoted himself to the administration of his estates in Mecklenburg. He took a keen interest in the religious and social questions of the day and from that time became a promoter of corporatism based on social reform. In 1850, under the influence of Emmanuel, Baron von Ketteler, the future Bishop of Mainz, he converted and entered the Catholic Church at Innsbruck. As this made it impossible for him to continue living among his Protestant relatives and countrymen in Mecklenburg, after years of wandering and hardship he moved to Austria in 1864, where he found a second homeland. In Vienna he took over the editorship of the conservative Catholic newspaper *Vaterland* in 1875. In 1879 he founded the *Österreichische Monatsschrift für Gesellschaftswissenschaft und Volkswirtschaft*. Together with M. Schindler, Karl Lueger and Prince Louis von Liechtenstein he introduced the Christian Social Movement. He is regarded as 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 viewed life with an integrally Catholic mind and regarded the Church as the vital principle of human society, placing this conviction at the foundation of his social ideas. A bitter enemy of capitalist economy, along 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. Through his words and writings he contributed greatly to the clarification of Christian social doctrine, and his influence on Catholic social movements in Central and Eastern Europe was profound. One year after his death the encyclical *Rerum novarum* appeared, whose teachings largely coincided with Vogelsang’s demands. He never set out his social programme in a systematic work, but developed it in the daily press in response to current events.