Rudolf Hilferding

Rudolf Hilferding (10 August 1877 – 11 February 1941) was an Austrian-born Marxist economist, leading socialist theorist, politician and chief theoretician for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) during the Weimar Republic, almost universally recognized as the SPD's foremost theoretician of his century, and a physician.

He was born in Vienna, where he received a doctorate having studied medicine. After becoming a leading journalist for the SPD, he participated in the November Revolution in Germany and was Finance Minister of Germany in 1923 and from 1928 to 1929. In 1933 he fled into exile, living in Zurich and then Paris, where he died in custody of the Gestapo in 1941.…more