Otto (Karl Wilhelm) Neurath was born in Vienna on 19 December 1882. He studied mathematics, economics, philosophy and history in Vienna, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1906, he earned his doctorate in Berlin, followed by a habilitation (post-doctoral qualification) on political economy from Heidelberg in 1917. He became president of the Bavarian Zentralwirtschaftsverband in 1919. After the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he continued his planned economy work in Vienna, becoming secretary general of the Wiener Forschungsinstitut für Gemeinwirtschaft as well as director of the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum and of the Internationaler Verband für Bildungspädagogik. In 1934, he emigrated to the Netherlands, where he founded the Institute for the Unity of Science. In 1940, he fled to England, continuing his work in Oxford, where he died on 22 December 1945.
Otto Neurath was an influential member of the Vienna Circle, the group of scholars who became known as the fathers of logical empiricism. Neurath modified the tenets of logical empiricism to also take pragmatism into account and was especially interested in the theory of the humanities and social sciences.
Microfiche copy. 207 files. An inventory of individual shots of his manuscripts and a list of his letters sorted by name are available in unpublished form.