Heinrich Pesch
Bio
By Rupert J. Ederer:
"Heinrich Pesch was born in Cologne, Germany, on September 17, 1854. He died in Valkenburg, Holland, on April 1, 1926. During that span of not quite 72 years he combined with his exemplary life as a Jesuit priest many years of extraordinary, productive scholarship. Pesch began his university studies at Bonn. After he entered the Jesuit order in 1876, he went through the intensive regimen required by that order, and that included for him periods in Holland, Austria, Luxembourg, and England. It was during his theological studies in England — absence from Germany being forced by the Bismarckian repression of Jesuits — that Pesch was able to see firsthand the social devastation liberal capitalism wrought among the working classes. The experience is what prompted the young student to dedicate his life to doing what he could to improve the lot of the common working people.
Although the provincial of his order had intended to have him go on studying to become a professor of theology, Pesch successfully pleaded his case for studies in economics. While still a theology student, he began to probe the so-called Soziale Frage — the great social question of the time, namely, how to alleviate the plight of the working classes in the laissez-faire capitalist milieu of the late 19th century. Later he was assigned to co-edit with his brother, the renowned philosopher Tilmann Pesch, the prestigious journal Stimmen aus Maria Laach. He published 71 significant articles in it over a 28-year period. There were also assignments in various parts of Europe, including Vienna and Holland, before he was assigned to be spiritual advisor in the seminary of the Diocese of Mainz — a happy coincidence! There the Jesuit scholar dwelt in the same house in which the great pioneer of Catholic social teaching, Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, had lived; it was there that Pesch wrote his important two-volume work Liberalismus, Sozialismus und Christliche Gesellschaftsordnung (Liberalism, Socialism, and Christian Social Order), which he described as an exercise in philosophical sociology. His studies in ethics and moral theology had convinced him of the relevance of morality for economic life. That set him on a course that was contrary to the positivistic orientation that the social sciences, including economics, were taking by that time."
(https://www.newoxfordreview.org/documents/heinrich-pesch-the-economics-of-solidarism/)