BAMBERGER, LUDWIG (1823-1899), German econ omist and politician, was born of Jewish parents at Mainz. After studying at Giessen, Heidelberg, and Gottingen, he entered on the practice of the law. When the revolution of 1848 broke out he took an active part as one of the leaders of the republican party in his native city, both as popular orator and as editor of one of the local papers. In 1849 he took part in the republican rising in the Palatinate and Baden; he was condemned to death, but escaped to Switzerland. The next years he spent in exile, at first in London, then in Holland; in 1852 he went to Paris, where he entered the bank of Bischoffheim and Goldschmidt, of which he became managing director, a post which he held till 1866, when the amnesty enabled him to return to Germany. He was elected a member of the Reichstag, where he joined the National Liberal party. In 187o, owing to his intimate acquaintance with France and with finance, he was summoned by Bismarck to Versailles to help in the discussion of terms of peace. In the German Reichstag he was the leading authority on matters of finance and economics, as well as a clear and persuasive speaker, and it was chiefly owing to him that a gold currency was adopted and that the German Imperial Bank was constituted; in his later years he wrote and spoke strongly against bimetallism. He was a free trader, and after 1878 refused to follow Bismarck in his new policy of protection, state socialism, and colonial de velopment ; in a celebrated speech he declared that the day on which it was introduced was a dies ne f astus for Germany. He and a number of followers left the National Liberal party and formed the so-called "Secession" in 1880. He was one of the few prominent politicians who consistently maintained the struggle against state socialism on the one hand and democratic socialism on the other. In 1892 he retired from political life. Bamberger's most important works are those on the currency, on the French war-indemnity, his criticism of socialism and his apology for the Secession.
An edition of his collected works (including a French life of Bis marck in French, written as propaganda) was published in 1894. After his death appeared a volume of reminis.:ences, Erinnerungen . . . ed. P. Nathan (1899) , which, though it does not extend beyond 1866, gives an interesting picture of his share in the revolution of 1848, and of his life in Paris. See also L. Hartwig, Ludwig Bamberger, Eine biographische Skizze 0900).