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'''Georg von MAYR'''

b. 12 February 1841 - d. 6 September 1925

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'''Summary'''. G. von Mayr was the foremost representative of German 
administrative and bureaucratic statistics. He was hostile to the use of the 
probability calculus and mathematics generally in the resolution of statistical
questions. 

Georg von Mayr was born  at W&uuml;rzburg in Franconia, 
Germany, where his father Aloys (1807-1890) was a Professor of Mathematics and 
Astronomy.  However, Georg pursued his studies in law and political science 
in Munich.

In 1864, he was appointed to the Bavarian Statistical Bureau
where he acted as assistant to his professor and future 
father-in-law Friedrich B.W. von Hermann (1795-1868), and  worked on a thesis
in criminal statistics which he defended in 1865.  Von Mayr received his 
Habilitation from the Faculty of Statistics of the University of Munich
in 1866, and was  appointed Privatdozent before being named Professor 
Extraordinarius in 1868.  After Hermann's death, von Mayr directed the 
Statistical
Bureau from 1869 to 1879.  This was the decade in which 
the constitution and structure of  Bismarck's Imperial State (Reich) took
shape. Statistics was an essential instrument in this structure, and von 
Mayr found himself at the forefront of its developments.  He became known as 
the advocate of reforms both in the organization and the scientific activity of 
the Statistical Bureau, first in Bavaria and later in the Reich.  He undertook 
the centralization of statistical services, and in 1869 founded a journal 
(''Zeitschrift des K&ouml;niglich Bayerischen Statistischen B&uuml;ros'') 
which enabled 
census material to be published, as well describing activities of the Bureau 
itself.  A very active member of the Commission for the Preparation
of Imperial Statistics (Reichskommission zur Vorbereitung der Reichsstatistik),
he refused the attractive offer of the directorship of the Imperial Statistical
Service (Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt), preferring to remain in Bavaria.

Nevertheless, in 1872, as counsellor to the Ministry of the Interior and
again in 1879 as Commissioner for the Bundesrat, he was consulted on some 
thorny questions of customs policy.  Ennobled in 1879, he left Munich
(M&uuml;nchen) for the 
duties of under-secretary of Finances in Strasbourg (Strasburg), where he 
vigorously 
defended the economic policy of Bismarck.  Following the Reichstag elections 
of 1887, which resulted in his finding himself in a minority, he resigned his 
ministerial duties and once again devoted himself to academic scientific 
activity. 

After a brief stay at the University of Strasburg, he returned to Munich 
in 1898 to the Chair of Political Economy, Financial Sciences and Statistics.
In 1913-14 he acceded to the position of Rector.

In 1890, while still in Alsace, he had founded the journal ''Allgemeines 
statistisches Archiv'', which he edited until 1907.  The journal was then 
suspended for a time, and resumed publication only in 1914, when  
von Mayr handed 
over the editorship to Friedrich Zahn (1869-1944) while continuing to support
the journal with his articles.  In addition, he became the head of the German
Statistical Society (Deutsche statistische Gesellschaft) created in Dresden 
in 1911, of which the ''Allgemeines statistisches Archiv'' became the 
organ.  G. von Mayr thus took part in the foundation and the activities 
of the great statistical institutions:  he was a member of the International 
Statistical Institute (ISI) from the time of its creation in 1885, becoming 
its Vice-president from 1911 to 1923.  He was President of the German section, 
and also Vice-President of the Comit&eacute; permanent international des Congr&egrave;s
des Assurances sociales.

In 1911, he added an actuarial component to the Seminar in Statistics 
which he had founded at the University of Munich. This new Seminar  fulfilled
the role of providing an actuarial diploma  for candidates having either
a mathematical or administrative background. 

After becoming Emeritus in 1920, von Mayr remained very active within the
University of Munich.  He died  at his home in Tutzing, near the Starnberger 
See.

G. von Mayr's career, which followed the archetype of the German professor- 
bureaucrat, testifies to the importance of the role he played in the 
history of administrative statistics, both nationally and internationally.  As 
a result
of his experience as Head of Bavarian statistics, von Mayr was able to extend 
and impose a rigorous reforming and centralizing methodology on the other 
statistical bureaux which had arisen in the different German provinces during 
the 19th century.  All the ideas involved were debated in the early congresses 
of the ISI, where problems of the unification of statistical methodology and 
practice were raised.

Research on statistical methods was  logically underpinned by von Mayr's 
conception of statistics as an autonomous discipline, with its own methods and 
objectives.  He made an active
contribution to disentangling descriptive statistics from the confused 
environment where political economy, geography, sociology and other disciplines 
were all mixed in together, and was one of the 
most enthusiastic promoters of extended descriptive statistics forming
``an exact science of mass social phenomena".  Thus at the ISI Congress 
of 1889 in Paris, von Mayr elaborated his point of view on the monographic 
method which had first appeared in 1829, and was later codified in 1856 by 
the French polytechnician F. Le Play.  
Von Mayr was above all critical of the status given to ``type" in social 
phenomena.  Under his guidance, long descriptive studies were carried out 
in economic, criminal, social, professional and demographic statistics;  such 
studies, he maintained, essential for disengaging 
``typical" phenomenona from any "law of  social life".

It is therefore not surprising that von Mayr remained 
a tireless opponent of Quetelet's (q.v.) views throughout his life.  His 
aversion 
to ``the average man"
extended to a more general distrust of statistical methods based on a priori
mathematical arguments.  He thus argued against the use of ``representative
methods" (sample surveys) invented by the Norwegian N.A. Kiaer (q.v.) and 
discussed 
in the ISI Congresses towards the end of the century.  In the same way, he
always expressed the greatest reservations about
the use of mathematical methods in 
statistics, as well as about Lexis' (q.v.) concept of basing mathematical 
statistics
(which Lexis referred to as ``analytical statistics" by analogy with mechanics)
on the calculus of probabilities.  Nevertheless, he counted among his students 
and assistants in the Seminar at the University of Munich, Friedrich B&ouml;hm and
Emil Julius Gumbel (q.v.), whose works in actuarial science and statistics were of
a very mathematical nature. 

One cannot deny that his scepticism about mathematical 
statistics had ill effects on the development of statistics in Germany
up to the middle of the twentieth century.  His heirs, proud holders of the 
German tradition of administrative statistics, which was gradually ossified 
by a conservatism tinged with imperial nostalgia (a widespread 
characteristic 
of the German administrative apparatus after 1918), contributed to cutting 
German science off from the striking development of mathematical statistics in 
English-speaking countries at the same time.  This was the 
essence of Paul Flask&auml;mper's judgment of 1944 on von Mayr, 
even though he was called the ``Altmeister der deutschen Statistik".

It should however be noted that von Mayr's renown lasted until World 
War 2 in those parts of Europe influenced by German culture.  This was the case 
of Hungary and Italy, and more surprisingly the USSR.  The Russian translation
of his treatise of 1877, carried out in 1887 by Romanov under the direction of 
the great statistician A.V. Chuprov (the father of A.A.Chuprov, q.v.),
recorded his fierce opposition to Quetelet.
This work was read by Soviet scientists as that of a capitalist statistician 
par 
excellence, and made the Bismarckian von Mayr one of the main methodological
references of statisticians in the Soviet administration. This is not the least of
history's jokes!


====References====
{|
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|valign="top"|{{Ref|1}}||valign="top"|   B&ouml;hm, F. (1925).  Nachruf auf Georg von Mayr.  ''Zeitschrift fur die  gesamte Versicherungswissenschaften'', '''26''', 125-127.    Mayr, G. von (1877). '' Die Gesetzm&auml;ssigkeit im  Gesellschaftsleben'', M&uuml;nchen.  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|2}}||valign="top"|   Mayr, G. von (1895-1917). ''Statistik und Gesellschaftslehre'', Bd I: ''Theoretische Statistik'' (1895, 1914),  Bd II: '' Bevolkerungsstatistik'' (1897, 1922/27), Bd III:''Moralstatistik'' (1909/1917). Mohr, T&uuml;bingen.     Mayr, G. von (1901). ''Begriff und Gliederung der  Staatswissenschaften''. Laupp, T&uuml;bingen (4th edn 1921).  
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|3}}||valign="top"|   Rinne, H. (Ed) (1991).  Georg von Mayr, Gr&uuml;nder und  Herausgeber 1890-1914.  In ''100 Jahre Allgemeines statistiches Archiv:   R&uuml;ckblick, Biographien, Generalregister; Archiv B&auml;nde 1-74;  Sonderhefte  1-26''. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, G&ouml;ttingen, pp.15-18. 
|-
|valign="top"|{{Ref|4}}||valign="top"|   W&uuml;rzburger, E. (1926).  Georg von Mayr, 1841-1925.   ''Metron'', '''6''', 218-226.
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Reprinted with permission from
Christopher Charles Heyde and Eugene William Seneta (Editors),
Statisticians of the Centuries, Springer-Verlag Inc., New York, USA.

[[Category:Statprob]]
[[Category:Biographical]]