Peez, Alexander von (ennobled 1889)

Politician, industrialist

born: 19.01.1829 in Wiesbaden

died: 12.01.1912 in Weidling (municipality of Klosterneuburg)

Peez, son of the spa physician Dr. August Heinrich Peez, studied law and obtained his doctorate in Göttingen. In 1857, he was brought to Reichenberg in Austria to edit the local newspaper. From 1864 he worked in Vienna as General Secretary of the Association of Industrialists; in 1866 he became an Austrian citizen.

His work for the economy continued: in 1874 he played a key role in the founding of the Association of the Coal, Iron and Engineering Industry. He served as secretary of the Industrial Club and as president from 1904/05. He was also active as an entrepreneur himself and ran a cellulose factory in Weißenbach an der Enns from 1886.

Peez was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives and was appointed a member of the Austrian House of Lords in 1902. He also held important positions in the Society of Austrian Economists, the K. K. Austrian Trade Museum and in the State Railway Council.

He was one of the founders of the Wiener Volksbildungsverein (1887). In 1889 Peez was elevated to the hereditary nobility and in 1910 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Berlin. Peez was an influential publicist of trade policy writings and a visionary of a larger Central European economic area. His works are not free of German nationalist and anti-Semitic elements.