Rudolf HilferdingUntil his death in a Gestapo prison cell, Rudolf Hilferding was one of Europe's most prominent socialist theorists and politicians. A leading economic thinker in the European socialist movement and an important politician in the German Social Democratic Party, he served as Weimar finance minister at the height of the inflation of 1923 and again at the onset of the depression in 1928. At a time when Germany faced one economic and political crisis after