Patricians and parvenus
Subtitle: wealth and high society in Wilhelmine Germany
By: Dolores L. Augustine.
Publisher: Berg Publishers
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Oxford [England]; Providence, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Subjects: Businesspeople -- Germany -- History -- 19th century.; Businesspeople -- Germany -- History -- 20th century.; Businesspeople -- Germany -- Biography.; Business and politics -- Germany -- History -- 19th century.; Business and politics -- Germany -- History -- 20th century.
Description: In the period 1890-1914, the business elite in Germany turned their economy into the most dynamic in Europe. An older school of biographers tended to view the wealthiest businessmen as unique individuals - pioneers or geniuses who braved the rough waters of the business world, alone or as part of an unusual family.

Other biographers placed their subject in the context of the larger questions of German history - the aristocracy's supposed eclipse of the bourgeoisie, anti-Semitism, the rise of corporate capitalism or war aims in World War I. Empirical research on businessmen as a group - an elite or a segment of the bourgeoisie - was long left to political and economic historians; social historians were primarily concerned with the working or lower-middle class.

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This study takes a new approach, combining comprehensive quantitative data on the 502 wealthiest businessmen of the time with material from public and private papers and 200 autobiographies to produce a many-sided study of this group. Not only business history, but family and social history, gender roles, ethnicity, class relations, consumption patterns, and broader historical factors are synthesized in the first coherent view of the social world of the wealthy business elite of Wihelmine Germany.

The extensive bibliography alone will no doubt be an invaluable resource for years to come.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-294) and index.