Patricians and Parvenus Wealth and High Society in Wilhelmine Germany [Hardcover]

This many-sided study of the wealthy business elite of Wilhelmine Germany is based on comprehensive quantitative data on the 502 wealthiest businessmen of the time, material from public and private papers and 200 autobiographies. Not only business history, but family and social history, gender roles, ethnicity, class relations, consumption patterns and broader historical factors are synthesised in the first coherent view of the social world of the wealthy business elite of Wilhelmine Germany.Selected for the CHOICE list of Outstanding Academic Books for 1995 (Choice current reviews for Academic Libraries)

... a splendid and informative work of social history that calls orthodox views of the German economic elite in the Wilhelmine period into question. Her work is a fine combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis and presents a portrait of this important group in society that is as convincing in its evidence as it is fascinating in its detail. Gerald D. Feldman, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

This is a highly interesting study on the very rich in the urban, industrial and financial world of Imperial Germany. Hartmut Kaeble, Professor of Social History, Humboldt-University, Berlin

... a crisp, analytical collective biography of the financial elite in Wilhelmine Germany ... With firm primary research, extensive use of printed resources in English and German, comparative techniques, and imaginative analytical methodology, this work is an excellent model for subsequent social history research. Choice

Professor Augustine has made a significant contribution to the attack on the traditional historiography of the Wilhelmine elite ... It deserves a wide audience among both historians and scholars of Wilhelmine literature. H_German

... this is a model study of its kind, wide-ranging, original and very sensible in its conclusions. International Review of Social History