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...