The bourgeoisie made up approximately 30 percent of the population. The term bourgeoisie originally denoted a wide range of individuals, from substantial business owners to small shopkeepers, from unbelievably rich non-titled individuals to those just above the poverty level. As members of the middle class, the word Mittelstand is often used interchangeably but that is not entirely correct. The term Mittelstand proves difficult to translate and causes a lot of confusion. The German word Stand refers to an estate, from the medieval model of society, under which a person’s position was defined by birth or occupation. There were three principal levels, the upper one being the aristocracy, the middle one (the Mittelstand) the free bourgeoisieof the cities, and the lower one the peasants. Today, the term Mittelstand relates primarily to small and medium-sized business. Sort of. Therefore, there is a big trap as some Germans only understand the modern use while the term meant an entirely different things to an
Imperial German. So for our purposes Mittelstand refers to business owners and white-collar workers that do not have titles.They tended to believe in property, hard work, achievement, recognition and rewards, and the importance of rules. The bourgeoisie considered themselves a Bildungsbürgertumor “élite built on education.” They were defined by the institution of the family. The male figure was expected to have a public working life; his spouse to devote herself to domesticity and teaching values to the next generation. Women and children had specific subordinate roles—Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, cooking, church).
There was a divide between the bourgeoisie and the peasants in the countryside. Even the richest peasants were set apart from the bourgeoisie because they performed manual labor and were not as well educated. The divide was important for the Mittelstand. The small shopkeepers and artisans of the Mittelstand, who had been protected by regulations in the old towns, became known as the old Mittelstand. The white-collar workers were the new Mittelstand, and they saw themselves as a class above the proletariat even though their economic circumstances were very similar.
In 1882, sixty percent of the employment came from small enterprises of five or fewer employees. That number shrank to 31 percent by 1907. The largest industries of 1,000 employees or more remained fairly constant at five percent. As a result midsize enterprises provided most of the employment. About a third of the master artisans in Friedberg lived at the edge of poverty. And about half of this group employed no one but themselves: 55 percent of the masters did not own their own shops in 1913; over a quarter were so poor that they paid no municipal taxes. This state of affairs was clearly a proletarianization of the crafts.
Although life expectancy was increasing, the average number of children in the bourgeoisie actually shrank from four to two by 1914. Bourgeois women faced a separate problem known as the spinster emergency. Middle-class fathers were finding it more and more difficult to find suitable husbands for their daughters. A good bourgeois father would not allow his “surplus daughters” to find a future husband among the “surplus sons of the proletariat.” It was far less common in imperial Germany to move from the bourgeoisie to the nobility than it was in Britain. Some of the most powerful bourgeoisie declined titles; instead, the title of Commercial Councilor (Kommerzienrat), or its parallel councilor titles in professional fields, was highly prized, as were reserve commissions in the army.
