ABSTRACT
The industrial entrepreneurs contributed more than any other social group to revolutionizing the German economy, thereby indirectly affecting its political development profoundly. To contemporaries the most impressive figures among the new class of entrepreneurs were the bankers, whose close links with industry are characteristic of the German industrial scene from the first. The life style of the early entrepreneurs was in some respects similar to that of established commercial families in the old German trading towns such as the Hansa cities or Frankfurt. In Prussia the Trades Ordinance of 1849 made it difficult for those who wished to transform their workshops into modern industrial concerns. The leading industrialists spread themselves into a variety of enterprises. The readiness to abandon the thrifty and self-contained life hallowed by tradition was more common among the younger generation of Rhenish and Berlin industrialists than it was in the older commercial communities. The rise of the industrialist in Austria was somewhat different from Germany.
