ABSTRACT
Germany played an important role in Gershchenkron’s work: it supplied the subject of his first major book, Bread and Democracy (1943) and subsequently served in his celebrated typology of industrialization1 as the principal case of ‘moderate backwardness’—in which banks supply crucial financial and entrepreneurial inputs. In addition, frequent references to Germany, to German industrialization, and especially to the German universal banks-which he at one point described as an innovation comparable in importance to the steam engine (Gerschenkron 1968:137)—are scattered throughout his writings. These are grounds for expecting to find important connections between the historiography of German economic history and Gerschenkron’s work.
