ABSTRACT
Actually, as a point from which to view the complexities of Wilhelmine Germany, the life of Walther Rathenau – a complicated and contradictory man in a complicated and contradictory society – is not perhaps a bad beginning. However, before we look at the relations of Walter Rathenau with that society and at the paradox of this ambitious social thinker who was at the same time an ambitious, successful and ruthless financier and industrialist, we must outline the external framework of his career. Rathenau, however, although he spent an apprenticeship working in metal and electro-chemical factories, soon showed that he had other ambitions, even though these pushed him in contrary directions. Rathenau’s social and financial success led many people to expect that he would also have political ambitions. Rathenau’s business and public career itself contained enough ambiguities and paradoxes, successes and failures to make it clear that he was by no means a typical tycoon of the Wilhelmine epoch.
