ABSTRACT
The social function of education in the Second Empire caused ambitious industrialists to submit their children to the narrow and rigid curriculum of the classical grammar school, rather than to provide for them the kind of education their future careers would seem to demand. The economic situation of Prussia and all German states in the early nineteenth century was such that education had to be limited to a minority. Statistics available from the last decades of the century show clearly the extent to which higher education was the preserve of the upper classes, particularly the bourgeoisie. The relationship between teachers in grammar schools and higher education and the state was based to a considerable degree on mutual advantage. Teachers in the secondary and tertiary sectors were only a small percentage of the whole profession. Teachers at all levels and university students were strong supporters of monarchy and Empire in the years before 1914.
