ABSTRACT
In 1917, Werner Sombart succeeded his former teacher, Adolph Wagner, in a chair of economics at the University of Berlin. In middle age Sombart saw the defeat of German militarism in the First World War and the collapse of the Weimar Republic, Germany's first democratic government. Prior to the advent of National Socialism in Germany, Sombart was looked upon as an academic exponent of Karl Marx. The difference between Germany and the Western powers, however, is that in Germany the conflict between the patterns has been rather one-sided, the scales being weighted in favor of the authoritarian or antilibertarian outlook. The Romantic influence as expressed in economics, philosophy, and law nourished early nineteenth-century German nationalism and was, in turn, nourished by it. As to the relation between Sombart's socialistic views and the program of the Nazi political party, it is clear from his own words that he looked upon the party as the means of realizing the principles he espoused.
