Bildungsbürgertum (German: [ˈbɪldʊŋsˌbʏʁɡɐtuːm], "cultured / educated middle class") was a social class that emerged in mid-18th-century Germany and Austria as the educated social stratum of the bourgeoisie. It was a cultural elite that had received an education based on the values of idealism and classical studies and which steered public opinion in art and patterns of behaviour. The majority of its members were Protestant and employed in the upper civil service and free professions such as law, journalism and the arts. Despite its influence, the never exceeded more than about one percent of the population.
Wilhelm von Humboldt shaped the ideal of education as a process of life-long learning that valued all-around knowledge over training for a profession. During the course of the nineteenth century, that ideal was slowly diluted as industrialisation and urbanisation increased the need for specialised scientific knowledge. "Secular religions" such as nationalism, social Darwinism, antisemitism and ideological imperialism became more prominent, and the class came to see its status more and more as an entitlement rather than an achievement.
The slaughter of World War I shattered the worldview. It suffered high losses in the fighting and a significant reduction of both income and status. Many of its members saw democracy as a threat and supported a return to authoritarian rule. Under the Nazi regime, however, what remained of the 's influence faded to insignificance.
Term The term Bildungsbürgertum was coined in 1920s Germany, by the political right wing to communicate anti-bourgeois sentiment based upon the perceived incompatibility of temperament in a person who claims to being both a 'genuine' intellectual and a , a bourgeois.
In the German compound word , the word denotes "culture" and "education" as defined during the Age of Enlightenment. also corresponds to the educational ideal presented in the works of Wilhelm von Humboldt in which connotes education as a life-long process, not merely the acquisition of knowledge and training.
The term was coined in the 1920s to distinguish the older class educated in the humanist tradition from the university-educated scientists and engineers who had come to be recognized as a new academic elite and were looked down on by the because of their lack of general knowledge.
Characteristics According to Klaus Vondung, a scholar in cultural and German studies, the of the 19th century had seven key characteristics.
Its members had an academic education in the humanistic (classical) tradition and were bound together by high-level professions which were largely reserved to them. The highest professional group included the upper civil service – university professors, teachers in academically oriented secondary schools (gymnasiums), judges and upper administrative officials – plus the partly nationalised Protestant clergy. A somewhat lower second group was made up of the academic free professions such as attorneys, writers, artists, journalists and editors. There was a high level of self-recruitment among the . Upper civil servants especially tended to come from families already in the educated elite, although there was also a flow into the from the merchant class and the parts of the middle class whose roots predated industrialisation (the "old middle class"). Most members shared similar backgrounds, educational paths and institutional memberships (such as the reserve officer corps) that shaped their mentalities and social conduct and led to "in-group" behaviour in social interactions. Social prestige was more important to them than economic prosperity. Its ranks were predominantly Protestant. Catholics were represented at a level considerably below their numbers in the general population. The was considered a cultural elite: "Its members' interpretations of reality and concepts of order, which extend from positive and formal systems – such as in law – to artistic readings of reality, constitute 'public' culture. ... The representative worth of the culture can be asserted because public opinion for the most part is made by the ." Its members occupied the professions that passed on the concepts of order which the developed and thereby allowed those professions to become socially dominant. The social relevance of the as elite interpreters of cultural phenomena was largely based on its dominant position in universities and schools and in the production and dissemination of public opinion through the press and literature. In the process it built up educational and linguistic barriers that allowed it to become an elite class to which the uneducated had little access. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, developed in the 20th century, is partly based on the social sphere.
Culture
The defining characteristic of the , including how it perceived itself, was its engagement with culture. Its education was based on specific canons that were both shaped and embraced by the . Social interaction in theatres, opera houses, concert halls, and museums in large cities became a defining characteristic of their milieu. The institutions often owe their founding and financial support to the patronage of the . They campaigned for the construction of cultural buildings, which – often designed in a classical, temple-like style – became extended public salons of social and political life, such as Museum Island in Berlin (1830), the Vienna State Opera (1869) and the Städel in Frankfurt am Main (1833). In smaller regional centres, too, private and municipal theatres were established, with orchestras that brought opera and concert performances to the provinces.
Under the aegis of the , the arts pages of the major German-language newspapers took on an important role, placing the examination of culture on the same level as that of politics and economics. The feature pages of the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna achieved particular renown. Through the collaboration of Theodor Herzl, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Felix Salten, Arthur Schnitzler, Bertha von Suttner and Stefan Zweig, they elevated the broader treatment of culture to a pillar of reputable media reporting. The Frankfurter Zeitung, the Berlin Vossische Zeitung and the Prague Tagblatt played a similar role.
History England and France
The development of the German bourgeoisie took place later than in England and France. The bourgeoisie in those countries had achieved a share of economic and political power considerably earlier. In England the process began in the late Middle Ages with the increasingly powerful House of Commons in which both the urban, bourgeois and mercantile elites (as well as religious minorities) and the rural, conservative (and Anglican) gentry were represented. In France the rise of the bourgeoisie was hampered by the Huguenot Wars and the subsequent absolutism. In the 18th century, with the Régence (1715–1723), merchants, private bankers and industrialists began to set the tone. As a result of the French Revolution of 1789 and definitively under Louis Philippe, they came to control the levers of political power.
What had been occurring since the late Middle Ages in many European city-states – such as the free imperial cities, the Hanseatic cities, Florence, the Republic of Venice, the Dutch Republic and the Swiss city cantons – was repeated at the national level: the emergence of bourgeois patrician families of commercial character. By the 19th century, most such patricians had long since become aristocrats. By the 17th century, a class of "grand burghers" had also emerged, particularly in the Hanseatic cities. Unlike the older patricians, they no longer aspired primarily to nobility by acquiring rural estates but emphasised bourgeois values such as achievement in commerce or science and a certain modesty in the display of wealth. From the end of the 18th century onwards, during the course of revolutions and industrialisation, the older bourgeois ruling classes were often replaced by new economic elites in their local spheres of influence.
The distinction between the French terms (roughly: citizen, member of the educated classes) and bourgeois (roughly: propertied citizen, member of the ruling class) is significant. In contrast to the typical propertied bourgeois, the educated bourgeois thought not only of himself and money, although an above-average income or wealth was usually assumed. Capital was understood to mean the possession of knowledge, relationships and connections, which they saw as a more original and significant capital asset than money. In France there was no parallel to the concept of the ; instead, a distinction is usually made between the bourgeoisie and intellectuals, among whom social origin was less important than career choices and the type of political or social engagement.
18th century Although universities had existed in Europe since the early Middle Ages, the social importance of the academy grew in the wake of industrialisation when it became essential to draw on scientifically well-trained citizens for economic growth and for the new western state structure. From the 19th century onwards, new universities sprang up all over Europe, as for example the present-day Humboldt University in Berlin (1810), as well as technically specialized universities such as the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (1855). Members of families in the often gained privileged access to secondary schools (gymnasiums) and universities.At the beginning of the 19th century, Wilhelm von Humboldt, with his model of an ideal education, created the most important intellectual product of the , one which at the same time became its objective. It was built around the two central concepts of bourgeois enlightenment: the autonomous individual and world citizenship (). The university was to be a place where autonomous individuals and “world citizens” were formed or self-created. University education was not to be job-related but rather an education independent of economic interests. Humboldt's ideal pointed to a “human society of equals” which ran counter to the efforts of many members of the to set themselves apart.
By the end of the 18th century, new humanism had penetrated deeply into the , supported by the spiritual atmosphere in the family and by formal education. The emerging class, particularly in the professional civil service, was fostered by the late absolutist administrative state. It needed a large number of well-trained civil servants which the pre-modern class order was unable to produce. The was able to assert its standards of achievement, often against the resistance of the nobility, and as academically trained civil servants to shape and execute national policy. The growing complexity of society in the era of industrialisation and rapid urban growth also led to the need for experts in such fields as engineering, law and medicine. Together with the "higher" professions, they were the formers of opinion through the press, associations and academies. The novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag noted in his "Pictures from Germany's Past": "Whoever writes a history of literature, art, philosophy and science in Germany is in fact dealing with the family history of the educated bourgeoisie."
Both the civil service and the free professions promoted the establishment of professional qualifications, and civil service members had entrance examinations instituted for gymnasiums and universities as well. The thus controlled access to its ranks and ensured its status as an elite group. Historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler described the resulting job market as "oligo-political".
Virtually all developments involving the were less pronounced in Germany's Catholic regions because the Catholic Church resisted new humanism, and schooling at all levels did not advance in the way that it had in Protestant areas.
19th century Size