Introduction

In the present state of our knowledge, any piece of economic history bearing the title ‘Capital Formation in Germany in the Nineteenth Century’ certainly deserves a sceptical reaction from its readers. Much basic research remains to be done before the quantitative information that title implies will be available. Recent specialized investigations into the question have stressed the difficulties in the way of obtaining a general picture, especially for the early part of the nineteenth century. German agricultural history, for example, has focused too strongly, according to one expert, on describing the experience in individual regions and branches.

The variations between individual groups of peasant farmers – differentiated according to tenure rights (and thus according to tax or debt burden), quality of the soil, size of enterprise, as well as other criteria – were so great that one may well assume that there were large variations in agricultural income and hence in the possibilities for capital formation. Individual investigations which are limited to a few farms or villages either can reflect and confirm the broad development trends that affected production techniques, marketing conditions, or consumption in all farms, or can reflect an exceptional situation.

In a more general survey, Knut Borchardt's scepticism seemed to go still further, when he labelled any attempt to estimate the national wealth as more or less ‘jesting’, since short-run price variations would tend to dominate the few observations one could hope to make.