Geschäftsinteresse statt ethnischer Identität?

Unternehmer von Lódz im 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract

The example of the metropole of textile industries in Poland gives us new facts on the weight of ethnic patterns in business´ life. This paper put stress on the mentalities and activities of textile barons in their careers as entrepreneurs, who were most of german or jewish origin. In Lodz, where the rasant capitalist change produced above all a field of economic expansion and technical improvment and where the central governmental power was far away the fabricants began more or less under the same conditions undisturbed of indigenous structures. Ethnical or national belongings disappeared more and more behind the contemporary slogan of „Lodzer Mensch“, who represented a „fin de siècle – businessman“ on the peak of capitalism.