Raiffeisen - Beginning and End

The occasion of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen,s two-hundredth birthday in March 2018 provided the inspiration for this book. In the words of the author: the hagiography expected to surround Raiffeisen this year is unlikely to reflect the real person, his work, his aims and his legacy. His anti-Semitism, his Christian fundamentalism and his paternalistic view of society have been kept quiet for decades. Kaltenborn now reveals these aspects through Raiffeisen,s statements and writings which are otherwise ignored. Yet these are an important part of his biography. Raiffeisen,s extensive anti-Semitic statements are reproduced here unabridged and in the original wording for the first time. His fight against ,social democracy, which he sees as a dangerous party of insurrection in Wilhelmine Germany is laid bare. Finally, it becomes clear how little Raiffeisen,s idea of cooperatives has to do with democratic self-help, although this principle is what first gave the cooperative concept its speci