Sombart, Werner

SOMBART, WERNER. - Protestant sociologist, b. at Ermsleben (Harz) on 19 Jan. 1863, d. at Berlin on 18 May 1941.

He studied at the Universities of Pisa, where he had Toniolo as his teacher, and of Berlin, and was appointed in 1890 professor at the University of Breslau, whence he passed successively to Berlin.

He began his scientific activity in 1888 with an economic-social study of the Roman countryside (Die römische Campagna), which he followed with a history of the commercial politics of Italy from 1861 onward (Die Handelspolitik Italiens seit der Einigung des Königreichs, in Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik, Leipzig, 49 [1892], pp. 77-166). The reality of economic-social conditions, and in particular the rise of socialism, subsequently stimulated his interest and his curiosity as a scholar, and the fruit of this was a great number of works on capitalism, on socialism and on particular aspects of economic life, among which are remembered: Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902); Die Juden und das Wirtschaftleben (1911); Der Bourgeois (1913); Der proletarische Sozialismus (1924); Deutscher Sozialismus (1934). S.'s work constitutes the bridge between the social science of the 19th century and that of the 20th.

Silvio Furlani