Submitted by: John Kleeberg (kleeberg@amnumsoc.org)

I would define Rentner, or Rentier, as someone who lives from the income
of his or her capital investments, i.e. dividends and interest; to be
distinguished from the Spekulant or Schieber who makes money from
capital gains, or the Gruender who makes money from capital gains on
initial public offerings (= British stag).  The term comes from Rentes,
the fixed interest rate (usually 3 percent) government bonds issued in
Continental nations, which are similar to British Consols.  There were
many people who described themselves as "rentier" in late nineteenth
century Germany, which is understandable; if they had their savings in
bonds, they would have prospered during the deflation of 1873-1896.  In
English, I use the term "rentier" with a French pronunciation - the word
is in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Spekulant, Schieber and Gruender
are uncomplimentary terms; Rentner is neutral (although Lenin has a
scathing passage about them in his _Imperialism_). "Kleinrentner" is a
diminutive partly designed to attract sympathy, similar to US "small
business" or German "Mittelstand."

In the twentieth century, after two inflations in Germany destroyed the
value of capital investments, Rentner came to mean someone living on a
fixed income, in particular an old age pensioner.

During the First World War, all the nations at war aggressively marketed
government bonds to their citizens.  Many people invested who had never
done so before.  In the countries which experienced hyperinflation,
these investors lost their savings.  It is interesting that there were
so many women among them.   In the United States, there have been more
women individual stockholders than men for many years now.  It would be
interesting to find out if the predominance of women among the
Kleinrentner of the 1920s is because of demographics or if women are
better at saving money than men are.  Because of the jobs which opened
for them during the First World War, women had earnings they could use
to buy government war bonds. I suspect a combination of all factors
explains why there were so many women Kleinrentner.

People who buy government war bonds don't always lose their money - the
opposite effect happened in southern Germany during the 1860s, when
Frankfurt/Main was the big market for United States bonds (Paris and
London were more sympathetic to the Confederacy).  Small investors
bought US bonds in the Frankfurt market during the darkest days of the
Civil War.  They cashed out in the later 1860s with big capital gains.
Some of these capital gains then fuelled the Gruender boom of 1867-1873.

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