Gründerzeit

German writers of the late 19th century used the term Gründerzeit as a pejorative, because the cultural output of that movement is associated with materialism and nationalistic triumphalism.

Magnificent palaces for nouveau-riche citizens but also infamous rental housing for the expanding urban lower classes were built.

A classical example of the new form is the steel and glass construction of the Crystal Palace, completed in 1851, which was then revolutionary and inspired subsequent decades.

Particularly, the German middle class rapidly increased its standard of living, buying modern furniture, kitchen fittings and household machines.

After copyright law gradually became established in the 1840s, the low-price mass market vanished, and fewer but more expensive editions were published.

In the rapidly-growing industrial cities, new workers' dwellings were erected, lacking in comfort by today's standards but criticised even then as unhealthy by physicians: "without light, air and sun", they were quite contrary to the prevailing ideas on town planning.

Nevertheless, the working class also saw improvements of living standards and other conditions, such as social security through laws on workers' health insurance and accident insurance introduced by Bismarck in 1883–1884, and in the long run also through the foundation of a social democracy that would remain the model for the European sister parties until Hitler's Machtübernahme in 1933.

Even today, the model of social care developed by Bismarck in 1873 (Reichsversicherungsordnung) remains the contractual basis for health insurance in Germany.