Bildungsbürgertum

Bildungsbürgertum (German: [ˈbɪldʊŋsˌbʏʁɡɐtuːm]) is a social class that emerged in mid-18th-century Germany, as the educated social stratum of the bourgeoisie, men and women who had received an education based upon the metaphysical values of Idealism and classical studies of the Graeco–Roman culture of Antiquity. In sociological contrast to the Kleinbürgertum, the petite bourgeoisie of Germany, the Bildungsbürgertum were the intelligentsia and the upper economic-stratum of the German bourgeoisie.