Franziska Wiest Defends Dissertation on Super-Rich Family Wealth

Franziska Wiest successfully defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of Cologne at the end of April 2026. In “Umkämpftes Vermögen: Patrimoniale Verhältnisse in superreichen Familien,” she explores how super-rich families pass down, organize, and legitimize their wealth across generations – a field that has been difficult to access and therefore under-researched to date. Her study is based on 33 interviews with members of nine super-rich families in Germany. With a particular focus on the role of conflict, Wiest explores situations that are often considered a threat to the preservation of wealth, and by doing so reveals shifting standards, values, and power dynamics in familial relationships. Drawing on Max Weber’s concept of patrimonialism, she shows that while ideals of paternal authority, family tradition, and primogeniture endure, they have proven to be adaptable. Changing ideals of equality and care in familial relationships have drawn more family members into the shared wealth, as a result of which the focus has shifted from the authority of an individual to the family as a collective. In this process, professional intermediaries such as consultants and lawyers play a key role in mediating tensions and managing wealth, both legally and emotionally. The dissertation was supervised by Isabell Stamm (TU Berlin). Franziska Wiest was a doctoral researcher at the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) and is now a postdoc working in the MPIfG’s Economic Sociology Research Area.