Extreme levels of wealth inequality are a threat to liberal democracies, the meritocratic claim, and societal cohesion. If the interest lies in addressing this pressing problem, it is indispensable to analyse the genesis of wealth in the first place. The genesis of wealth, however, is an empirical question. Wealth may be decomposed into two terms: the accumulation of savings over a lifecycle and the inheritances from previous generations. At present, in most OECD countries, more than half of wealth is not earned but inherited and the bequest motive leads to larger increases in the concentration of wealth. Germany serves as a good example and as our empirical case: The German inheritance volume is at present around 400 billion Euro per year, leaving no room for doubt that we experience a high wave of inheritances, currently expanding and with the potential to grow enormously. In our view, an understanding of the (re-)production of wealth has to be based on an understanding of the justifications firstly for wealth in general, and secondly for the inter-generational transfer of wealth. We therefor introduce and conceptualize the notion of the “deserving rich” – in analogy to Georg Simmel´s seminal analysis on the “deserving poor” – methodologically asking for the legitimation in the eye of the beholder. Our main question is: How and in which way can the different narratives of the “deserving rich” explain the (re-)production of wealth in Germany?

Our research is interdisciplinary and promises to leverage synergy effects on the basis of socio-political, philosophical-analytical and empirical approaches. Building on our concept of “deserving rich”, we analyze discourses, instruments and institutional arrangements in the realm of the genesis of wealth (1), identify and examine the decisive arguments of deserved and undeserved wealth (2), making the ideal-typical reconstruction of the right to bequeath possible (3). The empirical analysis of the German inheritance tax and business elites (4) finally allows to explain which narratives have had a residual impact on the existing legal frameworks, embedded in the paradigms and ideologies over the last hundred years (5). The discrepancy between the normative-rational arguments of wealth and inheritances on the one hand and the shape of the inheritance tax system on the other hand, may only be explained at the background of a historical analysis of the social and political processes of transformation.