In the long 19th century, the "bourgeois age", the bourgeoisie asserted their claims to political power, their economic and social order and their cultural values ​​in educational institutions, in parliament, in the way of life of modern city dwellers, often even at court. Wolfgang Hardtwig analyzes the connections between the bourgeois conquest of reality and the world of forms of an age that leads from the aesthetics of old European elite cultures to modern mass culture. His topics are the perception and design of natural spaces and urban landscapes, the symbolization of the nation, the sociology of art funding, utopian drafts of order and, last but not least, the aesthetic dimension of the narrative of the bourgeoisie about themselves.