While financial literacy has been a disputed field among economists, politicians, pedagogues and parents in recent decades, it is hardly known how the relationship between childhood and money was established in the late 18th Century. Since that time the topic of monetary education accelerated through the 19th Century in many countries. It oscillated between the dissemination of middle-class values on the one hand and the new discourse of financial literacy in capitalist economies on the other hand. The paper will discuss examples from the German and British debate and shed light on the early history of monetary education and its debates.

Beverly Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life. Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c 1600-1900, Manchester/New York 2005. Sandra Maß, Kinderstube des Kapitalismus? Monetäre Erziehung im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Berlin/Boston 2018.