text:  His father belonged to that higher class of nobility according to the old German constitution who held immediately of the Empire (Reichs: unmittelbare und Landbarfreie )--a descent which had perhaps a not unimportant effect in influencing the position which Stein afterwards assumed; for while the Baron always acted in the spirit rather of the middle classes than of the princes and their courts and indeed often indulged in the strongest expressions of contempt for the whole body of princes in Germany he never forgot his own character as a free and independent baron of the German empire and was notwithstanding the popular character of his great measures in his tone of mind as much aristocratic as democratic