This article intends to moderate the traditional thesis of the hostility of the nobility towards capitalism and of its resulting economic decline. With the example of the Prussian province of Saxony between 1850 and 1918, it presents the forms of economic adaptation of the nobility to capitalism as well as the aims which underlie this process. The analysis of the management methods of the fortune and landed property and of entering business shows that participation to capitalism had really taken place in the ranks of the nobility even though limited and concentrated on the agro industrial sector. On the other hand, there was a specific noble appropriation of capitalism, which aimed less at capital accumulation as to perpetuate local power and traditional family structures.