Pfeiffer saw his wealth not as an end in itself but as an obligation of service to the community. Because of the way in which he lived out his charitable convictions, and in particular in recognition of his financing, over three years, of a project that involved rebuilding a large part of the city's "old centre" between 1906 and 1909, he was made an Honorary Citizen of Stuttgart in 1909. By the time Pfeiffer died, in the summer of 1921, most of the still substantial residuum of the couple's wealth had been used, in 1917, to establish the Eduard Pfeiffer foundation, which still exists. Eduard Pfeiffer: published works (not necessarily a complete list) "   Eduard Pfeiffer can be seen as one of the first great prophets and pioneers of the consumer co-operative movement. His first book, which appeared in 1863, set out his thinking on the subject. Pfeiffer identified an urgent need for social reform, and saw a guided and targeted programme of self-help as providing an ideal route-map for it. His efforts in this respect remained consistent through his life: he worked to achieve steady improvements in working class living standards in order to bind people into a bourgeois social structure, and to distance them from Socialist and Communist ideas. Pfeiffer insisted that solutions for the social questions of the time could be found only through co-operation between the propertied and working classes. He pursued similar themes in his second book, which appeared in 1865, and in which he set out practical steps for the establishment and running of consumer co-operatives. Further publications on economic themes followed. He was also quick to put his ideas into practice, setting up in 1863 the Stuttgart Consumer and Savings Association, which became a model for most of the consumer co-operatives in Germany. In 1867 Pfeiffer organised a conference in Stuttgart which would lead to the creation of the League of German Consumer Associations. The league was to be tasked with bulk purchasing of individual article for sale through co-operative associations across Germany. For most articles categories for shared purchasing should be created. In this way, Pfeiffer produced the structure for what became the national . The Association for the welfare of the working classes (""der Verein für das Wohl der arbeitenden Klassen"") was founded at Pfeiffer's instigation in 1866: between 1876 and 1921 he headed it.