The Family Business Working Group was hosted by Germany's oldest family business, The Coatinc Company Holding GmbH, in Kreuztal near Siegen on 3 November 2023. The topic of the meeting was "Family businesses under National Socialism"

After a welcome and introduction by JULIA SABINE FALKE, Chairwoman of the Executive Board of GUG e.V., and JÖRG LESCZENSKI, Chairman of the working group, host PAUL NIEDERSTEIN reported on the findings to date on the history of his family business during the Nazi era.

In the following lectures, various case studies from a wide range of industries were presented. MICHAEL C. SCHNEIDER presented the interim results of his research into Isabellenhütte, STEPHAN H. LINDNER discussed sources from Gottfried Dierig, who together with his brother ran "Christian Dierig", one of the most important but now largely unknown textile companies of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, while MARGRIT SCHULTE-BEERBÜHL focussed on the chocolate industry in the Rhineland as a whole.

Various academic approaches were also used to approach the topic. While SANDRA LIPNER, for example, chose a cultural studies approach to analyse the estate of her own grandfather, the Freiburg building contractor Heinrich Brenzinger, CHARLOTTE SORIA combined cultural and social-historical approaches to investigate the formation of a National Socialist business community in a Saxon textile company. MARK SPOERER used the history of the widely ramified entrepreneurial family behind C&A, the Brenninkmeyer family, to particularly succinctly highlight the special features that characterise the Nazi history of family businesses: Although no specific pattern can be identified for family businesses during the Nazi era, it is the "post-history" after 1945 and how the entrepreneurial family dealt with the Nazi history that distinguishes family businesses from other companies.