Inhaltsverzeichnis der Beiträge

After introducing remarks on posing problems and on the base of material, this study answers three questions: 1. Are scripts of business-jubilee credible? 2. What value of information have their texts on business history? 3. Has their get-up any documental value? These fundamental problems presented themselves the author, before exploiting hundreds of scripts on business-jubilee in order to initiate pupils in concrete economic history by teaching in schools. With regard to a very different quality of those scripts, the useful and useless in them is considered carefully.

Untertitel: Ein geistesgeschichtliches EssayThere are several possibilities to define the word entrepreneur'. The criteria, which Wilhelm Weber set up (status, position, function), do no satisfy completely. Therefore the author went back to the Innovator' and the way Josef Schumpeter has defined him. The innovator' differs from the 19 th-century-entrepreneur most of all by his intellectual character. While the entrepreneur of the 19th century had bis origins in late calvinism and its secularized transformation, if we follow Max Weber, the entrepreneur as a pattern type has his roots in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant. The attitude of the modern entrepreneur is dominated by bis obligations towards society and his staff, regardless whether his is the owner or a manager.

Untertitel: Albert Ballin, Die HAPAG und das Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Politik im Kaiserreich und in den ersten Jahren der Weimarer RepublikThe article starts with examining the astonishing friendship between the powerful emperor of the Deutsche Reich Wilhelm II. and Albert Ballin, a Jew of humble origins who became the general director of the HAPAG, the world largest shipping line. Ballin's decisive role in the expansion of the HAPAG and in the development and working of international pools regulating the shipping lines before 1914 is analysed and shown, that political events and particularly the attempts of states to control the emigration from their countries and favour their own harbours and national steamship companies made merchant shipping a very risk undertaking . In the First World War the normal business of the HAPAG came to a standstill and Ballin who was highly critical of the war successfully lobbied for a statute of compensation of shipping companies (Schifffahrtsentschädigungsgesetz). After the war this allowed the successor of Ballin, who died by his own hand on November 9, 1918, the day of the establishment of the German Republic, to rebuild the HAPAG. In this he fought off the attempt of a hostile take over by Hugo Stinnes and cooperated at the first closely with an American group around the banker Averell Harriman. Especially in dealing with the relations of the HAPAG with banks and the postwar history of the firm sources from the historical archive of the Deutsche Bank are used.

Untertitel: Eine Fallstudie über den Einfluß des technischen Fortschritts auf Marktstruktur und MarktergebnisThe introduction of a new technology revolutionized the German sheet glass industry between 1925 and 1932. The inevitable concentration process was intensified by the small group of "first movers", who formed a cartel to share the costs of market entry deterrence. After successfully driving out their competitors, the innovators gained extra profits which lasted for nearly four decades and thus were not temporary, as the Schumpeterian view of market dynamics may have suggested. Nevertheless both the producer's and consumer's surplus rose, so that the overall welfare effect was clearly positive. But by barring market entry, the cartel cemented an inefficient regional plant distribution. So the innovation's welfare potential was not fully exploited.

The Zeppelin-Company was founded in 1908 for the construction of airships. During the First World War it experienced a boom by manufacturing Zeppelins for military purposes. After WW I however, the company had to face massive problems. The German state was neither willing or able to finance the airship-production; additionally, the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the production of larger airships for a certain time. For those reasons, Zeppelin had to find new areas of production such as car-manufacturing, airplanes, gears etc. This diversification-strategy was not very successful for a long time, mainly because Zeppelin had to compete on new and complicated markets. Also, the firm’s profitability was burdened by organisational problems. Furthermore, there was a strong fraction within the corporation that strove to re-establish the production of airships. That group of people were to gain control, though in the long-run it was impossible to abolish the diversification strategy. In the aftermath of the catastrophe of Lakehurst in 1937 the airship finally became a part of history.

Untertitel: Aspekte der Corporate Governance bei den Chemischen Werken Hüls (CWH).The long way to stability. Aspects of Corporate Governance at the Chemische Werke Hüls (CWH) Recently, the question how the structures of monitoring, managing and control of enterprises evolved and worked in practice has become a central research perspective in business history. So far, however, this perspective has been applied only to the dual constellation typical of the German corporate governance system consisting of supervisory board and executive committee. Nevertheless, corporate governance is also the central aspect by which the mechanisms of management and control of an enterprise can be analysed, wherefore this article will focus on that perspective. It will show how the formation of the shareholders (and thus the mechanisms of control and power) in the Chemical Works Hüls (CHW) evolved, and pay special attention to the impact of a certain constitution of shareholders on business policy and on decisions of the executive committee. CWH are especially suitable for this approach due to their property structure and changing conditions of management. Since the time it was founded, its ownership structure was complex because CWH was no pure subsidiary of IG Farben, but a 25 per cent stake was let to the mining company Hibernia for reasons of energy and raw material supply. This «founding deficiency» of CWH was to considerably determine the development of the company until well into the post-war period. This article, however, will focus on the 1950’s because the case of CWH is typical for a specific variant of decartelization and re-concentration of the IG Farben, which still by no means has been sufficiently studied. All in all, the example of CWH in many respects is not that representative as to stand for the development of corporate governance structures in the German enterprises in general. Nevertheless, the concept of corporate governance is helpful for comparing business histories. It cannot explain everything, but it can help to understand many central topics, and it possesses the potential to incite new and exciting research questions for the historical analysis of companies. It ties together aspects and research objectives which so far have hardly been recognised by business historians. The concept, in addition, seems to be more pragmatic and easier to implement for business history purposes than grand theories like the new institutional economics.

The study deals with the mechanism of the illegal expropriation of gold and gold artefacts owned by people or companies of Jewish origin in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the Second World War. Analysis of the legislative framework of the expropriation process identifies the decisive role of the Office of the Reichsprotektor as the supreme administrative organ of the Nazi occupation. The study explains the institutionalisation of the expropriation process in terms of three lines of activities. The first line represents the activity of the state secret police (Gestapo), and the second the purchasing monopoly of the peculiar «Hadega» commercial company which was under the control of both the Office of the Reichsprotektor and the Kreditanstalt der Deutschen, a bank with a tradition of nationalist sympathies, The third line represents a chain of institutions specially set up to appropriate and exploit Jewish property (chiefly the so-called Auswanderungsfond and Vermögensamt) The study also defines the subordinate role of the autonomous organs of Czech economic administration that worked under the direct control of representatives and collaborators of the Reich and German regime of occupation. It provides data on the quantity of gold and jewelry expropriated. The expropriation process involved an absurd combination of the principle of formally private enterprise and the state interests of Nazi Germany. The real «entrepreneur» with Jewish gold was of course the Reichsprotector himself, who delegated the deals to be made to «business» subjects under his control. The mechanism of transactions which find no parallel in the civilised world, shows the sophistication and systematic thoroughness of the Nazis in the liquidation and sale of Jewish property on markets in Germany and abroad.

To concentrate on the economic core must take priority in the future within business history. Therefore the New Institutional Economics will be of great support. The following article will give some aspects to it. The discussion over the involved disciplines comes, however, only on second place.

The European Recovery Programme (ERP) (initiated by G. Marshall) and the European Union Movement gave the impetus to the central organisations of European industry to form a head organisation. It was realized in 1949 by the president of the French «Conseil National du Patronat Francais», Georges Villiers. More than 20 associations of 17 countries formed a common discussion forum and secretariate, first in Paris and subsequently in Brussels. They decided to keep together even after having settled the ERP funds in order to discuss problems of common interest and - as far as possible - to give common answers to the political institutions. In contact with US management associations the CEIF organised in the sixties four international entrepreneur Kongresses. Since 1960, the CEIF acquired high reputation by annuary presenting industrial film festivals. The contacts between the industrialists and their associations proved especially important in stopping or at least mitigating the effects of a separation of trade and tariff policies in Europe (EEC versus EFTA). The CEIF also became the basis for new consultative bodies of industrial associations concerning OECD and EEC activities. They are all contributing to improve the understanding of the world division of labour.

The regulatory intervention of the new energy law («Energiewirtschaftsgesetz») in the competition between public and industrial power generation in the 1930s The liberalization of the energy market in the late 1990s marks a turning point in the history of the German electricity supply. For more than 60 years the German electricity market was regulated by an energy law («Energiewirtschaftsgesetz»), which was established in the mid-1930s. This essay focuses on the conflict between public and industrial power generation in the 1920s and 1930s. The combination of power generation and industrial heat economy became economically more viable with the transition to higher steam pressures and temperatures in the late 1920s. German industry attempted to harness the new technology, simultaneously increasing its own private energy supplies on the basis of combined heat and power generation and reducing its dependence on external energy supplies from public power grids. These developments placed the public electricity companies under considerable competitive pressure. The prospective loss of large industrial customers represented a serious problem, so that the retention of these customers became an increasingly important priority. The conflicts of interest were finally resolved in the mid-1930s by regulatory intervention in favour of the public electricity companies within the strong framework of the new energy law. Since 1935 the investment control mechanisms contained in the new law not only restricted the extension of industrial generation capacity but also seriously curtailed the attempts by German industry to create less dependent, internal power supply systems.

From the former six German big banks (Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Commerzbank, Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft and Bank der Deutschen Arbeit) Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft was the only one to start its post-World War II business in all parts of then Western Germany using its traditional company name. The current German «big three» had been forced by the Allied Military Administration to split each of them into altogether 30 different entities, before they managed to re-integrate their business in the fifties. The remaining three banks had no branches and were therefore not able to proceed any business outside Berlin, where all banking activities had been stopped by order of the Soviet Military Administration immediately after the occupation of the German capital in April 1945. The basis from which Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft started its post-war business was a small office in Thüringen, to which assets from Berlin had been transferred in 1943 to secure these funds against the allied air raids in Berlin. In June 1945 this office moved according to an American order to Erlangen in the US occupation zone of Germany, after Soviet troops incorporated Thüringen into their area. In 1948 the office moved again to Frankfurt where «Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft in Frankfurt am Main AG» had been formally founded as a fully owned subsidiary of the still existing Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft in Berlin. Within the five next years from 1948 to 1953 the Frankfurt «subsidiary» was recognised by the German authorities according to a special law as a «moved institute» with the fictitious founding year 1945. Even then the bank was able to operate in Western Germany and abroad only, but not in West-Berlin. Not before 1954 a special law allowed to re-integrate the Berlin business into the new Frankfurt head office of the bank. The traditional company name has been used until 1970, when Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft merged with Frankfurter Bank to BHF-Bank.

Untertitel: Der misslungene Einstieg westdeutscher Chemiekonzerne in die Kernenergie während der 1960er und 70er Jahre"The short dream of an industrial nuclear age. The failed entry of the West German chemical industry into nuclear power during the 1960s and 70s. With the increase in energy consumption during the boom years the composition of energy sources in West Germany changed fundamentally. West German chemical companies followed the international trend towards petrochemicals and converted their production and energy generation systems to oil. But the unrestricted use of fossil fuels soon provoked concerns . As a consequence, nuclear power appeared as an attractive alternative to power generation by coal and oil. The examples of the large West German companies Hoechst, Bayer and BASF show the connections between the chemical and nuclear industry under the conditions of increasing international competition. The Hoechst management discussed not only the question of own nuclear power stations, but also considered nuclear chemistry as a potential business. In the case of BASF, the plans for an own nuclear power station were more advanced than at Hoechst. The proposed location on BASF’s factory premises, however, represented a distinct rejection of the current safety philosophy that could not be ignored by policymakers.

Untertitel: ,oder: wie die Ruhrkohlenindustrie Geschichte machteA popular biography or: how the Ruhrcoal industry created history. The general assumption in our profession is that history is analyzed and written by qualified historians. Companies, industrialists and associations however are and were active in especially writing business history as well. It is evident that they commissioned commemorative publications for different reasons than historians wrote business history. By aiming to apply their business history frequently for political reasons of the present time, it turned out to be useful for them to hide the fact that the publications were commissioned working projects. By exemplifying the biography of Emil Kirdorf, written and publsihed in 1936 by Walter Bacmeister, the article draws attention to the ambitions that motivated the industrialists to merchandise Emil Kirdorf's life during the 1930s.

In this article, the question will be discussed why German female entrepreneurs in the late 1960s decided to make use of the concept of «female management style». From its very beginning in 1954, the Association of German Female Entrepreneurs expressed the opinion that business women were exactly the same as business men and therefore refused to represent its members differently. In order to improve the Association’s bad public performance, social scientists were asked for advice in the 1960s. They recommended to signal unmistakable femaleness if business women wanted to be perceived and accepted as a female variant of entrepreneurs. References to female business management perfectly met this requirement. So, the Association of German Female Entrepreneurs now adopted the rhetoric of the «female management style» as an inborn aspect of the female personality. While within economics the concept of the «female management style» is still a highly controversial issue, social scientists prefer a different perspective and argue that processes of professionalisation and engendering are inseparably combined. Therefore, statements of profession are impossible without declaration of gender affiliation. Referring to this approach, the change in representation enforced by the Association of German Female Entrepreneurs is analyzed as an attempt to demonstrate professionalism and finally to gain the longed-for recognition.