Aufsätze / Articles

Markus Flüggen
Die Eigenkapitalrentabilität deutscher Industrieaktiengesellschaften 1925–1929 / The Return on Equity of German Industrial Stock Corporations 1925–1929

In historical works, one likes to argue with profits or gains. Corporate profits also play a central role in Knut Borchardt’s well-regarded thesis that the economy in the middle phase of the Weimar Republic could be described as an «abnormal, in fact sick, economy» and therefore problems had accumulated that were extraordinarily significant on the long run in the collapse of Germany’s first democracy. According to this view, excessive wages in particular have caused a compression of those incomes that normally finance investment. A verification of this profit compression thesis is not possible with only commercial balance sheets, as these are considered unreliable due to the large entrepreneurial discretion involved in balance sheet preparation. The situation is different with tax balance sheets: tax law severely restricts the scope for discretion in balance sheet preparation, and tax balance sheets have been subject to scrutiny by the tax authorities since 1925. Therefore, tax balance sheets are considered as a very reliable basis for return calculations.
By using all surviving tax balance sheets, Mark Spoerer has presented a study of the return on equity of industrial stock corporations for the years 1925 to 1941. For the years from 1925 to 1929, he concludes that in the «Golden Twenties» the return on equity of industrial stock corporations could not have been more than two to a maximum of five percent. He claims that through his work the profit compression thesis has been empirically verified.
So far, there has been no critical examination of this work. The aim of this paper is to make up for this. It is shown that the surviving balance sheets do not allow conclusions to be drawn about the profitability of all industrial joint-stock corporations. On the other hand, it is shown that some tax balance sheets of very large companies, which have been included with a high degree of weight in the calculation of returns, contain considerable errors. In addition, some companies have used special tax rules to transfer the expense of future or previous periods to the years 1925 to 1929. Both – the erroneous accounting and the special tax rules – result in significant understatements of profits in the surviving tax balance sheets. Consequently, the calculated returns cannot be correct. Finally, an outlook is given on the consequences of the results of this paper for the use of tax balance sheets.

Keywords: tax history; accounting history; profit-squeeze; Weimar Republic; crisis before crisis; profitability

Maren-Sophie Fünderich
Perfektion in Technik und Form. Unternehmensstrategien in der Möbelfertigung zwischen 1750 und 1914 / Perfection in technology and form. Corporate strategies in furniture manufacturing between 1750 and 1914

Modern furniture manufacturing began in the mid-18th century, when cabinet makers, following the English model, manufactured luxury furniture in box construction and for stock according to the principles of rationalization and specialization. Other companies are used as examples to trace the transition to industrial production, until furniture made entirely by machines came onto the market at the beginning of the 20th century and the question of good design became increasingly important. Therefore, the second part of the essay uses selected examples to examine how companies were influenced from the outside, by large customers, the state or artists, with the aim of producing high-quality and well-designed products.

Keywords: furniture manufacturing; rationalisation; specialisation; industrial production; design

Arnd Kluge
Genossenschaftliche Belletristik / Co-operative Fiction

Co-operatives were the only group of enterprises, which used belletristic literature systematically for propaganda purposes. This essay analyses lyrics, dramas, novels and short stories of German co-operatives between the 1880s and 1950s. It examines the co-operative contents of the sources and the tendencies of the surrounding society reflected in them. Furthermore, the study discusses whether the aims of the co-operative organizations were reached, and why the project was terminated in the 1950s.

Keywords: Nationalism; antisemitism; propaganda; Raiffeisen-co-operatives

Martin Elbe
Von Offizieren und Managern: Reproduktion und Transformation einer Elite / Of Officers and Managers: Reproduction and Transformation of an Elite

The professional development of Bundeswehr officers today is almost emblematic of the careers of executives as part of a management elite. On the one hand, officers make careers within the military (in their traditional field), but on the other hand, the majority of officers leave the Bundeswehr after a few years and then pursue a civilian career path. How do the members of the officer corps recruit themselves and how do their military and civilian careers develop afterwards? The article investigates these references on the basis of empirical material.

Keywords: careers; elites; military history; military sociology; officers; professional expectations

Aus aktuellem Anlass / for topical reasons

Michael C. Schneider
Nachruf Prof. Dr. Knut Borchardt

Carsten Burhop
Nachruf Prof. Richard Hugh Tilly, PhD

Rezensionen / Reviews

Christian Marx
Walter Hochreiter, Roche in Basel und Westeuropa & Juris Salaks, Roche in Osteuropa
Christian Helm, Roche in Nordamerika & Roche in Lateinamerika
Tobias Ehrenbold, Roche in Asien und Ozeanien & Christine Hatzky/ Michael Rothmann, Roche in Afrika

Jonathan Voges
Gabriella Lojacono/Laura Ru Yun Pan, Resilience of Luxury Companies in Times of Change

Johanna Steinfeld
Pierre-Yves Donzé/Véronique Pouillard/Joanne Roberts (Hrsg.), The Oxford Handbook of Luxury Business

Werner Bührer
Beate Kohler-Koch/Sebastian Fuchs/David A. Friedrich, Verbände mit Zukunft? Die Re-Organisation industrieller Interessen in Deutschland

Werner Bührer
David de Jong, Braunes Erbe. Die dunkle Geschichte der reichsten deutschen Unternehmerdynastien

Martijn Lak
Stephen Broadberry/Kyoji Fukao (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World. Volume 1 – 1700 to 1870

Martijn Lak
Ulrich Pfister/Jan-Otmar Hesse/Mark Spoerer/Nikolaus Wolf (eds.), Deutschland 1871. Die Nationalstaatsbildung und der Weg in die moderne Wirtschaft

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