Aufsätze (Articles)

Eva-Maria Roelevink und Jan-Otmar Hesse
Geschichtspolitik und die deutsche Unternehmensgeschichte (1-6)
Politics of Past in Business History
German business history currently experiences a boom of commissioned company histories that comes close to a similar high in the 1990s, when German companies started to address their Nazi-past more critically. However, the current interest goes far beyond the period between 1933 and 1945. Apparently, the companies discovered history as an instrument for marketing purposes. By placing «Politics of the Past in Business History» at the center of attention, we aim to bring together contributions of a field that has been filled mainly by an exterior perspective, esp. by journalists. The special issue of ZUG is dedicated to the question, how corporations tried to control their public history. Whether companies organized their history for political purposes beside the anniversaries and how this was conducted is widely neglected by business history so far and is addressed with the special issue.

Tim Schanetzky
After the Gold Rush. Ursprünge und Wirkungen der Forschungskonjunktur «Unternehmen im Nationalsozialismus» (7-32)
After the Gold Rush. Origins and Outcomes of the Research Boom «Business in the Third Reich»
This article starts with a preliminary statistical reconstruction of the research boom «Business in the Third Reich». Its beginnings during the mid-90s resembled a broader change of attitudes towards the history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in particular. While this «universalization» of Holocaust memory and the accompanying shift in U.S. foreign policy is well known, the article adds a business historian's perspective and emphasizes the changes of the corporate world of the late 90s: German big business went global and were increasingly dependent on the American market, its financial institutions and the general public of the U.S. As the origins of the research boom were mainly non-academic, the article inquires how business historians reflected on scientific autonomy and conflict of interest in a field dominated by commissioned research. Strikingly, pragmatism prevailed and academics showed little interest in the current state of research on application-oriented science. In a last step, the article discusses the scientific repercussions of the massive surge in demand for commissioned histories. Subsequently, business history tended to address the ever-same set of research questions on corporate action during the 30s and 40s, while the acquisition of corporate funding also made for a distorted choice of objects

Eva-Maria Roelevink
Des Unternehmers «volkstümliche» Biographie, oder: wie die Ruhrkohlenindustrie Geschichte machte (33-68)
A popular biography or: how the Ruhrcoal industry created history.
The general assumption in our profession is that history it 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 published 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.

Sebastian Brünger
Schattenkapitel – NS-Unternehmensgeschichtsschreibung in der Bundesrepublik seit 1945 zwischen Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Wissenschaft (69-116)
The development of corporate history writing in the Federal Republic has been characterized by a striking relationship between company histories written or initialized by corporations and the slowly institutionalizing academic business history – in short: between public relations and science. Moreover, corporate history writing was closely related to the dispute over the Nazi past of major German companies. Relieving narrative patterns such as those of the «decent merchant» have determined the historical self-image of large companies for decades. By contrast, enterprise-funded contract research since the 1990s has been fundamentally different in its results from older commissioned hagiographies – the effect, however was the same: a promotional image gain for the companies. Thus, a constant remains to be recorded: From the Nuremberg economic trials (Flick, Krupp, IG Farben) and the trial Deutsche Bank vs. Czichon on the founding of the Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte to the boom of Nazi contract research – in the discourse on Nazi history of German companies, historical science has always taken an important legitimization function for the companies. By now, companies have learned that only proven independent research achieves the desired publicity effect of credibility and can counteract media scandalization dynamics.

Lutz Budrass
Das Verbot der deutschen Luftfahrtindustrie und die Erfindung ihrer Geschichte, 1945 bis 1953 (117-152)
The ban on German aviation and the creation/fabrication of its history
The article traces the origins of two central features of the historiography of the German aircraft industry: while its contribution to technical progress by the end of World War II tends to be grossly exaggerated – particularly in the case of the so-called Wunderwaffen, the jet fighters of Messerschmitt and Heinkel – its industrial basis und its role in the German war economy are played down to an impression that, until 1945, the industry consisted of tiny workshops of mere handicraft character. It is shown that this narrative was carefully constructed between 1945 and 1953, highlighted by memoirs of former military leaders of the Luftwaffe like Adolf Galland and Werner Baumbach, but predominantely through the memoirs of Ernst Heinkel, the leading industrialist during the Nazi period. These memioirs appeared at a time when it seemed unlikely – due to a total ban on German aviation under the Allied occupation – that a German aircraft industry would ever rise again. By exaggerating the German technological lead in 1945 they eased the idea that the industry was outdated when the chances grew for its return to the international market in 1953. Meanwhile, the outright denial of the size and importance of the industry during the war indirectly provided a chance to gloss over the participation of the industrialists in the Nazi crimes, highlighted by the use of concentration camp inmates and slave labourers who formed the bulk of the workforce in the production of the Wunderwaffen.

Aus aktuellem Anlass (Current discussion and debate)

Christopher Kopper
Unternehmerische Verantwortung in Militärdiktaturen und ihre historische Aufarbeitung – Das Beispiel VW do Brasil 153

Rezensionen (Reviews)

Sebastian Teupe, Die Schaffung eines Marktes. Preispolitik, Wettbewerb und Fernsehgerätehandel in der BRD und den USA 1945–1985 (André Steiner)
165

Karsten Voss, Sklaven als Ware und Kapital. Die Plantagenökonomie von Saint-Domingue als Entwicklungsprojekt (Margrit Schulte Beerbühl)
167

Antoine Acker, Volkswagen in the Amazon. The Tragedy of Global Development in Modern Brazil (Christopher Kopper)
168

Thomas Klingebiel, Curt Mast, Ein Unternehmer in der Politik (Jonathan Voges)
170

Matthias Wittig, Identität und Selbstkonzept. Autobiographien japanischer Unternehmer in der Nachkriegszeit (Regine Mathias)
172

Marita Kraus (Hg.), Die bayerischen Kommerzienräte. Eine deutsche Wirtschaftselite von 1880 bis 1928 (Dieter Ziegler)
173

Institut für bankhistorische Forschung e. V. (Hg.), Sozialreformer, Modernisierer, Bankmanager. Biografische Skizzen aus der Geschichte des Kreditgenossenschaftswesens (Detlef Krause)
175

Gerhard Streminger, Adam Smith, Wohlstand und Moral, Eine Biographie (Armin Müller)
177

Kristina Huttenlocher, Sprengel. Die Geschichte der Schokoladenfabrik (Margrit Schulte Beerbühl)
178

Marc Birchen, Die Firmenbeteiligung der ARBED im Osteuropa der Nachkriegszeit: Luxemburger Wirtschaftsdiplomatie im Kalten Krieg (Stefan Krebs)
180

Hartmut Berghoff/Adam Rome (Hrsg.), Green Capitalism? Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century (Jonathan Voges)
182