Aufsätze (Articles):

Matthieu Leimgruber, «Kansas City on Lake Geneva». Business hubs, tax evasion, and international connections around 1960, S. 123–140

Christian Möller, Zwischen Gestaltungseuphorie, Versagen und Ohnmacht:
Umwelt, Staat und volkseigene Wirtschaft in der DDR, S. 141–167

Julia Brüggemann, Die Ozonschicht als Verhandlungsmasse. Die deutsche Chemieindustrie in der Diskussion um das FCKW-Verbot 1974 bis 1991, S. 168–193

Hendrik Ehrhardt, Umweltpolitik in der Stromwirtschaft: Vom Kostentreiber zur
Legitimationsinstanz?, S. 194–217

Monika Poettinger, Milan in the 1850s: a merchant economy, S. 218–237

ABSTRACTS:

Matthieu Leimgruber, «Kansas City on Lake Geneva». Business hubs, tax evasion, and international connections around 1960
This article retraces the controversies that followed the arrival of 400 US multinational enterprises in Switzerland around 1960. If US firms were present all over Europe, many chose Switzerland to locate regional headquarters and special «base companies» that transferred revenues and profits originating from other subsidiaries in order to benefit from low taxation levels and avoid costly repatriation in the United States. These tax deferral practices were considered by the Kennedy administration as harmful tax evasion and led to diplomatic and public condemnations of the Swiss «tax haven». This article analyzes how multinational enterprises, international tax experts as well as Swiss financial and diplomatic circles resisted US attempts to fight tax evasion at the domestic, bilateral, and multilateral levels. It shows in particular how Swiss diplomats were able to water down US demands to fight tax evasion in the Fiscal Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the key forum for multilateral tax issues. The controversy surrounding «base companies» and the failure to curtail capital flight and tax evasion underscore the long-term resilience of the Swiss tax haven vis-à-vis international pressure.

Christian Möller, Zwischen Gestaltungseuphorie, Versagen und Ohnmacht: Umwelt, Staat und volkseigene Wirtschaft in der DDR
In between euphoria of action, faiture and impotence euvironment, state and people’s economy in the GDR
The environmental history of the GDR is characterized by a strong discrepancy: While the East German state in the 80s was in an ecological crisis and SED leadership and State Security responded to a social commitment to the environment with repression, approximately a decade before, a political and social awakening had taken place, which ended with an extensive environmental legislation and new environmental institutions. What was the environmental policy that produced such a discrepancy? The article examines the relationship between environmental, state and peoples-owned economy in the GDR. It’s about the question of how state actors tried since the 60s to include the businesses and combines in a newly developed environmental policy and how this state and company practices interacted with social developments. The article first elaborates the ecological upheaval in the GDR, whose roots date back to the 50s, and the formation of a socialist environmental policy. In this context, the world of ideas and the action repertoire of the state environmental protection are presented and discussed. Following on, the study leaves in a second step the macro level of the central government en viron mental policy and by using examples of local case studies, displays how municipal authorities and VEB took part in a new environmental negotiation process in the 70s, which influence workers and citizens had on in-plant environmental action and how the transition to the ecological crisis occurred.

Julia Brüggemann, Die Ozonschicht als Verhandlungsmasse. Die deutsche Chemieindustrie in der Diskussion um das FCKW-Verbot 1974 bis 1991
Negotiating the Ozone Layer. The Role of the German
Chemical Industry in the discussion on the CFC-ban, 1974 to 1991 Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) was produced and widely used by the chemical industry until the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was agreed in 1987. However, the discussion on the prohibition of CFC first started in the 70s following research on its damaging effects on the ozone layer by Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland. This article aims at answering the question how the different actors within the chemical industry reacted to the discussion to forbid this profitable substance. Companies had to learn how to cope with environmental problems, reacting to the emergence of environmentalist values in society in the 70s. The article focusses on German companies and compares them with US-based DuPont to show the scope of action different companies had in solving the new problems, as required by the public and legislators. The reaction of the companies to the planned CFC ban cannot be explained with a simple challenge-and-responsemodel, but has to be seen in the complex structure of natio nal, international and scientific developments regarding the CFC-discussion.

Hendrik Ehrhardt, Umweltpolitik in der Stromwirtschaft: Vom Kostentreiber zur Legitimationsinstanz?
Utility companies and environmental politics: Cleanair as financial and legitimate question
This article focuses on the environmental politics of utility companies in the 1970s and 80s, analyzing their stance and actions on upcoming environmental questions, especially clean air. Utility companies are not known as classical actors in environmental issues, since environmental protection does not seem economically profitable; moreover, it is seen as costly. In the German example, keeping the air clean was one of the main roots of environmental politics. The main political goal was to reduce the emissions especially of power stations by installing filters within a short period of time. This political claim meant huge investments for the utility companies. They developed and tested different techniques and, finally, installed expensive filters. However, utility companies remained in the center of environmental criticism. Making a change in maneuver, companies now invested their money in marketing in order to present themselves as «green». Nevertheless, it would be too easy to describe utility companies as dirty and unwilling to meet political guidelines. They tried to solve the problem of emission control mainly by lobbying and public relations, but at the same time environmental issues became a question of legitimacy. At the end of the 1980s, this resulted in a significant reduction of emissions leading to a cleaner air.

Monika Poettinger, Milan in the 1850s: a merchant economy
In the 1850s the economy of Lombardy was characterized by extensive networks of personal relations, credit by trust and family businesses and had no use for Gerschenkronian substitution nor modern corporations. Wealth was maximized by maintaining the mercantile identity of the city, while manufacturing innovation was pursued only when economically profitable or strategic to further growth. Economic development resulted from individual investment decisions of merchant houses, private bankers and foreign entrepreneurs, not government policies nor strategies of universal banks. In this essay the case will be made that such merchant economy, defined by extremely high retail ratios, shunned limited liability and the entrepreneur’s restricted control over their enterprise. Capital democratization was pursued only in case of utilities and philanthropic companies. Thanks to a sample including extensive data on almost two hundred firms in existence in Milan from 1852 to 1861, collected from the surviving documents of Milan’s Chamber of Commerce, it is possible to reconstruct the mechanisms govern ing such economy: how liquidity was collected and distributed, how partnerships were formed, inside which social circles partners were found, how much kinship ties determined business decisions, what criteria proved relevant in the investment decision making processes, how were innovation and entrepreneurship rewarded. The picture emerging from the sample will vindicate the capacity of Milan’s merchant elite to foster innovation through the efficient allocation of capital and the creation of entrepreneurial capital, averting at the same time disastrous financial crises: the solid base of the successive development of the region.

Buchbesprechungen (Reviews):

Johannes Bähr/Paul Erker, Bosch. Geschichte eines Weltunternehmens (Thomas Hermann)

Raymond Stokes/Ralf Banken, Aus der Luft gewonnen: Die Entwicklung der globalen Gaseindustrie
1880 bis 2012 (Jonathan Voges)

Knut Stegmann, Das Bauunternehmen Dyckerhoff & Widmann: Zu den Anfängen des Betonbaus
in Deutschland 1865–1918 (Hartmut Knittel)

Barbara Eggenkämper/Gerd Modert/Stefan Pretzlik, Die Allianz. Geschichte des Unternehmens
1890–2015 (Peter Borscheid)

Frank Oberholzner, Institutionalisierte Sicherheit im Agrarsektor. Die Entwicklung der Hagelversicherung
in Deutschland seit der Frühen Neuzeit (Peter Borscheid)

Ulrich Kreutzer, Von den Anfängen zum Milliardengeschäft. Die Unternehmensentwicklung
von Siemens in den USA zwischen 1845 und 2001 (André Steiner)

Martin Kukowski/Rudolf Boch, Kriegswirtschaft und Arbeitseinsatz bei der Auto Union AG
Chemnitz im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Manfred Grieger)

Alexander Donges, Die Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG im Nationalsozialismus: Konzernpolitik zwischen
Marktwirtschaft und Staatswirtschaft (Jonathan Voges)

Jörg Osterloh/Harald Wixforth (Hrsg.), Unternehmer und NS-Verbrechen: Wirtschaftseliten im
«Dritten Reich» und in der Bundesrepublik (Werner Bührer

Alfred Gottwaldt, Ernst Spiro: Ein jüdischer Reichsbahndirektor (Hartmut Knittel)

Knut Kühn-Leitz (Hg.), Ernst Leitz II: «Ich entscheide hiermit: Es wird riskiert» (Johanna Rumpeltes)

Stefanie Werner, Unternehmenskrimina lität in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Umfang, Merkmale
und warum sie sich lohnt (Hans H. Lembke)

Dieter Ziegler (Hg.), Rohstoffgewinnung im Strukturwandel. Der deutsche Bergbau im 20. Jahrhundert
(Tim Schanetzky)