Volume 68, Issue 2

From the 1840s onwards, German merchants increasingly settled in China, Japan and other countries in East Asia and at the same time took on consular duties for their home cities and countries. They remained primarily independent entrepreneurs, but also acted as state representatives, which could lead to considerable tensions. The article explores for whom the activities of merchant consuls in the two spheres of business and politics proved especially useful, what typical conflicts they encountered, and how these conflicts were resolved. The aim is to give a general overview of the activities of German merchant consuls in East Asia before the founding of the German Empire and at the same time to stimulate increased interest in the merchants of the 19th century from the perspective of modern business history.

The case of the financial scientist Karl Helfferich is one of the most spectacular «revolving door» incidents between academia, business and politics in the late Empire and early Weimar Republic. The historical judgement of Helfferich, however, is shaped by his polemical agitation against the so-called fulfilment policy after the First World War, as well as against Matthias Erzberger and Walther Rathenau in particular. This essay aims at a more differentiated view of Helfferich and draws on texts left by Helfferich himself, some of which are autobiographical, in order to make his position in and between the various «systems» clear. His career in the Wilhelmine era is described and his contribution to the difficult negotiations on the construction of the Baghdad Railway and to overcoming inflation is discussed. The end of the Empire also brought an end to this career of power-based expertise. While Helfferich’s bitterness about the end of the empire was vented in polemics, his sobriety and expertise continued to come to the fore in debates on financial, budgetary and monetary policy. Helfferich’s career is only superficially a case of a «revolving door» in that expertism and his supposedly superior expertise always determined his self-image and his uncompromising manner of appearance and argumentation differed significantly from the habitus of other politicians of the early Weimar Republic.

In the 20s and 30s German and French representatives of entrepreneurial interests often changed from the civil service to the management of business associations. In their new function, they were responsible for bringing their members’ interests to a common ground. In this context, they claimed to speak on behalf of the overall national economic cause. This strategy was due to the attempt to legitimize their coordination efforts through symbolic capital that lent itself to the justification of state officials. However, their proposals often met with resistance by members. In practice, their claim to represent the overall national economic interest only became effective as soon as their role was legitimized by the state. Such a situation emerged during the Great Depression when Franco-German economic relations were being renegotiated. Ironically, the actions of former state officials in the service of the private sector thus gained power precisely when the delegation of economic diplomatic tasks to business representatives tended to erase the boundary between state and economy.

Ernst Wolf Mommsen (1910–1979) was one of the best-known steel managers of the old German Federal Republic. In 1970 he was recruited as an under-secretary of state by the Federal Ministry of Defence with responsibility for armaments and procurement and returned to industry in 1973 as Chairman of Friedrich Krupp GmbH. Based on extensive archival research, the article examines the background to this twofold switch through the «revolving door». The focus is on the question of whether Mommsen’s entrepreneurial activity could be used successfully in the state administration. Furthermore, the meaning of this revolving door phenomenon with respect to the entanglement of politics and industry in the German Federal Republic of the 70s will be discussed.

The article examines the careers of German central bankers and the phenomenon of the revolving door in the first two postwar decades. It focuses on the personnel changes between central banking and politics resp. private banking and asks for the social structure of German central bankers, their training paths and changes in comparison to the Reichsbank era. Finally, the impact of recruitment practices on central bank policy will be outlined. The paper is based on the thesis that party-political orientation became significant for the rise of the presidents of the land central banks (Landeszentralbankpräsidenten) after 1945 and that relations to private banking were primarily evident in training, whereas such aspects were of secondary importance for central bank monetary policy.

Revolving door dynamics are pervasive in the United States. There are vast literatures on the revolving door and on Donald Trump, but so far, no attempts to bring these literatures together. This paper represents a first attempt to do so and answer the following questions: Can Trump’s rise be understood as a culmination of revolving door dynamics, under which managers become politicians and politicians become lobbyists? What motivated Trump to revolve, and how has Trump’s presidency affected the revolving door? The paper places Trump into the context of the revolving door and compares him with previous presidents and presidential candidates. In recent decades, revolving door activity has increased. While this suggests that the revolving door paved the way for Trump, a close examination of the evidence reveals a more complex picture. Many American businesspeople have unsuccessfully run for president. Like the businessmen-turned-presidents who preceded him, Trump is a family businessman, not a manager or a CEO of a listed company. A multitude of additional factors contributed to Trump’s 2016 win including his status as a reality TV celebrity, his charisma, and his right-wing populism: Trump is from business but not from the business establishment. In addition, Trump revolved from business into politics, rather than from Capitol Hill to K Street. Candidate Trump railed against the revolving door and pledged to drain the swamp. President Trump swamped the drain and precipitated one of the most serious crises and threats to American democracy in the country’s history.