Volume 69, Issue 1

Using the example of the German Mechanical and Plant Engineering Association (Verband Deutscher Maschinen- und Anlagenbau, VDMA), this paper examines the viability of corporate history approaches in the history of the associations. The VDMA, one of the largest trade associations in the Federal Republic of Germany, faced increasing criticism from its member companies in the late 60s. The complex organisation, which had to reconcile the interests of some three dozen branches of industry and various regional groups, was considered inefficient and lacking in profile. The reaction was to launch a reform programme with rationalisation measures, a modern image policy and an expansion of the range of services on offer that showed certain traits of entrepreneurial behaviour. At the same time, the dues system was reformed, but the introduction of a splitting of the dues to the association’s headquarters and the branches was dispensed in order not to endanger the cohesion of interests. Both areas of reform thus demonstrate the imits of entrepreneurial logic in the organisation of an association.

The long-term orientation of family businesses is particularly evident in crises. The example of the Gebrüder Bethmann bank in Frankfurt am Main, whose state of crisis began during the First World War and continued almost uninterrupted until the 50s, shows how far business families are prepared to go. The essay traces the developments and shows the measures taken by the bank and the banking family to counter the crises and their consequences. It shows that Baron Moritz von Bethmann made himself an instrument of the National Socialists and implemented their policies in associations, societies and companies – particularly with regard to the ousting of Jews from German economic and social life. However, his political role did not help him to run his business more successfully or to preserve his family property. In order to at least preserve Bankhaus Gebr. Bethmann – already almost 200 years old at the time – for the family, he sacrificed almost all of the real estate and land owned by the von Bethmann family. Despite this high price, the bank remained in the family for only one more generation.

Among German private inventors, former Federal Chancellor Dr. Konrad Adenauer is a peculiar case. Despite his (few) successful patents and his fame as a politician, hardly any aspects of his inventive activity have been studied scientifically so far. His correspondence with several patent attorneys lends itself to the following question: What functions could patent attorneys fulfil for private inventors in the first half of the 20th century? Using Adenauer as an example for this, it will be examined which roles his patent attorneys played for him and what added value resulted for Adenauer.

In the early 1930s, the trained beautician Charlotte Meentzen founded a company in Dresden based on naturopathy with the three pillars of a cosmetics institute, production and school. The foundation, financed by her father Theodor Meentzen, a professional speaker and publicist as well as trade union and SPD member, took place at a time of upheaval that affected the prevailing image of women as well as economic and political conditions. Charlotte Meentzen and her sister Gertrud, who joined the company early on, belonged to a close circle of professional women who ventured into self-employment in an industry that was still controversial at the time. The essay focuses on Charlotte Meentzen as a person, the circumstances surrounding the founding of the company in terms of female entrepreneurship, the cosmetics industry in general and natural cosmetics in particular against the backdrop of the final years of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era in the Saxon metropolis. At the time, Dresden was considered a stronghold of naturopathy and was proclaimed the «Stadt der Volksgesundheit» («City of Public Health») under the Nazi regime. Using (advertising) examples such as the guide published by Meentzen in 1941, «Heilkräfte im Dienste der Schönheit» («Healing powers in the service of beauty»), the actions of the company management between adaptation and self-assertion become clear. This applied not least to the years of reconstruction in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR, whereby the sisters always remained true to their convictions regarding individual health and beauty on the basis of natural remedies.