Abstract Christina Lubinski

german version

While many monographs about companies deal implicitly with family businesses the specific organizational form has rarely been taken as a starting point for historical analysis. Nevertheless, family firms play an important role for national economies to date - a fact which in Germany becomes manifest in a new index at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange exclusively for "owner-dominated" companies (German Entrepreneur Index, since January 2005)

Influenced by the work of Alfred D. Chandler, family firms have long been stigmatised as a retardive force or anachronism after the Second Industrial Revolution. The aim of this project is the reintroduction and re-evaluation of family business in the Economic, Social and Cultural History of the West German Republic. Corporate Governance in these firms is going to be analysed and connected to the generational self-conception of the main actors. The crucial generational swap in leadership, strategies and modalities concerning this family firm's Achilles heel, will underline changes and continuities in family business and make a substantial contribution to the history of the Republic of Bonn and the culture of the so-called "Rheinischen Kapitalismus".