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  • Die mitteldeutsche Chemieindustrie und ihre Arbeiter im 20. Jahrhundert
  • Jeffrey Fear
Hermann-J. Rupieper, Friederike Sattler and Georg Wagner-Kyora , eds. Die mitteldeutsche Chemieindustrie und ihre Arbeiter im 20. Jahrhundert. Halle, Germany: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2005. 416 pp. ISBN 3-89812-246-8, €24.00.

This collection of fifteen articles is based on the proceedings of a November 2003 conference held by the Martin-Luther Universität in Mitteldeutschland, or Central Germany. Most people tend to forget that the area of Mitteldeutschland in the former eastern Germany (German Democratic Republic or GDR), that is the area around Halle, Dessau, Leipzig, and Jena, was traditionally one of the centers of German intellectual and economic life. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses at a Wittenberg church. It was home to such firms as the original Zeiss (Jena) or Junkers (Dessau). Leipzig ran Germany's second oldest fair.

The main subject of this volume is Germany's famous "chemical triangle" and its workers through the 20th century. As Friederike Sattler reminds readers, politics and economics were rarely distinct spheres; above all, the chemical industry attests to this deep entwinement. Especially after 1914, the chemical firms BASF, Agfa (film), and Bayer invested heavily in the region to armthe nation. Built after 1937, the IG Farben Leuna/Schkopau plant became synonymous with synthetic rubber and German autarky-rearmament plans. This "chemical triangle" was the former East Germany's most important industrial sector, accounting for 50% of all former East German production value in chemical goods as well as employing about half of all employees in the industry. Finally, in 1995 in the largest privatization actions after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dow Chemical took over these polluted plants that were barely held together with duct tape, baling wire, and the effort, pride, and creativity of its workers (see photographs pp. 398ff). The region again is home to one of the largest chemical complexes in Germany; by 2005 Bayer Bitterfeld, north of Leipzig, became the largest single manufacturer of aspirin in Europe.

Viewing the history of the chemical industry here permits historians to attempt to integrate pre- and post-1945, the history of East and West Germany, as well as connect the past with the present. Not many academic conferences engage themselves in "positive identity building" or claim that they could "at least begin to heal the wounds wrought by two successive totalitarian dicatorships through knowledge and enlightenment, through taboo-less research and free discussion" (pp. 9-10). While it certainly did not heal the wounds, the collection does offer an ambitious, fascinating glimpse into the [End Page 447] fractured nature of German history and, by necessity, of German business history.

I can think of no better—or rather more awful—metaphor for the decrepit and dreary East German regime than the sickness of fluorosis often suffered by Bitterfeld aluminum workers; this disease slowly fused together the bones of the spinal column (p. 157) just as the GDR's politics locked in rigidity. Chemical exposure literally ate away the steel supports for its chemical plants at Bitterfeld just as its policies corroded its economy into a pattern of slow deterioration (p. 399). Environmental pollution penetrated peoples' bones just as the regime's political ideology and secret police (Stasi) deformed peoples' behavior. A number of contributors stress how the question of generations is particularly important for understanding workers' experiences and the ongoing process of political and economic sclerosis under communism that led to its collapse.

The highlight of the volume is a number of articles that intelligently discuss the concepts of generation, environmental history, gender, and class, which testify to the intellectual vibrancy of German business history. The volume as a whole raises a number of historical and theoretical questions. One dilemma was how best to conceptualize "firms" and their inner-workings as a "social action field." Can researchers study workers at the site of production in the same type of factories in the same way across economic systems? How distinct were capitalist or communist "firms" from their political and social surroundings? Clearly, they were not completely autonomous under capitalism or communism, but the standard methodologies of business history assuming a distinct organizational autonomy are...

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