From Export Orientation to Export Obsession: Germany’s Political Economy in the Twentieth Century

Why did Germany become one of the world’s most important export economies, after it started as an import surplus country in the 19th century? How did this transformation change the institutional structure of the political system to an extent that alternative policies are difficult to implement? Based on careful archival research, the talk will give an overview of Germany’s transformation to a “world export champion” (Exportweltmeister), a concept that first appeared in 1986. The talk will mark the most important turning points and highlight in particular the institutions and instruments that have been created over more than a century by an elite network of politicians and businesspeople in promotion of the German export drive. Over a long period of transition, encompassing several ruptures of political regimes and ideas, the loose instruments to assist the export success of German corporations fused to a powerful “export obsession” in the minds of policy makers and entrepreneurs, partly preventing the necessary readjustment of the foreign economic policy of our day.

Preparatory reading
Hesse, Jan-Otmar. 2023. Exportweltmeister: Geschichte einer deutschen Obsession. Berlin: Suhrkamp. English summary and translation of chapter 1.

Jan-Otmar Hesse is Professor of Economic and Social History at Bayreuth University. He was previously a Professor of History at Bielefeld University (2010–2015) and an Alfred D. Chandler Visiting Fellow in International Business History at Harvard Business School (2014). Among his publications are Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Entstehung und Wandel der modernen Wirtschaft (Campus, 2013), Die Große Depression: Die Weltwirtschaftskrise 1929–1939 (with Roman Köster and Werner Plumpe; Campus, 2014), and, most recently, Exportweltmeister: Geschichte einer deutschen Obsession (Suhrkamp, 2023).