Directing Foreign Investments to Eastern Germany

Swiss Engagements after (and before) 1989

Bibliographic Data

ID9644136
AuthorsKeith R Allen (0000-0002-9895-7032, Institut für Zeitgeschichte München–Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume53
Issue1
Pages168-199
Publication date2020-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCentral European History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0008-9389 • E-ISSN: 1569-1616
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0008938919000992
OpenAlexW3010503246
LanguageEN
References cited18

This contribution explains how a specific constellation of Swiss consulting experts, financial advisors, and diplomats became involved in the economic restructuring of eastern Germany after November 1989. Swiss engagements reveal that capital did not merely “flow” across unifying Germany's borders, as economists’ definitions of foreign direct investment suggest. Rather, facilitators within and especially beyond Germany actively promoted investments. Business involving foreigners was often grounded in socialist-era trade activities that united profit seekers from East and West Germany, Switzerland, and other nations. As foreign engagements in unifying Germany's economy illustrate, mediators mattered. Pasts persisted. Debt and investment were intertwined. The course of public divesture and state-sponsored private investment in post-Wall Germany suggests future scholars pay closer attention to individuals and entities engaged in exchanging market information, not so much within individual nations as between them

Debt · Economics · Economy · Foreign direct investment · Investment (military · Political science · Profit (economics · Restructuring · State (computer science · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · Finance

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