Institute for Economic and Social History

Past content


  • Publication Glocal Issues - Local Alternatives Bakhcheva, Iryna, Adua Dalla Costa, Anna Katharina Grill et al. (Hrsg.), Global Issues – Local Alternatives, Göttingen University Press, Göttingen 2021 Students of the Erasmus Mundus MA program „Global Markets, Local Creativities“ published results of their thesis research in a collaborative edited volume which just came out with Göttingen University Press. The volume offers case studies concerning local responses to global market processes under the headings of Space and Sustainability. The project was supported by the AKB Foundation and their program „Kreativität im Studium“. Open-Access PdF: link


  • WELT interview with Prof. Dr. Berghoff In a detailed interview with the German newspaper WELT, Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff, head of the Institute for Economic and Social History, compares the current corona crisis with the flu pandemic of 1957/58, which was largely passively accepted despite higher numbers of victims. The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation (Bayerischer Rundfunk) has also taken up the topic and emphasized the expectation of long lifetimes, which has become the norm. Article in German
  • GLOCAL Excursion to Berlin, Jan. 30 - 31, 2020 With the end of the semester near, Göttingen Glocal students embarked on a trip to Berlin. For more information about the excursion, please follow the link.
  • Cohort II Thesis Workshop Göttingen, Feb. 7 - 8, 2020 On Feb. 7-8 Göttingen Glocals had their first of two thesis workshops. We had an exciting program of presentations that took us (among other places) from the highlands of Scotland to the streets of Baltimore and the coffee shops of Barcelona. We discussed diverse topics ranging from financial education in Brazil, to beauty markets in China and shipping in the Arctic. Students received first feedback from their supervisors in Göttingen and - remotely via video-link - from their committee members in Barcelona and Glasgow. In addition, Duncan Ross (Glasgow) and Steven Ivings (Kyoto) flew out to participate in these two days of lively discussion. Duncan and Steven were also part of a joint workshop which brought together faculty and PhD students from Göttingen, Glasgow and Kyoto held at the same time to expand research connections within the GLOCAL consortium. With a focus on the fields of migration, business, and financial history, PhD students discussed their dissertation topics and had a stimulating exchange on differences in academic life between Germany, Scotland, and Japan. The PhD workshop was funded by the Schottlandinitiative des Landes Niedersachsens that aims to foster academic exchange between Lower Saxon and Scottish universities.


  • Congratulations, Privatdozent Alexander Engel! By passing his trial lecture on the marginalist revolution, Alexander Engel successfully completed his habilitation. He received the venia legendi in Economic and Social History. The Institute for Economic and Social History congratulates Alex on his achievement!
  • Publication: „Organizations Matter: German Schools and Educational Performance Amid Brazilian Coffee Plantations (1840–1940)“ Dr. Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza’s article „Organizations Matter: German Schools and Educational Performance Amid Brazilian Coffee Plantations (1840–1940)“ was published in the edited volume „Globalization and the Rise of Mass Education.“ The edited volume was presented at the University of Göttingen on December 3rd, 2019, in an event organized by Dr. Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza. To find out more about the book, follow the following link. A short summary of the conference is available here.
  • Publication in Business History: “Global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber between 1890 and the 1920s” Bastian Linneweh has published an article on the role of global trading companies in the commodity chain of rubber in Business History. To access the article online, please follow the following link.
  • Book Publication: „Engineered to Sell. European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism“ In his book „ Engineered to Sell: European Émigrés and the Making of Consumer Capitalism,” PD Dr. Jan Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research, and commercial design who transformed capitalism from the 1930s through the 1960s. The book was published in November 2019 by the University of Chicago Press. For more information, please visit the following website.


  • Book Publication: „Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens. Ein Album aus Auschwitz“ In their book „Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens: Ein Album aus Auschwitz“ Dr. Stefan Hördler, Tal Bruttmann, and Christoph Kreutzmüller (Humboldt University of Berlin) offer the first critical analysis of photographs taken in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. For more information about the book, please follow the following link [German].
  • Presentation: Auschwitz and the Nazi Concentration Camps through the Lens of the SS. Perpetrator Photography and Self-Perception For the first time in its 30-year history, the biennial „Special Lessons & Legacies Conference“ was held in Europe at the Centre for Holocaust Studies in Munich. Representing our institute, Dr. Stefan Hördler gave a presentation on „Auschwitz and the Nazi Concentration Camps through the Lens of the SS: Perpetrator Photography and Self-Perception." For more information about the conference, please follow the following link.
  • Book Publication: Consumer Engineering, 1920s–1970s: Marketing between Expert Planning and Consumer Responsiveness Edited by PD Dr. Jan Logemann, PD Dr. Ingo Köhler, and Gary Cross (Penn State University), „Consumer Engineering, 1920s–1970s: Marketing between Expert Planning and Consumer Responsiveness” assembles twelve articles of distinguished historians who deal with consumer engineering in the context of the longer history of transatlantic marketing. Contributors offer case studies on the roles of individual consumer engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, the impact of such marketing practices on European economies during World War II and after, and the conflicted relationship between consumer activists and the ideas of consumer engineering. By connecting consumer engineering to a web of social processes in the twentieth century, this volume contributes to a reassessment of consumer history more broadly. For more information, please click here.
  • Extension of Glocal Programme: EU Grants 4.4 Million € for Second Funding Period The Master's degree programme "Global Markets. Local Creativities" (GLOCAL) has been extended by the Education, Audiovisual and Cultural Agency (EACEA) of the EU within the framework of the Erasmus+ programme for a second funding period (2020-24). The programme is aimed at foreign students and has attracted over 900 applicants in recent years, of whom around 40 have been admitted to the programme in the winter semester. Scholarships are available for approx. 25 students. They study at three universities of the GLOCAL consortium, which now includes the founding members Glasgow, Barcelona, Göttingen and Rotterdam as well as Uppsala (Sweden), Los Andes (Colombia) and Kyoto (Japan). More information on the program can be found here.


  • Publication in Administory. Journal for the History of Public Administration Dr. Robert Bernsee „Gefühlskalte Bürokratie: Emotionen im Verwaltungshandeln des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts“ in Volume 3, Issue 1, S. 147-163. Link
  • Third Congress for Economy- and Social history PD Dr. Jan Logemann got admidet to be a member of the committee at the “Verein für Socialpolitik” after his talk about the historical roots of consumption of the behavioral Economics. We kindly congratulate him! Dr. Alexander Engel channeled the talk and discussion of a publication project addressed to “Crime of the Markets” and our new member of the institute Dr. Bruno Witzel de Souza hold a presentation about the European, Asian and Latin-American migration towards Brazil.
  • „Auf den Spuren der Konkurrenz" In his collective volume, Dr. Alexander Engel and his colleagues focus on the phenomenon of competition from an interdisciplinary perspective. Klick the link to learn more about it.
  • Congratulation Privatdozent Jan Logemann! With his trial lecture Jan Logemann completed his habilitation and achieved the venia legend in “newer and recent history”. The Team of the institute of Economic- and Social History kindly congratulates.


  • GLOCAL Summer School: “Mittelstand goes Global: Local Roots and Internationalization Pathways of SMEs”, August 25-31 The first summer school of Global Markets, Local Creativities (GLOCAL) took place at the University of Göttingen from August 25-31, 2018. For further information regarding the summer school, including some phtographic impressions and a link to a great blog post by a student participant, see our GLOCAL page.
  • DFG funds project on the economic and social history of reproductive medicine The German Research Foundation has granted funds for a three year project "Between markets and morals: modern reproductive medicine in West Germany, 1970-1990". The project will be carried out by Denise Lehner.
  • JMEH issue "Public Debt and Financialization after 1945" Issue 4/2017 of the Journal of Modern European History is devoted to public debt and financialization after 1945. The issue was edited by Prof. Dr. Hartmut Berghoff and Prof. Dr. Laura Rischbieter (Konstanz).


  • Radio broadcast on the history of consumption Radio Bremen has interviewed PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann on the beginnings of consumer society, and the role that department stores played in it. It is elaborated why this gradual transformation started in the 1850s; department stores were just one of many different new forms of retail businesses. You will find the interview, conducted in German, on the website of Radio Bremen.
  • Biographies as a key to revitalize Entrepreneurial Studies A the Workshop "Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Theory & Research" in Portland, PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann expounded ideas to revitalize business history through entrepreneurial biographies. You will find more information at the website of the 'Immigration Entrepreneurship' project, which Uwe Spiekermann presented at the Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference, which took place in Portland as well.


  • Amerika's nationalism: The long shadow of racism
    In an article for German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Hartmut Berghoff analyses the history of the U.S. immigration policy.
  • Anthology "Green Capitalism?" This new book, co-edited by Hartmut Berghoff, offers a critical, historically informed perspective on building a more sustainable economy. Written by business historians and environmental historians, the essays in this volume take a critical look at the nature of capitalism through a wide range of focused case studies. Ranging in geographic scope from Europe to the United States, "Green Capitalism?" raises questions about capitalism in different historical, sociocultural, and political contexts.


  • Rhetorics of Economic Crises: Economic History Yearbook 2016/2 Roman Rossfeld (Zurich) and Ingo Köhler (Göttingen) guest-edited the recent issue of the Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook. It focuses on the narratives and semantics of economic crises from the 18th century onwards. An interdisciplinary group of authors show how economic discourses influenced not only the expectations and behavior of politicians, businessmen and the public, but also the way the crises themselves unfolded. Two papers were contributed from members of our Institute: one on resilience by Benjamin Schulze and Ingo Köhler, and another on nineteenth century stock and commodity exchanges by Alexander Engel.
  • Public Relations: Communication Practices in Rhenish Capitalism Ingo Köhler has published an article on "Confrontational Coordination: The Rearrangement of Public Relations in the Automotive Industry during the 1970s" in the high-ranked journal Business History. He provides new insights into the communicative strategies, on which the German corporatism was based in the 1970s and 80s. Facing the new ecological sensibility of the emerging ?risk society?, the German carmakers had to readjust their marketing and public relations instruments. In a difficult process of confrontational negotiations, politicians, journalists and businessmen transformed the ?German? variety of capitalism, and gave a substantial impulse for its necessary modernization.
  • Anthology "Immigrant Entrepreneurship" A new anthology titled "Immigrant Entrepreneurship: The German-American Experience since 1700" focuses on the influence of German-American immigrants on transatlantic economic history and the rise of prominent businesses in the United States. Contributions to the volume, available as PDF free of charge, highlight individual case studies and provide insights into more general results of a research project carried out at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC between 2009 and 2016. Under the supervision of Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann, the project "Immigrant Entrepreneurship. German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present" collected more than 200 individual biographies and numerous documents which are available online.
  • New Master?s Programme "Global Markets, Local Creativities" (GLOCAL) The European Union will support a new Erasmus Mundus Master?s programme "Global Markets, Local Creativities" (GLOCAL), a joint effort of the Institute and partners at the universities of Glasgow, Barcelona and Rotterdam, with 3,000,000 EUR in stipends and mobility grants. GLOCAL equips students with the analytical tools and critical skills necessary to make sense of the history, theory, institutions and cultures of global and local capitalism. The new programme starts in the fall of 2017/18. For more information please visit our GLOCAL page.
  • Talks on glass and sugar Last week, PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann gave a talk on "History of Home Preservation in the 20th Century" at the Glass Museum in Boffzen. Furthermore, he contributed a paper on "Sugar Business in the American West in the late 19th Century" to a conference on "Commodity Chains and Labour Relations" in Steyr. Click on the titles to see a short, illustrated report.
  • Corporations and Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America The Institue for Economic and Social History, in cooperation with Marcelo Bucheli (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Manfred Grieger (Historische Kommunikation, Volkswagen AG), will host a workshop on the activities of multinational corporations in authoritarian regimes in Latin America during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. For further information, please consult the call for papers and especially the program.
  • Centenary of the supermarket On September 7, 2016, a feature on the history of the supermarket was broadcast by radio station "MDR aktuell". Dr. Jan Logemann weighed in as an expert.
  • 1st World Congress on Business History / 20th Congress of the EBHA The Annual Meeting of the European Business History Association in Bergen/Norway, simultaneously the first World Congress on Business History, hosted about 300 particpants from all continents. Two papers were delivered by members of the Göttingen Institute: Hartmut Berghoff spoke on "'Organized Irresponsibility'? Why Siemens Experienced the World?s Largest Corruption Scandal, 2000-2007", Alexander Engel addressed "The financialization of oil and gas markets and its consequences". In addition, both chaired a session.
  • New edition of Hartmut Berghoff's Introduction to Business History
    "Moderne Unternehmensgeschichte", a well established German textbook for business history, is now available in a revised edition.
  • Historical exhibition on family business
    The exhibition 'Family Businesses as a Phenomenon: Insights ? Overviews' approaches the subject of family businesses from a novel perspective ? allowing business figures and their families to 'speak' for themselves: letters, memoirs, wills, and business protocols from the late 18th century to the 1960s afford insights into the motives behind the actions of businesspeople and their family members. In 25 very personal stories, taken from 13 different family businesses, the goals, desires, and obligations of the various stakeholders come to life and prove to be surprisingly contemporary. - The academic companion volume contains contributions by Hartmut Berghoff and Ingo Köhler. Ingo Köhler also acted as a scietific adviser in the preparation of the exhibition, which is open until January 29, 2017. More Information can be found at www.draiflessen.com


  • "In the morning, wild and international, please"
    The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung has published an article on breakfast styles in Germany, to which PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann contributed. The article, written in German, is available online.
  • New anthology on the history of white-collar crime A volume jointly edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Cornelia Rauh, and Thomas Welskopp, presents eight contributions on the history of business crime from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century; two of them written by Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann, respectively. See our "Recent books at display" section for further information.
  • Göttinger researchers at the ABH-GUG congress On May 27 and 28, Robert Bernsee, Jan Logemann and Julian Faust (Marburg/Göttingen) presented papers at the joint congress of British and German business historians at Humboldt University, Berlin. In addition, Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann chaired sessions. Focused on "Creativity and Entreprenuership in the Global Economy" as its theme, the congress gathered more than 100 researches from all over Europe, the U.S., Canada and Japan.
  • New article on the history of financialization A new article by Prof. Hartmut Berghoff appeared in the latest issue of Business History Review. Titled Varieties of Financialization? Evidence from German Industry in the 1990s, the contribution looks at specific forms of the financialization of German businesses, and especially the case of Siemens.
  • Network on the history of knowledge in the economy On May 18 and 19, the network "Knowledge and Economy" ("Wissen und Wirtschaft") was started at the Center for the History of Knowledge in Zürich. It serves historians, economic historians and members of neighboring disciplines who are interested in the role of knowledge in the economy, as well as in the history of knowledge as a methodological approach to economic history. Among the founding members are Alexander Engel and Ingo Köhler of the Göttingen Institute for Economic and Social History. More information is available on the plattform of the network.
  • Radio broadcast on the history of consumption Radio Bremen has interviewed PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann on the beginnings of consumer society, and the role that department stores played in it. It is elaborated why this gradual transformation started in the 1850s; department stores were just one of many different new forms of retail businesses. You will find the interview, conducted in German, on the website of Radio Bremen.
  • Biographies as a key to revitalize Entrepreneurial Studies A the Workshop "Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Theory & Research" in Portland, PD Dr. Uwe Spiekermann expounded ideas to revitalize business history through entrepreneurial biographies. You will find more information at the website of the 'Immigration Entrepreneurship' project, which Uwe Spiekermann presented at the Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference, which took place in Portland as well.
  • Hello, goodbye! We are happy to announce that three new colleagues will join us in the 2016 summer semester: Dr. Robert Bernsee, Denise Lehner, and Bastian Linneweh. At the same time, unfortunately, Stina Barrenscheen and Julian Faust will leave Göttingen for Marburg University. Many, many thanks, and all the best to the two of you!