Description
Book Synopsis As a result of a multi-volume research project, funded by the Thyssen Foundations (Stiftung zur Industriegeschichte Thyssen and Fritz Thyssen Stiftung), ten books were published that served to greatly advance the available knowledge on the Thyssen family and their companies. The results of this project are summarized in this volume which provides both an explanation of how the project was conceptualized and executed and a detailed case study of a family and their business during the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explains the development of both whilst addressing issues such as patriarchal succession; gender roles in the family; wealthy lifestyles in international communities of aristocrats and diplomats; operating across national legislation, institutions, and policies; and discussions of labor and capital. In doing so it connects corporate and family history to provide an all-inclusive view of the development of a business.
Table of Contents List of Figures
Foreword to the English-Language Edition
Volker Berghahn
Foreword
Introduction
Point of Departure: The Thyssen Legacy
Elements of an Entangled Family and Corporate History
Part I: Family-History Projects: Selected Findings
Chapter 1. The Thyssens – family and fortune (Simone Derix, 2016, 2nd ed. 2021)
Family and conflict
Lifestyle: Family spaces, local roots, mobility
“Calculated risk”: The Thyssens, their foundations and advisors
Chapter 2. Two civic lives in the public eye.The brothers Fritz Thyssen and Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (Felix de Taillez, 2017)
Stepping out from the father’s shadow:Fritz Thyssen as national hero
The exclusive circles of Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
Out in the open:Fritz Thyssen, the media, and National Socialism
Chapter 3. The Thyssens as art collectors. Investment and symbolic capital (1900 -1970) (Johannes Gramlich, 2015, 2nd ed. 2021)]
“Normal capitalist bourgeoisie”:August Thyssen sr. and Fritz Thyssen
Collecting as vocation: Heinrich and Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
Part II: Corporate-History Projects: Selected Findings
Why Thyssen? On the state of research and the research problem
On the company’s development
Company and family
Trust—capital—assets
Consultant
Selected findings
Chapter 4. Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG under National Socialism (Alexander Donges, 2014)
Chapter 5. Forced labor at Thyssen.“Stahlverein” and “Baron-Konzern” in the Second World War (Thomas Urban, 2014, 2nd ed. 2021)
Chapter 6. The expropriation of Fritz Thyssen. Dispossession and restitution (Jan Schleusener, 2018)
Chapter 7. Thyssen in the Adenauer era. Corporate formation and family capitalism (Johannes Bähr, 2015)
Chapter 8. From steel group to corporate group. The Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza companies from 1926 to 1932 (Harald Wixforth, 2019)
Chapter 9. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Group(Boris Gehlen, 2021)
Appendix: Thyssen family tree
Sources and Bibliography
Overview of Book Series
