The Performance of German Big Business in the 20th Century

The paper deals with the development of big business in Germany during the 20th century. It shows the first results of the German team of the research project ?The Performance of European Business in the 20th Century?. The paper analyses how the structure of big business changed: it shows the decline of heavy industry and finally the rise of service sectors. Secondly the paper analyses the profitability of the German large scale enterprises and raises the question if German big business truly was less profitable than the English as suggested in literature.