ABSTRACT
The face of industry in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) has changed dramatically since economic reunification with the Federal Republic (West Germany) in July 1990. A significant proportion of the industrial capital stock has been scrapped and employment, especially in industry, has collapsed. Although several hundred thousand small private businesses have been founded, as elsewhere in eastern Europe, the singularity of the east German experience of transition has been the role played by the government agency the Treuhandanstalt (THA) in privatizing a substantial proportion of the former state-owned enterprise sector.1
