ABSTRACT
Historical research on enterprises and entrepreneurs deals with nearly all major problems of economic and social development in Germany and any other industrialized countries as well. In the 1860s, David Hansemann, Prussian politician and industrialist, laid the basis for these efforts by his successful commitment in establishing the German Commercial Code. This created a uniform commercial law applicable in all states of the then existing German confederation. The first was the Krupp archive founded in 1905. In 1907 Siemens and Bayer followed. Richard Ehrenberg, professor of economics in Rostock, analysed the records of various companies for his studies, using the Krupp archive in 1902 and the Siemens archive in 1906. University archives — independent scholary archives — were established on account of the research requirement of a single scholar or group within the University. The first regional business archives were established in 1906.
