ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the long-run historical development of corporate ownership and control in Germany as it progressed through marked liberalization during the later stages of industrialization and rapid economic development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then through dramatic reversals during the upheaval of two world wars and the Nazi regime. It focuses on the impact of the evolution of corporate law and the dramatic changes in its political landscape as people trace the role of families and their decisions over maintaining or relinquishing control of their businesses. The facts of the German case challenge the traditional view that companies are first dominated by founding families which then slowly lose control, giving way for widely held corporations. Founders and founding families have tried to preserve ownership and control of their corporations in the face of the multiple countervailing factors outlined in the introduction.
