ABSTRACT
The first version of the Treuhand was created in June 1990 pursuant to a law passed by the only democratically elected Volkskammer in the forty-year history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Treuhand was a comparatively small operation with only a few hundred employees. Because it was a part of the GDR government, all of its employees were easterners. As of mid-1994, practically all of the Treuhand’s initial portfolio has been disposed of in one way or another, with the exception of about twenty large industrial enterprises and a significant portion of its real estate holdings. The Treuhand has begun to liquidate some 3,219 of the companies or company divisions in its original portfolio. One of the most important aspects of the Treuhand’s continuing work will be monitoring the performance of the contracts it has entered into with private investors.
