Historians to study Siemens’ development over three decades

Munich, Germany

Siemens AG is commissioning an independent academic study of the company’s development from 1981 to 2011. The project is to be undertaken by the economic and company historian Hartmut Berghoff and the contemporary historian Cornelia Rauh. Both are being given unrestricted access to the company archives and they will be interviewing contemporary witnesses as well as researching documents. The results are expected to be published in 2014.

There are already a number of publications dealing with Siemens’ history, but the most recent contemporary history has not as yet been examined in detail. The most recent major publication, realized by the company’s historian Wilfried Feldenkirchen is from 1997. However, it is precisely in the last 30 years that the economic and political conditions under which the company has been operating have undergone rapid transformation through globalization and technological progress, and the period culminated in the company’s reorientation at the end of the last decade (2008).

Prof. Hartmut Berghoff has been head of the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., U.S. since 2008, and teaches economic and social history at the University of Göttingen. He has held guest professorships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, at the Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU) Koblenz, at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris and at the Harvard Business School. His research fields include the history of business, consumption and globalization. Hartmut Berghoff has won various awards including the ABB-Wissenschaftspreis and the Newcomen Harvard Article Award. He is the author or editor of 14 reference books, including the textbook “Moderne Unternehmensgeschichte” (2004). In 2010 he was a contributor and consultant for a publication on the history of the Bertelsmann publishing house: “175 Jahre Bertelsmann – Eine Zukunftsgeschichte.”

Prof. Cornelia Rauh has been professor of German and European contemporary history at Leibniz University in Hanover since 2005. Prior to this she worked at Tübingen University and was a fellow at Princeton University, N. J., U.S. One of her main areas of research is business history. She has written several biographies of entrepreneurs and a series of books and numerous essays on German contemporary history. She won an award from the Association for Business History for her habilitation thesis “Aluminium für Hitlers Krieg” about a multinational Swiss company before and during World War Two.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, operating in the fields of industry, energy and healthcare as well as providing infrastructure solutions, primarily for cities and metropolitan areas. For over 165 years, Siemens has stood for technological excellence, innovation, quality, reliability and internationality. The company is the world’s largest provider of environmental technologies. Around 40 percent of its total revenue stems from green products and solutions. In fiscal 2012, which ended on September 30, 2012, revenue from continuing operations totaled €78.3 billion and income from continuing operations €5.2 billion. At the end of September 2012, Siemens had around 370,000 employees worldwide on the basis of continuing operations. Further information is available on the Internet at: http://www.siemens.com.