Capacity losses, reconstruction, and unfinished modernization: The chemical industry in the Soviet Zone of Occupation (SBZ)/GDR, 1945–1965

Abstract

After World War II, almost 30% of German chemical industry production lay in the zone occupied by the Soviets. Fifty years later, about five years after German reunification, the chemical industry of the new Federal States represented only 5% of total German chemical production.1 In recent years, the industry has been in the “Chemical triangle” (Halle-Bitterfeld-Bohlen) recovering from the difficult adjustment and structural crises in which it has been mired since 1990. Without guarantees from the Federal Government that the “Chemical triangle” would continue to exist, and subsidies in the double-digit billions (especially for the French combine Elf-Aquitaine, which has taken over parts of the traditional Leuna-Plant near Merseburg, and the American Dow Chemical, the new owner of the Buna-Plant in Schkopau), it would hardly have been possible to succeed in maintaining and modernizing even a small part of the chemical industry in the new Federal States.