A return ticket to the world market? The Leipzig fur industry, internationalism and the case of the International Fur Exhibition (IPA) in 1930

ABSTRACT

This article examines the participation of German businesses in interwar trade exhibitions, focusing on a case study of the 1930 International Fur Exhibition in Leipzig. The central hypothesis of the article is that trade exhibitions, as vehicles of internationalism, were perceived as an instrumental strategy of post-war world market readmission for particular sectors and industries. It shows how the message of internationalism and international cooperation was believed to generally improve the position of German businesses. In the case of the IPA, fur businesses in Leipzig buried global commercial ambitions behind claims that the exhibition would facilitate the exchange of information, innovations and practices that would benefit the international fur business as a whole. The IPA also served more regional and local political and economic interests, as part of an effort to re-design regional economic structures in a newly conceptualised economic space called ‘Mitteldeutschland’ with Leipzig as a central commercial-industrial hub.

KEYWORDS:

• German business
• exhibition culture
• international business strategies
• business clusters
• great depression

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Robrecht Declercq

Robrecht Declercq studied history (MA) at the Ghent University. In 2010, he went to the European University Institute, Florence as a Phd-researcher, where he graduated in 2015. Since 2017 he is connected to the History Department of the Ghent University, as a Postdoctoral Researcher of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), where he teaches and works in the area of business and global history.