Regulating Competition during the Economic Miracle. The Practice of Cartel Law in the Federal Republic of Germany before the Law against Restraints of Competition, 1948/49-1958

该研究项目旨在调查德国“经济奇迹”时期卡特尔法的实践，以二战结束后竞争法的停顿来评估法律规则与商业实践的相互联系。从历史上看，德国公司的创业范围几乎完全是根据1957年才通过的德国反限制竞争法（GWB）来分析的。战后德国由占领法和德国法院的裁决决定的卡特尔法的实践没有引起人们的注意。该项目打算通过追求三个目标来缩小这一研究差距。首先，该项目将为法律与经济的历史联系提供实证贡献。协约国实施的竞争法的暂停不仅在德国公司的公开抗议中遭到抵制，而且在他们的日常实践中也遭到抵制。这些法律冲突迫使法院解释相关的法定条款，从而确定其法律内容。该项目将澄清德国公司在多大程度上成功地促使法院考虑到他们的论点、实践和传统。其次，该项目开启了在转向自由市场经济的过程中，识别德国司法部门内部进步和保守力量的可能性。法院对竞争政策原则的接受是这一转变的基本条件，并在20世纪60年代得到了很好的确立。然而，在20世纪50年代初，一些法院是否已经在制定新的卡特尔法方面发挥了先锋作用，这是一个悬而未决的问题。该项目将回答这样一个问题，即在GWB成为正式法律之前，哪些法院采用了它的要素。第三，该项目将为一个备受争议的问题提供一个新的解释方法，即哪些因素决定了GWB的具体形式。历史研究集中在美国的影响、经济思想的作用和德国公司的压力上。该项目扩大了可能解释的范围，探讨了这样一个问题：1957年的GWB是否真的标志着一个决定性的突破，或者它是否只是批准了当时已经确立的卡特尔法惯例。为了回答这三个问题，该项目将收集和整理法院判决和商业档案资料，分析它们之间的相互关系。研究结果将以期刊文章、特刊、数据库、两次研讨会和与研究项目相关的论文的形式得到保障和公开。

The research project seeks to investigate the practice of cartel law at the time of the German "economic miracle" to evaluate the interconnection of legal rules and business practices in light of the caesura in competition law after the end of the Second World War. The entrepreneurial scope of German firms has been analyzed historically almost exclusively with regards to the German Law against Restraints of Competition (GWB) which was passed only in 1957. The practice of cartel law in post-war Germany that was determined by occupation law and the rulings of German courts has escaped attention. The project intends to close this research gap by pursuing three targets.First, the project will provide an empirical contribution regarding the historical interconnection of law and the economy. The caesura in competition law enforced by the Allies met resistance not only in public protests of German firms but in their everyday practices as well. These legal conflicts forced the courts to interpret the allied statutory provisions thereby determining their legal content. The project will clarify to what extent German firms succeeded in inducing the courts to take into account their arguments, practices, and traditions.Second, the project opens the possibility of identifying progressive and conservative forces inside the German judiciary during the turn towards a liberal market economy. The courts' acceptance of competition policy principles was a fundamental condition for this turn and had become well established by the 1960s. It is an open question, however, whether some courts played a pioneering role in establishing the new cartel law already during the early 1950s. The project will answer the question if and if so which courts employed elements of the GWB before it became the official law. Third, the project will offer a new explanatory approach for the much-debated question which factors determined the concrete form of the GWB. Historical research has focused on U.S. American influence, the role of economic ideas, and the pressure of German firms. The project extends the scope of possible explanations by taking up the question whether the GWB of 1957 actually marked a decisive break or whether it simply sanctioned a cartel law practice that had become well established by that time. To answer the three questions the project will collect and systematize court decisions and sources from business archives to analyze their mutual interrelations. The results will be secured and made public in the form of a journal article, a special issue, a database, two workshops, and a dissertation related to the research project.