Hans Bayer · 1963
Bayer develops the medium-sized, personally shaped enterprise as a central but politically and institutionally vulnerable form of economic order. Its stabilizing potential lies not merely in firm size, but in the connection between ownership, management, liability, and personal responsibility. The medium-sized enterprise thus appears as a counterweight to anonymous large-scale organization: it disperses economic power, keeps competition alive, ties capital to concrete entrepreneurial decisions, and anchors employment regionally.
Im September 1960 waren mehr als ein Drittel aller in der Industrie Beschäftigten (Betriebe mit zehn und mehr Arbeitnehmern) in der mittleren Industrie tätig¹⁶.
English translation: In September 1960, more than one-third of all persons employed in industry (in establishments with ten or more employees) were engaged in medium-sized industry.¹⁶
This empirical scale supports Bayer’s claim that the medium-sized firm should not be treated as a marginal phenomenon, but as a factor of economic order. For him, medium-sized industry is a space of employment, training, and adaptation whose stability arises from the decentralized decisions of many entrepreneurs. Precisely because these firms do not possess the reserves of large corporations, they must remain flexible, close to customers, and capable of innovation. Bayer treats this mobility as economically valuable: it cushions crises, prevents tendencies toward monopolization, and preserves a pluralistic enterprise landscape.
At the same time, Bayer does not idealize the Mittelstand. The personally shaped firm is vulnerable to shortages of capital, succession problems, tax burdens, and inadequate business-management advice. The argument therefore shifts from a simple appreciation of medium-sized virtues to a reform agenda. Support should not mean permanent protection from competition, but assistance that strengthens independence, productive capacity, and cooperation.
Bereits im Jahre 1953 gründete der National Union of Manufacturers ein »Managerial advisory service for small scale industry«.
English translation: As early as 1953 the National Union of Manufacturers established a »Managerial advisory service for small scale industry«.
Such examples serve Bayer as evidence that Mittelstand policy had been recognized internationally as a task of modern economic stewardship. Advisory services, exchange of experience, purchasing and credit cooperations, and guarantee institutions are meant to offset structural disadvantages of small and medium-sized firms without dissolving their responsibility for themselves. The crucial idea is that cooperation need not mean the abandonment of independence; it can be the very condition that secures it.
Bayer places special weight on the legal and tax order. It helps determine whether personally shaped enterprises can build equity, admit partners, and manage generational succession. Where tax rules obstruct capital inflows or changes in company form, they endanger not only individual firms but the stabilizing function of the Mittelstand as a whole.
Wenn aber ein Kommanditist in eine KG eintritt, so werden nach der Bündel-Theorie die 200% als Einkommen der anderen Kommanditisten angesehen und – wenn auch nur mit dem halben Satz – besteuert.
English translation: But when a limited partner enters a limited partnership (KG), then, according to the bundle theory, the 200% is regarded as income of the other limited partners and taxed—even if only at half the rate.
The study therefore culminates in an ordoliberal diagnosis: the medium-sized, personally shaped enterprise stabilizes the economy as long as the state, associations, and financial institutions take its specific conditions seriously. Bayer does not call for romantic special pleading, but for fair competitive opportunities, better access to capital, competent advice, and tax rules that do not penalize personal entrepreneurship. His work is thus both an analysis of the Mittelstand and a plea for an economic order in which decentralized responsibility functions as a source of macroeconomic stability.
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