Consumer cooperative
The consumer cooperative is a special form of the cooperative in the retail trade , which primarily purchases and sells food and beverages as well as related everyday goods. In the past it was also referred to as a “consumer cooperative” or a “consumer association”. It was originally founded on the initiative of consumers , trade associations or social reformers from bourgeois circles with the aim of improving the standard of living through a cheaper supply of goods. In some cases, consumer cooperatives have also expanded their activities to include production or have transferred what is known as “in-house production” to central companies. The consumer cooperatives achieved particular importance in their mother country Great Britain, in Scandinavia (especially Sweden), in Japan, Switzerland and in Germany.
history
19th century
Consumer cooperatives emerged all over Europe as a result of industrialization . In the 19th century, industrial and commercial focuses emerged. The workforce was drawn from far away. Although they had escaped the hardship in the country, they found themselves in cramped and poorly equipped apartments and in working conditions in which they were largely without rights. They met their need for food from shopkeepers ; Due to a lack of means of payment, they often took out loans from them and thus became dependent on them. These shopkeepers were often accused of fraud by inaccurate weighing and selling spoiled or substandard goods. Dependency on the job without tariff and without protection against dismissal was too depressing , in the apartment without tenant protection came the dependency on the shopkeeper, which was felt as oppressive and made life difficult.
That is why workers and craftsmen came together early on in clubs, associations and cooperatives to improve their supply situation. One of the best known of these consumer or consumer cooperatives is that of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers , the Rochdale Cooperative of Honest Pioneers . On December 21, 1844 opened 28 charter members, mostly flannel - Weber in Rochdale , Manchester, her shop. They formulated basic principles that became the guiding principle of the consumer cooperative movement worldwide:
- Equal voting rights : Each member has one vote, regardless of the amount of the deposit.
- Anyone can join the cooperative at any time under the same conditions as the previous members.
- Reimbursement : The more a member buys from the cooperative, the greater his share in the surplus should be.
- Sale only against cash payment.
- Delivery of unadulterated goods with full weight.
- Political and religious neutrality.
Towards the end of the 19th century and until shortly after the turn of the 20th century, following the example of the successful British consumer cooperatives, a wave of consumer cooperatives was founded, primarily in the industrialized countries of Europe and in connection with the growing political and trade union movement. But there were also numerous start-ups on the initiative of patrons, for example by well-meaning entrepreneurs who sought cheaper supplies for their workers in order to encourage their willingness to perform. The starting point for such institutions was George Jacob Holyoake's book on the Rochdal pioneers. The principles of the consumer association, founded in Rochdale in 1844, were first adopted in Switzerland by the Schwanden workers' association in 1863 , and the English expressions have even been adopted in the statutes. The Konsumverein Zürich (KVZ), founded in 1851 , was the first to bear the name “Konsumverein” and is considered the oldest really successful consumer cooperative in Switzerland and on the European continent.
Political neutrality based on the Rochdale model was established around 1900, and bourgeois consumer associations (such as the large cooperative first Viennese Consum Association ) emphasized Rochdale neutrality . On the other hand, the Belgian model of strongly politicized cooperatives in the style of Vooruit (Ghent) was hotly debated. Around 1900 the consumer cooperative was seen as a promising form of business for the future: The French economist Charles Gide developed the vision of a coming cooperative republic in 1889 , and Werner Sombart also saw the consumer cooperative as a possible instrument for the peaceful socialization of the economy. Edward Bellamy based his model of society on this idea in his novel A Review from 2000 to 1887 .
20th century
With the British Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) founded as early as 1863 , the German large-scale purchasing society Deutscher Consumvereine founded in 1894, and the Kooperativa Förbundet dating from 1899, the structures of the consumer cooperative association that were valid for several decades were formed in the first decade of the 20th century with their goods and economic centers, with large purchasing companies as "daughters of many mothers" (ie the primary cooperatives), who themselves again directed a group of factories for their own production and other central services (such as the SOK 1904 in Finland or the GöC 1905 in Austria) . In the First World War , the consumer cooperatives proved themselves as honest distributors of scarce goods and then experienced a further boom (as far as they were not subject to political restrictions, as in Central Europe).
Even after 1945, the consumer cooperatives were initially among the most dynamic competitors in the retail sector and were mostly pioneers in self-service . In Japan there was even a new wave of start-ups with a strong ecological focus and innovative sales methods. From the 1970s onwards, however, there were massive difficulties which in the Netherlands led to the de facto disappearance of the consumer cooperatives at the beginning of the decade. In the de-ideologization phase , the ideal motivation of employees and members was often lost, and organizational weaknesses and tendencies to freeze became apparent as competitive pressure increased. In 1973 COOP Nederland had to be sold to a private company, an event that was rightly taken as a warning signal in the international consumer cooperative movement. This crisis reached its peak in the decade 1985 to 1995 with the collapse of the French consumer cooperative group around the SGCC, the crisis of the German Coop AG and the fall of Konsum Austria (1995). At the time, the sector also had major problems in Belgium, Finland, Iceland and even in Sweden, a model consumer cooperative. This international structural crisis of the consumer cooperatives had partly to do with the misconduct of individuals, partly with outdated company structures, which had to be adapted to those of the competitors as a result. The cooperative groups Coop and Migros, which operate on the somewhat isolated Swiss market, remained largely unaffected by this crisis .
Development in Germany
Basics
In Germany, too, numerous consumer cooperatives were founded during industrialization in the 19th century, with a clear focus on Saxony and Baden-Württemberg , where workers' organizations played an important role early on. 1850 created in Eilenburg craftsmen and workers who Eilenburger Lebensmittelassociation , the first real consumer cooperative in Germany . In socialist circles, the cooperatives were initially viewed as revisionist , because their activities aimed at improving living conditions in the existing capitalist system. This assessment gradually changed after the repeal of the socialist laws from 1890.
From the beginning, the consumer cooperatives were viewed with suspicion by the government . In 1851 the Merseburg district government came to the conclusion:
"If, however, the suspicion arises that these companies promote social, detrimental efforts among certain classes of the population, it is the task of the police authority to monitor the association in its business and non-business conduct and against violations of the statutory purposes of the association to intervene. "
Since the middle of the 19th century, Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch , Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen and Eduard Pfeiffer established craft and agricultural cooperatives as well as consumer cooperatives. The activities of Schulze-Delitzsch and Raiffeisen led to a Prussian cooperative law being passed as early as 1867 . On May 1, 1889, the Reich Law on the Commercial and Commercial Cooperatives was passed, which is still in force today, albeit with numerous changes. Section 1 of the Cooperatives Act defines the cooperatives as
"Companies with a non-closed number of members that aim to promote the acquisition or economy of their members by means of joint business operations."
A characteristic of a cooperative is that you can basically join it at any time and that you can also cancel your membership and then get the money paid in again - if it has not been consumed by losses. The cooperative is a jointly operated economic association that aims to bring together as many people as possible with the same needs. In contrast to a stock corporation , the aim of the company is not to maximize profits, but to promote the development of the cooperative on an equal footing. It is about the targeted benefit for the cooperative members when consuming, i.e. especially when shopping.
The success of the consumer cooperatives sparked backlash from small retailers. They put pressure on wholesalers and manufacturers so that they would not deliver to the consumer cooperatives. There were boycott campaigns , which is why the consumer cooperatives finally created their own wholesale organization in 1894, the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine mbH (GEG) based in Hamburg. The GEG developed into a successful business operation. It was not limited to the wholesale function, but began in 1910 to set up its own production facilities . The first was the newly built soap factory in Riesa in Saxony. The GEG also gave loans or bought companies when workers' production cooperatives got into economic difficulties. For example, in 1910 it took over the tobacco workers' production cooperative , whose three plants in Hamburg, Saxony and Baden with over 800 employees. Such production cooperatives were often founded when workers were not employed again after lengthy strikes and they took production into the hands of their own production cooperative. However, many of these producing cooperatives could not survive long on the market and the GEG as a buyer and possibly a takeover improved this position.
The Reichsverband deutscher Konsumvereine e. V. in Cologne left the Association of West German Consumers, founded in 1909 . V. emerged. It became the central association of consumer cooperatives based on Christian trade union tradition. He represented the so-called “black” consumer cooperative movement of the Cologne direction , in contrast to the “red”, the Hamburg direction .
The goods and economic center of this association was the Gepag , large purchasing and production corporation of German consumer associations. Gepag emerged in 1923 from the wholesale purchasing center of German consumer associations (GEZ) founded in 1912. Until it was switched into line in 1933, it was the goods and economic center of the consumer cooperatives based on Christian trade union tradition as a counterpart to the red large-scale purchasing company Deutscher Consumvereine GmbH, the Hamburg direction.
Turn from the 19th to the 20th century
In the period up to 1933, GEG and Gepag built up an efficient in-house production with almost 60 production companies, including meat factories, pasta factories, a fish goods factory, a cocoa and chocolate factory, a vegetable and fruit canning factory, a cheese dairy and a mustard factory. But clothes, matches, furniture and brushes and much more were also produced. In the 1920s, the GEG became the largest German food retail and production company with over 8,000 employees.
An important period in the founding of consumer cooperatives was around the turn of the century after the Socialist Law was finally fallen. This was also a time of rapid growth in membership in the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party . The Hamburger PRO or, as it was called at the time, the consumer, building and savings association “Produktion” was founded in 1899 after a decision by the Hamburg union cartel . In the same year the consumer cooperative Berlin and the surrounding area was founded, which later became one of the largest consumer cooperatives in Germany. Also in 1899 the consumer cooperative Kiel und Umgegend eGmbH was founded, one of the predecessor cooperatives of the coop eG , which today is by far the strongest German consumer cooperative in terms of sales and has now spread far beyond its home country.
The proximity to the trade unions and social democracy has always characterized the consumer cooperatives "Hamburger Direction", as they were called - Hamburg Direction because they were part of the Zentralverband deutscher Konsumvereine e.V., founded in 1903 . V. with its headquarters in Hamburg and were supplied by the Hamburg GEG. There was also the Cologne direction, the Christian-oriented consumer cooperatives from the Kolping area .
The “Hamburg” consumer cooperatives often offered members of the trade unions a job if they had become unpopular due to their trade union or political activities and got on the blacklists of the employers' associations and therefore often found no work in their respective occupation anywhere in the Reich. One example of this is the later mayor of Hamburg , Max Brauer , who, as a trained glassblower, was committed to the glass workers' union, was blacklisted and was no longer allowed to work in the profession he had learned. For this he was employed by the PRO, which on the other hand gave him so much leeway for his political activities that he could finally be elected mayor in Altona , which was then still (Prussian) Holstein .
The relationship between consumer cooperatives and the Prussian governmental state changed fundamentally during the First World War , when social democracy and trade unions pursued a policy of " truce ". On the one hand, in this time of growing food shortages and hunger, the consumer cooperatives proved themselves to be loyal advocates of their members by carefully and fairly distributing the allocated food and not doing black market deals; on the other hand, they made their production capacities available to produce food for the front, as, for example, the Hamburg PRO did on a large scale. It is remarkable that the PRO earned so much money that they decided not to distribute this additional profit to the members, but instead to build a children's recreation home in Haffkrug on the Baltic Sea. This home still exists today, now as the PRO Foundation's retirement home. The Pro-Stiftung's senior citizens' housing complex in Hamburg-Rissen also still exists. The chairman of the PRO Foundation (Hamburg and Haffkrug) is Hans-Rainer Holst, a former coop manager.
Earlier names such as “Konsum-, Bau- und Spar-Verein Produktion eGmbH” already indicate that the consumer cooperatives were originally by no means limited to the food trade. In many cases, they built apartments for their members at the same time and also served as a savings bank , as is still the case today, for example with the Italian consumer cooperatives. The savings institutions were of particular economic importance because they enabled the cooperatives to obtain financial resources much more cheaply than from the banks.
Unlike today, the consumer cooperatives were legally restricted to selling exclusively to their members. This included the principle of reimbursement already introduced by the Rochdal pioneers. The turnover of each member was documented with the well-known sales brands and a reimbursement was paid according to the surplus of the respective year. There were cooperatives whose reimbursement rate was sometimes 10 percent, which of course led to a considerable bond between the members and their cooperative.
From 1933 to 1945
The National Socialists fought these institutions in particular by equating them with the department stores, which were often in Jewish hands, since they came to power . In 1932/1933, numerous shop windows in consumer shops were destroyed by the National Socialists, shops smeared and in individual cases also set on fire. As a result, the work of destruction against the consumer cooperatives was deliberately continued. First of all, the discount law of 1933 limited the reimbursement to three percent and thus decisively curtailed interest in membership in the consumer cooperative. Then the consumer cooperatives were banned from accepting savings, which resulted in a significant loss of cash and cash equivalents and brought numerous consumer cooperatives to the brink of bankruptcy. In May 1933 the consumer cooperatives and their central organizations were brought into line. Ultimately, the NSDAP forced the liquidation of all cooperatives that were no longer doing well economically, such as the consumer cooperatives in Berlin , Kiel , Lübeck and Hanover .
In May 1933, the consumer cooperatives and their central organizations were brought into line and thereby dissolved. On August 14, 1933, the GEG was renamed the Reichsbund der Deutschen Konsumentgenossenschaften GmbH (GEG) . The central cooperative organizations have now been brought together in it: the Central Association of German Consumers' Associations and the Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft Deutscher Consumvereine mbH. as well as the Verlagsgesellschaft deutscher Konsumvereine mbH (all in Hamburg), and the Reichsverband deutscher Konsumvereine e. V. and the Gepag , large purchasing and production stock corporation of German consumer associations, both based in Cologne. After the law of May 31, 1935 for the Reichsbund (GEG) was passed, the company structure was reorganized again. The company was changed again to Deutsche Großeinkaufs-Gesellschaft mbH (Deugro). The company name no longer contained any reference to the cooperative origin. In Hamburg, the well-founded consumer cooperative production, whose sales outlets were set up in its own apartment blocks, was brought into line and traded under the name of "Niederelbische consumer cooperative".
On April 1, 1941, the remaining consumer cooperative institutions and their central organizations were incorporated into the German Labor Front under a holding company that operated as a joint venture of the German Labor Front (GW) .
Development since 1945
After the end of the war, the consumer cooperatives met everywhere and tried to re-establish the cooperatives and to get back the lost assets, as far as they still existed. The four occupying powers went very different ways.
East Germany
In the Soviet occupation zone , the legal basis for the establishment of consumer cooperatives was restored by Order No. 176 of the Soviet military administration of December 18, 1945. At the end of 1945 there were already 5,380 sales outlets. At the end of 1947, the consumer cooperatives in the Soviet occupation zone already had 1.8 million members. In 1950, 17 percent of total retail sales came from the consumer cooperatives. The importance of consumption in the GDR was considerable. There were 4.6 million members there at the same time, and consumption handled over 30 percent of the retail trade.
In eastern Germany, many consumer cooperatives got into severe economic difficulties after the fall of the Wall, which led to numerous company closings and insolvency proceedings . However, a number of cooperatives managed to catch up with the new trading conditions and secure their businesses. For example, the consumer cooperatives in Dresden , Leipzig , Weimar, Berlin (again) and Seehausen are working successfully . The former association of consumer cooperatives of the GDR became the Zentralkonsum eG (commercial enterprises and interest representatives), which is still the owner of the brush factory founded by the GEG in Stützengrün . In 2001 the Konsum-Prüfverband eV and the ZdK created an all-German auditing association for the consumer cooperatives, which at the same time assumes the function of the cooperative umbrella organization for the representation of interests vis-à-vis governments, authorities and other cooperative associations. Today, the majority of the consumer cooperatives active on the market in East Germany are audited by the Central German Cooperative Association (Raiffeisen / Schulze-Delitzsch) eV based in Chemnitz.
West Germany
In the British occupation zone, the former GEG managing director Henry Everling was appointed general director of the "GEG complex", as the joint venture of the German labor front was now called. As in other areas of society, the British promoted the development from below, which led to the establishment of numerous small consumer cooperatives, while the Americans and French tied in their zones with the structures of community work and the associated supply rings. Great efforts were made by the cooperative members to get back the former assets. Much was lost or destroyed and could not be regained. With dramatic actions by members of the Hamburg cooperative, immediately after the end of the war, the sale of the former consumer cooperative assets to Reemtsma , which the old work front squad had planned, was prevented. The rapid development work meant that in 1948 there were again 250 consumer cooperatives with 750,000 members and 5,700 distribution points in the three western zones.
The consumer cooperatives continued the old virtue of being pioneers in modernization. The Hamburger Produktion (later “PRO” for short) opened the first self-service shop in Germany in 1949 . The Swedish consumer cooperatives were the model . The first self-service shop in East Germany was opened by Konsum Groß-Berlin eGmbH in Treptow in 1952 . At the beginning of the 1960s, the consumer cooperatives in the old federal states reached their highest level, with 2.6 million members, 79,000 employees and almost 10,000 shops.
co op AG
With the advance of the discounters and the large retail chains, the climate in the old Federal Republic changed fundamentally for the consumer cooperatives. As in some other countries, more and more West German cooperatives were facing economic hardship. The former productivity lead of consumption has been overtaken and overtaken. A major modernization debate began, which led to an optical modernization in the 1960s with the introduction of the co op brand . The establishment of the first plaza stores responded to the advance of large-scale offers.
At the same time, a discussion about the question of the correct legal form took place, which ended with the fact that many leading consumer cooperatives considered the stock corporation to be the better legal form than that of the cooperative. As the first consumer cooperative, the Saarland Asko was transformed into an AG in 1972. Other cooperatives followed this example, including the Hamburg-based "PRO". The change in legal form turned sick cooperatives into no healthy public limited companies. In the course of the further merger movement, by far the largest part of the former consumer cooperative trade finally gathered in the Frankfurt co op AG .
The trade union BGAG played a major role in co op AG , but the cooperative principles were lost with the new direction of the co op corporation. It got into economic distress , also due to the criminal machinations of management members around the CEO Bernd Otto . In order to avert bankruptcy, a settlement was made with the 143 creditors - banks in 1989 , which in fact meant the end of co op AG . What was left of them were transferred to the Metro Group as Deutsche SB-Kauf AG .
This process of transformation to a stock corporation led to the expropriation of the former members of the consumer cooperative (especially the Hamburger PRO). Parallel to the difficulties in Germany, there were also massive crises in the consumer cooperatives of other industrialized countries, such as Belgium, France, Finland, Iceland, and even in the model consumer cooperative country Sweden. In many cases, there were bankruptcies and extensive displacement from the market (as in the case of Konsum Austria in 1995). From around 1975 one can therefore speak of an international structural crisis in the consumer cooperatives, which was not only related to the misconduct of individuals.
The eG
Not all consumer cooperatives followed the path of the German co op into the AG. A number of small and very small consumer cooperatives have remained, but also the then particularly profitable KG Dortmund-Kassel eG and the coop eG in Schleswig-Holstein, which was independent until 2016 .
The KG Dortmund-Kassel temporarily had over 500,000 members. It got into financial difficulties due to the neglected modernization of the store network in the 1990s, was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1997 and, after the decision to dissolve it on June 27, 1998, was gradually liquidated by 2008 . Two thirds of the stores were taken over by Edeka .
Of the larger consumer cooperatives in West Germany, only coop eG , formerly coop Schleswig-Holstein eG, remained . The cooperative was not only active in Schleswig-Holstein, but in a total of five federal states (in addition to Schleswig-Holstein also in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Hamburg and Lower Saxony). The stores in southern Germany (Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria) were sold by coop eG to Rewe in 2009 . The coop eG had not made a loss since it was re-established after the Second World War by 2005. In 2014, it was ranked 17th among German food retailers, had a turnover of around 1.28 billion euros, had around 54,000 members and over 9,000 employees.
In 2016, the financially troubled coop eG was majority taken over by Rewe. In this context, the company lost its independence and began to reflag 163 stores, which previously operated under the Sky and Plaza brands , to Rewe . This also meant that the last eG in Germany to operate under the name coop lost its independence.
New developments
Today, consumption is no longer just about goods , but increasingly also services , so that service cooperatives in particular belong to the group of consumer cooperatives. For example, there is a cooperative of disabled people in Hamburg and Bremen , in which they organize their care themselves and thus maintain a great deal of human dignity . In order to ensure the quality of food in a cooperative way, cooperatives for the distribution of organic food (so-called food coops ) were founded, as well as in small and medium-sized towns from which profit-oriented providers had withdrawn due to insufficient margins. Finally, one of the youngest consumer cooperatives is Greenpeace Energy eG , which was founded in 2000 and trades in green electricity.
See also
literature
- Johnston Birchall: The International Co-operative Movement. Manchester University Press, Manchester et al. 1997 ISBN 0-7190-4824-9 .
- Johann Brazda , Robert Schediwy (Ed.): Consumer Co-operatives in a Changing World. Comparative Studies on Structural Changes of some selected Consumer Cooperative Societies in industrialized Countries. 2 volumes. International Co-operative Alliance, Geneva 1989, ISBN 2-88381-000-1 .
- Mustafa Haikal : Good business. The history of the Leipzig consumer cooperative. Faber & Faber, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-86730-084-1 .
- Peter J. Hartmann: Consumer Cooperatives in Japan. Alternative or reflection of society? Developments and structures using the example of Osaka prefecture. Iudicium, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89129-507-3 ( monographs from the German Institute for Japanese Studies 29, also dissertation at the University of Heidelberg , 2003).
- Erwin Hasselmann : History of the German consumer cooperatives. Knapp, Frankfurt am Main 1971.
- Fritz Klein: Under the flag of the consumer cooperative. The story of the Gepag. Large purchasing and production stock corporation of German consumer associations, Cologne 1927 (= consumer cooperative library 12).
- Fritz Klein: Self-help out of Christian responsibility. The history of the Christian consumer associations. Kommunal-Verlag, Recklinghausen 1967.
- Heinrich Lersch : The pioneers of Eilenburg. A novel from the early days of the German labor movement. Gutenberg Book Guild, Berlin 1934.
- Michael Prinz: bread and dividends. Consumers' associations in Germany and England before 1914 (= critical studies on historical science . Volume 112). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-35775-3 (also habilitation thesis at Bielefeld University , 1992).
- Gisela Notz : The socialist cooperative movement as the third pillar of the workers' movement - history and perspectives , in: Axel Weipert (ed.): Democratization of economy and state - studies on the relationship between economy, state and democracy from the 19th century to today , NoRa Verlag , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86557-331-5 .
- Otto Ruhmer: History of the origins of the German cooperative system. The first German cooperatives. Kröger, Hamburg-Blankenese 1937 ( Genossenschafts- und Sozial-Bücherei 1, ZDB -ID 275841-6 ).
- Gernod Schneider: Economic miracle GDR. Claim and Reality . 2nd edition expanded by an epilogue. Bund, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7663-2190-0 .
- Uwe Spiekermann: Basis of the consumer society. Origin and development of the retail trade in Germany 1850–1914. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44874-7 , pp. 238–277, 446–463 (= journal for corporate history, volume 3, also a dissertation at the University of Münster , 1996).
- Vinzenz Winkler: COOP and MIGROS. Cooperatives in competition and through the ages. Rüegger, Zurich / Chur 1999, ISBN 3-7253-0385-1 .
- Armin Peter: The transformation of cooperatives into stock corporations - a gift from the legislature. in “125 Years of the Cooperative Law - 100 Years of the First World War, 9th Conference on Cooperative History”, Ed .: Heinrich Kauffmann Foundation, Adolph von Elm Foundation, ISBN 978-3-7392-2219-6
- Burchard Bösche : Brief history of the consumer cooperatives, publisher: Central Association of German consumer cooperatives, undated.
- Jan-Frederik Korf: From the consumer cooperative movement to the joint effort of the German Labor Front - Between conformity, resistance and adaptation to the dictatorship, published by the Heinrich Kaufmann Foundation of the Central Association of German Consumer Cooperatives, Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3 -8334-7304-3
Web links
- Definition of consumer cooperatives at the Federal Statistical Office ( Memento of March 2, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
- German consumer cooperatives
- Chronicle of the Central Association of Consumer Cooperatives ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.7 MB)
- History of the Co-op in Lower Saxony
- International comparative study from 1989 (English; PDF; 3.0 MB)
- Summary, international overview articles from economy and society , 1989 (PDF; 1.6 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hartmut Bickelmann : cooperative and consumer cooperative Lübeck. From the food supplier of the labor movement to the regional retail chain, Zeitschrift für Lübeckische Geschichte, Volume 98 (2018), Verlag Max Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck, p. 165.
- ^ Martin Broszat, Hermann Weber: SBZ manual , University of Mannheim. Department of History and Politics of the GDR., Institute for Contemporary History, Publisher: Oldenbourg; 2nd edition 1993, page 767, ISBN 3-486-55262-7
- ↑ Gunhild Freese: With a new board of directors and fresh capital, the ailing trading company co op can start over. But the past is not quite over yet: managers in the twilight . In: The time . No. 50 , 1989 ( zeit.de ).
- ^ Annual report VdK of the GDR, 1989.
- ↑ As of June 27, 1998 - Resolution of Coop-Dortmund-Kassel resolved. WDR, June 27, 2013, accessed July 31, 2018 .
- ↑ Lebensmittelzeitung: Top 30 Lebensmittelhandel Deutschland 2014 , accessed on April 29, 2015
- ^ Coop retail chain: Goodbye Sky - Rewe takes over . Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag ( shz.de [accessed on August 15, 2018]).