Agreements and Achievements – MICO in the German Bosch Archive

Table of Con­tents
Intro­duc­tion  |  “His­tor­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion” by Bosch  |  Bosch (in) India  |  The Records  |  Research Out­look   |   Archives   |   End­notes   |   Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Introduction

Com­pa­ny archives hold the mate­ri­al­ized pos­si­bil­i­ties for firms to empha­size their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance and to cre­ate their tra­di­tion and can there­fore be impor­tant for cor­po­rate iden­ti­ties and brand­ing. Sys­tem­at­ic “his­tor­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion”[1] estab­lish­es the company’s image for board mem­bers, stake­hold­ers and employ­ees, as well as for out­siders, cus­tomers and part­ners. As a mat­ter of fact, one can hard­ly speak of “the” com­pa­ny archive, as there are few over­ar­ch­ing rules, and archival stan­dards are – sim­ply put – devel­oped by the respec­tive company’s inter­ests. The expe­ri­ences of researchers work­ing with such archives will dif­fer enor­mous­ly, depend­ing on the com­pa­ny. This arti­cle sheds light on the head­quar­ters’ archive of one of Germany’s biggest glob­al com­pa­nies, Robert Bosch GmbH’s archive in Stuttgart, Baden-Wuert­tem­berg, and shows its poten­tial for research on Indo-Ger­man eco­nom­ic relations.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, many large and still active com­pa­nies such as Bosch store their own records, where­as many small­er and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies that ceased to exist have deposit­ed their hold­ings in the respec­tive state’s eco­nom­ic archive (Lan­deswirtschaft­sarchive) or anoth­er suit­able larg­er archive, e.g. the com­pa­ny J.M. Voith, which was active in India simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with Bosch and whose mate­r­i­al can be found in the Wirtschaft­sarchiv Baden-Wuert­tem­berg, WABW.[2] In the lat­ter case, the company’s col­lec­tions usu­al­ly become one sin­gle hold­ing, as they are inte­grat­ed into an exist­ing archival structure.

Com­pa­ny archives hold mate­r­i­al that ranges from adver­tis­ing posters and pho­to albums through cor­re­spon­dences, con­tracts and bal­ance sheets to tech­ni­cal draw­ings and arte­facts, such as the end prod­ucts of man­u­fac­tur­ing from dif­fer­ent time peri­ods. In order to cre­ate a space to dis­play those arte­facts, there may be a cor­re­spond­ing muse­um, as is the case at the Daim­ler AG’s com­pa­ny archive, which is also based in Stuttgart. This direct con­nec­tion to an insti­tu­tion deter­mines the pro­file of the com­pa­ny for the pub­lic and reveals the impor­tance that com­pa­nies ascribe to retain­ing con­trol over the material’s inter­pre­ta­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al claims are there­fore inher­ent to the nature of com­pa­ny archives and the files that are con­sid­ered wor­thy to con­serve. Besides, com­pa­ny archives are cer­tain­ly not cre­at­ed with the inde­pen­dent researcher in mind, but for inter­nal pur­pos­es or on legal grounds. The effects this has on the inter­ac­tions between user and archive have to be considered.

Many firms view schol­ar­ly engage­ment with their vari­ety of sources with inter­est, so if the ini­tial inquiry about per­mis­sion to con­duct research is suc­cess­ful, it is often encour­aged and one finds sup­port from archival staff. How­ev­er, it is obvi­ous that, on prin­ci­ple, some com­pa­nies will not be open towards inde­pen­dent researchers work­ing in their archives. The researcher should treat the archive as the company’s pri­vate space, which can mean a nec­es­sary change in habits and approach­es. If inex­pe­ri­enced in the field of busi­ness his­to­ry, she is used to start­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by going through dig­i­tal or ana­logue find­ing aids, there­by accu­mu­lat­ing a sense of the con­text of the files. One can ini­tial­ly be thrown off by the invis­i­bil­i­ty of find­ing aids and cat­a­logue struc­tures in many com­pa­ny archives. While eco­nom­ic state archives will gen­er­al­ly have find­ing aids avail­able for the researcher, it is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry for those that are pos­sessed by the firm. In the Bosch archive, for exam­ple, the data­base or cat­a­logue is avail­able sole­ly to the archivists, who will then act as inter­me­di­aries using key­words pro­vid­ed by the researcher and by their own knowledge.

To respect Bosch’s pri­va­cy reg­u­la­tions, MIDA does not pub­lish details on files and hold­ings in the data­base. The main objec­tive of this entry to the Archival Reflex­i­con is there­fore to dis­pel pos­si­ble con­cerns by guid­ing and inspir­ing future researchers towards work­ing with­in the archive’s bound­aries. The arti­cle does not give a descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal struc­ture of the mate­r­i­al, but rather hints at pos­si­ble research routes with the files, while out­lin­ing the rel­e­vance of Bosch’s activ­i­ties in India.

“Historical Communication” by Bosch

Bosch’s com­pa­ny archive is part of the company’s depart­ment of “His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion” (C/CGC-HC). It is locat­ed in the cen­tral part of Stuttgart, the South Ger­man head­quar­ters not only of Bosch, but also of oth­er glob­al­ly known com­pa­nies, a fact that con­tributed to the deep con­nec­tions Bosch shares with oth­er local­ly based firms, which can be traced through­out var­i­ous archives. One fre­quent­ly encoun­ters the name “Bosch” in the eco­nom­ic archive of the state of Baden-Würt­tem­berg, WABW, espe­cial­ly in the hold­ing of the Cham­ber of Com­merce, Stuttgart.[3] Doc­u­ments in the Daim­ler archive also ref­er­ence part­ner­ships with Bosch in the Indi­an context.

The Bosch archive was estab­lished in 1933 for the occa­sion of a “dou­ble jubilee”: 50 years since the foun­da­tion of the com­pa­ny and the 75th birth­day of founder Robert Bosch. It was ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed as a muse­um with a cor­re­spond­ing archive. From 1992 onwards, the archive was part of the pub­lic rela­tions depart­ment of the com­pa­ny until it was assigned to “His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion”. The archive com­pris­es 2,500 run­ning metres of records that con­sist of var­i­ous mate­ri­als: writ­ten records, tech­ni­cal draw­ings, pho­tos and around 16,000 arte­facts, such as spark plugs from dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions.[4]

Cur­rent research con­di­tions are influ­enced by the archive’s recent move with­in the city of Stuttgart. Files are stored in an exter­nal depot, away from the office space, hence spon­ta­neous order­ing of files is dif­fi­cult and orders should be placed in advance. The archive decides on research per­mis­sions indi­vid­u­al­ly, as there is no oblig­a­tion to let every researcher work with unlim­it­ed mate­ri­als. As defined by the user reg­u­la­tions, research is gen­er­al­ly autho­rized to any­body who can evi­dence “legit­i­mate inter­est” in the firm’s his­to­ry, so this mat­ter should be suf­fi­cient­ly explained in the ini­tial approach­ing email.

The start­ing point for a descrip­tion of the pur­pose of an Archival Reflex­i­con entry are the box­es: the stan­dard grey archive box­es, car­ry­ing the file num­ber in pen­cil, which indi­cates group­ings of sev­er­al box­es togeth­er as a hold­ing (Bestand). Secu­ri­ty lev­els assigned to each box tend to be set restric­tive­ly and per­mits are giv­en to each inquir­er indi­vid­u­al­ly. A box in the Bosch archive is treat­ed as a file (Archiva­lie) and col­lec­tions of doc­u­ments that do not nec­es­sar­i­ly belong togeth­er the­mat­i­cal­ly are some­times stored with­in the same file. In this man­ner, the box “3 0005 1560 Länder—Indien—MICO” holds doc­u­ments that range from 1934 to 1996, con­tain­ing news­pa­per arti­cles, cor­re­spon­dences with part­ner com­pa­ny Mous­sel & Co. Ltd., the fac­to­ry mag­a­zine “MICO Wheel” from 1994, a brochure for the occa­sion of the 25^th anniver­sary of the Voca­tion­al Cen­tre in 1986 and a fair amount more.[5]

Such mag­a­zines and brochures, which are abun­dant through­out the archive, relate to and some­times even specif­i­cal­ly speak of a con­cept called “mile­stones”. It is used as a way to struc­ture the cor­po­rate his­to­ry chrono­log­i­cal­ly, with achieve­ments being the main bench­marks that define the path. Apart from the doc­u­ments that are con­cerned almost exclu­sive­ly with MICO (nowa­days Bosch Lim­it­ed) and India, order­ing min­utes of spe­cif­ic meet­ings can be fruit­ful. Here, the researcher should pro­vide some knowl­edge of the tight­est pos­si­ble time­frame of inter­est. Com­bin­ing this time­frame with a search for min­utes (“Sitzung­spro­tokolle”, that often even car­ry the key­word “India” or “MICO” in the archive’s cat­a­logue), the archivist can help locate min­utes of rel­e­vant board meet­ings etc.

Bosch com­mu­ni­cates being proud of its long involve­ment on for­eign mar­kets. How­ev­er, as Johler and Spara­cio (2011: 9) stat­ed in their 2011 pub­li­ca­tion on Gas­tar­beit­er:[6] a lot can be found about Bosch in the world, but not quite as much about the world at Bosch. This obser­va­tion is def­i­nite­ly true for the Indi­an con­text, as well. Most of the India-relat­ed mate­r­i­al that one is pro­vid­ed with in the archive will cov­er the actions and the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Bosch and its Ger­man employ­ees in India, while few records illus­trate a reverse exchange.

Bosch (in) India

The his­to­ry of Bosch in India start­ed in the ear­ly 1920s with the estab­lish­ment of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive office in Cal­cut­ta. The sales house Illies & Co. from Ham­burg import­ed spark plugs, mag­ne­to igni­tion sys­tems and oth­er auto com­po­nents to British India. In the begin­ning, how­ev­er, Bosch was unable to com­pete with the estab­lished British and US sup­pli­ers. After the Sec­ond World War, it was rather dif­fi­cult for Bosch to re-estab­lish itself inter­na­tion­al­ly in the so-called indus­tri­al coun­tries, since many of its fac­to­ries abroad had been destroyed or expro­pri­at­ed. They decid­ed to con­cen­trate on promis­ing mar­kets that they had pre­vi­ous­ly not giv­en much atten­tion, such as India (see Bähr/Erkner 2013: 333).

Suc­cess came grad­u­al­ly: accord­ing to the rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ly designed “A Short Mem­oir of Bosch India” (Bosch Ltd. 2014: 17), Bhailal Patel from the Bosch com­pa­ny Kino-Bauer sug­gest­ed estab­lish­ing a base in India short­ly after inde­pen­dence. Fol­low­ing this, the year 1951 marks an impor­tant year in the his­to­ry of Bosch in India. It is the found­ing year of the Motor Indus­tries Com­pa­ny Ltd. (MICO), of which Bosch instant­ly bought 49%, upon dis­cussing larg­er invest­ments in the Indi­an auto­mo­tive indus­try with Daim­ler-Benz (Bähr/Erkner 2013: 333). MICO was found­ed by K.C. Var­ma and Raghu­nan­dan Saran as a sub­sidiary of Ghazi­abad Engi­neer­ing Co. (GEC), the main dis­trib­u­tor of Bosch prod­ucts in India at the time (see Bosch Ltd. 2014: 15). Things moved fast from here onwards: MICO became the sole dis­trib­u­tor, and after the Indi­an state imple­ment­ed restric­tive import reg­u­la­tions, a fac­to­ry was set up at Adugo­di, Ban­ga­lore in 1953 to man­u­fac­ture spark plugs, noz­zle hold­ers, fil­ters and fuel-injec­tion pumps by Bosch license. A tool-room appren­tice­ship scheme was imple­ment­ed in the same year, a Voca­tion­al Cen­tre fol­lowed in 1960.

By 1961, 2,000 peo­ple worked at the Ban­ga­lore plant, which had already start­ed export busi­ness, and 57.5% of MICO shares had been bought by Bosch, an act that Herdt (1986: 105) described as “strength­en­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal umbil­i­cal cord to MICO”. The affil­i­a­tion with MICO as a “self-suf­fi­cient and strong” exam­ple of a Bosch part­ner man­i­fest­ed itself in the moti­va­tion to invest and in the ubiq­ui­tous will to diver­si­fy pro­duc­tion along with India’s chang­ing indus­tri­al mar­ket (Ibid.: 106). Large sums were invest­ed in MICO plants in India in the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s: a sec­ond plant was installed in Nasik in 1969–1971, a third in Naganatha­pu­ra in 1988. Prod­ucts from the Nasik plant were export­ed to the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many (FRG) and oth­er coun­tries around the world, while the Naganatha­pu­ra plant con­tributed to diver­si­fy­ing pro­duc­tion. By acquir­ing oth­er com­pa­nies in var­i­ous sec­tors of engi­neer­ing, such as con­trol and motion tech­nolo­gies etc., Bosch out­put became addi­tion­al­ly diverse in India over the years, as well. The part­ner­ship with MICO would go on, and in the late 1980s, the sec­ond-largest num­ber of Bosch employ­ees out­side of Ger­many was based in India (behind Brazil; Bähr/Erkner 2013: 425) until even­tu­al­ly, in 2008, MICO was renamed Bosch Limited.

Even though the Ban­ga­lore plant ini­tial­ly strug­gled to make a prof­it, most pub­li­ca­tions by and about Bosch stress its con­tri­bu­tion to the growth of India’s auto­mo­tive indus­try (e.g. Langenscheidt/Steinruecke 2011: 84; Herdt 1986: 106; Bosch Ltd. 2014: 17, 37–39). Bosch com­mu­ni­ca­tors were gen­er­al­ly more trans­par­ent about the role of their own finan­cial and busi­ness inter­ests than some oth­er Ger­man com­pa­nies in India were. Bosch being one of the first com­pa­nies to get involved in devel­op­ment aid, for exam­ple in the con­text of the pro­duc­tion of water pumps for agri­cul­ture, is an achieve­ment notably ver­bal­ized (Herdt 1096: 107; see also Bosch 1961: 111).

In their rep­re­sen­ta­tive por­tray­al of big Ger­man com­pa­nies in India, Lan­gen­schei­dt and Stein­ruecke stat­ed that a part of Bosch’s abil­i­ty to grow in India was due to dis­trib­ut­ing account­abil­i­ty amongst Indi­an agents: “[This] has also widened the scope of respon­si­bil­i­ty for local man­age­ment and devel­oped Indi­an tal­ent” (2011: 84). State­ments that hint at aid in devel­op­ing a new Indi­an work­force are found through­out the archival mate­r­i­al, too. The afore­men­tioned brochure for the Voca­tion­al Cen­tre from 1986 speaks about the “human fac­tor” that has to “keep pace” with new machin­ery, illus­trat­ing the gen­er­al strug­gle of fac­to­ries to adjust train­ing facil­i­ties to par­al­lel tech­no­log­i­cal advances.[7] Spe­cial atten­tion was giv­en to sec­tors that required high-pre­ci­sion han­dling skills, such as man­u­fac­tur­ing fuel-injec­tion pumps. Since the MICO Voca­tion­al Cen­tre col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Indi­an gov­ern­ment in devel­op­ing the Appren­tices Act of 1961, the means of train­ing at MICO did not mere­ly have the­o­ret­i­cal ties to the reg­u­la­tions of train­ing on a nation­al lev­el. The Cen­tre itself explained its impact in the fol­low­ing words:

[Man] can only be as effec­tive as he is allowed to be by his rela­tion­ships with men and machines. Hence, to be a con­tribut­ing mem­ber of his group, man has to be in har­mo­ny with his work­ing envi­ron­ment. Espe­cial­ly as tech­nolo­gies reshape work­shops and oth­er work­places, and machines gain in sophis­ti­ca­tion, the human fac­tor has to keep pace. The answer lies in train­ing and devel­op­ment. The devel­op­ment of human resources can­not be left to indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive. It has to be built into a planned pro­gramme and imple­ment­ed as a con­scious and sus­tained effort. This has been the guid­ing phi­los­o­phy in MICO.[8]

When West Ger­man com­pa­nies began to invest in India by build­ing fac­to­ries in the 1950s, they soon com­plained about a lack of skilled work­ers on the ground. Many stat­ed that Indi­an grad­u­ate engi­neers had not under­gone any prac­ti­cal train­ing at all when they were led to the machines (see Hunck 1963: 70). The impor­tance of prac­ti­cal skills in con­trast to aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge was hence­forth stressed. At MICO Voca­tion­al Cen­tre, grad­u­ate engi­neers and oth­er uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed per­son­nel were trained in man­u­al skills in one-year cours­es. Appren­tices who had not under­gone aca­d­e­m­ic edu­ca­tion before were trained for three years as “trade appren­tices”. They were trained as elec­tri­cians, fit­ters, grinders, machin­ists or mill­wright mechan­ics.[9] Infor­ma­tion of this sort is eas­i­ly locat­ed in the records at the Bosch archive, since sta­tis­tics and sum­maries of MICO’s per­for­mance were com­mu­ni­cat­ed through the mate­r­i­al pub­lished for stake­hold­ers and the in-house mag­a­zines, as well as in stored reports or arti­cles by third parties.

The Records

Most­ly in Ger­man, some­times in Eng­lish, the records date from approx­i­mate­ly the 1930s onward and are suc­ces­sive­ly extend­ed. These ear­li­est files on Bosch in India most­ly relate to sale hous­es sell­ing Bosch prod­ucts in India, such as GEC. As the com­pa­ny from Stuttgart was prepar­ing to col­lab­o­rate, infor­ma­tive mate­r­i­al of a gen­er­al sort about India and its econ­o­my was col­lect­ed. The files reveal con­sid­er­a­tions of prof­itabil­i­ty and strate­gies to get involved on the Indi­an mar­ket. After the involve­ment with MICO had been estab­lished, the mate­r­i­al rep­re­sents the expan­sion of the com­pa­ny, grouped around core ele­ments such as plans for the con­struc­tion of fur­ther plants in Nasik and Naganatha­pu­ra. Cor­re­spon­dences that are found in the box­es addi­tion­al­ly deal with the Bosch sales part­ners in India, data on import­ed prod­ucts or for­eign exchange devel­op­ments. Oth­er types of files, like the occa­sion­al min­utes of board meet­ings of MICO, Annu­al Reports, bal­ance sheets, sta­tis­tics and ratios, are scat­tered over the boxes.

With­in com­pa­ny archives, hold­ings are often part­ly relat­ed to impor­tant board mem­bers or oth­er deci­sion mak­ers, e.g. after inher­it­ing their pri­vate papers. This par­tic­u­lar form of orga­ni­za­tion shows inter­na­tion­al­i­ty as an obvi­ous aspect of the busi­ness. High-rank­ing employ­ees or chief board mem­bers trav­elled around the world fre­quent­ly and left cor­re­spon­dences, reports, sched­ules and min­utes. In the ear­ly 1950s, Bosch also built fac­to­ries in Aus­tralia and Brazil and got more involved in the Japan­ese mar­ket by sell­ing licens­es (Herdt 1986: 154–156). The simul­tane­ity of these ven­tures is mir­rored in the box­es at the archive. Attend­ing impor­tant nego­ti­a­tions in India and in Brazil with­in a short time span, the records by the most impor­tant deci­sion mak­ers are then stored close to one anoth­er, some­times even in the same box or fold­er, and can open glob­al per­spec­tives for the read­er. Trips were planned metic­u­lous­ly, with dupli­cates and quin­tu­pli­cates of the trav­el sched­ules, whether it was for the vis­its of high-rank­ing Indi­an employ­ees to the FRG or the oth­er way around, or, for exam­ple for a vis­it of Abid Hus­sain, who came to Stuttgart to vis­it the com­pa­ny in 1988 in his role as a mem­ber of India’s Plan­ning Com­mis­sion.[10]

Among the Ger­man men on the Bosch side, the name Hans Merkle is men­tioned with high fre­quen­cy in the records relat­ed to MICO . Merkle was man­ag­ing direc­tor of the finan­cial depart­ment from the late 1950s onwards and then con­tin­ued to shape the busi­ness through­out the decades as chair­man of the man­age­ment board (1963–1984, which is a cru­cial time peri­od for Bosch’s activ­i­ties in India). An hon­orary mem­ber of the man­age­ment board, he passed away in 2000. In the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the Bosch man­age­ment board includ­ed up to more than a dozen men at the same time. Anoth­er name that can be pin­point­ed in rela­tion to India is Paul Stein, who was in Bosch’s legal depart­ment from 1953 onwards and left the MICO direc­to­ry board in 1989. To the pub­lic, he was not as rep­re­sen­ta­tive as Merkle, but his influ­ence was cer­tain­ly not small, as his sig­na­tures on many cor­re­spon­dences indi­cate (see also Bähr/Erkner 2013: 311). The Indi­an MICO men are less often vis­i­ble in the Stuttgart archive, even though some stand out, such as Bhailal Patel. Patel was a mem­ber of MICO’s direc­to­ry board from 1955 onwards and became chair­man in 1969 and Pres­i­dent of the Indo-Ger­man Cham­ber of Com­merce (IGCC) in 1963–1964. He remained chair­man emer­i­tus until his pass­ing in 1983. At the fes­tiv­i­ties for the 25^th jubilee of MICO, for which Merkle had also trav­elled to India, Patel gave a speech that can be found in the archive and that speaks of the his­to­ry of MICO, the busi­ness rela­tions, the agree­ments and the achieve­ments made in the course of the col­lab­o­ra­tion.[11]

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive mate­r­i­al like Patel’s wel­come speech, col­lect­ed news­pa­per arti­cles that men­tion Bosch in India or MICO, brochures and so on con­sti­tute the major­i­ty of the records avail­able to researchers. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive are also inter­nal­ly pub­lished things, such as the scat­tered ver­sions of the fac­to­ry jour­nal “MICO Wheel”. Many of these inter­nal pub­li­ca­tions were meant for stake­hold­ers. An intrigu­ing thing to stum­ble upon in this mate­r­i­al, besides the unique infor­ma­tion on the factory’s con­cerns, is the adver­tise­ments. They are not nec­es­sar­i­ly for Bosch or MICO, but most­ly for oth­er West Ger­man com­pa­nies that were active in India in one way or the oth­er. For exam­ple, many com­pa­nies put up a one-page adver­tise­ment in a mag­a­zine on the Hanover Trade Fair in 1984, dis­trib­uted amongst com­pa­nies by the Indo-Ger­man Cham­ber of Com­merce (IGCC), e.g. com­pa­nies like Otto or Bharat Fritz Wern­er.[12] Not only do the adver­tise­ments sig­ni­fy who was active in India at the time, they often include much length­i­er texts than what is com­mon today, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about activ­i­ties, rhetoric and world view. For exam­ple, a MICO adver­tise­ment in the IGCC mag­a­zine offers insights into its tar­get group by equat­ing “tra­di­tion” (rep­re­sent­ed by a pho­to of two hands carv­ing ivory deity fig­urines) and “mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy” (two hands hold­ing a small met­al machine part), stat­ing that the “India of today is a hap­py blend” of both.[13] Adver­tise­ments like this catered to con­ser­v­a­tives as well as progress enthu­si­asts, and to the blend of both.

This mag­a­zine and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions by the IGCC that Bosch col­lect­ed also show the kind of infor­ma­tion and guid­ance that was sent to Bosch and oth­er com­pa­nies and was being stored there. Espe­cial­ly the IGCC’s infor­ma­tive out­put can be of great val­ue for research on the Indo-Ger­man eco­nom­ic entan­gle­ments of the lat­ter half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, as they pro­vid­ed not only guide­lines, but also con­crete sta­tis­tics, such as lists of firms that were look­ing for export part­ners.[14]

Research Outlook

Though this overview could by no means be exhaus­tive, inter­est­ing out­looks for pos­si­ble future research derive from the engage­ment with the mate­r­i­al. Gen­er­al­ly, the archive can relate to research areas of Indo-Ger­man eco­nom­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion, tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion, busi­ness his­to­ry and the his­to­ry of tech­ni­cal devel­op­ments. There are many pos­si­ble routes for research with the Bosch archive and, as far as is known, there has to date not been an inten­sive aca­d­e­m­ic engage­ment with the Bosch-MICO matters.

The archive shows com­pa­ny ethics, val­ues, pol­i­tics, visions, ide­olo­gies and inter­ests that one can cer­tain­ly inter­pret regard­ing their rep­re­sen­ta­tion in India. The lens of the Ger­man archival mate­r­i­al can help broad­en per­spec­tives, as the mate­r­i­al pro­vides pos­si­bil­i­ties to trace sto­ries of transna­tion­al­i­ty and glob­al con­nec­tions. Con­nect­ing the find­ings from the Bosch archive in Stuttgart with oth­er archival mate­r­i­al, such as the afore­men­tioned state eco­nom­ic archives, the com­pa­ny archive of Daim­ler Benz or the Nation­al Archives of India (which held dis­cus­sions on the Appren­tices Act 1961 and on import reg­u­la­tions affect­ing MICO), will sure­ly be a chal­leng­ing but reward­ing approach.

Trac­ing busi­ness net­works through these archives offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to include small com­pa­nies in the research as they become vis­i­ble through their part­ner­ships with large enti­ties such as Bosch. Busi­ness links will reveal and reflect cer­tain dis­cours­es of the time, of dif­fer­ent approach­es to trade or part­ner­ship, and of pos­si­bly chang­ing and vary­ing con­cepts of “the firm”. The Bosch archive offers pos­si­bil­i­ties to uncov­er nuanced his­to­ries in the mate­r­i­al and to place them with­in cor­po­rate his­to­ry, but also out­side of it. In the end, one has to read the records in a way that appre­ci­ates and prob­lema­tizes the rep­re­sen­ta­tive nature of the records.

Archives

Robert Bosch GmbH, His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion (RB)

Wirtschaft­sarchiv Baden-Würt­tem­berg, Stuttgart (WABW)

Endnotes

[1]  The Ger­man term “His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion” is used main­ly by com­pa­nies to engage with their own his­to­ry. It is direct­ed at mar­ket­ing, cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty and image.

[2]  The WABW can be found in the MIDA Database.

[3]  Wirtschaft­sarchiv Baden-Würt­tem­berg, Stuttgart (WABW), Bestand A 16.

[4]  The num­bers are from 2016; the infor­ma­tion was received from the archive.

[5]  Robert Bosch GmbH, His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion, 3 0005 1560.

[6]  Togeth­er with stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen, Johler and Spara­cio tried to at least part­ly close this gap through their pub­li­ca­tion and a relat­ed exhi­bi­tion, for which they inter­viewed sev­er­al of the for­mer work­ers who con­tin­ued to live in Stuttgart.

[7]  Robert Bosch GmbH, His­torische Kom­mu­nika­tion (RB), 3 0005 1560.

[8]  Ibid.

[9]  Ibid.

[10] RB, 1 017 004.

[11] RB, 3 0005 1560.

[12] RB, 1 017 038.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

Bibliography

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