“Border surfing” to the Czech Republic in the early 1990s. When small and medium sized Austrian businesses went ‘East’ across the northern border

Die European Social Science History Conference 2025 findet vom 26.-29. März 2025 in Leiden statt. Oliver Kühschelm spricht am 26. März 2025 im Panel “Social and cultural history of foreign investment: International business and European transformations since 1989” zum Thema “‘Border surfing’ to the Czech Republic in the early 1990s. When small and medium sized Austrian businesses went ‘East’ across the northern border”. 

Abstract

The paper will analyse the narratives of entrepreneurs from a peripheral region of Lower Austria close to what for decades had been considered a “dead border” along the “Iron Curtain”. In 1989, all of a sudden, this changed dramatically. The owners of the investigated small and medium-sized businesses quickly seized on the new opportunities in the Czech Republic. The founder of a company that marketizes herbal tea, builds his narrative around the concepts of friendship and harmony relegating the notion of profit to the background (while having built a very profitable company). The former executive director of a regional savings bank fashions himself as a (regional) agent of history. He explains the investments in the neighbouring country as being motivated by contributing to the reconciliation between former enemies. In contrast to such narratives, the owner of an industrial company is straightforward about the calculations that led to the acquisition of a Czech firm close to the border. With hindsight this turned out to be the decisive first step towards converting a regional firm into a multinational company that has since also set up shop in Mexico and China. The founder of a shopping centre at the border paints himself as an adventurer who sought his fortune in a frontier world that offered chances to those fearless and ruthless enough to take them. The four narratives allow to link different versions of fashioning an “entrepreneurial self” with the history of FDI.

Weitere Informationen zu Vortrag und Panel hier.

Website der ESSHC 2025: https://event.esshc2025.exordo.com/

Bildcredits: Jukeboxe-Museum in der Excalibur-City an der tschechisch-österreichischen Grenze (Foto: Thomas Samhaber).