Abstract

"Adaptation or Co-creation? The Westen Family Connections in East-Central Europe"

Katrin Schreiter, King's College London (katrin.schreiter@kcl.ac.uk), Volodymyr Kulikov, University College London (vlkulikov@gmail.com)

This paper offers an empirical and methodological contribution to the study of business networks in interwar East-Central Europe. At the end of the First World War, the enamel company A. Westen (established 1894 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) was caught in the upheaval of imperial decline and nation-building. The German-speaking Westen family had built a network of metal-enamelling factories in Celje, Petržalka, České Budějovice, Olkusz, and Wolbrom, alongside a commercial company in St. Petersburg. During the Belle Époque, the family ran a successful and growing business. The collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, however, created new national borders that interrupted flows of goods, people, and finance. Despite these obstacles, the Westen network continued to grow. This paper asks how the family sustained its influence across this politically and economically fragmented region through both alliance and antagonism.
To answer this question, we are building a database to explore the connections between the actors involved. We are mapping various types of connections – formal (board memberships), biographical (family ties, shared education), transactional (financial flows), material (supply chains), and informal (joint newspaper mentions) –to analyse the network on several layers. The database design allows us to map both positive and negative ties, such as financial disputes, intrafamily loans, and technology transfers. Network analysis typically favours cooperative links and marginalises the conflicts that (as the CfP points out) are a natural part of business. This paper seeks to address that imbalance. We will present our database design and preliminary findings and wish to discuss the methodological challenges of transforming fragmented historical sources into structured knowledge.