MUCH LIKE GERMANY’S economy, Bonn’s central station and its immediate surroundings have seen better days. So too has the small building squeezed between a travel agent and a bio-supermarket on Maximilianstrasse, a stone’s throw from the station. As well as housing a language school, these premises are the surprisingly modest headquarters of the Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IFM). Funded chiefly by the federal and North Rhine-Westphalia governments, the IFM has since 1957 been the principal source of research on Germany’s celebrated Mittelstand, the mass of small and medium-sized companies frequently described as being the backbone of Europe’s largest economy.
There are about 3.7 million of these companies, according to Norbert Irsch, director of economic research at development bank KfW, which categorizes Mittelstand enterprises as those with a turnover of up to €500 million. Irsch says that this group of...
