The Publicly Owned Enterprise (german: Volkseigener Betrieb; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. They were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960s, and the handing back in 1954 of some 33 enterprises previously taken by the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

reparations Reparation(s) may refer to: Christianity * Restitution (theology), the Christian doctrine calling for reparation * Acts of reparation, prayers for repairing the damages of sin History *War reparations **World War I reparations, made from G ...

. The managing director of a VEB was called a plant or works manager (German: ''Werkleiter'', ''Werkdirektor'' or ''Betriebsdirektor''). He or she was assisted by the first secretary of the factory party organisation (''Betriebsparteiorganisation'') of the

SED sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed wa ...

, and the chairman of the factory trade union (''Betriebsgewerkschaftsleitung''). Subordinate to them were roles such as "Chief Accountant" and "Technical Director". VEBs were initially

vertically integrated In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply ...

into units called Associations of Publicly Owned Enterprises (''Vereinigung Volkseigener Betriebe'', VVBs). A VVB existed in most major industries to consolidate production and reduce waste. They had all been replaced by 1979 with the '' VEB Kombinate'', or VEB Group, which integrated the VEBs much more closely than the largely administrative VVBs. Under this system, the term 'Kombinate' was frequently dropped and the term "VEB" usually implied the group rather than the individual factory. The organisation of all state enterprises was the responsibility of the State Planning Commission. VEBs often had company sports teams, and played an important role in the promotion of sports. In 1989, VEBs employed 79.9% of the East German workforce. After

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

and the introduction of the market economy in 1990, the ownership of around 8,000 publicly owned enterprises passed to

Treuhand The ("Trust agency"), colloquially referred to as , was an agency established by the government of the German Democratic Republic to reprivatise/privatise East German enterprises, Volkseigene Betriebe (VEBs), prior to German reunification. Cre ...

, the trust agency which oversaw the privatization of GDR state property. An honorary name was frequently added to the firm's actual name, for example, VEB Kombinat Chemische Werke "

Walter Ulbricht Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (after spending the years of Nazi rule in ...

Leuna Leuna is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, south of Merseburg and Halle, on the river Saale. The town is known for the ''Leunawerke'', at 13 km2 one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany, where a very wide range of ...

. This was a

socialist emulation Socialist competition or socialist emulation (, "sotsialisticheskoye sorevnovanie", or , "sotssorevnovanie") was a form of competition between state enterprises and between individuals practiced in the Soviet Union and in other Eastern bloc state ...

incentive towards fulfillment and overfulfillment of production quotas. Many Germans, as a form of mild protest against the nationalization of private businesses, nicknamed the VEBs ''Vatis ehemaliger Betrieb'', which translates to "Daddy's former business".

Examples

*VEB

Automobilwerk Eisenach The Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE) was an automobile manufacturer in Eisenach, Germany. History Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach Heinrich Ehrhardt founded the Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach (FFE) in Eisenach on 3 December 1896 as a stock company. Init ...

VEB BMK Kohle und Energie VEB may stand for: * Venturing and Emerging Brands, a division of Coca-Cola * Virtual business * Venezuelan , currency of Venezuela between 1879 and 2007, ISO 4217 code VEB * ' (German for "People-owned enterprise"), a state-owned workplace or est ...

*VEB Braunkohlenwerk

Gustav Sobottka Gustav Sobottka (12 July 1886 – 6 March 1953) was a German politician in East Germany. He was a member of the Communist Party and was in exile during the Nazi era. He returned to Germany in 1945 as head of the Sobottka Group and later worked in ...

Röblingen *VEB Deutsche Musikaliendruckerei *

VEB Deutsche Schallplatten The VEB Deutsche Schallplatten was the monopolistic music publisher in the German Democratic Republic from the 1950s until the 1980s. On August 12, 1946, the German singer and actor Ernst Busch got permission by Soviet military administration ...

* VEB Deutsche Seereederei * VEB Elbewerften Boizenburg/Roßlau * VEB Fahrzeug- und Gerätewerk Simson Suhl * VEB Filmfabrik Wolfen * Hochseeschiffbau Mathias-Thesen-Werft Wismar VEB *VEB

Jehmlich Orgelbau Dresden Jehmlich Orgelbau Dresden is a privately owned organ building and restoration company in Dresden, Germany. History The company was founded in 1808 in Cämmerswalde by three brothers, Gotthelf Friedrich, Johann Gotthold und Carl Gottlieb Jehmlic ...

* VEB Lokomotivbau Karl Marx Babelsberg (LKM) * VEB Lokomotivbau Elektrotechnische Werke Hans Beimler

Hennigsdorf Hennigsdorf () is a town in the district of Oberhavel, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated north-west of Berlin, just across the city border, which is formed mainly by the Havel river. History The municipality shared its borders with the form ...

(LEW) *

VEB Meissen Porzellan Meissen porcelain or Meissen china was the first European hard-paste porcelain. Early experiments were done in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger continued von Tschirnhaus's work and ...

* VEB Motorradwerk Zschopau *

VEB Polytechnik VEB Polytechnik was a company from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) located in Chemnitz (then called Karl-Marx-Stadt). In the GDR, it was mainly known for producing overhead projectors, called Polylux. The company was founded in 1870 as ''Rei ...

* VEB Planeta *

VEB Robotron VEB Kombinat Robotron (or simply Robotron) was the biggest East German electronics manufacturer. It was based in Dresden and employed 68,000 people (1989). It produced personal computers, SM EVM minicomputers, the ESER mainframe computers, sev ...

VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau HQM Sachsenring GmbH is a Zwickau-based company that supplies chassis and body parts to the automotive industry. The company was named after the Sachsenring race track. Founded as VEB Sachsenring after the end of World War II, Sachsenring was one ...

VEB Typoart VEB Typoart was the only type foundry of East Germany. It was a state-owned enterprise ("Volkseigener Betrieb") located in Dresden. The foundry's most influential art directors were Herbert Thannhäuser (until 1963) and Albert Kapr (until 1987). ...

* VEB Uhrenwerke Ruhla * VEB Volkswerft (

Stralsund Stralsund (; Swedish: ''Strålsund''), officially the Hanseatic City of Stralsund (German: ''Hansestadt Stralsund''), is the fifth-largest city in the northeastern German federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after Rostock, Schwerin, Neub ...

) * Kombinat VEB Zeiss Jena

References

Sources

* * {{Authority control * German words and phrases Corporate law Economy of East Germany East German law no:Volkseigener Betrieb

Examples

See also

References

Sources