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sorrow were still part of everyday life in the divided
Germany. In an address to the German people, Federal
President Theodor Heuss complained that privation
was “firmly rooted in many, many places.” And
yet 1952 was also a year of new confidence, as the first
fruits of the reconstruction became palpable. The
German economic miracle was taking shape—through
a lot of hard work, capital assistance from abroad,
and, not least, inge nuity.
Innovation as a lifeboat to a better future? While
Heuss lamented the poverty back then, he also spoke
of confidence and “highly sophisticated inventions
that would set the German people back on course.”
An end-of-the-year review from 1952 proudly celebrates
the television: “We invented and built a number
of new machines.” Journalists can point to successful
export trade fairs as proof. Even back then,
the focus was always on innovations, new ideas that
will prevail on the market—in Germany, but also
abroad.
A core message from 1952 still holds true today;
the economic prosperity of the people of our country
is not based on the merging of simple components or
by merely imitating the achievements of others. Our
opportunities lie in forward thinking and improvements,
in brainpower, and know-how. Sixty years
later, in the Germany of the 21st century, this still applies—even
if we use different vocabulary. Ingenuity
and industriousness were the bywords of 1952. Today,
concepts such as innovative power and competitiveness
are more common.
The German economy was also gaining steam internationally
60 years ago. As early as 1952, customers
around the globe associated “Made in Germany”
on goods and products with quality. But the economic
size classes have changed: Back then, it was sovereign
nations, national economic systems or national economies
that competed with each other. In the wake of
globalization, on the other hand, we’re more likely
to talk of competition between alliances and world
regions.
Another important difference between 1952 and
2012 is the time factor: The speed of innovations has
increased. More than a half century passed from the
time the television was invented to the time it was
widely found in households across Germany. When
it came to the mobile phone, that time span was only
a little over ten years.
Over the last few decades, Germany has managed
to maintain a healthy, powerful industrial climate—
despite the crises and dramatic changes across entire
industries. The capacity for self-renewal, innovation
for our own sake, was a key factor in this regard. Today,
the chemical industry in Germany often serves
completely different markets, supplies entirely different
products than in 1952.
Evonik Industries itself reflects this change. The
Group began operating under this name in 2007, only
five years ago, thereby focusing its energies expressly
on the power to create. The new company brought
with it decades of experience from the chemical industry—and
an appreciation of the value of innovation.
Evonik’s history contains names such as Degussa,
Chemische Werke Hüls, Th. Goldschmidt, and
Röhm, just to mention a few. Even in the decades before
the name change, these companies and groups
were no strangers to innovation. Some milestones
from Evonik’s history provide good illustrations.
EUDRAGIT®, the protective coating for tablets,
came on the market in the 1950s and made it possible,
for the first time, to control the release of a medical
agent in the patient’s body.
In the colorful 1960s, plastic was king, and awareness
of environmental protection was on the rise. In
1964, the Group began producing proprietary biodegradable
detergents, the active cleansing agents 333
CoMMent
Current research topics at evonik: A binder for
corrosion protection formulations that significantly
reduces, or avoids, the use of toxic heavy metals
The core message is unchanged
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elements39 Issue 2|2012