Merck: From a pharmacy to a global coporation 1668 - 2018

Merck is the oldest pharmaceutical-chemical company in the world. It developed into a global corporation from a Darmstadt pharmacy that Jacob Friedrich Merck received the pharmacist?s license for in 1668. This book tells the 350-year history of the company for the first time in its entirety and on the basis of all the available sources, as well as the newest research in business history.For a long time, family-owned companies were regarded as a dying breed. The future seemed to belong to jointstock companies with an anonymous stockholder structure. Yet there are numerous successful counterexamples in Germany, such as Bosch, C&A and Bertelsmann. Merck, too, counts among them. How did the Merck family manage to keep the company in its possession for 13 generations through all the political ruptures and historical crises and turn it into a global leader among science and technology firms? With this as their central question, four acclaimed historians recount the fascinating history of the Merck company between 1668 and 2018, embedding it in the eventful course of world history.

Cover -- Title -- About the Book -- About the Authors -- Copyright -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Sources -- The Merck Archive -- Other Archives -- Literature -- I. Origins and Starting Point of a Chemical-pharmaceutical Firm -- 1. Beginnings -- 1.1 Origin of the family -- 1.2 The first Merck pharmacist in Darmstadt: Jacob Friedrich -- 1.3 The nephew as successor: Georg Friedrich Merck (1647-1715) and the continuation of the Darmstadt pharmacy -- 1.4. Establishing the pharmacy and family in Darmstadt: Johann Franz Merck (1687-1741) -- 1.5. Guardianship and management: Elisabeth Catharina Merck, née Kayser (1706-1786) -- 2. 1758-1805: Pharmaceuticals and Money Lending: The Pillars of the Merck Business during the Age of Enlightenment -- 2.1. The Merck family as lenders -- 2.2. Intellectual and social influences: The role of Johann Heinrich Merck -- 2.3 A new type of pharmacist: Johann Anton Merck (1756-1805) -- 3. 1805-1827: Emergence into the Modern Age: Emanuel Merck and the Transitional Period of the Merck Pharmacy -- 3.1 The Merck family and pharmacy at the turn of the 19th century -- 3.2 Emanuel Merck -- 3.3 The pharmacy and Darmstadt society -- 3.4 New fields of business -- 3.5 Emanuel Merck the scientist -- II. Under the Spell of Industrialization (1827-1914) -- 1. 1827-1850s: From Pharmacy to Factory -- 1.1 An industrial company in three steps -- 1.2 Scientific networks and the expansion of industrial manufacturing -- 1.3 Secondary activities, diversification, and investments -- 1.4 Socio-patriarchal traditions, family ties, and political background -- 2. 1850s to the 1880s/90s: Partnership, Gradual Expansion, First Problems -- 2.1 The founding of the E. Merck Partnership -- 2.2 Political-economic background, the death of Emanuel Merck, focus on tradition.