The Mittelstand Succession Crisis and Why It Matters

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are roughly 3.5 million small and mid-sized enterprises in Germany. They account for more than half of the country’s economic output, employ over 60 percent of the workforce, and are the reason German towns you have never heard of produce components the entire world depends on. The Germans call this ecosystem the Mittelstand, and they are justifiably proud of it.

They should also be worried about it.

Over the next decade, an estimated 600,000 of these businesses will need new ownership. Many were founded in the postwar boom, passed once to the Boomer generation, and now face an uncomfortable reality: the children do not want the factory. They have moved to Berlin, or London, or into consulting. The founder, now in his seventies, has spent forty years building something that has no obvious successor.

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The Mittelstand Succession Crisis and Why It Matters