One of Germany’s leading business schools sits awkwardly in Berlin between the reconstructed Humboldt Forum museum complex and a rose garden planted by Margot Honecker, an ex-education minister and wife of the last leader of communist East Germany.
The European School of Management and Technology, founded to train the country’s capitalist elite, is based in the former state council office of the defunct German Democratic Republic. It is replete with retro lights, hammer and compass emblems and a stained-glass window portraying the leftwing intellectual and revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.
Its surroundings reflect the distinctive past attitudes to business and education in Germany. But in the two decades since ESMT’s creation, much has changed in the country, its companies and attitudes to management, bringing about a flourishing business education sector with ambitions to compete with international rivals.