Ludwig Noé, shipping and the economic opportunities of international zones after the First World War

In 1920, the League of Nations implemented the first modern international zones in Europe. While historians have largely presented international zones as unworkable peace-making solutions devoid of resident support, this article draws attention to those figures who saw in zones an opportunity to cash in on the end of empire. It follows the case of Ludwig Noé–a preeminent industrialist in the Free City of Danzig–who was employed to run the city’s imperial shipyard. Noé’s transformation of the Danzig shipyard into a successful international concern demonstrated the economic advantages that internationalisation could facilitate and chimed with calls to exploit the zone further by converting it into a manufacturing free port. The article contributes, therefore, to a growing literature concerned with how abstract international visions were realized locally and independently, and who, ultimately, made internationalism work in the 1920s.