Ludwig Noé, shipping and the economic opportunities of international zones

In 1920, the League of Nations implemented the first modern international zones in Europe to help smooth the transition out of empire. While historians have largely presented international zones as unworkable and despised by nationalists, this article draws attention to those citizens who saw opportunities in them. It follows the case of Ludwig Noé – a preeminent industrialist in the Free City of Danzig – who was employed to make the zone’s shipyard a successful international concern. Noé’s transformation of the Danzig shipyard demonstrates the economic advantages that internationalisation could facilitate, and his work chimed with broader support for manufacturing free ports, which some contemporaries hoped would precipitate commercial windfalls in the 1920s. The article contributes, therefore, to a growing literature on efforts to use the international arena to experiment with new economic ideas, demonstrating how abstract international visions were realized locally and independently.