“buoyed by its cadre of family-owned niche companies”
The key to all successfull economies are the mom and pop small family businesses. It’ll be those that pull Germany though, nothing else.
German inheritance tax laws have favored passing wealth along to the next generation vs. selling businesses to consolidators, which has helped preserve the German economy. A good balance of public policy vs. gov’t interference in the private sector, I think.
Well, not quite 'mom and pop' small. The backbone of the German economy are companies with a few dozen to some hundreds or even thousands of employees. And most of those are still family owned/controlled.
Of course sometimes the heirs start fighting amongst each other and the company is damaged - the Dornier aircraft company was pretty much destroyed by such infighting.