Germany is the United States' most important trading partner in Europe and, with a trade volume of US$90 billion, the U.S.'s fifth-largest trading partner in the world. The American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding this year, can take credit for many substantial contributions to this flourishing exchange, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

AmCham Germany, the organization's official name since 2001, represents the interests of American companies in Germany and fosters transatlantic business exchanges in both directions. It is the oldest bilateral trade organization in Germany and the second-oldest American chamber of commerce in the world. With more than 3,000 members, including Ford, General Electric, IBM, McDonald's, Kodak, Xerox and Oracle, it is the largest American chamber of commerce in Europe, representing roughly 85% of the U.S.'s total business engagement in Germany. It stands behind 800,000 jobs and investments exceeding US$100 billion in the Federal Republic.

AmCham's headquarters are in Berlin, its operations managed by Fred B. Irwin, vice president of e-business at Citibank. It has 500 honorary members who work together in 30 regional and thematic committees to "expand German-American trade relations and to cultivate the German investment climate," according to the organization. "The voice of AmCham Germany is listened to in the political landscape," says Irwin.

The chamber sees itself as a lobbying group and attributes a considerable share of many political successes to its efforts over several decades: It takes credit for getting American banks to provide the capital necessary to establish Lufthansa, Germany's flagship airline, and for the fact that Americans sent abroad by U.S. firms as well as their spouses can obtain work permits in Germany.

AmCham's development was shaped in large part by the vicissitudes of 20th-century German history. American businessmen who sought to bolster free trade in the Wilhemian empire founded the organization in Berlin in 1903. In 1906, at the wish of Prussian authorities, the chamber reorganized under the name "American Association of Commerce and Trade." During World War I, the organization was engaged in repatriating Americans living in Germany. During the Weimar period that followed, the chamber reverted to its original name and worked to revitalize German-American trade relations. By the time Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the organization had nearly 1,000 members, most in Berlin and Frankfurt.

But in 1936 the United States rescinded Germany's "most-favored" nation status. American exports to Germany plunged from US$482 million a decade earlier to just US$83 million that year. In 1939, the U.S. government ordered all Americans to leave Germany; only a few stayed behind for business purposes. Finally, in 1941, America's declaration of war against Germany shuttered the chamber's activities and its president was jailed, then deported.

In 1949, foreign trade controls for the nascent Federal Republic were lifted, and the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany established itself anew. In the divided Germany of the 1950s, disagreement erupted over whether the organization should remain in Berlin as a sign of hope for eventual reunification or be relocated to Frankfurt, Germany's financial capital and home of a major American military base. A separate organization was established in Frankfurt, though the two bodies later merged.

AmCham takes particular pride in its constant engagement with eastern Germany. In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, 100 American companies had business connections "on the other side." After unification in 1990, the chamber set up a range of workshops for businesses in the east to bring them into contact with American companies in the west and to interest American investors in revitalizing ailing state-run industries. In the early 1990s, the chamber opened offices in Saxony and Thuringia, two of the five "new" federal states.

In recent months, political relations between Germany and the U.S. have grown more difficult. But trade relations have not been affected, a sign, perhaps, of just how much AmCham Germany has contributed to the ties that bind the two nations.