Industrial history

The industrial history is a branch of economic history and deals with historical analysis, comparison and representation of industrial developments and its influencing factors of industrialization through to structural change . It is therefore closely linked to other bridging disciplines such as the history of technology , transport history , company history , social history and cultural history, and architectural history and art history . She experiences a practical, mostly regional historical representation based on industrial monuments with the help of industrial culture .

Representation of industrial development

On April 14, 1365, Emperor Karl IV enfeoffed Count Ulrich von Helfenstein with the right to dig for ore in the Heidenheim an der Brenz rulership and to build smelting furnaces and hammer mills. The date is considered to be the hour of birth of the first industrially oriented factory in Europe, which was called Schwäbische Hüttenwerke .

Industrial history differentiates between the phases of the pre-industrial era (before 1770), the first modern industry (1770-1820), early industrialization (1820-1860), late industrialization (1860-1890) and high industrialization (since 1890). The years are not considered to be fixed periods of time. The era of the digital revolution has existed since 1969 . The main causes of industrialization are important technical inventions and a rationalization of work organization .

Pre-industrial era

The first industrial approaches could already be seen in the 16th century in the publishing system , which was characterized by the decentralized production of textiles that were manufactured by the so-called laid people in home work and marketed centrally by the publisher. The publishers acted as merchants who coordinated production, “submitted” the capital ( pre-financing ) and were therefore initially called “Vorleger”, then “Publishers”. You bore the market risk . The next form of business was the manufacture ( Latin manu facere , "to make by hand") with wage laborers centralized in workshops and predominantly manual labor. They mostly produced luxury goods such as silk , porcelain , tapestries , leather goods and watches . The first factories were probably established in France after King Henry IV instructed every municipality in 1602 to set up a mulberry tree plantation and a silkworm farm .

Industrial Museum Kupfermühle, view of the water wheel and hall with the hammer mill

Around 1600 the Danish King and Duke of Schleswig Christian 4th had a hammer mill for metal processing built close to Flensburg on the Krusau . The most important basic requirements at the time, duty-free traffic routes, energy and raw material supplies were given. Flensburg was the second most important port in the great Kingdom of Denmark , and raw copper and metal ores were delivered duty-free from Roros (Norway) via Trondheim , using what is still the most effective means of transport today - ship . By 1800 the copper and brass works had developed into the largest industrial facility in the Duchy of Schleswig and was considered one of the largest in the Kingdom of Denmark. The region goes to Prussia in 1864 and in 1871 a facility for using steam power is built in the Crusau copper and brass factory in addition to water power.

With the invention of the coking process in England by Abraham Darby II in 1735, it was possible to replace charcoal in the previous pig iron production and to intensify mining and the iron and steel industry . Benjamin Huntsman 1740 developed a process, the former cement steel in a crucible furnace remelt crucible ( cast steel ) and so freeing it from its slag residues. Both processes made a significant contribution to industrial development, initially in England. Finally, after 1769, the factory ( Latin fabrica , "workshop") emerged, in which the workers mainly used mechanical equipment . This was particularly true of the first Waterframe spinning machine , which in 1771 led to the establishment of the world's first industrial cotton mill by its inventor Richard Arkwright in Cromford . England was considered a leading country in industrial development, and from 1775 it belonged to the wealthiest nations in Europe alongside France, Belgium and Holland .

The first mechanical spinning mill was built in the Rhineland near Ratingen in 1783 , followed by Chemnitz in 1799 . He named the mechanical cotton spinning mill founded by Johann Gottfried Brügelmann near Ratingen after his model "Cromford Mill" textile factory Cromford . It earned the reputation of being the first modern factory in mainland Europe. The mechanical loom by Edmund Cartwright reached by 1785 20 times the productivity of a manual loom.

First modern industry

Another invention sparked the emergence of the first modern industry. James Watt received a patent for his invention of the steam engine in January 1769 , which the textile industry initially used to drive textile machines . Their versatility ensured they were used in steamships ( Claude François Jouffroy d'Abbans ) in June 1783 , in mining for the first time in August 1785 in Hettstedt ( Carl Friedrich Bückling ) and in February 1804 in rail-bound steam locomotives ( Richard Trevithick ). As a result, shipbuilding , railway construction , the mining industry and the steel industry became industrialized . This development is considered to be the beginning of the age of the first industrial revolution , which transformed some agricultural states into industrial states through increasing industrialization .

Around 1800 Germany was still considered an agricultural state because about 62% of the employees worked in agriculture , only 21% worked in trade . Crafts dominated here (50%), followed by the publishing system (45%) and manufacturers (5%).

Early industrialization

The machine spinning process reached 200 times the productivity of the manual spinning wheel around 1820. In England there were already 1500 steam engines for industrial production in 1821, which made England the first industrial state in Europe.

After the end of the Congress of Vienna in June 1815, the process of early industrialization began in Germany . The main reasons included the establishment of the “Preußisch-Rheinische Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft” (forerunner of the Cologne-Düsseldorf German Rhine Shipping Company ) in October 1825, followed by the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in June 1837 and the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in October 1843 . Ship and railroad construction benefited from this . At the forefront of railway construction was undisputedly the Borsig company , which produced its first locomotive in 1841 and its thousandth in 1858 and with 1,100 employees rose to become the third largest locomotive factory in the world.

The German Revolution of 1848/1849 marked the transition from early industrialization to the second industrial revolution. Johann von Zimmermann founded Germany's first machine tool factory in Chemnitz in 1848 . The most important branch of industry in Germany in 1850, with 45.5% of employees, was still the textile industry, whose share in 1959 was only 15.2%. In contrast, the metal industry grew from 10.8% (1850) to 33.4% (1959). The textile industry received a second boost from around 1860 through the mechanization of cotton weaving.

Late industrialization and high industrialization (from 1860)

In the USA the industrial revolution started comparatively late, swiftly since 1850 and clearly recognizable after the Civil War from 1865. Here, too, the railways and the basic industries proved to be the pacemakers . Railways provided the industrial infrastructure , and energy provided industry with the basis of production. The 3,069-kilometer transcontinental railroad connection between New York City and San Francisco was completed on May 10, 1869, and frozen carriages have been bringing fresh meat from Chicago to New York since 1887 . John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 to meet the enormous demand for oil. The incandescent lamp invented by Thomas Alva Edison in 1879 also made it possible to illuminate factories .

Werner von Siemens invented a powerful dynamo for generating electricity in 1866 , Nicolaus Otto invented the internal combustion engine in 1862, and in 1876 electric motors were available as drive units. Gradually the industrial sector in Germany was able to take on a leading role in the economy. Further technical advances ensured increasing mechanization. The first usable steam turbines were developed by the Swede Carl Gustav Patrik de Laval (1883; principle of action ) and the Englishman Charles Parsons (1884; principle of reaction ). In 1891, Oskar von Miller succeeded in connecting industrial operations to remote power sources through the remote transmission of three-phase current, so that the choice for industrial locations could be made more independent of existing energy sources.

After Carl Benz in 1885, the automobile invented intensified industrialization significantly by 1897 starting in the US automotive industry , the 1913 Henry Ford's company's first permanent assembly line ( English moving assembly line ) began. As a result, Ford increased production eight times, so that he was able to reduce the price of his model Tin Lizzy enormously and increase wages at the same time . As early as October 1912, Friedrich Krupp AG had its employee Benno Strauss patented as the inventor of stainless steel , even though Harry Brearley was not celebrated as the inventor of stainless steel in Sheffield until August 1913 .

The question of the share of large-scale industry in the rise of the NSDAP is a central subject in historical studies in the political and scientific discussion of National Socialism and the final phase of the Weimar Republic . The main controversial issue is whether and to what extent large-scale industry promoted the NSDAP in the decisive years after the Reichstag elections from 1930 to the beginning of National Socialist rule in 1933.

During the Second World War , many industrial companies - as far as it was technically possible - had to make their capacities available as an armaments industry ; this made them strategic targets for Allied air raids from May 1940. The German industrial plants, which were completely destroyed as a result, experienced rapid reconstruction in accordance with the latest technical standards from 1946 onwards . The competitiveness that has now also increased as a result of this and the product quality “ Made in Germany ” were the main reasons for the export growth supported by industry during the economic miracle . However, this was done at a flat level, because if real industrial production in 1936 is assumed to be 100%, it was 34% in the post-war year 1946, 40% in 1947 and 60% in 1948. Germany continued on its way as an industrialized state, because in 1950 industry achieved a turnover of 80 billion DM, followed at a long distance with 27 billion DM in handicrafts and 9.4 billion DM in agriculture.

Digital revolution

The digital revolution is the period that has existed since 1969 and is characterized by the invention of digital technologies and the establishment of new industries . The development of the Internet since October 1969 promoted digitization , which Intel intensified in November 1971 with the first commercial microprocessor . Their microprocessor was also built into the Micral N microcomputer from February 1973, which is considered the forerunner of today's personal computer . This was followed, among other things, by the founding of Microsoft in April 1975, which concentrated on software production. The Apple II came on the market in April 1977 and had the basic features of a PC today. IBM , which had underestimated the development of medium-sized data technology , only brought out its first PC in August 1981. New cutting-edge technologies spread worldwide through the CD player and the compact disc (September 1981). In addition to digital sound carriers , digitization also captured image carriers ( photography , film ) with the help of the DVD released in November 1996 . The rapid IT industrialization brought by Motorola International 3200 in September 1991 the first digital GSM-enabled mobile phone indicates that the digital media added. It triggered a real mobile phone boom in Germany from 2000 onwards .

literature

Wolfgang Wüst (ed.): Regional economic and industrial history in a small town-rural environment (micro and macro - comparative regional studies 1) Erlangen 2015. ISBN 978-3-940804-07-5 .