Industrial revolution in Germany
The industrial revolution was the phase of the breakthrough of industrialization in Germany, the beginning of which is dated by Hubert Kiesewetter to 1815 and by Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning to 1835.
This was preceded by the periods of pre-industrialization and early industrialization. In general, the decades between the 1830s and 1873 are considered the phase of industrial “take off” ( Walt Rostow ). The industrial revolution was followed by the phase of high industrialization during the German Empire . The (catching up) industrial revolution in Germany differed from that of the pioneering country Great Britain in that the key industries were not the textile industry , but the coal and steel industry and railway construction .
Another characteristic was the regional character of industrialization. Partly against the background of older traditions, partly because of the favorable location (e.g. on trade routes , rivers, canals, near raw material deposits or sales markets) or for other reasons, the industrial revolution concentrated on a few regional densification zones . In some older industrial landscapes, in which the adaptation to the new era did not succeed, deindustrialization processes took place. Initially, industrial development was too weak to create any significant number of new jobs for a growing population . On the contrary, industrial competition initially exacerbated the crisis in the crafts and many traditional branches of industry. This was one of the causes for the pauperism of the pre-March period . Only with the breakthrough of the industrial revolution did new job opportunities emerge on a large scale. In the further course the social question shifted away from the rural lower classes and towards the growing working population with their poor working conditions and often low wages.
Concept development
The term “industrial revolution” originated in France during and after the French Revolution. It was at times an analogy to compare the political change in France and the roughly simultaneous changes in commercial production in Great Britain. The use was similar in the following decades, e.g. B. 1827 in a report in the newspaper Moniteur Universel or 1837, when Adolphe Jérôme Blanqui used the term to compare the violent development in France with the peaceful development in England. In 1839 it was used by Natalis Briavoinne (1799–1869) as a process and epoch term. Outside France, it appears for the first time in 1843 with Wilhelm Schulz and in 1845 in Friedrich Engels ' work " The Situation of the Working Class in England ".
Engels also compared the political revolution in France and industrial development in Great Britain. For him the industrial revolution was a turning point. “ ... there is hardly an event in world history which in the short period of a few generations has brought about such extraordinary changes, has so violently intervened in the fate of the educated peoples and will still intervene than the industrial revolution, in which our time is entering. "
If the term was limited here to the industrial development emanating from England, Schulz had already applied it to other epochs. In this he was followed above all by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, such as John Stuart Mill or Arnold Toynbee . The historical uniqueness of the emergence of large-scale industry was emphasized as an epoch designation towards the end of the 19th century, while as a process designation he interpreted the upheaval as something unfinished. The level of meaning as a process term lost significantly in importance in the 20th century compared to the term industrialization.
Problem of chronological delimitation
In research it is undisputed that the industrial revolution was based on preconditions, some of which were long ago. Some - like Simon Smith Kuznets - therefore put the concept of a revolution into perspective in the sense of a radical upheaval in view of the character of development. Kuznets regarded the period from the middle of the 18th century to the present as the epoch of “modern economic growth.” Most researchers, however, held and are adhering to the idea of an industrial breakthrough in the sense of a comparatively rapidly growing economic growth in Germany as well Development solid. However, the exact delimitation remains controversial.
In the meantime it has become accepted in research to distinguish a “preparatory phase” from the actual beginning of industrialization, which began around 1790 and which was followed by the actual phase of “take off” (or the industrial revolution). Its beginning is still controversial. Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning , Karl Heinrich Kaufhold and Jürgen Kocka date their beginnings in the 1830s. Reinhard Spree , Richard H. Tilly and also Hans-Ulrich Wehler see the decisive step towards accelerated industrial development in the 1840s. Knut Borchardt even suggested the 1850s as the beginning of the industrial revolution.
In all of the detailed discussions, the newer authors essentially agree that after a long preliminary phase of pre-industrialization or early industrialization, Germany entered the industrial age by the middle of the 19th century, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. This applies to both the economy and society.
Pre, early and proto-industrialization
The starting point for an industrial revolution in Germany was significantly worse than in the country of origin of industrialization, in Great Britain . These include the lack of a unified market, the multitude of customs duties, currencies or weights and the territorial fragmentation in the Holy Roman Empire, which fell in 1806 . In terms of transport, the empire was much less developed than England, and there was also no overseas trade and colonial expansion. The gap compared to Great Britain was also evident in Germany's much stronger agricultural sector. In addition, no comparable "agricultural revolution" had taken place in this area at the beginning of the 19th century. There were still strong feudal elements and apart from Ostelbia , there were numerous underperforming small businesses, many of which still operated with old methods and, as subsistence businesses, were hardly connected to the market. There were also other aspects. Despite mercantilism in the 18th century, the guilds clung to old economic regulation instruments, for example in the field of handicrafts.
But there have been preparatory developments in the German states since early modern times. Werner Conze limited a preparatory phase to about the period between 1770 and 1850. This included a stronger population growth that began in the middle of the 18th century. This increased the demand and increased the workforce.
Proto-Industry and Home Trade
The guild trade was in crisis around 1800, but also in the commercial sector there were not only stagnant developments. In the factories with around 100,000 workers, there was already a kind of mass production with a division of labor to a certain extent . The publishing system ( proto-industry ) had already emerged in some regions in the late Middle Ages and above all in the early modern period. The poor strata in East Westphalia and other areas have specialized in the domestic production of linen , which has been bought by dealers and marketed on the national market. It is estimated that a million people were employed in this area around 1800.
These and other developments in the iron and metal industry and other areas have already given rise to various regional centers of commercial concentration. In the western Prussian provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia , these were, for example, the Bergisch - Mark region , the Siegerland with foothills into the Sauerland . There were similar connections in the Rhineland, where iron from the Eifel between Aachen , Eschweiler , Stolberg and Düren was processed. Above all, however, the brass , zinc and lead production was concentrated in this area . In Upper Silesia , mining and processing were carried out partly by the state and partly by large landowners. These included the Counts of Donnersmarck and the Princes of Hohenlohe . In the Kingdom of Saxony there was a highly differentiated trade from rural and urban handicrafts to home traders in the proto-industry, manufactories, mining and soon the first factories. Large parts of Saxony - above all the Chemnitz region , which was later also called the Saxon Manchester - were, like the northern Rhineland, among the fastest growing regions in Europe, said Hahn.
In connection with manufacturers and publishers, trading capital accumulated in the various industrial landscapes , which was later used not least to finance the new factories. However, these early industrial landscapes were not always a direct precursor to industrial development. Partly, as in parts of Hesse or Lower Silesia, the connection to industrialization did not succeed and in the areas of rural industry there were economic processes of decline.
Early industrialization
There have been approaches to commercial expansion since the beginning of the 19th century at the latest. Nevertheless, it makes sense to let early industrialization begin around 1815 in the sense of an immediate prehistory of the industrial revolution in Germany. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the lifting of the continental blockade, trade barriers fell on the one hand, and on the other hand the German economy was now exposed to direct competition with English industry. This increased the pressure to adapt significantly. In addition, the territorial upheaval after the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss led to the disappearance of numerous small territories and the emergence of a number of medium-sized states. But there was still no unified economic area. An important institutional factor for the commercial development was the foundation of the German Customs Union in 1834, which enabled a duty-free exchange of goods within the contract area. This was a key prerequisite for integrating the previously regionally related markets into a larger context. However, the direct promotion of industrial development by the Zollverein was limited. Industrial development was facilitated by him, but no decisive growth impulses came from him. Numerous other reforms in the areas of government, society and the economy were just as important. The Prussian reforms , which had similarly taken place in other states, are particularly well known . These included the peasants' liberation and the reforms in the trade legislation. Depending on the state, implementation dragged on well into the middle of the century.
As early as the end of the 18th century, the first modern factories came into being in Germany, alongside the home trade and manufactories . In 1784, for example, the first mechanical cotton spinning mill , the Cromford textile factory , was put into operation in Ratingen , and a year later the first steam engine in the mining industry in Hettstedt . In 1796, the first continuously producing coke oven was built in the Royal Prussian Iron Foundry in Gleiwitz . However, these early approaches did not achieve a broad impact, but remained isolated islands.
In 1798 the spinning mill was founded by CF Bernhardt in Chemnitz-Harthau . Among other things, it cleared the way for industrial development in the region. In the years that followed, countless spinning mills based on the Bernhardt spinning mill were built in Chemnitz and the Chemnitz area.
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Most of the factory-like operations were relatively simple plants that did not yet use steam power. It all started with spinning machines for yarn production; mechanical looms were added to the textile production sector in the 1830s . Seen as a whole, the early industrialization approaches were based on the production of simple consumer goods and the processing of agricultural products ( linen and wool manufacturers , distilleries , breweries , oil mills or tobacco factories ). A few larger spinning mills in Baden emerged relatively early , such as the spinning mills in St. Blasien with 28,000 spindles or the similarly sized Ettlinger Spinnerei AG. A largely new branch of the textile industry was cotton processing in the early 19th century. Saxony took the top position, followed by Prussia and Baden. The center in Prussia was the administrative district of Düsseldorf and in particular the Bergisches Land , which had already stood on the threshold of the industrial revolution around 1800 on the basis of small iron and textile industries. In Rheydt and Gladbach alone there were 16 spinning mills in 1836, for Barmen in 1830 " 38 factories for linen, half-wool, wool, cotton tapes, cords and belts, 26 factories for cloths and cloths made of linen, cotton and half-cotton, 11 factories for twisted lace and lobes, 17 factories for sewing thread, 1 factory for twilies, 7 factories for silk scarves and ribbons, 2 factories for riding crops, 1 factory for metal clad goods and buttons, 4 factories for chemical products, 3 soap factories, 50 bleaching plants, 50 Dyeing works [..] "listed. The textile industry as a whole was one of the first industrially operated branches of trade. Unlike in England, however, it was not a leading sector of the industrial revolution. Their dynamism and growth were too low for that.
The phase of the early industrial upswing that began after 1815 ended in the mid-1840s when the agricultural crisis and the effects of the revolution of 1848/49 severely impaired development. During this time the high point of the pre-March pauperism and the last "old type" agricultural crisis ( Wilhelm Abel ) fall .
The industrial revolution
The revolution of 1848/49 also marked the dividing line between early industrialization and the industrial revolution. A change from the crisis-ridden self-confidence in the 1840s to a general mood of optimism in the following decade also fits in with this. Since around this time, social production per inhabitant has increased tenfold compared to the pre-industrial era.
An important indicator for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1850s was the sudden increase in the use of hard coal . There were various growth processes behind this: a sharp increase in iron and, above all, steel production, the increased construction of machines , not least of which locomotives, and the increase in rail transport services increased the demand for energy. The growing demand for fuel and industrial goods led to a further expansion of the railway network and in turn increased the demand for new locomotives and rails. Overall, the industrial revolution in the 1850s and 1860s was characterized primarily by investments in railway construction and heavy industry.
Decline of the old trade
The overall economic development during this time was not just a success story. Rather, the import of machine-made goods, especially from Great Britain and the creation of factories in Germany itself, posed a threat to the existing older forms of economy. This applies both to iron products made with charcoal and to textiles made in factories or in the publishing system. The linen industry in particular lost its importance because of the cheaper cotton products. This threatened the very existence of the most important branch of the German textile industry.
For a while, the older production methods could hold up. In some cases, this happened quite successfully through specialization in special products (e.g. Krefeld velvet and silk, Wuppertal ribbon goods). Elsewhere, publishers reacted by lowering the fees for home weavers. In the long run, many trades could not withstand machine competition - with the exception of a few retreat areas. As a result, if the older industrial regions failed to make the transition to the factory industry, there would be a lack of job opportunities and processes of de-industrialization and rehabilitation could take place.
Another factor in the crisis was the craft . Due to the population growth in the first half of the century, the number of craftsmen increased sharply. Some mass professions such as tailors or shoemakers were overstaffed, the journeymen no longer had a chance to become masters and the income from self-employed craftsmen was extremely low. Above all, the trades, whose products competed with industry, came under pressure from this side, which erupted in riots like the Berlin tailor revolution.
Regional industrialization
A characteristic of industrial development was its uneven regional distribution . There were many reasons for this. The connection to the railway network or the availability of raw materials, workers or capital played a role.
In the decades of industrialization, some old commercial agglomeration zones adapted to industrial development. In Bielefeld, for example, the home-made linen producers were replaced by large textile factories. In Wuppertal and Saxony, too, the industry followed on from old traditions. Chemnitz was the core of Saxon industrialization and was also called "Saxon Manchester". Chemnitz developed into the leading industrial city in Germany. Machine tool construction, textile machine construction, the textile industry, bicycle construction, motorcycle construction, vehicle construction, steam engine construction, locomotive construction and the chemical industry played a leading role. In Berlin, for example, primarily the clothing industry , mechanical engineering, banks and insurance companies settled . The Rhineland benefited from its traffic situation. The Ruhr area , which is partly in the Rhine Province and partly in the Province of Westphalia , developed into the center of industry, especially the coal and steel industry, due to raw materials. There had already been mining there in some places before, but with the north migration of the production there was a completely new development in some areas. The proximity of the plants to the raw materials, for example in mechanical engineering, which has established itself at numerous locations, was less important. The locomotive factories were often built in the capital and residential cities.
Distribution of machine tool factories in Germany in 1846
- Chemnitz / Zwickau = approx. 135 factories
- Dresden = approx. 60 factories
- Berlin = approx. 38 factories
- Leipzig = approx. 19 factories
- Cologne = approx. 5 factories
- Düsseldorf = approx. 5 factories
- Middle Franconia = approx. 5 factories
But there were also areas that benefited less from industrial development. The once rich Silesia fell behind due to its relatively remote location in terms of traffic. Parts of the Sauerland and Siegerland, with their traditional iron production facilities, found it difficult or impossible to hold their own against the competition from the nearby Ruhr area. Conversely, the construction of the main line of the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, carried out until 1847, and the south parallel line of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft from 1862 had a beneficial effect on the emerging Ruhr area.
At the end of the era, four types of region can be distinguished. The first includes clearly industrialized areas such as the Kingdom of Saxony (here primarily the region around Chemnitz ), the Rhineland, Alsace-Lorraine , the Rhine-Palatinate and also the Grand Duchy of Hesse . A second group includes regions in which some sectors or subregions appear to be pioneers of industrialization, but the entire area cannot be considered industrialized. These include Württemberg , Baden , Silesia, Westphalia, and the Prussian provinces of Saxony and Hesse-Nassau . A third group includes regions in which there were early industrial approaches in some cities, but otherwise exhibited comparatively low commercial development. This includes the Kingdom or the Province of Hanover , Upper and Middle Franconia . There are also areas that were predominantly agricultural and whose trade was mostly craftsmanship. These include, for example, East and West Prussia , Posen and Mecklenburg .
Leading industries
The main engine of growth for industrialization in Germany was railway construction. The demand emanating from this promoted developments in the three most closely interlinked leading industries: mining, metal production and mechanical engineering.
Railway construction
In the secondary sector, the railroad was the strongest growth engine and also played a key role overall. The railway age began in Germany with the six-kilometer route between Nuremberg and Fürth operated by the Ludwig Railway Company . The first economically important route was the 115-kilometer Leipzig – Dresden route (1837) built on the initiative of Friedrich List .
The growing demand for transport led to the expansion of the rail network, which in turn increased the demand for iron and coal. How strong this connection was is shown by the fact that between 1850 and 1890 around half of iron production was consumed in the railway sector. With the expansion of domestic iron production since the 1850s, railway construction also gained new momentum. In the course of the expansion of the railway network, transport prices fell continuously, which in turn had a beneficial effect on the economy as a whole. The fact that between 1850 and 1890 around 25% of total investments went into this area speaks for the overall economic importance of the railway. For a long time, investments in the railways were higher than in the manufacturing or industrial sectors.
In the 1840s, railroad construction experienced its first peak. In 1840 there were about 580 kilometers, by 1850 more than 7,000 kilometers and in 1870 almost 25,000 kilometers. In 1840, more than 42,000 people were employed in the construction and operation of the railways, more than in coal mining. This number continued to grow over the next few years and in 1846 was almost 180,000 workers. Only a small part of about 26,000 workers was permanently employed in the company, the rest were busy building the lines.
Metal processing
The first steam-powered machines were built and used in Germany at the turn of the century. In 1807 the brothers Franz and Johann Dinnendahl built the first steam engines in Essen . These were primarily used to pump water in mines in the Ruhr area. Friedrich Harkort founded his mechanical workshop in Wetter in 1817 . In the Aachen area in 1836 there were nine mechanical engineering companies with a total of a thousand workers. In 1832 there were 210 steam engines in all of Prussia. The first was started in the Kingdom of Hanover in 1831.
With the beginning of the railway age in 1835, the demand for rails and locomotives grew. Since the 1830s, the number of manufacturers of steam engines and locomotives has grown. These included the Esslingen machine factory , the Sächsische Maschinenfabrik in Chemnitz , August Borsig in Berlin , Josef Anton Maffei in Munich , J.Kemna in Breslau , the later so-called Hanomag company in Hanover , Henschel in Kassel and Emil Kessler in Karlsruhe . At the top was undoubtedly 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. Their rise in turn increased the demand for products from the coal and steel industry.
In the field of metal processing , mechanical engineering, as the most modern and growth-intensive area, played a leading role. In addition to a few large companies, there were numerous small and medium-sized companies in this area, not infrequently family-owned. The main locations were Chemnitz and Zwickau , as well as Berlin, Dresden, Hanover, Leipzig, Mannheim and Cologne. Johann von Zimmermann founded Germany's first machine tool factory in Chemnitz in 1848. In addition, the clients attracted companies of this type, for example in the heavy or textile industry. Mechanical engineering in Germany benefited from the establishment of various trade schools , some of which later became technical universities . While in England new products were still being developed in the field of mechanical engineering on the basis of empirical experience , engineering calculations were already becoming established in Germany. While steam engines were mainly produced in the 1860s, the focus of production in 1871 was more or less evenly distributed among textile machines, steam engines and agricultural machinery. In 1846 there were only 1518 steam engines in the area of the Zollverein, in 1861 there were already 8,695 units. In Prussia alone there were 25,000 systems in 1873.
Mining
The mining of ores or coal was subject to the princely mountain shelf until the 19th century . In the Saar region , the Prussian state took over the coal mines in state ownership with one exception. In the Prussian western areas, the so-called principle of direction was introduced in 1766 . By making the Ruhr navigable in the final phase of the reign of Frederick II , the export of coal was made much easier. After the founding of the provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia, the Upper Mining District of Dortmund was created in 1815. This stretched from Emmerich in the west to Minden in the east, from Ibbenbüren in the north to Lüdenscheid in the south. The mining authority regulated the mining, working conditions and payment of the "miners." This meant considerable protection for employees, but also restricted business decisions. Although the production between 1790 and 1815 increased considerably from 177,000 to 513,000 tons, the economic importance was still quite modest. In 1815 only 3400 miners were employed. Mathias Stinnes from the port city of Mülheim was an example of the possibility of being successful in the mining industry despite official supervision . From 1818 he systematically built up a coal transport company with customers in the Rhineland and Holland. Stinnes soon had numerous barges and was one of the first to use steam-powered tugs. With the profit he bought shares in mining companies . In the year he died, he was the most important mining company in the district with four of his own mines and shares in 36 other mines.
The use of steam engines for drainage enabled mining to take place at greater depths. What was decisive, however, was the possibility of breaking through the marl layer with the so-called deep mining mines. As one of the first entrepreneurs, Franz Haniel (co-owner of Gutehoffnungshütte ) had such mines built near Essen in 1830 . In the following years the number of civil engineering mines increased to 48 with 95 steam engines (1845). By 1840, the production volume in the Oberbergamtsviertel rose to 1.2 million tons and the number of employees rose to almost 9,000. In other areas, too, coal production was increased in the first decades of the 19th century. This included, for example, the Aachen district in the Düren mining authority . In 1836 there were 36 mines in this region.
Above all, the demand for iron products triggered by railway construction had a beneficial effect on mining since the 1840s. There were also changes in the legal framework. This included the gradual abandonment of government control of the mining industry, particularly from 1851 onwards. This development was not completed until the Prussian mining law reform of 1861. This was one of the reasons for the boom in private mining in the Ruhr or in Silesia.
Last but not least, the changes to the mining law made it easier to implement the modern stock corporation as a form of company in the mining sector. The Irishman William Thomas Mulvany created the Hibernia AG in 1854 and in 1856 various shareholders founded the Harpener Bergbau AG . In the following decades, both rose to become leading mining companies in the area. In the 1850s, numerous new mines were opened in the Ruhr area. Their number peaked in 1860 with 277 companies. Associated with this was a considerable increase in production volumes. In the years that followed, the number of mines declined, but production capacities were further increased by merging smaller mines into larger units. Most successful at the end of the industrial revolution was Friedrich Grillo in 1873 with his Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks AG .
Iron and steel production
The beginnings of a number of heavy industrial companies that later lead the way also fall in the period of early industrialization. On the Saar, Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg and his family played a leading role in heavy industry, especially when they controlled competitor Dillinger Hütte from 1827 . In 1810 various companies founded the Gutehoffnungshütte in Sterkrade near Oberhausen . While the company only had 340 workers around 1830, it was already around 2000 in the early 1840s. Friedrich Krupp had started cast steel production in Essen in 1811, but in 1826 he left a heavily indebted company to his son Alfred . The company's situation remained problematic until railroad construction started to stimulate demand in the 1840s.
An important technical innovation in the first decades of the 19th century was the construction of puddle works , which were much more productive and cheaper than the old charcoal-based huts using hard coal. In 1824 the process was introduced at a hut in Neuwied , in 1825 Eberhard Hoesch's Lendersdorfer Hütte followed near Düren , and Harkort's plant followed a year later. The renovations and new foundations that took place in the following two decades - as in the case of the Hüstener union - led to further operating departments such as rolling mills, wire drawing shops and mechanical engineering departments. The expansion of the railway caused the demand for iron and rails and other mining industrial products to skyrocket within a short time.
In metal production, technical innovations ensured considerable progress in production, such as the aforementioned production of iron with coking coal instead of the expensive charcoal as before . While in 1850 only 25% of iron was produced with coke, only three years later it was already 63%. In the 1860s, the Bessemer process established itself in steel production . This enabled steel to be produced industrially from liquid pig iron.
In total, around 1850 at the beginning of the actual industrial revolution in the territory of the German Confederation, only 13,500 workers were employed in the field of pig iron production and their production volume was around 214,000 tons. In the following ten years production grew by 150%, in the 1960s again by 160% and at the height of the industrial revolution from 1870 to 1873 by 350%. During this time the number of workers had only grown by 100%. The reasons lay in the technical improvement in production, but also in the emergence of an experienced skilled workforce. The technically more complex steel production expanded even more and had almost caught up with iron production by 1850. At that time, around 200,000 tons were being produced with around 20,000 workers. In 1873 production was 1.6 million tons with 79,000 employees.
Group formation
While the heavy industrial enterprises were not infrequently small businesses at the beginning of the industrial revolution, in the course of this period some of them grew into giant businesses. In 1835, 67 people worked at Krupp, in 1871 there were already 9,000 and in 1873 just under 13,000. At the same time, with exceptions such as Krupp or a few Upper Silesian family businesses, the stock corporations established themselves as the dominant form of company.
In addition, vertically and horizontally connected corporations emerged - especially in heavy industry - during this phase . For example, mines, iron and steel production, rolling mills and mechanical engineering companies were combined. The Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen , the Bochumer Verein , the Hoesch and Thyssen companies , the Hoerder Verein and family businesses such as Henckel von Donnersmarck in Upper Silesia developed in this direction . While most companies only gradually developed in this direction, the Dortmunder Union was founded in 1872 as a diversified business association. The same applies to Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks AG (1873). Both projects were largely driven by Friedrich Grillo and financed by the Disconto-Gesellschaft headed by Adolph von Hansemann .
Industrial finance and banking
The financing of the first industrial companies was not infrequently based on equity or family money. In the longer term, it was necessary to set up and develop companies so that banks could provide the required capital. In the first decades these were mostly private bankers. In addition, the development of joint stock banks and the system of universal banks typical of later developments in Germany began as early as 1870. The private banks initially played a central role in financing the profitable railway construction. These were the issuing offices for the corresponding shares and the heads of the banks often sat on the management bodies or supervisory boards of the railway companies. The role of private banks in the Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft is particularly well documented . Initially the leading force was Ludolf Camphausen . There were also A. Schaaffhausen and Abraham Oppenheim from Cologne's banking sector , as well as a group from Aachen around David Hansemann . Later Oppenheim became the main shareholder. The railroad business was also important as a bridge to investment in mining and heavy industry. However, the financing of the railways was also very risky. Therefore, in the circles of West German private bankers, plans for the establishment of joint stock banks emerged as early as the 1840s, but these failed because of the Prussian state bureaucracy. As a reaction to the acute crisis of the Schaafhausen Bank, the A. Schaaffhausen'sche Bankverein was founded in 1848 as the first public limited company. This was followed in 1853 by the bank for trade and industry , also known as Darmstädter Bank , in which Gustav Mevissen , among others, participated, in 1856 David Hansemann's Disconto-Gesellschaft , which was converted into a stock corporation, and in the same year the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft . These corporations focused on financing industrial and other businesses with high capital requirements. As a result, unlike in Great Britain, for example, there was a division of labor. The issue of banknotes remained in the hands of (semi-) state institutions. The Prussian Bank soon played a central role in this. In contrast, private and joint stock banks concentrated on the founding and issuing activities of industrial stock corporations.
Economic alternation
In relation to the economy in this period as a whole, the growth rates were not above average. The average increase in the net national product per year was 2.36% between 1850 and 1857 and rose to about 3.31% between 1863 and 1871. A different picture emerges if the various economic sectors are considered separately. By far the greatest growth was seen in the industrial sector. This development was really new. Within the industry, consumer goods production initially dominated, especially the textile industry . The economic development in the industrial sector was therefore still heavily dependent on the development of real wages. This changed significantly after 1840 when railways and heavy industry rose to become industrial leaders. The industrial economic development now primarily followed its own profit expectations.
However, the secondary sector was not yet strong enough to dominate overall economic development. It was only towards the end of the industrial revolution around 1870 that he clearly assumed the leading role. Until then, the development of agriculture, the main component of the primary sector, had its own dynamic. This is also one of the reasons why macroeconomic business cycles in the current sense only appeared since the beginning of the German Empire. Up until then, older, agrarian upswings and downswings mixed with industrial influences in the “economic shifts”.
The older type of agricultural economic crises were primarily related to crop failures, i.e. natural influences. Good harvests made food cheaper, but a sharp drop in prices led to a loss of income for farmers, which in turn had a significant impact on the demand for commercial products. Conversely, poor harvests led to an extreme rise in food prices. There were agricultural crises of this kind in 1805/06, 1816/17 ( year without summer ), 1829/30 and the worst was that of 1846/47 (→ potato revolution ).
The industrial type of the economy can be demonstrated in Germany for the first time in the mid-1840s. In the years 1841 to 1845 there was a real investment boom in the railways, which attracted capital in a previously unknown amount within a very short time, but then quickly broke off again.
The slowdown in this upswing was linked to the agricultural crisis of 1847 and intensified it further. In addition to food inflation and the hunger crisis, there was unemployment and loss of earnings. This also intensified the pre-revolutionary development in the lower classes. The economic slump did not end until the end of 1849 or the beginning of 1850.
In the opinion of historians, the fact that the crop failures in the early 1850s only had a regional impact, since transport by rail in particular ensured a balance within Europe, speaks in favor of a fundamental change. During this period investments were made in all commercial areas, especially in the railways. The rise of industry was interrupted from 1857 to 1859 by a massive economic downturn, which was often referred to as the " first world economic crisis " ( Hans Rosenberg ). In essence, it was a trade, speculative and banking crisis, starting primarily in Hamburg. The crisis came when the trade and arms deals between Hamburg, America, England and Scandinavia financed with bank bills collapsed. The origin was in the USA, where the collapse of a bank triggered a kind of chain reaction and the collapse of numerous other credit institutions. However, there were also factors in the industrial area. In many places, production capacities did not keep pace with demand. However, the crisis was much shorter and the effects less serious than the founder crisis after 1873.
Compared to the first half of the 1850s, the economy remained comparatively weak in the first half of the 1860s. This was mainly due to external influences such as the American Civil War . The textile industry in particular suffered from the lack of cotton deliveries from the south . Incidentally, after the experience of the years 1857–1859, companies were reluctant to invest. After the mid-1860s, there was another notable economic upturn, which turned into the “start-up boom”. This was no longer borne solely by heavy industry , but the textile industry and agriculture grew almost as significantly. Only briefly slowed down by the war of 1870/71, growth continued until the start of the founding crisis in 1873. Whereas in the middle of the century the economic fluctuations were also determined by agriculture, industry now clearly dominated.
Change in society
During the decades of the industrial revolution, society changed significantly as well as the economy. Similar to the way in which older forms of business appeared alongside modern industry in the economic sphere, older and newer ways of life, social groups and social problems also mixed.
Bourgeoisie
The 19th century is considered to be the time of the breakthrough in civil society . In quantitative terms, however, the citizens never made up the majority of society. In the beginning the rural society predominated and in the end the industrial workers were about to outnumber the citizens. The bourgeois way of life, its values and its norms were formative for the 19th century. Although the monarchs and nobility initially maintained their leadership role in politics, this was shaped and challenged solely by the new national and bourgeois movements.
However, the bourgeoisie was not a homogeneous group, but consisted of different parts. The old urban bourgeoisie of craftsmen, innkeepers and traders stood in continuity with the bourgeoisie of the early modern period . This gradually passed downwards into the petty bourgeoisie of the small tradesmen, individual masters or traders. The number of full citizens was between 15 and 30% of the population until the 19th century. After the reforms in the Confederation of the Rhine, in Prussia and later also in the other German states, they lost the exclusivity of their citizenship status through the civic concept of equality and the gradual implementation of the municipalities . With a few exceptions, in the early 19th century the group of old townspeople persisted in the traditional ways of life. In the urban bourgeoisie, class tradition, family rank, familiar forms of business, class-specific expenditure on expenditure counted. By contrast, this group was skeptical of the rapid but risky industrial development. Numerically, this group formed the largest citizen group until well into the middle of the 19th century.
Beyond the old bourgeoisie, new civic groups have emerged since the 18th century. Above all, this includes the educated and economic bourgeoisie. The core of the educated bourgeoisie in the territory of the German Confederation was predominantly made up of senior employees in the civil service, in the judiciary and in the higher education system of grammar schools and universities, which expanded in the 19th century. In addition to the civil servant educated bourgeoisie, freelance academic professions such as doctors, lawyers, notaries or architects only began to gain numerical importance from the 1830s and 1940s. It was constitutive for this group that membership was not based on class privileges, but on performance qualifications.
Self-recruitment was high, but the educated middle class in the first half of the 19th century was quite receptive to social climbers. About 15–20% came from a rather petty bourgeois background and made it through high school and university. The different origins were brought into line through training and similar social groups.
The educated bourgeoisie, which made up a considerable part of the bureaucratic and legal functional elite, was politically undoubtedly the most influential bourgeois subgroup. At the same time, however, it also set cultural norms that were more or less adapted by other bourgeois groups right up to the working class and even by the nobility. This includes, for example, the bourgeois family image of the publicly active man and the wife caring for the house and children, which dominated into the 20th century. The educated bourgeoisie was based on a new humanist ideal of education. This served both to distinguish itself from the privilege-based nobility and from the uneducated classes.
With the industrial development, a new economic bourgeoisie emerged in addition to city and educated citizens. The German form of the bourgeoisie came from the group of entrepreneurs. Research estimates that up to the middle of the 19th century, several hundred entrepreneurial families could be counted here. By 1873, their number increased to a few thousand families, but the economic bourgeoisie was numerically the smallest bourgeois subgroup. In addition to industrialists, they also included bankers, capital owners and, increasingly, employed managers.
The social origins of the economic citizens varied. Some of them, such as August Borsig, were social climbers from craft circles, a considerable number, such as the Krupps, came from respected, long-established and wealthy city-middle-class merchant families. It is estimated that around 54% of industrialists came from entrepreneurial families, 26% came from families of farmers, self-employed artisans or small traders, and the remaining 20% came from the educated middle class, from officer and large landowning families. Hardly any industrialists came from working-class families or the rural lower class. Already during the industrial revolution, the type of social climber lost weight. While around 1851 only 1.4% of entrepreneurs were academically educated, by 1870 37% of all entrepreneurs had attended a university. Since the 1850s, the economic bourgeoisie began to separate itself from the other bourgeois groups through its lifestyle - for example by building representative villas or buying land. Some of these began to orient themselves towards the nobility in their lifestyle . However, only the owners of large companies had the opportunity to do so. In addition, there was a middle class of entrepreneurs, such as the Bassermann family , who set themselves apart from the nobility and followed a distinctly middle-class ideology.
Pauperism
The growth of the new industry has been impressive in some areas; For a long time, however, these impulses were insufficient to properly employ and feed the growing population. In addition, the collapse of old trades and the crisis of the handicrafts aggravated the social hardship. This mainly affected the often overstaffed manufacturing trade. In the medium term, however, the craftsmen managed to adapt to industrial capitalist conditions. The building trade benefited from the growth of the cities and other craft sectors increasingly concentrated on repair instead of production.
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In rural society, the number of farms in the sub-or small-scale classes with little or no arable land had risen sharply since the 18th century. The commercial employment opportunities - be it in the agricultural trade or in the home trade - had made a major contribution to this. With the crisis in the handicrafts and the decline of the home industry, significant parts of these groups found themselves in dire straits. These developments contributed significantly to the pauperism of the Vormärz. In the medium term large parts of the factory workers came from these groups, but for a longer transition period industrialization meant the impoverishment of many people. At first, the standard of living declined with the opportunities for profit, before a large part of the home traders became unemployed. The best known in this context are the Silesian weavers .
emigration
Since most of the new industries initially gave work to the local lower classes, internal migration played a subordinate role in the first few decades. Instead, emigration appeared to be a way of overcoming social hardship. In the first decades of the 19th century, the quantitative scope of this type of migration was still limited. Between 1820 and 1830 the number of emigrants fluctuated between 3,000 and 5,000 people per year. Since the 1830s, the numbers began to increase significantly. The main phase of pauperism and the agricultural crisis of 1846/47 had an impact here. The movement therefore reached its first peak in 1847 with 80,000 emigrants.
Emigration itself took on organized forms, initially through emigration associations and increasingly through commercially oriented agents, who often worked with disreputable methods and cheated their clientele. In some cases, especially in south-west Germany and especially in Baden, emigration was encouraged by the governments in order to defuse the social crisis.
In the early 1850s, the number of emigrants continued to rise and in 1854 was 239,000 people a year. Social, economic and also latent political motives were mixed. A total of around 1.1 million people emigrated between 1850 and 1860, of which a quarter came from the real division areas of southwest Germany.
Origin of the workforce
From about the mid-1840s, the composition and character of the lower social classes began to change. One indicator of this is that since around this time the term proletariat has played an increasingly important role in contemporary social discourse and superseded the concept of pauperism until the 1860s. Contemporary definitions show how differentiated this group was in the transition from traditional to industrial society. These included manual workers and day laborers , journeymen and assistants, and finally factory and industrial wage workers. These “working classes” in the broadest sense made up about 82% of all employed persons in Prussia in 1849 and together with their members they made up 67% of the total population.
Among these, the modern factory workers initially formed a small minority. In purely quantitative terms, there were 270,000 factory workers in Prussia (including those employed in the factories ) in 1849. Including the 54,000 miners , the overall figure of 326,000 workers is still quite small. That number rose to 541,000 by 1861. Industrial workers were still a strategically important but numerically rather small group of the working classes. At the end of the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 1870s, statisticians in Prussia numbered 885,000 industrial workers and 396,000 miners. On a somewhat different basis of data, the new Reich Statistical Office in 1871 already counted 32% of the workforce in the mining , industry , metallurgy and construction sectors . The number of manual laborers and servants outside of industry and agriculture was still high at 15.5%. In terms of industrial and mining employment, highly developed Saxony was clearly in the lead with 49% of the workforce.
Not only did rural day laborers and urban industrial workers differ in their earning potential, but there were also clear differentiations within these groups. The organization of work in large companies led to a distinctive company hierarchy made up of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled employees. The core of the skilled workers came mainly from the journeymen and masters of the crisis-ridden craft. Specialized occupational groups such as printers and typesetters were once again clearly raised. Not infrequently they had a considerable degree of education, organized themselves early on and felt themselves to be the avant-garde of the qualified workforce. It is no coincidence that Stephan Born, the founder and many supporters of the General German Workers' Association, came from this environment. The unskilled and semi-skilled workers mostly came from the urban lower classes or from the surrounding rural areas. In the decades of the industrial revolution, i.e. since the 1850s, the growing industry began to increasingly attract internal migrants .
Women's work was and remained widespread in some sectors such as the textile industry, but women were hardly employed in mining or heavy industry. In the first few decades in particular, there was also child labor in the textile industry . However, the extent was significantly smaller than in the first decades of industrialization in England. It also remained a passing phenomenon. Child and women's labor, however, remained a widespread phenomenon in agriculture and the home industry.
The merging of the initially very heterogeneous groups into a workforce with a more or less common self-image initially took place in the cities and was not least a result of the immigration of rural lower classes. The members of the pauperized strata of the Vormärz hoped to find more permanent and better paid services in the cities. In the course of time, the initially very heterogeneous stratum of the “working classes” grew together, and a permanent social milieu developed thanks to the close coexistence in the cramped workers' quarters .
A profound change in mentality took place within the “working classes”. While the urban and rural lower classes had largely regarded their need as unchangeable, the new opportunities to earn income in industry led to an increase in the will to change. Those affected saw their situation as unjust and pressed for change. This was one of the social foundations for the emerging labor movement . The spreading social grievances of the growing population groups were discussed as a social question , for which social reformers , catheter socialists and early socialists developed different solutions.
literature
- Knut Borchardt : Outline of German economic history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1978, ISBN 3-525-33421-4 .
- Christoph Bucheim: Industrial Revolutions. Long term economic development in the UK, Europe and overseas . dtv, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-04622-8 .
- Wolfram Fischer , Jochen Krengel, Jutta Wietog: Social history workbook . Vol. 1: Materials on the history of the German Confederation 1815–1870 . Munich 1982, ISBN 3-406-04023-3 .
- Rainer Fremdling : Railways and German Economic Growth 1840–1879 . Dortmund 1975.
- Hans-Werner Hahn : The industrial revolution in Germany . Munich 2005, ISBN 3-486-57669-0 .
- Hans-Werner Hahn: Between Progress and Crises. The forties of the 19th century as the breakthrough phase of German industrialization (= writings of the historical college . Lectures 38) . Munich 1995 ( digitized version ).
- Wolfgang Hardtwig : Pre-March. The monarchical state and the bourgeoisie . dtv, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-04502-7 .
- Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning: Industrialization in Germany 1800 to 1914 . Schöningh, Paderborn 1973.
- Jürgen Kocka : Employment relationships and employee livelihoods. Foundations of class formation in the 19th century . Bonn 1990.
- Toni Pierenkemper : Trade and Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries . Munich 1994, ISBN 3-486-55015-2 (Encyclopedia of German History, Vol. 29).
- Wolfram Siemann : Society on the move. Germany 1849–1871. Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-518-11537-5 .
- Richard H. Tilly : From Zollverein to an industrial state. The economic and social development of Germany from 1834 to 1914 . dtv, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-423-04506-X .
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society . Vol. 2: From the reform era to the industrial and political German double revolution 1815–1845 / 49 . Munich 1989.
- Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society . Vol. 3: From the German double revolution to the beginning of the First World War . Munich 1995.
- Wolfgang Zorn (Hrsg.): Handbook of German economic and social history . Vol. 2: The 19th and 20th centuries . Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-12-900140-9 . Among other things:
- Knut Borchardt : Economic growth and changing situations . Pp. 198-275.
- Karl Heinrich Kaufhold : Crafts and Industry 1800–1850 . Pp. 321-368.
- Hermann Kellenbenz : traffic and communications, trade, money, credit and insurance . Pp. 369-425.
- Wolfram Fischer: Mining, Industry and Crafts 1850–1914 . Pp. 527-562.
- Richard Tilly: Transport and communications, trade, money, credit and insurance 1850-1914 . Pp. 563-596.
- Dieter Ziegler: The Industrial Revolution . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005.
Magazine articles
- The current situation of the commercial industry in Germany . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 2 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig July 8, 1843, p. 22-23 ( Wikisource ).
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Hubert Kiesewetter: Industrial Revolution in Germany 1815–1914 , Frankfurt am Main 1989.
- ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning: Industrialization in Germany 1800 to 1914 , Paderborn 1973, p. 111.
- ↑ Darst. And quotation from: Dietrich Hilger : Industry as an epoch term: industrialism and industrial revolution . In: Basic historical terms: historical lexicon on the political-social language in Germany . Vol. 3. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982. pp. 286-296.
- ↑ Tilly, p. 184 f., Pierenkemper, Gewerbe und Industrie, p. 49 f., P. 58–61, Siemann, Gesellschaft, p. 94–97, Hahn, industrial revolution, p. 1.
- ^ Hahn, industrial revolution, pp. 4–6.
- ^ Hahn, industrial revolution, p. 7, Pierenkemper, p. 50.
- ↑ Numbers according to Hahn, industrial revolution, p. 9.
- ^ Hahn: Industrial Revolution , p. 8. Pierenkemper: Gewerbe , p. 51 ff., P. 100ff. Wehler: History of Society, Vol. 2, pp. 78–81.
- ↑ Botzenhart, Reform, Restoration, Crisis, pp. 95-104, Siemann, Vom Staatbund zum Nationstaat, pp. 337–342.
- ^ Hahn, industrial revolution, p. 10 f.
- ^ Bernhard Neumann (1904): Die Metle , p. 34 ; see also here .
- ^ Friedrich von Restorff : Topographical-Statistical Description of the Royal Prussian Rhine Province. Nicolai, Berlin and Stettin 1830 ( digitized edition at the Bavarian State Library )
- ↑ Kaufhold, Handwerk und Industrie, pp. 328–333, Wehler, Gesellschaftgeschichte Vol. 2, pp. 79–86, pp. 91–94, Pierenkemper, Industrie und Gewerbe, pp. 49–58.
- ↑ Pierenkemper, Industrie und Gewerbe, pp. 58–61.
- ^ Wehler, Gesellschaftgeschichte vol. 2, pp. 54–64, p. 72, p. 93 f., Kaufhold, Handwerk und Industrie, p. 329 f.
- ↑ Ilja Mieck : From the reform period to the revolution (1806-1847) . In: Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.): History of Berlin, first volume . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1987, pp. 526-529. ISBN 3-406-31591-7 .
- ↑ Hans J. Naumann et al. (Ed.): Machine tool construction in Saxony: from the beginnings to the present. Chemnitz, 2003.
- ↑ Siemann, Gesellschaft, p. 99 f., Wehler, Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2, p. 627.
- ^ Rainer Fremdling : Railways and German Economic Growth 1840–1879 , Dortmund 1975, Kellenbenz, Verkehrs- und Nachrichtenwesen, pp. 370–373, Wehler, Vol. 3, pp. 67–74.
- ↑ Hermann Kellenbenz , Verkehrs- und Nachrichtenwesen , pp. 370–373, Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 108–111, Wehler, Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2, p. 77, p. 81, p. 614, p. 628, Kocka, Employment conditions, p. 68, see Rainer Fremdling : Modernization and growth of heavy industry in Germany 1830-1860 . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 5th year 1979, pp. 201–227.
- ↑ Fischer, Bergbau, Industrie und Handwerk, pp. 544–548, Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 105 f., Wehler, Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 2, pp. 73–82, p. 626.
- ↑ Siemann, p. 106 f., Wehler, vol. 2, p. 76–78, 82 f., Wehler, vol. 3, p. 75–77, Kocka, Arbeitsrechte, p. 72.
- ↑ Wehler, Vol. 3, pp. 85-87.
- ↑ Tilly, pp. 59-66.
- ^ Wehler, History of Society Vol. 3, p. 83.
- ↑ Tilly, p. 29.
- ↑ Johannes Bracht (2013): Geldlose Zeiten and overcrowded coffers , p. 49 ( online )
- ↑ dhm.de
- ↑ Tilly, p. 29 f.
- ↑ Knut Borchardt, Economic Growth, pp. 198–210, pp. 255–275, Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 102–104, pp. 115–123, see Reinhard Spree : Changes in the pattern of cyclical growth in the German economy from the Early to high industrialization . In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft , 5th year 1979, pp. 228–250.
- ^ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Citizens, Workers and the Problem of Class Formation 1800-1870. In: Ders .: Learn from history? Munich, 1988. ISBN 3-406-33001-0 , pp. 161-190, Wehler, Vol. 3, 112-125, Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 157-159.
- ↑ Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 150–152, pp. 162 f., On the weavers' uprising see for example Hardtwig, Vormärz, pp. 27–32.
- ↑ Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 123-136.
- ↑ Wehler, Vol. 3, pp. 141–166, Siemann, Gesellschaft, pp. 163–171.
- ↑ Gerhard Taddey (Ed.): Lexicon of German History to 1945 , Entry: Social Policy . Knowledge Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1998, p. 1189.
- ^ Jürgen Reulecke: The beginnings of the organized social reform in Germany . In: Rüdiger vom Bruch (ed.): Neither communism nor capitalism. Civil social reform in Germany . Beck, Munich 1985, p. 21 ff.
