Connections and Complications - The Roots of Modernity

The Roots of Modernity

5.2 Connections and Complications

The development of widespread and unhindered communication implied, of course, the cultivation of each state’s external relations. During the 1860s, tele-graphic transmissions across much of Central Europe continued to be managed through the regular conferences of the Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphen-Verein(DÖTV), at which the representatives of member states discussed possible means of streamlining communication across Germany. These meetings, how-ever, also served to highlight the diverging interests of the states involved, an issue further complicated by parallel initiatives to develop an even broader European

⁵² I. Burkhardt,Das Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Verwaltung in Bayern während der Anfänge der Industrialisierung (1834–1868)(Berlin, 2001), pp. 200–8.

⁵³ BHStA, MH 16799, Gumbart,‘Bericht, Erweiterung des bayerischen Telegraphen-Netzes betr.’, 15 Apr. 1867.

⁵⁴ BHStA, Staatsrat 1148, ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Staatsrats’, Beilage V, ‘Motive zum Gesetzentwurf’, 12 Oct. 1867.

⁵⁵ Ibid. ⁵⁶ Ibid. ⁵⁷ Ibid.

framework of communication, as well as the incipient globalization of the tele-communications industry, from which Germany appeared to be excluded.

The member states of theDÖTV agreed on a number of pragmatic policies designed to facilitate communication across Germany and Austria. The removal of commutation stations at state borders, for instance, raised few objections.⁵⁸On other matters, however, particularly questions of ﬁnance, the delegates to the DÖTVconferences did not see eye to eye. Since the 1850s, states had received a proportion of all income generated across the network relative to the length of the telegraph lines which they possessed, a principle which naturally favoured the larger states of Austria and Prussia: in 1860, they received 72 per cent of the DÖTV’s total income, despite handling only around half of all telegrams trans-mitted. At Bavaria’s suggestion, therefore, the formula was changed in 1863 to take account of the volume of trafﬁc handled, but states were then soon accused of seeking to divert trafﬁc to their own lines.⁵⁹

Some of theﬁnancial questions addressed at theDÖTVwere intertwined with the changing balance of power in Central Europe more broadly. Since the late 1850s, Prussia’s representatives had been pushing for a reduction in the baseline cost and a reform of the tariff zones according to which telegrams were priced, primarily in order to bring theDÖTVin line with the West European Telegraph Union (WETU) established in 1855 by France, Belgium, Sardinia, and Switzerland. In general, the WETU charged less for long-distance communication and favoured the implementation of uniform tariffs for communication across Europe, an outward-looking policy which Prussia increasingly supported, and which matched its efforts to establish international free-trade treaties. Prussia’s efforts to introduce a similar strategy within theDÖTV, however, was hindered by other states, including Saxony and Austria, whose representatives feared that this would reduce their income, increase trafﬁc, and overburden their lines.⁶⁰

This reluctance to liberalize tariff policies was also a reaction to the leading role which Prussia was seeking to take in negotiations with western neighbours. In 1865, Napoleon III invited representatives of the DÖTVto Paris to meet with delegates from Spain, Russia, Belgium, and Denmark, among others, and discuss the establishment of an international treaty on telegraphic communication.

Prussia suggested that it attend the conference on behalf of the DÖTV as a whole, but this option was vigorously opposed by Bavaria, and the various German states concerned instead sent their own delegates.

The International Telegraph Union which resulted from these meetings was the largest international organization of the period, designed in some ways to apply

⁵⁸ Reindl,Der Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphenverein, pp. 111–39. ⁵⁹ Ibid., pp. 164–6.

⁶⁰ J. Ahvenainen, ‘The International Telegraph Union: The Cable Companies and the Governments’, in Bernard Finn and Daqing Yang (eds.), Communications under the Seas: The Evolving Cable Network and its Implications(Cambridge, Mass., 2009), pp. 61–77.

the principles of free trade to the ﬁeld of telecommunications.⁶¹ Implementing these regulations within theDÖTV, however, was problematic. The ITU’s ultimate objective was to treat all states as homogeneous price zones, but these were only progressively introduced across Germany. Prussia’s proposal to establish new, rational zones of communication across the region met with a counterproposal from Bavaria for more‘organic’zones, and an outright refusal to reduce tariffs on the part of Austria. At one conference intended to decide the issue, the Bavarian delegate complained conﬁdentially that ‘Prussia repeatedly demonstrated its attempt to become the Union’s leader’.⁶²

* * *

Beneath these discussions and negotiations, the geopolitical balance of power in Central Europe was indeed shifting. And once again, in matters of strategy, new means of communication held the potential to divide as much as to unite. In 1855, for instance, state representatives in Frankfurt had expressed the intention to provide the Confederation’s fortresses (Bundesfestungen) with telegraphic con-nections, part of a broader attempt to revitalize the Bund’s military system and paving the way for something akin to a regional defence structure.⁶³ At the same time, however, the technology was being developed for military purposes by a number of individual German states, adding a weapon to the arsenals which they would exploit during the wars of uniﬁcation. An order had been issued for its introduction in Prussia in 1856, and mobileﬁeld telegraphs were deployed when the army was temporarily mobilized during the Austro-Italian War of 1859, at which point the Bavarian military authorities also began to consider its development.⁶⁴

The successful application of new technologies, by some accounts, played a determining role in the outcome of the wars of uniﬁcation—the Prussian army’s use of the breech-loading riﬂe, in particular, has been credited for Austria’s defeat at Königgrätz in 1866.⁶⁵If we are to believe Theodor Fontane, who was dispatched as a correspondent to report on these wars, the telegraph was also one such innovation. During the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864, he wrote, ‘[d]ay and night, the telegraph ofﬁce was in operation, and gave shining proof of how the art of war had learnt to make use of the latest inventions’.⁶⁶

⁶¹ Ibid. ⁶² Reindl,Der Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphenverein, pp. 193–4.

⁶³ D. Showalter,The Wars of German Uniﬁcation, 2nd edn. (New York, 2015), pp. 45–84; see the discussions in GStA PK I. HA Rep. 75 A, Preussische Gesandschaft.

⁶⁴ BHStA, GDVA 285, Pfordten to Telegraphenamt, 6 June 1855; H. A. Wessel,Entwicklung des Nachrichtenwesens, p. 180; S. Kaufmann, Kommunikationstechnik und Kriegsführung 1815–1945:

Stufen telemedialer Rüstung(Munich, 1996), p. 87; BHStA, MH 16793, Kriegsministerium to HM, 12 Apr. 1859.

⁶⁵ Ashton,The Kingdom of Württemberg, p. 133.

⁶⁶ T. Fontane,Der Schleswig-holsteinische Krieg im Jahre 1864(Berlin, 1866), p. 184.

This technology’s inﬂuence on the conﬂicts of the 1860s is difﬁcult to assess, however. Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the Prussian General Staff who came to dominate the military scene in these years of uniﬁcation, remained sceptical as to the technology’s utility. He resented the idea of ofﬁcers going into battle with a

‘telegraph wire in the back’, insisting upon the need to grant commanders on the ground a degree of independence.⁶⁷It was not until the late 1860s, therefore, that telegraph detachments were assigned a greater role within the Prussian army, and not all of these were ready by the time of its war with France in 1870.

Often, it was the existing state networks which were of most utility during these conﬂicts. These were the lines used by the Prussian army when itﬁrst entered the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, for instance, rather than mobile ﬁeld telegraphs. During the Austro-Prussian War two years later, General Moltke used the state network to coordinate troop movements from his headquarters in Berlin, not least by facilitating the organization of railway transportation.⁶⁸ In general, however, following mobilization Moltke limited himself to the transmis-sion of occatransmis-sional last-minute decitransmis-sions, primarily using the technology as a source of information rather than control.⁶⁹In this regard, Prussia does indeed appear to have held an advantage—during the 1866 conﬂict, the commander of the Austrian imperial army, General Ludwig von Benedek, and the Austrian Kaiser himself were poorly informed of developments taking place on the battleﬁeld.⁷⁰ After the Prussian victory, Kladderadatsch was able to joke that a petition had circulated through Austrian villages, complaining of the‘damaging impact of the telegraph . . . whose miasmas are purportedly the main cause of a disease ravaging the vines’. In a number of high places, the paper was able to conﬁrm, certain telegrams, from Königgrätz in particular, had indeed produced sour grapes.⁷¹

In many ways, the Austro-Prussian conﬂict of 1866 had a greater inﬂuence on the changing balance of power in the German telegraphic sphere than vice versa.

The war effectively ended in a‘telegraphisches Königgrätz’, which helped deter-mined the future shape of communications networks in Germany and Prussia’s predominance.⁷² Although the DÖTV was maintained, the North German Confederation’s telegraph administration absorbed the networks of Hanover, Hamburg, Hessen-Nassau, and Saxony, and threatened the future of Bremen’s privately ownedBremer Telegraphen Verein.⁷³ The consequences of the conﬂict

⁶⁷ D. Showalter,‘Soldiers into Postmasters? The Electric Telegraph as an Instrument of Command in the Prussian Army’,Military Affairs, vol. 37, no. 2 (1973), pp. 48–52.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Wessel,Entwicklung des Nachrichtenwesens, p. 182; Showalter,‘Soldiers into Postmasters?’.

⁷⁰ E. Dörﬂer and W. Pensold,Die Macht der Nachricht: Die Geschichte der Nachrichtenagenturen in Osterreich(Vienna, 2001), p. 166.

⁷¹ Kladderadatsch, 13 Jan. 1867.

⁷² Siegfried Weichlein proposes the idea of a‘postalisches Königgrätz’inNation und Region:

Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich(Düsseldorf, 2004), p. 108.

⁷³ Reindl,Der Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphenverein, pp. 194–7.

were also tangible in Bavaria, a number of whose northern telegraph stations were lost to Prussia, among which were Frankfurt am Main, Mainz, Worms, Darmstadt, and Gotha—the income from the dynamic ﬁnancial hub of Frankfurt, in particular, was sorely missed.⁷⁴Both Austria and Bavaria considered leaving theDÖTVafter 1866, and matters were not improved when in 1868 the director of the Prussian Telegraph Administration, Colonel Chauvin, called for a new treaty between the North German Confederation and southern Germany which would exclude Austria.⁷⁵

* * *

The reconﬁguration of Germany’s networks and the emergence of a Prussian-dominated telegraphic sphere took place within an increasingly global framework of communication. One major effect was to further complicate relations between members of theDÖTVand the ITU. In 1865, Britain had been excluded from the conference establishing the ITU because its telegraph network was privately owned, and it could not therefore empower a state representative to reach agreements with its neighbours. The nationalization of the British network in 1868/9 removed this obstacle, but the regulation of telegraphic communication now also involved accommodating the growing number of large-scale, multi-national corporations that were funding the construction of landlines and sub-marine cables across the world.

Another crucial effect of this telegraphic globalization was to spotlight its reliance upon an alliance of private investment and imperial connections which was lacking in Germany. British entrepreneurs had initiated the process by funding the laying of a submarine telegraph cable across the English Channel in 1851, and by linking London and Denmark in 1859. That same year, the French government established a connection to its colony in Algeria. The Austrian and Russian governments, meanwhile, embarked on a number of large-scale construc-tion projects of their own, in an effort to integrate the disparate regions of their empire.⁷⁶The most signiﬁcant achievement of the following decade, of course, was the laying of a transatlantic cable between Europe and North America in 1866, a project launched by the British cotton merchant John Pender and the American businessman Cyrus Field. Until the late nineteenth century, the combination of British imperial interests and power, and Anglo-American ﬁnance, led to the English-speaking world’s domination of global communications.⁷⁷

Prussia’s rise to power, therefore, was matched by a diminution in Germany’s relative inﬂuence on the world telegraphic stage. Lacking the imperial

⁷⁴ Rückblick auf das erste Jahrhundert der Kgl. Bay. Staatspost (1.3.1808 bis 31.12.1908), ed. Kgl. Bay.

Staatsministerium für Verkehrsangelegenheiten (Munich, 1911), p. 319.

⁷⁵ Reindl,Der Deutsch-Österreichischer Telegraphenverein, pp. 194–212.

⁷⁶ K. Beauchamp,A History of Telegraphy(London, 2001), pp. 144–5.

⁷⁷ S. M. Müller,Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (New York, 2016).

connections, coastal landmass, and the corresponding motivations for investors and governments to participate in such large-scale construction projects, German governments remained focused on the development of regional communications networks. There were a few minor exceptions: the Schleswig-Holstein War had allowed the Prussian government to obtain control of the cable between Britain and Denmark, for instance, and in 1865, it co-funded the establishment of a connection between Stralsund and Christiania with the Swedish government. But it was Reuters that obtained a concession to connect Britain and Hanover, while the ‘Vereinigte Deutsche Telegraphengesellschaft’ established in 1869 to lay a cable between Germany and the USA was primarily funded by British investors, and never got further than Ireland. That same year, meanwhile, the Russian government explicitly objected to any German involvement in the establishment of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, a Danish, Norwegian, British, and Russian consortium.⁷⁸

In a culture that celebrated the advent of Weltkommunikation, therefore, negligibly few of the telegraphic tentacles extending outwards from Europe were German. The incipient process of globalization did, however, provide opportunities for well-connected individuals andﬁrms that were able to pos-ition themselves at the intersection of technological innovation, global busi-ness, and international relations. Chief among them was Werner Siemens.

During the 1860s, Siemens continued to work for a range of European states and railway companies, always closely following geopolitical developments which might stimulate new business—the possibility of hostilities in Persia, for instance, or Austria’s efforts to expand its network into Greece and Turkey.⁷⁹ In general, however, he felt that ‘the telegraph business is now becoming very ordinary and unproﬁtable . . . There is no recognition of true progress, nor proﬁt to be made in it. The customers are, with the exception of England, all [state] administrations, and for them the matter itself is always a minor issue.’⁸⁰

The military applications of telegraphy appeared to simulate some business:

when the director of the Prussian Telegraph Administration began to show an interest in developing a military telegraph, Siemens hoped that‘if Prussia, which currently determines the fashion in military technology, adopts the matter, then it will be used a lot’.⁸¹ Despite General von Moltke’s apparent reluctance to employ

⁷⁸ K. Jacobsen,‘Small Nation, International Submarine Telegraphy, and International Politics: The Great Northern Telegraph Company, 1869–1940’, in Bernard Finn and Daqing Yang (eds.), Communications under the Seas: The Evolving Cable Network and its Implications (Cambridge, Mass., 2009), pp. 61–77.

⁷⁹ Werner to Carl, 27 Dec. 1856, in C. Matschoß, (ed.),Werner Siemens: Ein kurzgefasstes Lebensbild nebst einer Auswahl seiner Briefe(2 vols., Berlin, 1916), i, p. 121; Werner to Wilhelm, 19 Jan. 1858, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 127.

⁸⁰ Werner to Carl, 22 May 1857, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 122.

⁸¹ Werner to Wilhelm, 9 Dec. 1864, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 233.

ﬁeld telegraphs, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 Siemens’s business seemed to be thriving as he struggled to produce cables quickly enough to cover the rapid advance of Prussian troops.⁸² Nevertheless, Siemens believed that the ﬁeld of telegraphy was experiencing ‘a tragic stagnation’.⁸³ Expanding state networks, indeed, required little innovation, simply involving a large-scale imple-mentation of existing techniques which were now being formalized in a special-ized branch of engineering.⁸⁴ ‘[E]very mechanic without capital and intelligence can present strong competition,’Siemens lamented.⁸⁵ ‘The internal market’, he added,‘has therefore been lost to us.’⁸⁶

Innovation was the key to business, as Werner Siemens well knew, and the most exciting developments were taking place in theﬁeld of submarine telegraphy.⁸⁷In 1858, Siemens had collaborated with a Britishﬁrm to begin laying cables across the Mediterranean, from Sardinia to Bona in Algeria, and he had then set his sights on a transatlantic project, though he would not be theﬁrst to successfully complete one.⁸⁸ Throughout his expeditions, Siemens used his experience to rethink some of the electrical principles underlying the telegraph industry, sharing and publishing his observations in various circles, contributing to the broader exchange of knowledge between science and technology that was shaping theﬁeld of physics. It was through his brother Wilhelm in London, however, that Werner Siemens was able to tap into the emerging global telegraph industry. Settled at the heart of the British Empire, Wilhelm appeared to have‘the world’s trafﬁc in his hands’, with access to a larger pool of investors and a wide network of commercial relations.⁸⁹In 1865, as the transatlantic cable project launched by John Pender and Cyrus Field got underway, the London branch of Werner’s ﬁrm was therefore restructured under the new name of Siemens Brothers, from which point the entire company underwent transformation.⁹⁰

In 1868, the London and Berlin branches of the business formed the Indo-European Telegraph Company, marking Siemens’s accession to the ranks of the multinational corporations which were to shape the future of global

⁸² Werner to Wilhelm, 2 July 1866, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 255.

⁸³ Werner to Wilhelm, 30 Dec. 1861, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, pp. 187–8.

⁸⁴ The PrussianRepertorium der technischen Literaturlisted 190 articles on telegraphy published between 1823 and 1853, but between 1854 and 1868 theﬁgure rose to 923. Among those, 185 were drawn from theZeitschrift des Deutsch-Österreichischen Telegraphen-Vereins(ZDÖTV) alone, com-pared with 158 from the FrenchAnnales télégraphiques: B. Kerl (ed.),Repertorium der technischen Literatur, die Jahre 1854 bis einschliesslich 1868 umfassend(2 vols., Leipzig, 1873), ii, pp. 452–77.

⁸⁵ Werner to Wilhelm, 3 Jan. 1861, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 172. ⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Werner to Wilhelm, 29 Feb. 1864, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 223.

⁸⁸ Werner to Wilhelm, 29 Sept. 1858, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i., p. 137; Werner to Wilhelm, 21 Sept. 1858, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, pp. 136–7.

⁸⁹ Werner to Carl, 4 Nov. 1863, in Matschoß,Werner Siemens, i, p. 218.

⁹⁰ W. Feldenkirchen,Werner Siemens: Inventor and International Entrepreneur, ed. K. A. Kerr and M. G. Blackford (Columbus, 1994), pp. 76–83; J. Kocka, ‘Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847–1914: zum Verhältnis von Kapitalismus und Bürokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung’(Stuttgart, 1969), pp. 117–20.

telecommunications.⁹¹ Although Siemens would later initiate large-scale submar-ine cable projects, this company was in fact constituted to build a landlsubmar-ine across Europe and the Middle East, which could compete with Britain’s submarine connections to India. Like other large-scale projects, the Indo-European line depended upon modern means of ﬁnancing, and despite Siemens’s attempt to reach an agreement with private bankers, including the Rothschilds, he soon realized that the only viable option was to create a public limited liability com-pany.⁹² At this stage, he even reluctantly considered converting not only the Indo-European Telegraph Company but the entire Siemens enterprise into a publicly listed company—a decision not ultimately made until 1890.⁹³

The Indo-European telegraph project highlighted the political and economic complexity of an international construction project. Siemens’s landline was to pass through a number of countries on its way from London to Calcutta and required concessions from multiple states—unlike many of the British submarine cables, it could not pass through a succession of imperial possessions. Yet Siemens also insisted that the line should have‘an international character, independent of local governments’, and should be managed by a single administration. This freedom from regional inﬂuences, he believed, was needed to ensure the ‘the capitalists’’peace of mind.⁹⁴Siemens’sﬁrst foray into the global telegraph industry thus gave international renown to hisﬁrm, but it also underscored the awkward

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