The Hanseatic Exception

Often overlooked, the north-western coast of Germany offers an informative contrast to the changes taking place in Prussia and Bavaria. In 1838, the merchant and vinegar manufacturer Johann Ludwig Schmidt obtained a concession from the HamburgSenatto construct an optical telegraph line linking the town to its port in Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe. The installation served princi-pally to facilitate communication between merchants and shipowners based in Hamburg, and the vessels entering or leaving the waterway to and from the North Sea.¹⁰⁸In effect, Schmidt’s project was to fulfil the wish expressed in 1799 to the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung der Künste und nützlichen Gewerbe, and replicated similar installations in other coastal towns such as between Holyhead and Liverpool in Britain.¹⁰⁹

Drawing on the success of his initiative, in November 1838 Schmidt turned his attention westwards. In Bremen he found a situation analogous to that in Hamburg, as the city state was heavily dependent upon its ties to the harbour in Bremerhaven, at the mouth of the Weser. Schmidt therefore proposed to connect the two sites with an optical telegraph line, and as the project was beneficial to merchants and shipowners, his idea was pitched as a private enterprise. The aim was to establish a public limited company, whose shareholders would also receive dividends issuing from profitable use of the service.

Schmidt’s project could be expected to find support in Bremen because it presented a solution to a very real problem which local merchants had faced since the early decades of the century. Over hundreds of years, an accumulation of

¹⁰⁶ M. Seckelmann,Industrialisierung, Internationalisierung und Patentrecht im Deutschen Reich, 1871–1914(Frankfurt am Main, 2006), pp. 100–2.

¹⁰⁷ DMM FA005/0582, Abel to Steinheil, 3 May 1839.

¹⁰⁸ Seidel,Verkehrsmittel Telegraph, pp. 197–200.

¹⁰⁹ See above, p. 37 G. J. Holzmann,‘Die optische Telegraphie in England und anderen Ländern’, in K. Beyrer and B.-S. Mathis (eds.),So weit das Auge reicht: Die Geschichte der optischen Telegraphie (Karlsruhe, 1995), pp. 116–30.

sand had rendered the Weser inaccessible to ships at the level of Bremen itself, such that this‘port’town’s very existence was under threat by the 1820s. A partial solution to this issue had been found in 1827, when Bremen’s renowned BürgermeisterJohann Smidt had negotiated the acquisition of a portion of coastal territory from the neighbouring Duchy of Oldenburg. There, around 60 kilo-metres further downstream on the Weser, Bremen had established its new port:

Bremerhaven.¹¹⁰ The optical telegraph proposed by Schmidt now offered ship-owners and merchants the possibility of remaining in Bremen and communicat-ing with their ships in Bremerhaven via semaphore, enhanccommunicat-ing their ability to coordinate the loading and unloading of their imports and exports.

In proposing the project, moreover, Schmidt could point to his success in Hamburg, another Hanseatic city state with a remarkably similar geographical and socio-economic layout.‘The results which have issued from that [Hamburg-Cuxhaven] line’, it was asserted,‘enable us to conclude that, just as the enterprise there is profitable to the shareholders, so might adequate dividends be expected for the signatories here too, given the known communications relations between Bremen and Bremerhaven.’His more ambitious project eventually to connect the Hamburg–Cuxhaven and Bremen–Bremerhaven lines was similarly based upon the‘known’potential benefits of tying these sister towns.¹¹¹

The BremenSenatapproved Schmidt’s request for a concession, recognizing the very concrete benefits which his telegraph promised. The commission for Bremerhaven recognized the‘general considerations which render the multipli-cation and improvement of communimultipli-cations desirable for a trading post’. It also highlighted the‘local conditions’which supported the establishment of a Bremen–

Bremerhaven connection, namely‘the significant distance of the central point of our trading life from the harbour and moorings of our ships’.¹¹² In contrast with the consideration of proposals in Bavaria and Prussia, the language used by both Schmidt and the Senatreflected the precise ways in which the telegraph might improve existing conditions.

In Bremen, the mouth of the Weser River was the lifeline of both the elite merchant community and the city state as a whole, which depended upon maritime trade. Notwithstanding a long history of disagreements and constitu-tional settlements, both theHandelskammer(Chamber of Commerce), represent-ing the merchant community’s interest, and the Senat, the state’s government, often cooperated, recognizing that politics and trade went hand in hand. Bremen thus lacked the cameralist heritage which elsewhere in Germany had created

¹¹⁰ H. Schwarzwälder,Geschichte der Freien Hansestadt Bremen(4 vols., Bremen, 1975–85), ii, 121–34.

¹¹¹ StAB 2-R.15.b.2, J. L. Schmidt,‘Einladung zur Unterzeichnung von Actien für den bremischen Telegraphen-Verein’, 8 Nov. 1838.

¹¹² StAB 2-R.15.b.2,‘Bericht ad Supplikat Joh. Ludw. Schmidt pro Anlage einer Telegraphenlinie’, 16 Jan. 1839.

tensions between a bureaucracy pursuing the higher objective of a well-ordered state and the materialist pursuits of an emerging commercial class, or Wirtschaftsbürgertum. In sharp contrast to Prussia, for instance, the commission for Bremerhaven considered it an undeniable advantage that Schmidt’s project was to be carried out by private industry, and therefore at‘private risk’.¹¹³ This economic liberalism was tied to a particular brand of social conservatism, based on the notion that the city state was an organic whole—a blend which Lars Maischak has termed‘cosmopolitan conservatism’.¹¹⁴

Like the railway companies elsewhere in Germany, merchants and shipowners saw the immediate utility of the telegraph to their existing operations. But the commission examining the project also suggested extending the service beyond the merchant community itself. It was proposed that the service be opened to all, in exchange for a fee, and that theSenatmight itself make use of the telegraph when communicating with the relevant governmental bodies.¹¹⁵In Bremen, the organic—rather than holistic—conception of state and economy ensured that all shared similar interests: the growth of the latter supported the former. Only later would other German states resort to a similar understanding of the dynamic relationship between economic growth and state interests.

In the end, despite the proven success of the telegraph line between Hamburg and Cuxhaven, as well as theSenat’s support, Johann Ludwig Schmidt’s project was not to come to fruition for a number of years, by which stage the electric telegraph had made its appearance on the technological and commercial scene.

Part of the issue lay in the difficulty Schmidt experienced in obtaining the necessary concession from the Hanoverian government, on whose territory the connection between Bremen and Bremerhaven was to run.¹¹⁶In addition, how-ever, the entrepreneur failed to attract the investment he had hoped for, and was never able to establish his projected ‘Telegraphen-Verein’.¹¹⁷ Indeed, even in Hamburg, the demonstrated utility of the telegraphic connection to Cuxhaven belied the little support which Schmidt had received from individual investors—

even after establishing anAktiengesellschaftthere, the entrepreneur was forced to buy the majority of the shares.¹¹⁸

The German‘norm’had thus been reversed in the Hanseatic city states, where there was a fertile ground of common interests between state and economic actors, but the lack of long-term ambitions, a narrow horizon of expectation, had failed to provide the required incentive to invest. The issue was compounded by the

¹¹³ StAB 2-R.15.b.2,‘Bericht ad Supplikat Joh. Ludw. Schmidt pro Anlage einer Telegraphenlinie’, 16 Jan. 1839.

¹¹⁴ L. Maischak,German Merchants in the Atlantic(Cambridge, 2013), pp. 82–107.

¹¹⁵ StAB 2-R.15.b.2,‘Bericht ad Supplikat’, 16 Jan. 1839.

¹¹⁶ StAB 2-R.15.b.2, J. L. Schmidt to Senat, 12 Dec. 1843.

¹¹⁷ StAB 2-R.15.b.1,‘Extract aus dem Senatsprotocolle’, 29 Oct. 1845; cf. also Seidel,Verkehrsmittel Telegraph, p. 204.

¹¹⁸ Seidel,‘Verkehrsmittel Telegraph’, p. 198.

mechanical, visible, and somewhat cumbersome nature of optical telegraph instal-lations which did not evoke the kind of multi-sensory, telegraphic speech evoked by Steinheil and Gauß. Once such promises began to circulate, however, this fertile ground would bear its fruit, and Bremen was to be one of thefirst states in Germany to introduce the electric telegraph.

* * *

By the late 1830s, widespread expectations as to the possibility of telegraphic communication had begun to draw together the diverse intellectual, scientific, and entrepreneurial forces which were necessary to its materialization. In doing so, however, this possibility had also forced the actors concerned to narrow their horizons, temper their hopes, and consider the practicalities of the technology’s development as well as their concrete interests in the project. Drawing upon a common fund of ideas and information regarding the technology and communi-cation in general, writers, scientists, and bureaucrats had initially defined their vision in similarly evocative and ambitious terms. Now that various trials, improvements, and applications of the technology were under consideration, however, these actors had come to depend upon one another for financial, technical, and logistical support, and to voice their more immediate concerns.

For the time being, the horizon of expectation associated with telegraphy shifted out of focus. Across Germany and Europe, some scientists turned to the state for support in their trials, others to private enterprise; railway companies began to consult with ministers and academics for help in developing new signalling technologies; budding entrepreneurs such as Werner Siemens in Berlin discovered the networks of information exchange which bureaucrats them-selves were drawing up to inform their decisions regarding the technology. Like delegates arriving at a conference of allied powers, these actors had initially gathered around a common purpose, but as immediate circumstances required them to prepare for extended deliberations, new hopes and frustrations began to emerge.

In October 1840, Carl Steinheil discovered that the telegraph line he had been trialling along the Munich–Augsburg railway had been damaged as a result of being left unsupervised. Furious, he complained to the regional government, demanding that the railway company in charge be mandated to conduct the trial according to his precise instructions.¹ This angered the company’s board of directors: why, they asked, had he turned to the government instead of addressing them directly?² By 1842, the Bavarian state railway commission had been tasked with overseeing the line, but when the king asked for an update on Steinheil’s experiments, the scientist refused to cooperate.³ Tired of the incessant trials ordered by the state, Steinheil wrote that‘[t]hese experiments—which I did not conduct upon the request of the government—are my private property’. ‘If the government wishes to make use of my invention,’ he continued,‘then I would humbly ask that the Royal Ministry address itself to me as a private person, and take into account further conditions on my part . . . .’⁴

Such conflicts and frustrations were a natural by-product of the interactions between scientists, technicians, railway companies, and state officials during the 1840s, as their elevated expectations were confronted with the reality of collabor-ation. During the 1830s, as we have seen, Carl Gauβand Carl Steinheil had both considered whether railway tracks might not serve as an electrical circuit. Their hopes were dashed, but railway companies realized that telegraph wires could be used to transmit short signals along their lines, enabling them to manage the passage of trains and schedule their services. Britain set the example in this regard, when William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone trialled their telegraph along a number of lines, particularly the Great Western Railway in 1839—a simple system of needles which, when deflected by the electric current, pointed to letters on a display.⁵No doubt aware of this experiment, theMünchen-Augsburger Eisenbahn-Gesellschafthad then agreed to Steinheil’s trials along their line in 1840, and others soon followed suit.

¹ BHStA, MInn 45175/1, Steinheil to Regierung Oberbayern, 24 Oct. 1840.

² DMM, FA 005/0582, Directorium to Steinheil, 28 Oct. 1840.

³ BHStA, MInn 45175/1, Präsidium Regierung Oberbayern to MInn, 7 Aug. 1842.

⁴ DMM, FA 005/0582, Response to the commission established on 18 July, 28 July 1842.

⁵ Fari, Victorian Telegraphy before Nationalization; K. Beauchamp, A History of Telegraphy (London, 2001), pp. 31–2; Aschoff,Geschichte der Nachrichtentechnik, pp. 85–6.

Networks of Modernity: Germany in the Age of the Telegraph, 1830–1880. Jean-Michel Johnston, Oxford University Press 2021. © Jean-Michel Johnston. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198856887.003.0004

The railway companies’experiments with the new technology were followed closely by state authorities, who pursued their own inquiries into its development, increasingly aware that their control over a potentially revolutionary means of long-distance communication was at stake. In Bavaria, as mentioned above, Carl Steinheil’s telegraph was eventually placed within the technical jurisdiction of the Eisenbahnbau-Kommission zu Nürnberg (Railway Construction Commission), established in 1841 to pave the way for state ownership of the railways.⁶ In Prussia, aTelegraphen-Kommission (Telegraph Commission) was assembled in 1844 to investigate the technology, under the authority of Major O’Etzel, director of the state’s optical telegraph line, and the Ministry of War.⁷A similar pattern emerged in Austria, where a state commission was established in 1845.⁸

The development of the telegraph thus inevitably became caught up in the negotiations between the state and the private sector which shaped the emerging German railway industry during the 1840s.⁹In technical, logistical, andfinancial terms, however, the aims of the state and of the railway industry were in many ways complementary. Telegraph lines did not require the same scale of investment as railways—the kind of sums that led to constitutional crisis in 1847 when the Prussian government’s request for a loan to build theOstbahnwas made condi-tional upon parliamentary reform.¹⁰Instead, governments often hoped to use the channels already opened up by railway lines to lay their own telegraph wires, thereby avoiding the need for expropriations. The results of the trials undertaken by private companies, moreover, substantially informed the decisions made by state commissions investigating the technology.

In many respects, therefore, the development of telegraphy relied upon much the same cooperation of state officials, businessmen, and industry experts which, as James Brophy has demonstrated, was necessary to the construction of railways in Prussia during the period.¹¹ Even outside Prussia, where state ownership of the railways was more pronounced, it was the utility of the technology to this sector that encouraged its development. The cast of characters involved was so broad, in fact, as to blur the very distinction between ‘state’ and‘civil society’. Ministers, bureaucrats, chief engineers, scientists, and individual entrepreneurs were all drawing upon a common, growing fund of‘useful knowledge’circulating across

⁶ D. Götschmann,Wirtschaftsgeschichte Bayerns: 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Regensburg, 2010), p. 59.

⁷ H. A. Wessel,Die Entwicklung des elektrischen Nachrichtenwesens in Deutschland und die rheinische Industrie: von den Anfängen bis zum Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges(Wiesbaden, 1983), p. 150.

⁸ G. Lobentanz,‘Zur Geschichte der Telegraphie in Österreich: Von den Anfängen bis ca. 1850’

(PhD Thesis, University of Vienna, 1967), pp. 21–7.

⁹ L. Gall and M. Pohl (eds.),Die Eisenbahn in Deutschland: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1999), pp. 13–27.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 21–4.

¹¹ J. M. Brophy,Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads in Prussia, 1830–1870(Columbus, 1998), esp.

pp. 22–52.

a broad landscape of innovation through social networks, newspapers, and jour-nals throughout Germany and beyond. The industrialization of Germany may have been regionally inflected and owed much to individual entrepreneurs, government departments, and educational establishments, but it is often the connections between them that are most striking.¹²

Tension was nevertheless the inevitable corollary to the cooperation between these diverse social and institutional actors. As state representatives, scientists, entrepreneurs, and technicians interacted to gain the resources they needed from one another, they also discovered their differences.‘The state’sought to establish its control over a technology which, as Robert von Mohl and Friedrich List had anticipated, seemed designed to emancipate society and the economy. Railway companies were eager to ensure they obtained favourable terms in their pursuit of technological innovation and, of course, profit. Carl Steinheil and his counterparts in other German states, meanwhile, defended their intellectual property in an increasingly competitive knowledge market. All of this took place in an inter-national context of technological innovation which stimulated competition between and within states. Until 1847, the fruits of collective labour outweighed the frustrations which it produced, and a productive tension reigned. But the friction between them eventually threatened to grind the process to a halt.