New Profession, Old Order: Engineers and German Society, 1815-1914

New profession, old order Engineers and German society, 1815-1914

KEES GISPEN University of Mississippi

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry Vlll in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge New York

Port Chester

Melbourne

Sydney

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1989 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Gispen,Kees, 1943New profession, old order: engineers and German society, 1815-1914/KeesGispen. p. cm. Revision of author's thesis. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0 52137198 8 1. Engineering - Social aspects - Germany - History. I. Title. TA157.G55 1989 303.48/3-dc20 89-7115 CIP ISBN 0 521371988 hardback ISBN 0 521 52603 5 paperback


Contents

List of tables List of

figures

page v vi

Preface Abbreviations

vii ix

Introduction

1

Parti Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order 1 Technical education and society before 1850

15

2 Nationalism, industrialization, and technology: the first years of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure

44

3 The pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI, 1856-1876 4 The reform of technical education in Prussia, 1876—1879

64 86

Part II Reorientation: industrial capitalism and a "practical" profession 5

Reorientation in the engineering industry, 1876—1884

6

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-1890

7 The rebirth of nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901 8

Public authority, private power, and the production of engineering personnel, 1901-1914

113 130 160 187

iv

Contents

Part III The crucible: technical careers and managerial power, 1900-1914 9

Career prospects and the Btib's reform efforts

223

10

The unified employment code and the Patent Law

255

11

Direct action

288

12

The reaction of the VDDI

313

Epilogue

333

Appendix

337

Bibliographical note

341

Index

351


Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 7.1 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 12.1

Employment situations of VDI members, 1857-76 Educational backgrounds of obituary recipients by employment situation Employment situations of obituary sample compared with class situations of VDI membership, 1857-76 Employment situations of the membership of executive committees of seven selected local chapters Prussian government annual budget for engineering schools, 1886-1911 Enrollments at mechanical and electrotechnical nonacademic engineering schools in Germany, 1910 Founding dates of German proprietary schools for mechanical and electrical engineering Annual salaries of academically trained and nonacademic engineers in private industry and government in Berlin, 1906 Annual salaries of engineers in industry, grouped by education, Berlin, 1906 Employment situations of the VDDI membership, 1911

page 57 58 59 68 172 189 200 200 201 320


Figures

8.1

8.2 8.3 8.4

Enrollments at Prussian four-semester MBSs and related schools for the metals industry and German proprietary schools for mechanical and electrical engineering, 1887—1914 page Enrollments at four-semester MBSs and related schools for the metals industry in Prussia, 1901-14 Enrollments at German technische Hochschulen from 1872—3 to 1913-14 Index of number of employees, production value, in industry and crafts, and enrollments at German technische Hochschulen, 1870-1913

188 190 197

199


Preface

This is a study of engineers and German society in the nineteenth century, of the changes in the educational system, the social hierarchy, and the occupational structure that accompanied the emergence of this new profession. In this sense my deepest concern is not the engineers as such but the general social transformation associated with the Industrial Revolution in Germany. The engineering profession turns out — perhaps not surprisingly — to be particularly useful for understanding key aspects of this larger development. I also believe that reconstructing the engineers' trajectory to 1914 creates new insight into the dynamics of Germany's unique political culture in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Throughout, therefore, I have attempted to "lift up" seemingly minor issues to a higher level of historical significance, striving to follow the advice of my great Berkeley teacher, Hans Rosenberg. I owe gratitude and intellectual debt in the first place to him. In addition, I want to thank all those others who helped make possible this book: Gerald Feldman, who first suggested the topic to me and then as the director of my dissertation was tolerant enough to let me venture far afield; Winthrop Jordan, Konrad Jarausch, and James Albisetti, who read the entire manuscript in a late stage and made extremely valuable comments; Reinhard Bendix, Samuel Haber, Tony LaVopa, Steven Vincent, Gary Marker, Jon Knudsen, Peter Bergmann, and Larry Dickey, who at different times helped me by reading individual chapters and discussing the ideas of this study; Hans Mommsen and his seminar group, who at an early stage encouraged me and listened to what must have been rather incoherent observations; Allan Silver, Mel van Elteren, Peter Lundgreen, Lars Scholl, Wolfgang Konig, Irmgard Steinisch, and the late Hans Ebert, with whom I had stimulating discussions. I have received invaluable help from Prof. Dr. Kurt Mauel of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, who let me spend many long hours in the library of that association in Diisseldorf, and from the following archivists: Herr

viii

Preface

Bodo Herzog of the Historical Archive of the Gute Hoffnungshiitte, Oberhausen; Frau Irmgard Denkinger of the Historical Archive of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Niirnberg in Augsburg; Herr Reuss of Klockner-Humboldt-Deutz in Cologne; and Herr Waldmann and his staff of the Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Historische Abteilung II, Merseburg. I also had generous help from librarians and archivists at the Verein Deutscher Eisenhiittenleute in Diisseldorf, the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Zentrales Staatsarchiv in Potsdam, the Nuremberg Archive of the MAN, and the John Crerar Library in Chicago. In 1979—80 the History Department of Erasmus University in Rotterdam arranged a leisurely teaching schedule that enabled me to spend a great deal of time writing. The Social Science Research Council, the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Regents of the University of California, and the Graduate School of the University of Mississippi have provided very generous financial help, without which my research and writing would have been impossible. My greatest debt is to my parents, to whom I dedicate this book. Oxford, Mississippi February 1989

Abbreviations

Bdl BIE Btib CDI DATSCH DHV DIBZ DTV DVSGE DWV GDM GHH HMBS LGA LMBS MAN MBS SPD VBG VBEM VBM VDDI VDE VDESI VDEh VDI VDMA VDMI

Bund der Industriellen "Bureau of Industrial Education," desk for technical education in the Prussian Ministry of Trade Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen Deutsch-Nationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband Deutsche Industrtebeamten-Zeitung Deutscher Techniker-Verband Deutscher Verein fur den Schutz des gewerblichen Eigentums Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband Gesamtverband Deutscher Metalindustrieller Gutehoffnungshiitte Higher Machine Building School Prussian Landesgewerbeamt Lower Machine Building School Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Niirnberg Machine Building School Social Democratic Party Verein zur Beforderung des Gewerbfleisses Verband Berliner Metalindustrieller Verband Bayerischer Metalindustrieller Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker Verein Deutscher Eisen- und Stahlindustrieller Verein Deutscher Eisenhiittenleute Verein Deutscher Ingenieure Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten Verein Deutscher Maschinen-Ingenieure

x

Abbreviations ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

DATSCH AB DBZ DIBZ DS (1883)

DS (1891)

DS (1896)

DTZ GA HdA HA/GHH MHG NGug VDDIZ VDIW VDIZ VDMA ZM VERH (1896)

VERH (1898)

VVBG ZSTA II

DATSCH Abhandlungen und Berichte Deutsche Bauzeitung Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung Denkschrift tiber die Entwicklung der gewerblichen Fachschulen in Preussen. . . . wdhrend der Jahre 1881 und 1882 (Berlin: 1883), in ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 29970, Bl. 124-44f. Denkschrift iiber die Entwickelung der Fortbildungsschulen und der gewerblichen Fachschulen in Preussen . . . wdhrend der Jahre 1883 bis 1890 (Berlin: Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, 1891), in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1-2, Bl. 56-102. Denkschrift uber die Entwickelung der Fortbildungsschulen und der gewerblichen Fachschulen in Preussen . . . wdhrend der Jahre 1891 bis 1895 (Berlin: Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, 1896), in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 3Deutsche Techniker-Zeitung Glaser's Annalen fur Gewerbe und Bauwesen Prussia, Haus der Abgeordeneten, Stenographische Berichte der Verhandlungen Historisches Archiv der Gutehoffnungshutte Prussia, Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe. MAN Werksarchiv Augsburg, Nachlass Guggenheimer Zeitschrift des Verbandes Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure Wochenschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure Zeitschrift des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure VDMA Zwangslose Mitteilungen Verhandlungen der stdndigen Kommission fur das technische Unterrichtswesen zu Berlin am 13. und 14. Januar 1896 (Berlin: 1897), in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 7, vol. 3, Bl. 198-228. Verhandlungen uber die Organisation der preussischen Maschinenbauschulen zu Berlin am 6. und 7. Mai 1898 (Berlin: 1899), in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 4l-80f. Verhandlungen des Vereins zur Beforderung des Gewerbfleisses. Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Hist. Abt. II (Merseburg).

Introduction

In 1914, after trying for almost a century, German engineers had achieved only modest gains in their pursuit of professional standing. In fact, as a group the engineers probably were further from their goal on the eve of World War I than they had been thirty or forty years earlier. In the throes of a deep crisis, the profession was wracked by internal conflict, fragmented into numerous subspecialties and class positions, separated by wide differences in formal education, and locked in bitter combat with industrial employers, social reformers, and the incumbents of the civil-service bureaucracy. In addition, engineers suffered from a debilitating oversupply, and their various projects for legal reform, creation of new career opportunities, and restriction of access to the profession were getting nowhere. The frustrations attendant upon this state of affairs, which carried over into the Weimar Republic, go a long way toward explaining the Utopian politics and the double-edged hostility for Germany's established elites and the proletarian left that the overwhelmingly middle-class engineering profession developed. The massive discontent of the middle classes after World War I was arguably the single most important problem of German society between 1918 and 1933-x Historians continue to debate whether this disaffection and the political crisis it produced can ultimately be explained only with reference to a long history of German exceptionalism and the survival of preindustrial traditions or whether it should be accounted for primarily in terms of industrial capitalism.2 Obviously a study of engineers and 1 E.g., Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions 1918-1933," Journal of Contemporary History 20, 3(July 1985):379-98. 2 David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press, 1984); Geoff Eley, "What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist State?" Politics and Society 12, 1(1983): 53-82; Jiirgen Kocka, White Collar Workers in America 1890-1940: A Social-Political History in International Perspective (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980); Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and De-

1

2

Introduction

German society in the century before 1914 cannot answer this question directly. What it can do, however, is show that neither preindustrial factors nor industrial capitalism alone caused the engineers' most intractable problems. Only the unique and peculiar convergence of developments originating in the early nineteenth century and the dynamics of industrial capitalism after 1850 did so, creating conditions that profoundly traumatized engineers in the decade before 1914 - and after. As would-be professionals, the German engineers always found themselves on the dividing line between capitalist industry and the old order. With the exception of certain subgroups, engineers never quite succeeded in fully becoming part of either world and ended up being squeezed mercilessly between the two. The result was that eventually they developed a deep-seated resentment of both: of the surviving preindustrial world of high culture, classical learning, and the state, which had never really accepted them, and of the realm of capitalist bosses and proletarians, which demanded that they surrender their aspirations to professional autonomy. The possibility of turning left had been ruled out because of the revolutionary Marxist rhetoric of the working class, leaving only the options of impotent democratic reform, radical right-wing protest, or flight into dangerous and Utopian fantasies. Engineers embraced all three in the years before World War I. Their multifaceted hatred of the establishment and the left is precisely the attitude that Wolfgang Sauer has identified as being at the center of National Socialism.3 It emerged among the best educated and ostensibly most cultured engineers in the years before 1914. 4 The engineers' sociopolitical failure probably was intimately related to Germany's industrial successes in the second half of the nineteenth century. The astonishing dynamism of German industry may well have been a function of the inability of technically educated groups to become "feudalized" or fully integrated into the establishment. The rift separating Technik from Bildung and Besitz remained so wide and deep in Germany that engineers were forced to develop something like a counterculture and to compete rather than amalgamate with the dominant social order. 5 They mocracy in Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1919 (Leamington Spa, Dover: Berg Publishers, 1985). 3 Wolfgang Sauer, "National Socialism: Totalitarianism or Fascism?" American Historical Review 73, 2(1967):404—24. It should be noted, however, that there is virtually no evidence of anti-Semitism among engineers prior to 1914. Jews were rare in the engineering profession. 4 Some of the ideological aspects of this development are discussed in Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1974); also Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984). 5 This was in contrast to British and French developments. On France, see David S. Landes, "French Entrepreneurship and Industrial Growth in the Nineteenth Century," in The Experience of Economic Growth, ed. Barry E. Supple (New York: Random House, 1963), 3 4 0 - 5 5 ; idem, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present

Introduction

3

did so in terms of a technological prowess that was the envy of other industrial societies and the motor of economic success, but also the fuel for eventual hostility toward the entrenched elites. Closely related to the issue of the engineers' discontent is the problem of their fragmentation and internal divisiveness. In this regard, as well, they were a microcosm of the larger society. As the nineteenth century progressed, a rapidly expanding number of new, highly diverse positions related to industrialization, up and down the scale and in a wide variety of settings, came to be occupied by men who called themselves engineers or men who were engineers but thought of themselves as something else. Their educational and functional diversity, unlike that among contemporary physicians, lawyers, military officers, professors, or higher civil servants, was enormous, and there is some question whether or not engineers became a profession at all, in addition to the question of what it meant to be a profession in the German context. 6 Because this is a historical rather than a definitional question, one way to read this study is as a "thick description" of the meaning of "profession" and its development in an age of industrial capitalism. 7 I have adopted a similar approach with regard to the meaning of the term Ingenieur. The suggestiveness, vagueness, and shifts in meaning that accompanied the use of the term contributed to more than a hundred years of imprecision, confusion, and conflict over the definition of the engineering profession in Germany. Throughout the nineteenth century, the word Ingenieur was used interchangeably with the more neutral term Techniker, or technician. Depending on the context, however, Techniker (Cambridge University Press, 1969), 131-7, 189, 202-10, 339-48; Terry Shinn, "From 'Corps' to 'Profession'; the Emergence and Definition of Industrial Engineering in Modern France," in The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808—1914, ed. Robert Fox and George Weisz (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 183-203; Charles P. Kindleberger, "Technical Education and the French Entrepreneur," in Enterprise and Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France, ed. Edward C. Carter II, Robert Forster, and Joseph N . Moody (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 3-40; John Hubbel Weiss, The Making of Technological Man: The Social Origins of French Engineering Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982). On Britain, see Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981). 6 This problem is discussed more fully in Kees Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, 3(Summer 1988):550-74. 7 As a history of engineers' professionalization, the study's questions and open-ended point of termination in 1914 are distinct from a perspective that locates the "culmination" of German history in 1933-45. In practice, the two were intertwined and cannot be separated: The world did not stop in 1914, nor does one get to the present without passing through the Nazi era. I have tried to address this problem by operating with a double Fragestellung throughout: a more sociological one centered on fundamental changes in social organization that reach to the present, and a more historical one focusing on Germany's unique and tragic political history before 1945. For the concept of "thick description," and the concomitant decision to forgo operationalizing the terms "profession" and "engineer," see Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-30.

4

Introduction

could also refer to a lower species of technologist - roughly the equivalent of the English "mechanic" or "machinist." Ingenieur, for its part, had connotations that varied by region and over time. In the early nineteenth century in southern and southwestern Germany, Ingenieur, as in France, typically meant civil engineer — a hydraulics expert or a road builder trained and employed by the state. In northern Germany, the same person would be known as Baubeamte ("building civil servant"), whereas an Ingenieur was a technologist of uncertain educational background, active in the private sector and typically concentrating on mechanical subjects. Although these regional variations in usage gradually disappeared, the lack of precise meaning did not. On the contrary, it increased, with Ingenieur becoming a generic term for all technical functions above skilled blue-collar work and foreman duties. An unprotected occupational designation (comparable to, e.g., "accountant," as opposed to "certified public accountant"), the term was frequently manipulated for purposes of social advancement. Until the 1960s, anyone could become an Ingenieur in the German Federal Republic simply by appropriating this label at will. Though partly autonomous, the legal and terminological confusion was not so much a cause as a consequence of the engineers' most basic problem. Their inability to form a cohesive professional group had two deeper causes: one pertaining to the peculiarities of nineteenth-century German society, the other inherent in engineering work as such. Going through the historical evidence, the dictionary, and the sociological literature, one searches in vain for a good German equivalent of the concept "profession." This is because it is essentially an Anglo-American notion that until very recently did not exist in the German context. 8 It has been shown, however, that the concept is intimately related to Max Weber's model of bureaucracy and that "profession" and "bureaucracy," often thought to be antithetical, share so many basic traits that they can be viewed as variations on a common theme. Both were avenues for middle-class emancipation and the quest for privilege through technical expertise, instrumental rationality, objectivity, examinations, closure, and loyalty to a higher cause or service to an impersonal master. 9 Their kinship helps explain why the values and traditions of Germany's preindustrial public officialdom spread so widely among a new industrial occupational group such as engineers, employed overwhelmingly in the private sector. 8 Recent German work that has been measurably influenced by the concept profession: Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 1: Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in intemationalen Vergkichen (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985); Claudia Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der Aerzte im 19. Jahrhundert: Worn gelehrten Stand zum professionallen Experten: Das Beispiel Preussens (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985). 9 Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory," and the literature cited there.

Introduction

5

The civil-service bureaucracy was not merely a historically plausible, though structurally alien, reference group for the engineers; it also represented the substance of professionalism in the German environment. Many engineers therefore readily adopted the bureaucratic ethos, which included values such as a premium on social harmony and service to the general welfare, the moral superiority of objective technical expertise and of administrative solutions over political solutions, and above all the need for "general cultivation" imparted by classical training. Significantly, however, not all engineers adopted the bureaucratic model. The evidence shows that even though many of them did so, the occupation as a whole did not readily embrace the bureaucratic ethos or fit the bureaucratic version of the professional model. This is because the bureaucratic option, though indeed a major feature of the German historical landscape, was not the only model of professionalism available for emulation. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, a historical development was set in motion that introduced "democratic principles in a monarchical government." 10 That is to say, while the bureaucratic elite and "the state" retained ultimate political control, their conscious pursuit of a liberal economic policy and other liberal political reforms helped bring about an autonomous "society," that is, an incipient liberal polity and market economy. Initially weak and lacking in self-confidence, these liberal elements in German society gradually matured, acquired considerable strength, and finally rose up in revolt against the bureaucratic state in 1848. n Though, politically, Liberalism was defeated in 1848, in the economic arena it prevailed, and Germany continued uninterruptedly on its free-market path until Bismarck's dramatic change of course in 18789. Meanwhile, the country underwent rapid economic growth and massive industrialization after 1850. Within the tenacious shell of the bureaucratic old order, therefore, Germany developed many of the characteristics of a more liberal industrial society. The incongruities of this combination, and the uncontrollable tensions it produced, were repeated in the cleavages of the occupational structure. Next to the traditional bureaucratic-professional colossus there arose the relatively insignificant and weakly developed institution of the

10 Prince Hardenberg, quoted in Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 202-3. 11 Werner Conze, "Das Spannungsfeld von Staat und Gesellschaft im Vormarz," in his Stoat und Gesellschaft im deutscben Vormarz, 1815-1848 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1970), 207-69; Jiirgen Kocka, Unternemensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847—1914: Zum Verhdltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 4 1 - 7 ; Reinhart Koselleck, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1967), passim.

6

Introduction

so-called free professions (freie Berufe) (e.g., physicians, private legal counsel, "free" architects, independent consulting engineers).12 The engineering occupation also reflected these rifts and divisions. One recognizes patterns that seem to fit the Anglo-American mold of profession, but are then arrested, or apply to only a segment of the occupation. Likewise, bureaucratic tendencies, though clearly present, also were only partially and unevenly developed. Even when put together, moreover, these two related models account for only part of the picture, because the engineering occupation also belonged in part to Germany's emerging community of businessmen and entrepreneurs. As the nineteenth century progressed, the relationship involving the bureaucratic, professional, and entrepreneurial tendencies in Germany's economic and occupational structure shifted. Until the 1870s, a liberal, market-oriented economy rapidly grew in opposition to, but against the background of, a still vigorous preindustrial bureaucratic tradition. Toward the end of the century, this trend was reversed as industrial capitalism became bureaucratized and converged with the existing bureaucratic patterns to lay the foundation for a new historical phenomenon, variously described as the rise of organized capitalism, corporate capitalism, managerial capitalism, or the postliberal interventionist state — trends that did not, however, become dominant until World War I. 13 Many of the liberal, decentralized, and competitive features of the occupational structure that might have stimulated further development of professions on an Anglo-American pattern grew more slowly or stopped growing altogether, whereas bureaucratic dimensions — albeit substantially modified by market rationality — regained prominence.14 The rapid succession and kaleidoscopic interplay of these various patterns and cleavages help explain why the case of the German engineers presents such difficulties. Located at the juncture of several different principles of organization, pulled back and forth between contradictory tendencies, and split into a variety of factions and segments, the German engineers never had much of a chance to follow any one line of development 12 Otto Hintze, "Der Beamtenstand," in Soziologie und Geschkhte: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, Politik und Theorie der Geschkhte, 2ded., ed. Gerhard Oestreich (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 77; Huerkamp, Aufstieg der Aerzte; Conze and Kocka, Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Lawyers and Their Society: A Comparative Study of the Legal Profession in Germany and in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973). 13 E.g., Heinrich August Winkler, ed., Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfdnge (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974); Gerd Hardach, The First World War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977). 14 Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung, 13-29, 521, 547—59; for similar trends in the United States, see Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971).

Introduction

7

very long. For one reason or another, patterns could never solidify, trends were prematurely interrupted, or context abruptly changed. Exogenous factors like the overall historical environment were not the only causes of the engineers' lack of cohesion. Their inability to develop into a true occupational community was inherent in the nature of engineering as well. Although Durkheim and his functionalist followers were right to draw attention to the group-formative powers of a shared occupation, it should not be forgotten that occupation has powerful competitors in religion, ideology, class, gender, and birth — all of which can cut across or complicate occupational solidarity. 15 Even if these other factors could be ignored, engineering itself developed many separate subspecialties as industry diversified and bureaucratized, leading to countless gradations of skill, training, responsibility, employment setting, and prestige for engineers. This balkanization counteracted occupational community or tended to produce an array of separate communities within the larger occupation.16 This was the case not only in Germany but also in other countries. American engineers, for example, exhibited many of the same educational, social, and career cleavages as did the German engineers. The tendency toward fragmentation in the American case was so pronounced that Robert Perrucci and Joel Gerstl speak of engineering as a "profession without community." While acknowledging that "engineering is a profession," they also conclude that "it lacks the one characteristic traditionally deemed the essence of professionalism — a community of shared values." 17 In fact, the ideal type of a homogeneous occupational community corresponds so poorly with the known facts in a number of occupations that social scientists have developed a complementary model, known as the "segment" or "process" approach. Pioneered by the occupational sociologists Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss to analyze the medical profession, the segment approach "develop(s) the idea of professions as loose amalgamations of segments pursuing different objectives in different manners and more or less delicately held together under a common name at a particular period in history." 18 Bucher and Strauss view the segments within a profession as coalitions of opposed interests, each possessing a 15 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1964), preface; William J. Goode, "Community within a Community: The Professions," American Sociological Review 22 (1957): 194-200; Graeme Salaman, Community and Occupation: An Exploration of Work/ Leisure Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 1974). 16 William M. Evan, "Engineering," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 69-79. 17 Robert Perrucci and Joel E. Gerstl, Profession Without Community: Engineers in American Society (New York: Random House, 1969), 176. 18 Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss, "Professions in Process," American Journal of Sociology 66 (January 196l):325-6.

8

Introduction

common occupational situation, a distinctive professional identity or ideology, and a shared historical perspective, in consequence of which they "tend to take on the character of social movements." 19 One of the most important causes of segmentation relates to the knowledge base of a profession. Different views of its "sense of mission" associated with the emergence of a new specialty and the attendant claims and denials of exclusive competence are potential sources of conflict. Other knowledge-related issues around which different segments have crystallized have concerned the primacy of application (practice) or innovation of knowledge (theory, research), as well as the roles of teaching, public service, consulting, and general or specialized practice as the profession's core activities. Yet another example of this sort is disagreement over methodology and techniques, which can produce the kind of deep divisions and struggles between factions that have been documented with reference to scientific revolutions. 20 A second cause of segment formation pertains to the audience or clientele of a profession. All professions need an audience as the basic condition of their survival, and conflict may arise over how to maintain the clientele, prevent it from shrinking, or promote its growth. Thus, segmentation is intimately linked to the question of the targeted audience: Does it consist primarily of the public at large, or is it composed of large and influential customers, colleagues, bureaucratized corporations, or the government? Is it in the process of changing from one to the other? A third cause of segmentation is the organization of occupational practice. One's role as a sole practitioner, a partner, or an associate, whether one is self-employed, is a salaried employee, is a civil servant, or works in a large or small organization — all these differences are potential sources of conflict and, in the case of the German engineers, became the basis for divisiveness and eventually for separate patterns of association. 21 The existence of segments is also reflected in the history of professional associations, which "are not everybody's association but represent one segment or particular alliance of segments." 22 Control over associations often is intimately bound up with a segment's chances of survival, because it means the ability to forge special relationships with preferred clients and to influence the educational policies or curricula by which segments replenish themselves or become dominant. Because of such advantages, control over professional associations often is disputed, and associations can provide the battleground between competing factions, or segments can split off to form their own associations. 19 20 21 22

Bucher and Strauss, "Professions in Process," 326—30. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1971). A. L. Mok, Beroepen in Actie: Bijdrage tot een Beroepensociologie (Meppel: Boom, 1973), 68—9. Bucher and Strauss, "Professions in Process," 330.

Introduction

9

Set against the background of the wider occupational community posited by Durkheim and the functionalists, the segment approach sheds a great deal of light on the history of engineers. Perrucci and Gerstl employ a combination of the two models in their analysis of the engineering profession in the United States. Harry Lintsen does the same in his study of the Dutch civil engineering corps in the nineteenth century. Monte Calvert's history of the American mechanical engineers, written largely in terms of a fundamental conflict between "shop culture" and "school culture," is an obvious, albeit unacknowledged, application of the segment approach.23 For a history of the German engineers, these concepts are valuable as well. The German engineers who are the subjects of this study - the men who described themselves as Ingenieure or as Techniker and who were overwhelmingly active in the private sector in mechanical specialties — were from the outset split into two fundamental camps. One was headed by engineering professors and technical educators; the other was led by senior managerial engineers and businessmen-engineers. A similar division existed in the United States. Unlike their American counterparts, however, German engineers did not evolve from a "shop culture" dominated by respected but predominantly experimental and empirical entrepreneurengineers to a "school culture" controlled by a strictly scientific and mathematical elite based in the universities. Rather, something close to the reverse was the case. The German pattern was one of initial predominance by a segment of engineering professors who sought to achieve the highest scientific standards in the shortest amount of time, with complete disregard for the needs of practical machine builders. In addition, these engineering scholars promoted a conception of engineering as pure science based on a foundation of classical secondary education and other quasiaristocratic measures of social honor. The reasons for this development, which did not fully surface until the 1860s, as well as the embryonic formation of a countersegment of business-oriented engineers, are spelled out in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 emphasizes those factors that made for occupational community in spite of the underlying reasons for divisiveness. A review of the founding period and early years of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, the largest and most important association of German engineers, shows how important the sense of common purpose, work involvement, and social marginality were for this first generation of engineers. Though the profession was indeed no more than a "loose amalgamation. . . more or less delicately held together. . . under a common name at a particular 23 Harry W . Lintsen, Ingenieurs in Nederland in de Negentiende Eeuw: Hun Streven naar Erkenning en Macht (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980); Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967).

10

Introduction

period in history," it is nonetheless clear that the forces uniting the engineers at that early stage were able to contain the pressures for segmentation and conflict.24 Chapter 3 reconstructs the process that led to the abrogation of occupational community in favor of a policy that promoted the interests and "sense of mission" of the professorial segment, as well as its control over the knowledge base of the occupation. These trends are analyzed with reference to the leadership structure and educational policies of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, as well as in terms of the evolution of Prussia's system of technical education until the mid-1870s. Chapter 4 describes how the foregoing policies culminated in the founding of the technische Hochschule in Berlin. On the surface, the occupation's professorial segment had reached an important milestone in its struggle for educational certification and equality and amalgamation with Germany's traditional professional elites. At the same time, the events surrounding the educational reforms of the middle and late 1870s reveal a fundamental shift: a turning away from traditional definitions of professional knowledge, followed by acceptance "of the 'specialist type of'man' [as opposed to] the older type of the 'cultivated man'" as the dominant self-image and model of professionalism for engineers. 25 Associated with the self-assertion of hitherto latent liberal and business segments in the engineering society, this change came to light in the debates over the Oberrealschule, a new type of nonclassical secondary school established at the same time as the technische Hochschule. Beginning with Chapter 5, the focus of attention shifts to explain the rise to power of a managerial segment in the wake of the severe economic depression of 1873-9. The leaders of this industrial-capitalist faction consciously emulated and displayed many of the characteristics of an American "shop culture" that was just then entering its phase of decline. The interests and the mission of the members of this segment were first to destroy the remaining power of the professorial faction and then to recast engineering education and all that followed from it according to their own needs. To a large extent this succeeded, as standards of capitalist rationality and cost accounting replaced the economically irrational, technocratic policies and quasi-aristocratic ambitions of the occupation's first generation of leaders. In Chapter 6, these changes are analyzed with reference to the formation and subsequent breakaway from the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure of various segments in response to client pressure and because of conflicts over the definition of the occupation's priorities. The focal point for many of 24 Bucher and Strauss, "Professions in Process," 325-6. 25 Max Weber, "Bureaucracy," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (Oxford University Press, 1970; originally published 1946), 243.

Introduction

11

these struggles was the editorial policy and the business policy of the engineering association's journal, which registered with striking clarity the changing of the guard. Chapter 6 also examines the consequences that the managerial segment's victory had for higher technical training and secondary education. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on the reemergence of nonacademic engineering education that was part of the general reorientation of the 1870s. The new engineering schools and what they stood for became matters of contention between the Prussian state and the engineering profession's leadership, which used the conflict to acquire governmental policy-making powers. In the process, the last remnants of an all-encompassing occupational community of engineers were destroyed, making for exceptional degrees of factionalism, fragmentation, and frustrated social ambitions. Various gradations of academic engineers, themselves divided between managerial and professional types, confronted "uncultivated" upstarts from the newly formed nonacademic engineering schools, who often competed for the same positions in industry. Superimposed on this were the devastating consequences of an excess supply of engineers, brought on by the enthusiasm for technical schools of all sorts that seized Germany in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Because the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure proved unwilling and unable to deal with the social consequences of these developments, there came into being a great number of new organizations that catered to the specific interests of the various categories and ranks of engineers. The result was a state of bitter acrimony and latent civil war in the profession, with ominous consequences for the future. This development, which was accompanied by growing radicalization and anger toward the established elites, is discussed in Chapters 9 through 12.

PART I Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

1 Technical education and society before 1850

Reflecting on a century of technological development in German mechanical engineering, the historian Conrad Matschoss noted in 1908 that the "extraordinary progress of the last few decades" contrasted favorably with conditions during the greater part of the nineteenth century. Until recently, he stated, the field had suffered from a vast gap between theory and practice. On one side had stood the prestigious representatives of engineering theory and education — characterized by "scholarly, theoretical debates that only rarely display common sense . . . and most often were useless for actual engineering." On the other side could be found anonymous practitioners, who "learned to get along without the scholars . . . and often rightfully mocked the arrogance and sterility of science." 1 Matschoss attributed this fateful division not to any inherent difficulty in fusing theory and practice but to peculiarly German social conditions. Contemptuous of business and practical know-how, engineering educators 1 Conrad Matschoss, Die Entwkklung der Dampfmaschine, vol. 2 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1908), 6 9 1 4. On the theme of theory and practice, see Wolfgang Konig, "Wissenschaft und Praxis: Schliisselkategorien fur die Entwicklung des deutschen technischen Ausbildungssystems," Mitteilungen der Technischen Universitdt Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig 20, 2(1985): 30—6. On German engineers, see Peter Lundgreen, Techniker in Preussen wdhrend der frtihen Industrialisierung: Ausbildung und Berufsfeld einer entstehenden sozialen Gruppe (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1975); Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, technische Hochschule und Industrie: Ein Beitrag zur Emanzipation der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970); Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1974); Franz Schnabel, Die Anfdnge des technischen Hochschulwesens (Karlsruhe: C. F. Miiller, 1925); Hans Schimank, Der Ingenieur: Entwicklungsweg eines Berufes bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts [Cologne: Bund-Verlag GmbH (DGB), 1961}; Lars Ulrich Scholl, Ingenieure in der Fruhindustrialisierung: Staatliche und private Techniker im Konigreich Hannover und an der Ruhr (1815—1873) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978); Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zumpolitischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970); Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig, eds., Technik, Ingenieure undGesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856-1981 (Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981); Manfred Spath, "Die Professionalisierung von Ingenieuren in Deutschland und Russland 1800 bis 1914," in Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 1: Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen, ed. Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985), 6 5 1 - 8 8 .

15

16

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

in the past had approached their subject as a pure science and a strictly academic discipline, in consequence of which they had lost touch with reality. The professors had ignored the problem for decades, because as scholars and academics they enjoyed public esteem far above that of the practical engineers, "who as former artisans also stood socially much below the representatives of the sciences."2 The ascendancy of the engineering professor that Matschoss lamented originated in the early nineteenth century and was rooted in causes similar to those that accounted for the rise of Germany's nontechnical academics at that time: the period's unique blend of bureaucratic and aristocratic traditions, modern doctrines of political and economic liberalism, and relative economic backwardness coupled with a highly developed educational structure. 3 Representing a mixture of the ideology of knowledge for its own sake and Bildung with the spirit of science and technology, technical educators had arrived on the scene well before the breakthrough of industrial society in order to help build it. Thus, they provided a vehicle for continuity between the vanishing aristocratic world of the eighteenth century and the emerging world of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. It was a historic role with major consequences for the development of the German engineering profession.

1.

MODERNIZATION GOALS IN PRUSSIA IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Technical education for the private sector grew out of the various reform programs that most German states adopted in the aftermath of defeat by Napoleon. Their founding of technical schools was a key aspect of the effort to regenerate a stagnating economy.4 If the economic historians are right, it was an effort that paid off. The states' pioneering creation of technical schools in the first half of the nineteenth century usually is singled out as one of the most significant - albeit unquantifiable - contributions to Germany's rapid industrial progress in the second half of 2 Matschoss, Dampfmaschine, 692. 3 Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890— 1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 1-41; Jiirgen Kocka, "Biirgertum und Biirgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte vom spaten 18. zum friihen 20. Jahrhundert," in Burger und Biirgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jiirgen Kocka (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 27, 33-8, 52; Rudolf Vierhaus, "Der Aufstieg des Burgertums vom spaten 18. Jahrhundert bis 1848/49," ibid., 64-78. 4 Hans Joachim Straube, Die Gewerbefbrderung Preussens in der ersten Hdlfte des 19. Jahrhunderts mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Regierungsmassnahmen zur Forderung der Industrie durch Erziehung und Fortbildung (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1933), 9, 12-13; Hja Mieck, Preussische Gewerbe-Politik in Berlin, 1806—1844: Staatshilfe und Privatinitiative zwischen Merkantilismus und Liberalismus (Berlin: W . de Gruyter, 1965), 12, 37.

Technical education and society before 1850

17

the century. 5 But the technical schools did more than stimulate industry, or, rather, they did so at a significant social cost. The educational initiatives of the early nineteenth century set the stage for the dichotomy between practical and theoretical engineers and the dynamic tensions and other social reverberations that sprang from it. The case of Prussia's approach to technical education in the Reform Era and the Vorma'rz illustrates the problem. Perhaps best summarized as an attempt at education of society by the state, the Prussian reforms from the outset placed great emphasis on economic regeneration and catching up with western Europe. 6 The introduction of "democratic principles in a monarchical government" was intended to revitalize Prussian society and so forestall the dangers of a much larger political and social upheaval. "The Prussian bureaucracy," writes Reinhart Koselleck, "had consciously opted in favor of Adam Smith and against Napoleon, in order to drive out the one with the other. It accepted the challenge of the Industrial Revolution to avoid a Trench Revolution' but to achieve its goals all the same." 7 Prussia's bureaucratic reformers wished to complement the Old Regime's traditional techniques of economic stimulation, in which educational motives had already figured prominently, with the liberalization of large parts of the entire social order.8 They hoped gradually to introduce an age of economic and political liberalism and accommodate it to the historical traditions and life of Prussian society. Combining tradition and modernity in the notion that 5 David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 1969), 1 5 0 - 1 ; Knut Borchardt, "The Industrial Revolution in Germany, 1700—1914," in The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 4, pt. 1: The Emergence of Industrial Societies, ed. Carlo M. Cipolla (London: Collins/Fontana, 1973), 102, 136; Ulrich Peter Ritter, Die Rolle des Staates in den Fruhstadien der Industrialisierung: Die preussische Industriefbrderung in der ersten Hdlfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1961), 37; William O. Henderson, The State and the Industrial Revolution in Prussia, 1740-1870 (Liverpool University Press, 1958), 96, passim; Hans Mottek, Walther Becker, and Alfred Schroter, Wirtschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands: Ein Grundriss, vol. 3: Von der Zeit der Bismarckschen Reichsgrundung 1871 bis zur Niederlage des faschistischen deutschen lmperialismus 1945, 2nd ed. (Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1975), 48—9; Peter Lundgreen, Bildung und Wirtschaftswachstum im Industrialisierungsprozess des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1973); Robert S. Locke, The End of the Practical Man: Entrepreneurship and Higher Education in Germany, France, and Great Britain, 1880-1940 (London: JAI Press, 1984), 1-88. 6 Reinhart Koselleck, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1967), 153-62, 3 3 1 - 2 . More recently on the period, see Marion W . Gray, Prussia in Transition: Society and Politics under the Stein Reform Ministry of 1808. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 76, 1(1986). 7 Koselleck, Preussen, 14. 8 On economic reform in the Old Regime, see Conrad Matschoss, Preussens Getverbefbrderung und ihre grossen Manner: Dargestellt im Rahmen der Geschichte des Vereins zur Befbrderung des Gewerbfleisses in Preussen, 1821-1921 (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1921), 11-19; idem, Friedrich der Grosse als Befbrderer des Gewerbefleisses (Berlin: Leonhard Simion, 1912); Henderson, State, 1—42; Oskar Simon, Die Fachbildung des preussischen Gewerbe- und Handelsstandes im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Heine, 1902), 500-708; Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 14; Schnabel, Anfdnge, 29.

18

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

"what had to be taught" was liberalism, the reformers viewed education and freedom as the two mutually reinforcing principles that would overcome Prussia's greatest handicap, the tradition-bound attitudes and backwardness of its economic classes.9 The reports of Gottlob Kunth, a high official in the Prussian Department of Trade during the 1810s and an enthusiastic member of the reform party, bear witness to the conviction that ignorance and lack of education were at the root of the problem. Traveling to the province of Saxony in 1817, Kunth, a former tutor to the brothers Humboldt, observed that "in Magdeburg and in Burg there are a few machine builders, in particular for weaving; they are mere artisans who copy in a mechanical way. Not a single one of them makes his own inventions or even looks for improvements." 10 On a visit to Silesia in 1818, Kunth noted that "relative to [the province's] size, factories and in general the factory spirit are absent." He blamed these conditions above all on the lack of proper knowledge and educational facilities. u Even in the Rhine province, which was economically ahead of other Prussian territories, Kunth observed the "indolence and clumsiness" of the workers in Trier and the technological backwardness of textile manufacturers in Bonn, Elberfeld, Remscheid, and Solingen.12 In 1829, Elberfeld's industry was "essentially still the same as" in 1816. Despite a better attitude, "the technical education of the factory owners [was] still no match for the volume and diversity of their business." 13 The level of education among Berlin's cotton manufacturers in 1820 was so low that many had "difficulty writing their name and [were] unable to do their simple bookkeeping." They had "no idea of the possibility and necessity of more education." 14 In the initial stages of the reforms under Baron vom Stein, attempts to eliminate this kind of apathy were based on ideas that centered on the indivisibility of social, political, and economic reforms. To men like Stein and Kunth, the key to successful economic development did not lie solely in the rigid economic liberalism advocated by the Prussian disciples of Adam Smith, but in a grandiose educational operation. Their project was 9 Friedrich and Paul Goldschmidt, Das Leben des Staatsraths Kunth (Berlin: J. Springer, 1888), 362. On Prussia's economic backwardness, see Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 3: Erfahrungswissenschaften und Technik, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1950), 258-300; Landes, Prometheus, 134-8; Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 2 0 - 1 ; Ritter, Rolle, 156-8; J. H. Clapham, Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815—1914, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1968), 8 2 - 8 ; Simon, Fachbildung, 6 0 1 - 8 . Borchardt, "Revolution," 7 6 - 9 0 , does not acknowledge backwardness. 10 Quoted in Goldschmidt, Kunth, 175. 11 Ibid., 2 0 2 - 3 ; Matschoss, Gewerbefbrderung, 147; Straube, Gewerbefbrderung, 45; Koselleck, Preussen, 628. 12 Goldschmidt, Kunth, 235, 297. 13 Ibid., 311. 14 Ibid., 32.

Technical education and society before 1850

19

to foster a liberal bourgeoisie that was emancipated politically as well as economically. Kunth expressed this approach concisely when he stated that "the help that can be given by the state is summed up in one word: education!"15 Stein and Kunth saw the causes of economic backwardness not merely in excessive government regulation of the economy or the lack of particular modern techniques and skills but above all in the low level of general education of the economically active population, specifically its ignorance of "the mathematical and physical sciences, and what is based thereon: history, especially history related to the development of culture, and modern languages." 16 They believed that technological stagnation was ultimately a result of a more general ignorance and that the lack of general education, in turn, was primarily a consequence of the vast social rift between Germany's artisanal and manufacturing classes and its "cultivated," classically trained higher orders. Regeneration of Prussian society could take place only if that gap were bridged. That would be done by a "revolution from above," which would introduce a program of modern, nonclassical education centered on the natural sciences and designed for all social classes.17 In 1816, after he had already retired from active government service, Kunth presented to Finance Minister Biilow a memorandum containing the essence of his views. The "lack of general education," Kunth pointed out in On the Education of the Manufacturing and Trading Class, "is a great handicap for our economic classes, not merely in the external, commercial aspects, but above all in the internal, technical functioning of their business. At the same time it consolidates the dividing wall between them and the so-called learned or educated classes - to the detriment of both." 18 Breaking down this barrier between the "industrial" class and "learned" society with a system of secondary education that would be equally relevant for "civil society" or the private sector and for the bureaucratic classes was a precondition for creating the synthesis of production and science on which better technology and improved economic performance depended. 19 The necessity of introducing a type of education that combined moral "cultivation" with practical occupational preparation also was the theme 15 Ibid., 106-7, 214. 16 Kunth to Stein in 1821, ibid., 369; Goldschmidt, Kunth, 362. 17 Schnabel, Geschicte, vol. 3, 239-320 (especially 239-44, 292-301). The diagnosis was not new. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment figures such as Johann Julius Hecker and Justus Moser had made similar observations. See Schnabel, Geschkhte, vol. 1, 425; Wilhelm Treue, "Geschichte des technischen Unterrichts," in Festschrift zur 125-Jahrfeier der TH Hannover (Hanover: 1956), 9—69; Simon, Fachbildung, 49—50, 631; Lundgreen, Techniker, 11, 15; Manegold, Universitdt, 18... 18 Goldschmidt, Kunth, 360-1. 19 Ibid., 125.

20

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

of August Spilleke's well-known treatise "On the Essence of the Burgher School" (1822). Spilleke, a noted educator and a close collaborator of Kunth, had concluded that these functions "must be connected with each other very closely if education itself is not going to become either merely mechanical or merely formal, but rather a real, solid human education and a burgher education at the same time. " 20 Not only would such schools, which were to be equal in rank to the classical Gymnasium, bring about the social and political emancipation of artisans, manufacturers, and merchants, but "as the Gymnasium for those who choose a higher burgher occupation" they would also attract those sons of the wealthier and higher classes of society "who do not want to become scholars." 21 The conviction that fundamental economic improvement would not occur without emancipating the industrial population in a broad, societal sense also was central to Stein's ambitious plans for Prussia. Simultaneous political and economic education, mutually reinforcing and strictly complementary, would be the means to arrive at the goal. In economic questions, Stein adhered to a "liberalizing mercantilism" designed to steer a course between the extremes of the rigid, free-trade movement of Prussia's liberal economic theorists and the ossified protectionist system of eighteenth-century of mercantilism. 22 The heart of his economic policy was also to educate, to inculcate the values of independence and entrepreneurship at the same time as teaching the scientific foundations of modern methods of production. In 1808 Stein had decided to organize a "Technical Deputation for Industry and Commerce" (Technische Gewerbe- und Handels Deputation), whose explicit purpose it would be "to watch the progress of the scientific element in production techniques [Gewerbekunde]."25 Stein's political liberalism showed in the famed Nassau memorandum, which reflected his faith in the possibility of citizenship, self-government, and individual respsonsibility. In short, the "intimate connection between the constitutional movement and industrial ascent was a matter of innermost conviction for the founders of industrial Germany." 24 Convinced of the indivisibility of economic, social, and political modernization, the reformers proved incapable of translating their lofty prin20 Spilleke, quoted in Goldschmidt, Kunth, 131. 21 Quoted in Goldschmidt, Kunth, 361-3, 369, 382; also see 122-35; Wolfram Fischer, Der Stoat und die Anfdnge der Industrialisierung in Baden, 1800—1850, vol. 1: Die staatliche Gewerbepolitik (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1962), 164-5; Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847—1914: Zum Verhdltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 166. 22 Mieck, Gewerbe-?olitik, 8-13. 23 Matschoss, Gewerbeforderung, 23; Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 12—13; Straube, Gewerbeforderung, 29-31. 24 Schnabel, Geschichte, 297.

Technical education and society before 1850 ciples into reality. 25 The system of closed estates they hoped to replace with a liberal society was by no means dead, and many proposed reforms faced considerable opposition from those whose social and economic privileges depended on its perpetuation. Simultaneous political emancipation and socioeconomic reforms would have caused a conservative opposition to use the former for undoing and preventing the latter. In Koselleck's words, "it was the dilemma of how much freedom to start with if the people were to be educated in it."26 The reform party tried to solve this dilemma by holding on to, or even tightening, the reins of bureaucratic control over society and, in good absolutist tradition, by justifying their intensifying tutelage as part of the educational experience that would eventually bring about liberal capitalism. 27 In theory, at least, the notion of education made possible the reconciliation of liberal ideology and coercive practice. This general political problem coincided with a specific financial crisis: near-bankruptcy and the need to come up with massive payments to the French conqueror. The result was a decision to give priority to immediate economic modernization at the expense of political emancipation. The ascent to power of Prince Hardenberg and his deregulation of trade and business in 1810 signaled the change in course. Inexorably the goal of political liberalization was subordinated to first creating a liberal economic order. Initially a temporary stay of political reform, after 1815 the new policy evolved into a course of bureaucratic absolutism and rigid political control. The new priorities go a long way toward explaining Prussia's paradoxical situation during the Restoration and the Vorma'rz: on the one hand a political climate of oppression and reaction, on the other hand the consistent application of liberal principles in the economic arena. With a unique mixture of neomercantilist techniques and liberal economic motives, the state intervened in the economy as its principal promoter and modernizer in the decades before 1848. Despite the mercantilist appearance created by the continued use of eighteenth-century methods, such as extensive regulation and supervision, subsidies, credits, and public enterprise, all the reform measures that were introduced betrayed "the determination to arrive thereby at economic liberalism." 28 Although failing to meet the standards that would today be applied to a deliberate policy of industrialization, the government's efforts were all aimed at "the education of manufacturers and tradesmen in independent activity," which was in line with the latest word in economic theory. 29 25 26 27 28 29

Koselleck, Preussen, passim. Ibid., 159. Fischer, Stoat, 11. Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 236. Quoted in Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 236. Borchardt, "Revolution," 102, and Ritter, Rolle, 1 1 -

21

22

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

All this economic activism took place in a sociopolitical context that had given the inherited aristocratic order a new lease on life. Although noble birth was removed as the exclusive standard of social prestige and privilege, "the development of open classes was largely offset by the perpetuation of privileged professional status groups {Berufsstdnde'] of high social rank which preserved or even fortified many of the persistent traditions and exclusive rights of the abolished 'First Estate.' " 30 Formal Bildung, to be acquired through a classical secondary education and university training, became the single most important new criterion for membership in the "aristocracy of intellect" - a community made up primarily of the higher civil service and the academic professions that Fritz Ringer has aptly labeled the "German Mandarins." 31 This readjustment at the top of the social pyramid did not eliminate the fundamental rift somewhat further down its steps: the traditional social barrier between the economically active classes and the "cultured" and aristocratic elite. 32 "The assimilation of the upper layer of commoners to the nobility, which specifically excluded the 'advancing economic bourgeoisie,' occurred gradually in the context of government service," writes Koselleck. Outside this orbit, the old legal and social hierarchy survived, which meant that the "Prussian Burgher class was much less homogeneous than its name suggests." 33 If anything, the appearance of Bildung and classical secondary education as the twin standards for "professional" rank reinforced the invidious distinction between "lower," practical occupations in the private sector and "higher" cultural occupations associated with the state. As a critical observer noted in 1826, the Restoration was a time in which he was "continuously subjected to hearing a feudal regimen defended more crudely and boldly than 49 years ago, when I was already fighting it." The 1820s were a period "when the most rigid segregation of the classes is preached with a confidence as though the Indian caste system were the triumph of all political and social institutions; when people are not ashamed to describe - at times derisively, at times ingenuously - our higher artisans, our manufacturers, etc., when these respectable classes have saved enough to buy a noble estate, as the lower classes (sic), as the dregs of society (sic)."34

30 31 32 33

34

12, argue that all this fell short of an industrialization policy. Landes, Prometheus, 138—52, suggests it was. Hans Rosenburg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660—1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 211. Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, passim; Vierhaus, "Der Aufstieg des Biirgertums," 64— 78. Koselleck, Preussen, 438-47. Ibid., 87, 90; Lenore O'Boyle, "Klassische Bildung und soziale Struktur in Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1848," Historische Zeitschrift 207 (1968): 584-608; Kocka, "Burgertum und Biirgerlichkeit," 33-8, 52. Kunth to Stein, 22 April 1826, quoted in Goldschmidt, Kunth,, 385.

Technical education and society before 1850

23

The political realignment that took place after 1810 had major consequences for educational policy as well. The plans for a wider social and political emancipation of the industrial and commercial classes via modern, science-based general secondary education were abandoned. They were replaced by a technologically more concentrated and culturally narrower conception of separate specialized occupational training programs to achieve only the economic emancipation of select artisans. This change in educational goals had the effect of blocking practice-oriented natural science and modern education as avenues of social mobility. It dovetailed with the increasingly reactionary political climate and with the reaffirmation of the social barrier between a newly reconstituted, philologically oriented upper stratum and the rest of society.35 The new constellation expressed itself in a rejection of the attempt to combine the teaching of practically useful knowledge with general cultivation or moral education in nonclassical secondary schools. As Education Minister Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote tersely in 1810, "I am against it."36 In his Lithuanian school plan, Humboldt had explained why. All schools that served the "entire nation, or, in its place, the state, must only aim at general human cultivation. What is required by the necessities of life or one of its industries and trades must be acquired separately and upon completion of general instruction. If both are mixed, education becomes impure and one gets neither complete human beings nor complete burghers of the individual classes."37 When he formulated this program, Humboldt had been motivated by noble intentions. The neohumanist educational views he championed had themselves originated as a constructive reaction against the tendency of eighteenth-century enlightened absolutism to restrict the function of education to practical utility, and against French cultural and scientific influences. But their victory resulted in a one-dimensional emphasis on the formal aspects of Bildung, in a prejudice against practical knowledge, and hence, despite perfunctory assurances to the contrary, in neglect of occupational and industrial education. Implemented by Humboldt's increasingly conservative successors, the rigid segregation of practically useful education from personal cultivation served to exclude large segments of the middle classes from social emancipation.38 35 Hartmut Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikem in 19- und 20. Jahrhundert," Geschkhte und Gesellschaft 10, 1(1984): 110. 36 Quoted in Lundgreen, Techniker, 23. 37 Quoted in Gustav Griiner, Die Entwicklung der hoheren technischen Fachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet

(Brunswick: Westermann, 1967), 34. 38 The invidious distinctions established at that time between technical and modern schools on one hand and classical education and the universities on the other are an instance of what Fritz Ringer calls "segmentation," and Detlef Miiller "systematization." See Detlef K. Miiller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon, The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction

24

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

For higher education, these educational tendencies meant the revival of the universities, especially the ascent of the philosophical faculty as a bastion of philology and the Geisteswissenschaften ("cultural sciences"), and the gradual development of "pure" natural science. All the emphasis in natural science was on theoretical investigation and basic research. In conformity with the neohumanist outlook, it was defined as knowledge for its own sake and as a form of moral excellence. Even if it had practical value, university-based science always rested on a foundation of classical learning. The applied sciences, in contrast, were considered morally inferior and therefore suffered neglect, or else were made over in the neohumanist image. Disciplines such as Technologie and Cameralism, for example, were robbed of their pragmatic, technical aspects.39 In secondary education, the consequences of the neohumanist victory were even more significant. The classical Gymnasium, increasingly concentrating on narrow grammatical study of the Greek classics and, as time went on, above all the traditional Roman authors, arose as the "school for the state and the cultivated classes."40 Endowed with all the social prestige and educational privileges that the state could muster, the Gymnasium became the most secure path to social advancement in nineteenthcentury Germany. It alone could provide access to the respectability of a government career, to the universities, and to the coveted status of the "cultivated man." The rise of the Gymnasium also meant the invidious neglect of practical knowledge, mathematics, and the natural sciences and therefore the consolidation of social and cultural prejudices among the German educated bourgeoisie that were increasingly unwarranted in an industrializing society.41 1870—1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1987), passim; Fritz K. Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979). On the theory and practice of neohumanism, see Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 1, 408—57, vol. 2, 343—63; Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, 1—24; Lundgreen, Techniker, 2 0 - 4 ; Manegold, Universitdt, 26—33; KarlErnst Jeismann, Das preussische Gymnasium in Staat und Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1974); Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts aufden deutschen Schulen und Universitaten vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Veit & Co., 1897); Hans Weil, Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsprinzips (Bonn: Verlag von Friedrich Cohen, 1930); Margret Kraul, Das deutsche Gymnasium 1780-1980 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984), 13-73. Konrad Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), 6 - 1 3 , 8 1 - 9 , 403. 39 Manegold, Universitdt, 2 6 - 3 3 . 40 Subtitle of Jeismann, Gymnasium; Kraul, Gymnasium. Until the 1850s and 1860s, however, the lower grades of the Gymnasium frequently also served as the equivalent of a general high school for all but the poorest classes; Detlef Miiller, "The Process of Systematization: The Case of German Secondary Education," in The Rise of the Modern Educational System, ed. Miiller, Ringer, and Simon, 2 7 - 3 1 . 41 Jiirgen Kocka, "Bildung, soziale Schichtung und soziale Mobilitat im Deutschen Kaiserreich: Am Beispiel der gewerblich-technischen Ausbildung," in lndustrielle Gesellschaft und politisches System: Beitrdge zur politischen Sozialgeschichte, ed. Dirk Stegmann, Bernd-Jiirgen Wendt, and

Peter-Christian Witt (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft GmbH, 1978), 297-313; Matschoss,

Technical education and society before 1850 2.

25

TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Between 1810 and 1820, building up the Gymnasium and spreading the gospel of Bildung were top priorities. All of Prussia's schools would be reorganized along neohumanist lines, including those formerly intended for industrial and practical training. Naturally this development caused grave concern in the Department of Commerce and Industry, mandated to revive the economy in part through a policy of utilitarian, technical education. Despite repeated complaints, Commerce Department officials were powerless to influence the course of events until 1820. In the end, however, the single-minded policy of the neohumanists could not be maintained. In 1817 the Department of Education for the first time acknowledged that some sort of occupationally relevant instruction for artisans was indeed necessary.42 Finally, in 1820, it reluctantly agreed to a compromise. The Department of Commerce and Industry received permission to set up, outside the orbit of "general education," its own system of specialized occupational instruction. Besides economic reasons, financial considerations played a large role in this decision. Lack of funds prevented the Ministry of Culture from retaining control over technical and industrial education. As its chief, Altenstein, wrote to Commerce Minister Biilow in the fall of 1820, "a very substantial cut in the budget of my Ministry" had been decisive in the decision to leave education "for the class of the tradesmen" to other government agencies.43 To protect the Ministry of Culture's monopoly on "general education," it was stipulated that the new technical schools would not be allowed to impart general, socially or culturally emancipating knowledge. They were exclusively designed for the encouragement of private enterprise and intentionally were to create narrow specialists. As the Ministry of Culture subsequently explained, the "fundamental distinction between a . . . specialized occupational school [Fachschule] and an institution that gives general education" was that the former "shall only . . . train its students in a clearly

Gewerbeforderung, 148; Ritter, Rolle, 23—4; Manegold, Universitdt, 3 1 ; Schnabel, Deutsche Geschkhte, vol. 1, 428-33. Similar attitudes existed in other European countries, but owing to the Gymnasium's key role and its numerical weight, they appear to have been particularly pronounced in Germany, especially in Prussia; Detlef K. Miiller and Bernd Zymek, Sozialgeschkhte undStatistik des Schulsystems in den Staaten des Deutschen Reiches, 1800—1945 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987); Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe. 42 Straube, Gewerbefbrderung, 13—14. 43 Ibid., 18. It is not clear whether or not and to what extent technical schools were approved because they might be a safety valveforthe growing pressures on classical and university education — part of a policy to divert lower-middle-class social ambitions into alternative careers. It cannot be ignored, however, that concerns about afloodof would-be Bildungsburger from the lower orders dovetailed with the need for economic modernization and with the subsequent organization of technical education; cf. Vierhaus, "Der Aufstieg des Biirgertums," 7 2 - 5 .

26

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

defined body of specialized knowledge and skills," whereas the latter had a monopoly on moral improvement.44 The compromise meant that disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and modern languages, which besides the engineering subjects proper made up the curriculum in the new technical schools, entered Prussian education primarily in the guise of special occupational training and therefore with a vocational stigma. It is true that they were ultimately also introduced in the classical Gymnasium, but that was done reluctantly, slowly and in small doses.43 The government's policy was therefore calculated to reinforce the invidious moral and social distinction between science and technology on one hand and the classics and culture on the other. The existence of the Realschule, or modern secondary school, softened the rigidity of these alternatives only marginally. An institution that the neohumanist regime had been unable to eliminate, the Realschule occupied a middle ground between the Gymnasium and the specialized occupational school. Aiming to give an education at once moral and practical, the Realschulen resembled specialized occupational schools insofar as their primary purpose was to educate the commercial and industrial classes. The social and political elites avoided them as schools that provided nothing more than applied training for the humdrum world of industry, trade, and commerce. The administrative and legal context reinforced such prejudices. Though part of the main system of general education under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture, the Realschule offered only a modest program in classics, in order to make time for its modern topics of instruction. Without a full, government-certified program in Greek and Latin, it provided only severely limited access to higher education or the civil service. This effectively seduced the Realschule to gradually increase its Latin curriculum at the expense of modern languages, mathematics, and natural science.46 Unlike the Realschulen or the Gymnasien, the new schools for industry came under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Department and had none of the specialized educational rights and entitlements of the former. Not until 1850 did they win their first important privilege: the right of graduates to serve in the military as "one-year volunteers." Without instruction in "generally cultivating" subjects, the graduates of the industrial schools were excluded from the universities and the civil service 44 ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 29970, Bl. 40, Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Trade, 6 March 1859. Also Griiner, Fachschulen, 35. 45 James C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton University Press, 1983), 71-6, 9 1 - 3 , 208-42. 46 Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 3, 315-23; Paulsen, Geschichte, vol. 2, 539—60. A summary history of the Realschule is found in Miiller, "The Process of Systematization: The Case of German Secondary Education," 3 1 - 3 .

Technical education and society before 1850

27

altogether. If nevertheless these schools survived and grew, it was because they filled a large gap and because they had the unfailing attention of the bureaucratic official in charge of technical education: Peter Christian Beuth. An expert in finance and tax questions, Beuth became the head of Prussia's office for economic development and technical education in 1820. 47 As a firm believer in economic liberalism, Beuth adopted a strategy that differed from the approach of his predecessor Kunth. 48 He abandoned the latter's ambitious and expensive plans for broadly based modern secondary education. Instead, Beuth concentrated on highly focused but modest programs of technical training and industrial encouragement that aimed only at improving economic performance. By opting for specialized knowledge and immediate, economic utility over a more generalized kind of education for the industrial classes, Beuth succeeded in establishing technical education in Prussia. But his success came at a price. He revived the eighteenth-century tradition of narrowly utilitarian, specialized education in academies and in special-purpose schools that was rejected equally by dissenters such as Kunth and, at least in principle, by the neohumanists themselves. Beuth, who shared Kunth's dislike for classical education, recognized that it would be impossible to defeat the powerful neohumanists. 49 From his early days in the Department of Commerce and Industry he therefore was willing to make a clear distinction between the "subjects for general public instruction" and those for the "specific instruction of artisans." 50 Under the circumstances it probably was the only course that had a chance of success, because it alone allowed reconciliation of the need for education in science and technology with the conflicting goals of preserving a preindustrial status hierarchy and solidifying the recent gains of the classically educated middle class. When Beuth's policy is compared with Kunth's broad vision, the change in emphasis becomes fully apparent. Contrary to Kunth's aims, his policy distinguished economic modernization from sociopolitical change. Economically his policy was to concentrate all efforts on the application of scientific knowledge to carefully chosen, narrowly circumscribed areas of production as a way of stimulating the development of private industrial enterprise. As he wrote in 1824, "where science has not been introduced 47 On Beuth, see Straube, Gewerbefbrderung; idem, "Chr. P. Wilhelm Beuth," vol. 2, no. 5, of Deutsches Museum, Abhandlungen und Berkhte (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1930); Matschoss, Gewerbefbrderung, 30ff.; Henderson, Prussia, 9 6 - 1 1 8 ; Neue Deutsche Biograpbie, vol. 2 (Berlin: 1955), 2 0 0 2. 48 Beuth's economic liberalism is described in Matschoss, Gewerbefbrderung, 18, and Schnabel, Deutsche Geschkhte, vol. 3, 297. 49 Straube, Gewerbefbrderung, 15; Fischer, Stoat, I65ff., Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung, 166; Manegold, Universitdt, 39—40, 43; Lundgreen, Techniker^ Chapter 1. 50 Straube, Gewerbefbrderung, 14; Lundgreen, Techniker, Chapter 1.

28

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

in industry, there industry lacks a secure foundation, there progress does not exist." 31 At the same time, he willingly eliminated from industrial education all those topics that might in this period and ideological climate have had a socially emancipatory effect. By toning down its social dimension and by restricting it to a narrow, merely occupationally relevant curriculum for a relatively small group of technologically critical artisans and manufacturers, the social ramifications of educating the lower classes might be held in check. Under Beuth's guidance the economically necessary education for these classes would be effected within the framework of the existing social hierarchy, rather than being part of its general overhaul. Even a limited program like Beuth's evoked considerable anxiety in conservative circles. King Frederick William III, for example, feared that such schooling would still implant social discontent and the drive to climb the social ladder in the lower classes. As late as 1830 a reactionary Hanoverian bureaucrat argued against the founding of industrial and technical schools because they would only serve "to make obvious the oppression of misery, to show more clearly the gap between dignity and indigence, to alienate the tradesman from his occupation in which he is happy because of his limited horizons, and, through various measures of enlightenment, to let him wake up out of the unconsciousness of a pleasant dream to a calamitous reality." 52 Despite such ultraconservative fears, Beuth carried the day. The compromise of 1820 between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Trade thus marked the beginning of a policy whereby economic modernization was to be achieved through a separate program of special education for private industry. Within a year Beuth had founded the Technical Institute in Berlin, started a network of trade schools in the provinces, and embarked upon a coherent policy of stimulating economic development through the dissemination of technical knowledge. The 1820 compromise also inaugurated the development of two separate educational systems that varied in status and perpetuated a modified version of the preindustrial social cleavage between the archetypes of the artisan and the scholar deep into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ideological justification for this arrangement was provided by Carl Friedrich Nebenius, who introduced a similar, albeit less rigid, system in Baden in 1830. Nebenius argued that there were "two different areas for the application of human endeavor in social life, according to which 51 Quoted in Ritter, Rolle, 26. Also, Frank Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in Deutschland, 1750-1914 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974), 137. 52 Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 2, 349, and vol. 3, 302. The much-cited remark of the Hanoverian official is cited in Treue, Unterricht, 50; Matschoss, Gewerbefbrderung, 38; Fischer, Staat, 162; Matschoss, Dampfmaschine, vol. 1, 173; Gustav Goldbeck, Technik als geistige Bewegung in den Anfdngen des deutschen Industriestaates (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1934), 10.

Technical education and society before 1850

29

society is divided into two main classes." On the one hand there was the class that concerned "itself above all with the cultivation of the inner values of society [and was] made up of the scholars in a narrow sense . . . then of civil servants and churchmen, legal scholars, physicians, in short of all those who according to current practice need academic qualifications for the proper exercise of their profession." On the other hand was the "much larger main class, . . . made up of all those who are active in some area of the economy, devote themselves to some branch of production as entrepreneurs, as administrators, or as workers, in agriculture, trade, or manufacture, or in commerce, in private firms, or in such as come under the purview of the state." 33 This fundamental dichotomy prescribed different types of secondary education for society's two basic classes. The station of the universityeducated elite demanded a classical education. 54 The future guardians of the inner values of society needed the classics, according to Nebenius, not merely because the latter were necessary for the various academic disciplines of the university but also because they were "the keepers of the most glorious products of a higher cultural development [and] an excellent means to stimulate almost all spiritual powers: memory, intellect, judgment, heart, imagination, aesthetic sensibility." 55 Only the Gymnasium fitted this description, and therefore it was to remain the school for the cultured few. In contrast, organic ties between the classics and progress in the technical disciplines were nonexistent, Nebenius observed. Thus, the curriculum, rigor, and homogeneity of a Gymnasium education were unsuitable and unnecessary for the productive class. "To qualify for a technical or a burgher occupation no such comprehensive preparatory education is required." 56 Moreover, it was dangerous, as the acquisition of a "higher spiritual education not required for their future position in life might cause [the productive classes] to lose the appetite for their work." 57 3.

ORGANIZATION OF PRUSSIAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION TO 1830

Beuth patterned the new industrial schools after the organization of civil engineering and building trades schools that dated from the late eighteenth 53 Carl Friedrich Nebenius, Ueber technische Lehranstalten in ihrem Zusammenhange mit dem gesammten Unterrichtswesen und mit besonderer Rucksicht auf die polytechnische Schule zu Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe: Chr. Fr. Miiller'sche Hofbuchhandlung, 1833), 65-6. On Nebenius, see Arthur Boehtlingk, Carl Friedrich Nebenius; der deutsche Zollverein, das Karlsruher Polytechnikum und die erste Staatsbahn in Deutschland (Karlsruhe: W. Jahraus, 1899); Schnabel, Anfdnge, 25-42. 54 Nebenius, Lehranstalten, 66. 55 Ibid., 68. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 67.

30

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

century. 58 In 1787 the government had set up several Provincial Art Schools to improve the level of artisanal competence. In 1799 it had established the Bau-Akademie in Berlin to train surveyors and its own corps of civil engineers and architects. As a civil-service school, the BauAkademie required a basic knowledge of Latin and French for admission, though occasionally it also admitted a few talented lower-class graduates from the Provincial Art Schools.59 In the chaotic years around the turn of the century, none of these schools had taken root, and subsequently they languished under the regime of the neohumanists. The Provincial Art Schools were neglected, and the Bau-Akademie was allowed to adopt unwarranted academic pretensions. The result, according to Beuth, was a teaching level too advanced for most students, lax discipline, and ultimately technical incompetence. 60 Beuth revived the system and adapted it to the requirements of industrial education for the private sector. He retained the principle of a two-tier system with a central higher institute at the top and a string of lower-level schools in the provinces. The best students from the lower stage would be allowed to continue their education at the higher level. This upward path, however, was available only to students going into private industry. Beuth distinguished sharply between the civil-service track and the business track. Of future technical civil servants he continued to require a "generally cultivating" preparatory education, including Latin. This meant that admission to the reorganized Bau-Akademie — renamed General Building School — from the provincial schools was eliminated. Students going into private industry, on the other hand, could enter a separate higher school of their own, the Industrial Institute in Berlin, without having to take classics or surmount a "general-cultivation" barrier. Until the late 1870s, most of the students of the Industrial Institute, which concentrated on mechanical engineering, came from the system's bottom tier, the Provincial Trade Schools (Provinzial-GewerbeSchulen).61

Replacing the Provincial Art Schools, the Provincial Trade Schools were gradually established in the provinces after 1820 at the rate of one in each administrative district (Regierung), for a total of twenty-five. This

58 On the organization of early Prussian technical education, Lundgreen, Techniker, is by far the best. Still useful older literature: Straube, Gewerbeforderung; Matschoss, Gewerbeforderung; Simon, Fachbildung; Griiner, Fachschulen; Dobbert, Cbronik der Koniglichen Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin, 1799-1899 (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1899); F. W . Nottebohm, Cbronik der Koniglichen Gewerbe-Akademie zu Berlin (Berlin: R. v. Decker, 1871). Less satisfactory or misleading: Henderson, State; Manegold, Universitdt. 59 Griiner, Fachschulen, 2 7 - 9 . 60 Straube, Gewerbeforderung, 1 0 - 1 1 , 18. 61 Lundgreen, Techniker, 30, 35.

Technical education and society before 1850 goal was almost reached in 1850 and had been surpassed by 1870. 62 They were full-time schools that gave sufficient instruction to pass the examination for a master artisan in the building trades and reach an equivalent level in other, mechanical specialties. At the same time, they prepared for attendance at the Industrial Institute. 63 Designed to connect with the basic knowledge acquired in the course of an ordinary primary education (Volksschule), the Provincial Trade Schools had a one-year program of instruction in lower mathematics, physics, chemistry, and technical drawing. Their purpose, in Beuth's words, was to provide students with the theoretical "knowledge that may legitimately be required of a competent tradesman for the normal operation of his business. The standard to apply is that which the state demands by law of its building craftsmen." 64 The Industrial Institute in Berlin initially had a two-year program. Its first year corresponded in theory to the level of the Provincial Trade Schools, although in practice it seems to have been more advanced. The second year was divided into two semesters, the first of which taught more mathematics and natural science, whereas the second concentrated on application. Initially Beuth set the maximum number of students in each class at thirty. The most promising graduates of the Provincial Trade Schools could enter the Industrial Institute as second-year students, though in fact they often had to start with the first year - a procedure that became permanent in 1850. Attendance was free, and approximately 90 percent of the students had financial support from the government. 65 This organization and curriculum reflected the strategy of partial modernization, in which science was to serve the purposes of economic growth and nothing more. Though the system taught general science courses, rather than specific practical skills as such, it confined the uses of theory to the social realm of industry and business by excluding any and all broadly orienting courses from the curriculum. This is evident from the policy of admitting boys with artisan backgrounds and little or no general education to a graduated system of technical education. 66 In the context of a culture dominated by neohumanist educational values, this kind of tracking necessarily stigmatized students of technology, especially at the higher level, as "partial men." Neither the gradually expanding duration of the curriculum nor the differentiation between higher technical education at the Industrial Institute and more basic training at the Provincial Trade Schools changed this stigma. 62 Lundgreen, Techniker, 51; ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2 . 2 . 1 , Nr. 29970, Bl. 6 1 ; Simon, Fachbildung, 731, 734. 63 Lundgreen, Techniker, Chapters 2—3; see also Chapters 4 and 7 in this volume. 64 Quoted in Simon, Fachbildung, 727. 65 Lundgreen, Techniker, 115—16. 66 Ibid.; Matschoss, Gewerbeforderung, 148.

31

32

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Technical education's openness to advancement for the artisanal classes, which remained in effect until the late 1870s, has been interpreted as a socially progressive feature.67 This view is correct only when the system is looked at from below. Beuth's organization also had the effect of denying and de-emphasizing the social and educational differences that were developing underneath the classically educated, noneconomic middle class. It lumped together workers, artisans, and the incumbents of higher technical and industrial occupations, such as engineers trained at the Industrial Institute, in one social category. The opportunity for upward mobility within technical education for private industry gave its higher level an artificially low standing as artisanal, manual training. Thus, in 1850, Commerce Minister von der Heydt stressed that "the tasks of the Royal Industrial Institute and those of the Provincial Trade Schools are fundamentally the same, and vary only in scope. The former as well as the latter shall provide future artisans and manufacturers [Gewerbetreibenden] and building craftsmen [Bauhandwerkern] with a theoretical-practical education." 68 The engineers' artisanal stigma was further reinforced by the policy of the Bau-Akademie to admit only students who did possess certification of "general cultivation." Although educational policy-makers did their best to preserve technical education's narrowly specialized occupational character, this did not mean that the system was in fact vocational or taught applied skills. The schools in reality placed greater emphasis on teaching science than on providing a practical training. To some extent this was intentional. If schools were to promote economic growth at all, it would be by "introducing science into industry." 69 Therefore they provided a theoretical foundation in the sciences. But unless such school knowledge somehow bridged the gap separating theory from practice, it would remain useless. Looked at from the vantage point of this objective, the social barrier that was erected between industrial education and the higher social classes appears as a means of ensuring that theory would not only find its way into industrial practice but also stay there. Beuth also tried to make sure that classroom instruction would be as relevant and practical as possible. He thought that drawing and drafting courses were the answer, as well as frequent use of demonstration models and visual aids by the teachers. He also attached practical workshops and a laboratory to the Industrial Institute to ensure the optimal usefulness of its program for industry. Beuth's concern with bridging the gap between theory and practice 67 Kocka, U nternehmensverwaltung, 167; Lundgreen, Techniker, 48, 74—84; Gustav Schmoller, "Das untere und mittlere gewerbliche Schulwesen in Preussen," in his Reden und Aufsdtze zur Socialund Gewerbepolitik der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890), 2 4 7 - 7 6 . 68 Ministry of Trade to all Regierungen, 5 June 1850, quoted in Simon, Fachbildung, 730—1. 69 Simon, Fachbildung, 736-7; Ritter, Rolle, 26.

Technical education and society before 1850

33

was not limited to the curriculum and the organization of technical schools. It also showed in two other agencies he used for modernizing the Prussian economy: the Technical Deputation for Industry (technische Deputation fur Gewerbe) and the Society for the Promotion of Industry (Verein zur Beforderung des Gewerbfleisses, or VBG). 70 A semiofficial body founded in 1820, the VBG aimed at stimulating the economy by bringing together in one forum representatives from industrial practice and scientific knowledge. In his inaugural address to the association in 1821, Beuth elaborated on the importance of fusing science and production by personal contact. He argued that the economic lead of France and Britain was based on long-standing recognition in those societies of the "most beneficial influence on industry" that came from "the union of such men as have dedicated themselves to those sciences that are the foundation of industry and the kind of men who have been engaged in business, either theoretically and practically or practically only." 71 Deliberately following these foreign models, Beuth founded the VBG in the hope that it might serve as a bridge between scholar and artisan and become the embodiment of applied science in Prussia. Unlike his approach to technical education proper, Beuth's involvement with the VBG approximated the broader goals of a Kunth or a Stein. The organization grew out of a social circle of high civil servants, manufacturers, officers, technicians, artists, businessmen, and scientists who for years met regularly at Beuth's home. The link between state and society achieved in the VBG thus transcended in principle the narrow policy of economic modernization without regard for the social emancipation of the industrial classes that typified Beuth's other policies. 72 Even so, it would be a mistake to attach much more than symbolic significance to this union. Despite its claims to the contrary, the VBG did not go far beyond the programmatic stage of a merger between science and production. It remained a paternalistic organization dominated by enlightened civil servants — mostly from the Department of Commerce — and by educators. Official tutelage and unvanquished dualism were repeated in the composition of its early membership. Almost a third of the original 367 members were higher civil servants and professors, whereas only a little more than half were active in industry. These early entrepreneurs represented approximately thirty different occupations from all the traditional crafts, but designations indicating a conscious straddling of sci70 Beuth, quoted in Nottebohm, Chronik, 3-9. 71 On the Technische Baudeputation and the VBG, see Straube, "Beuth" ; idem, Gewerbeforderung; Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 6 2 - 7 ; Matschoss, Dampfmaschine, vol. 1, 143-74; idem, Gewerbeforderung, 4 5 - 6 ; Henderson, State; idem, Prussia, 9 7 - 1 1 8 ; Ritter, Rolle, 9 2 - 1 1 4 . 72 Details on the VBG are in Matschoss, Gewerbeforderung, 3 3 - 7 , 7 0 - 1 , 119-23; Rudolf Delbruck, Lebenserinnerungen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1905), vol. 1, 136, and vol. 2, 135—7; Mieck, Gewerbe-Politik, 3 5 - 7 .

34

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

ence and production (e.g., "machine builder" or "engineer") were absent. The industrial members had been trained in the usual way, through apprenticeship, domestic and foreign travel, and on-the-job training in a variety of positions, rather than by contact with theoretical knowledge and science.73 In other words, a heterogeneous collection of enterprising artisans, artisanal entrepreneurs, and empirical technicians existed side by side with a group of educated men from the upper classes who were interested in stimulating technological progress, but who, on the whole, had no firsthand technical knowledge or practical skills. Clearly, there was as yet no real middle ground between the two cultures. Precisely that, however, is the significance of the VBG for the purposes of this study. Its founding was symptomatic of a new awareness of the importance of applied science and practical knowledge for the future, but before 1850 that was no more than an ambition. Translating it into reality was a project that eventually rattled the deepest foundations of German society. 4. THE PROBLEM OF THEORY AND PRACTICE

Nowhere was the problem of reconciling theory and practice more obvious than in the technical schools themselves. Because their fundamental reason for existence was to solve this problem, Beuth and his successors spent a great deal of time and energy trying to find at each level of instruction the "correct" synthesis between scientific theory and industrial practice. Many of their directives and requests bore directly on this problem. As early as 1827, Ministers Motz (Finance) and Schuckmann (Interior) addressed a petition to the king requesting additional funding to expand the Industrial Institute's practical workshops because "the purpose of returning workers to the provinces who are not merely theoretically educated but also distinguished in practice has largely been defeated. Many students could not be admitted to the workshops due to lack of space." 74 In 1850, Minister of Trade von der Heydt cautioned the teachers at the Provincial Trade Schools against becoming overly scientific. He admonished them not to forget that practical application of knowledge should remain in the foreground.75 It is difficult to say how successful such government efforts were, and it is impossible to determine if technical education was in fact at all times the desired bridge between science and industry. What can be pointed out is that the question of the "correct" mixture of theory and practice 73 Nottebohm, Chronik, 66. 74 Matschoss, Gewerbefbrderung, 3 3 - 7 , 7 0 - 1 , 119-23. 75 Von der Heydt to all Regierungen, 5 June 1850, quoted in Simon, Facbbildung, 730—1, emphasis added.

Technical education and society before 1850

35

became a highly controversial issue practically from the moment technical schools came into being. Soon after its introduction, technical education came under fire from different directions and for different reasons. Entrepreneurs and practice-oriented technicians invariably complained that what the schools taught was useless for practice. As early as the 1820s, entrepreneurs from the Rhineland indicated to Beuth what they expected of technical education. Students "should be able to learn and hear at school what processes take place in blast furnaces, in puddling furnaces and ovens, refining fires, hardening ovens, etc., in each successive step of processing iron and steel." 76 In 1835 the director of a textile factory in Silesia explained to Beuth what qualifications he sought in graduates from the Industrial Institute. A student's theoretical sophistication was less important than "that he got some practical skills in machine building and management, that he had some experience of mechanics, in forging or in turning a lathe, and that he was of exceptionally good moral behavior, as well as physically strong and dexterous." 77 Educators at the technical schools, on the other hand, if their hostility was not already aroused by the fact that science was subordinated to industrial purposes, often criticized their own field for its empirical character and its failure to be truly scientific in approaching technology. In 1854 the famed Ferdinand Redtenbacher, mechanical engineering professor at the Karlsruhe Poly technical School, best known for his effort to elevate machine building to the level of an autonomous science strictly based on mathematics and mechanics, wrote to a friend: "For a long time now I have been disgusted with the gobbledygook of the empiricists." 78 In Prussia, a first sign of public discontent with the humble status of the Industrial Institute came in 1829, when Professor Schubarth urged stricter admission standards and expansion of the natural science curriculum after comparing his school to the newly opened Ecole centrale des arts et des manufactures in Paris. 79 Designed as a synthesis of theory and practice, the hybrid nature of technical education probably could not have escaped such diametrically opposed criticism under any circumstances. But the social policy in which it was embedded transformed the issue into a problem of entirely different proportions. The tension that could have been expected to exist between science and production even under more favorable social circumstances was increased enormously by the official policy of fostering their merger 76 E. Elbers to Beuth, quoted in Griiner, Fachschulen, 31. 77 Quoted in Lundgreen, Techniker, 141-2. 78 Rudolf Redtenbacher, Biographische Skizze und Festbericht: Erinnerungsschrift zur siebzigjdbrigen Geburtstagfeier F. Redtenbacher's (Munich: Fr. Bassermann, 1879), passim (especially 58); Franz Grashof, Redtenbachers Wirken zur wissenschaftlichen Ausbildung des Maschinenbaues (Heidelberg: Fr. Bassermann, 1866), 3 - 6 , 10—11, 31; see also Chapters 3 and 4 in this volume. 79 Lundgreen, Techniker, 63—8.

36

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

in economic terms while discouraging it socially. Thus, even the limited fusion of science and production, of scholar and artisan, that was actively promoted succeeded only partially and remained incomplete. There is no question that Beuth's and other policy-makers' establishment of technical schools was instrumental in the emergence of the modern engineering profession — a profession that by definition embodied the fusion of science and production. It is equally true that as a consequence of the peculiar circumstances of its birth in Germany this new profession came to be characterized from the outset by deep fissures and cleavages between its major constituent elements. A certain degree of polarization around the types of the scholar and the manufacturer was to be expected. But the German social context, which reinforced and emphasized the social division between professor and producer, while subordinating "science" to "production" for strictly economic purposes, made it that much harder for an incipient engineering profession to overcome this dualism. The historical circumstances guaranteed that German engineers would develop an unusual degree of internal polarization and tensions that mirrored the larger social cleavage. The effort to exclude the recipients of a technical education from the prestige of traditional scholarship and civil-service careers caused those who identified with the scientific and teaching dimensions of engineering to develop a stronger orientation toward this "forbidden" higher realm than toward industry. Led by their teachers, a sizable part of the engineering occupation would come to embrace an ideology of professionalism that viewed society ordered hierarchically in estates - estates no longer based on birth but founded on education and occupation (berufsstdndische Gliederung) — in which the science of engineering was struggling for its rightful place alongside the other, traditional professions. Status became the dominant concern and social ordering principle for this group. 80 The timing of technical education's birth, before industrialization had firmly taken hold, had much to do with this development and with its popularity. Still, it did not extend so far as to encompass the entire profession. Partly in reaction to what Franz Schnabel has called "that unbounded overvaluation of theoretical knowledge," and partly as a result of their own impetus, the exponents of engineering's productive and business dimensions would come to reject what they viewed as an exaggerated and dysfunctional orientation toward theory and science. 81 Stubbornly clinging to what the profession's other half tried to escape and 80 This tendency, which took the form of an obsession with "general cultivation" and existed (and exists) in other contexts as well, has been described by Fritz Ringer as the "idea of the 'generalist shift' "; cf. Miiller, Ringer, and Simon, The Rise of the Modern Educational System, 7—8, 62—3, 111-12. 81 Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 2, 350.

Technical education and society before 1850 despised as the "lower" realm of "civil society" - the world of commerce, industry, money, material values, and, if necessary, manual labor - this group would come to represent emerging class society. Thus, the dividing line between Bildung and Besitz, between status and class, came to run right through the middle of the engineering profession. At the "production end" of the profession, an industrial "shop culture" emerged that was oriented toward practice, business, and the substantivefunctional dimensions of technical knowledge; it rested largely on private initiative and was oriented toward "society." Although measurably influenced by the government's various educational programs and institutions, the technological achievements of these "higher craftsmen" were primarily based on experiment, experience, and empiricism. Except for their attendance at technical schools, these men had relatively little contact with their occupation's "better half," to whom they initially left the pursuit of engineering's status aspirations. The practitioner segment, which included such famous engineering entrepreneurs as August Borsig, Alfred Krupp, and Ferdinand Schichau, followed the example set by Britain both in its empirical approach and in its actual technology. 82 At the other end of the spectrum, a status-seeking "school culture" grew up that inclined toward theory and "pure science" and was joined to the complex of academic-bureaucratic officialdom.83 In its official role as the scientific element in engineering and as the "teacher of industry," this faction almost immediately assumed a posture of tutelage and paternalism toward the mere empirics who occupied the field of practical industrial technology. Moreover, it soon tried to emancipate itself from the prosaic function of providing specialized occupational training for these "better artisans." Seeking academic standing for engineering, it found a worthy foreign model in France's prestigious Ecole poly technique. The views of this faction were summed up by one of its more energetic protagonists, who wrote in 1878 that the German engineer does not yet have the standing to which he is entitled. But he will achieve this standing if he complements his specialized occupational training with that general education that other occupations deem absolutely necessary. "Knowledge is power!" and in the struggle for survival the engineer must fight with the weapons of his adversaries, with the weapons that have given the civil engineer, the physician, the legal scholar their social status and that have protected it. And this weapon is called "general scientific Bildung."84 82 Rudolf Stadelmann and Wolfram Fischer, Die Bildungswelt des deutschen Handiverkers urn 1800: Studien zur Soziologie des Kleinburgers im Zeitalter Goethes. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1955), 165. 83 See Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830—1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), for the concepts of "shop culture" and "school culture." 84 Albert Putsch, "Ueber die soziale Stellung der Techniker," VDIW (1878): 342-4, 348-9-

37

38

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

What this author proposed, in so many words, was a classical education for engineers. This hunger for general cultivation and academic prestige became extremely popular with the leadership of the engineering profession in the 1860s and 1870s. It manifested itself first in the 1830s and 1840s among the technical educators. Ironically, it was precisely the barrier erected against the social emancipation of technology that became the greatest stimulus to professorial attempts at crossing it. In a social order that tried to preserve a dichotomy between the archetypes of artisan and scholar, they found themselves, as government-employed teachers of industry, on the dividing line between these two cultures. This division remained intact so long as industrialization had not yet modified the occupational structure and the social hierarchy in substantial ways. Situated at the juncture of the industrial and scholarly worlds, the technical educators combined elements of both in a constructive response to their undefined and uncertain social position. Contemptuous of empirical industry, they looked toward the model of impractical Bildung for emulation. Yet their entire professional existence was bound up with practical knowledge and problems of application. Solving this contradiction depended on technical education being recognized as not merely the handmaiden of economic and industrial development, but as a new kind of superior, practical knowledge, a legitimate science in its own right, and the equal of traditional scholarly knowledge. Pursuing such thoughts, the teachers developed an ideology of practical knowledge that minimized its concrete connection with industrial reality. Instead, it maximized the theoretical, purely scientific aspects as well as the general cultural significance of technical knowledge. 5.

EARLY STATUS SEEKERS: KARMARSCH AND REDTENBACHER

These tendencies were exemplified by two of Germany's best-known engineering professors from the early period, Karl Karmarsch (1803-79) and Ferdinand Redtenbacher (1809-63). Both Austrians by birth, and both educated at the Vienna Poly technical School (founded 1815), Karmarsch and Redtenbacher came to northern and western Germany under remarkably similar circumstances. Both had tried and failed to secure a professorship at their alma mater. It is unclear what exactly disqualified them, but their humble social origins and unorthodox secondary education appear to have been important factors. Like the Prussian schools, the Vienna technical institute was founded primarily to stimulate private industry. Unlike the Prussian system, it had also been influenced by the Ecole poly technique in Paris, having been set up more lavishly and on a

Technical education and society before 1850 grander scale than the other German technical schools. 85 It also was much broader in its educational concept - basing itself on "modern" secondary education that included topics of general education - and the sons of the upper classes did not hesitate to attend. 86 Judging from the attendance of Karmarsch and Redtenbacher, there must have been room for students from the lower middle classes or those with irregular secondary educations. The same apparently was not true for the selection of professors. After serving as a teaching assistant from 1829 to 1833, Redtenbacher reached the limits of upward mobility in Viennese society. For the talented ironmonger's son, "who had aroused the greatest expectations, there was no opportunity in Austria." The appointment to a professorship depended on a "precisely delineated education," which Redtenbacher lacked. 87 Karmarsch had comparable experiences. Born into a family of Viennese tailors, the brilliant student soon attracted the attention of Technologie professor Altmiitter, who made Karmarsch his assistant in 1819 at the tender age of sixteen. Like Redtenbacher, Karmarsch kept that position for four years, but then reached the end of the line. 88 During the next seven years he tried to make it as a professor by staying on in a private capacity while establishing a reputation for first-rate technical writings. That got him nowhere. When his efforts to be considered on the basis of merit alone failed miserably, Karmarsch occasionally explored other means. As he put it in his memoirs, "because in the normal scheme of things I could not hope to achieve my goal without the goodwill and support of influential people, I decided to pay them a few visits." 89 His tenacity even got him an audience with the emperor, but it was all to no avail. 90 Having failed in Vienna, both men decided to try their luck elsewhere. In 1830, Karmarsch accepted an invitation to go to Hanover to organize and direct its new technical school. There it was no longer his personal career that was frustrated, but the rank and standing of technology as such. The humble school for artisans that Karmarsch was permitted to set up could not begin to emulate the brilliant Austrian example, let alone the Ecole poly technique. As in Prussia, the Hanover school was an instrument of economic modernization from the bottom up. The systematic exclusion of the technical disciplines from the respectability of science and educated society frustrated Karmarsch, and in the long years of his directorship he spent much of his time trying to overcome it. In 1856, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hanover 85 Schnabel, Anfdnge, 17. 86 H. Gollob, Geschkhte der Technischen Hochschule in Wien (Vienna: Gerold & Co., 1964); Karl Karmarsch, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Hanover: Helwing, 1879), 4. 87 Redtenbacher, Skizze, 22. 88 Karmarsch, Erinnerungen, 1-22. 89 Ibid., 29. 90 Ibid., 30.

39

40

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Technical School, Karmarsch sketched the distance his discipline had traveled since 1830. Industry "had barely dawned when the plans for this institution were drawn up." Small wonder "that the new school was given a rather low level and had little prestige. The name chosen for it — higher trade school — was more or less accurate." 91 Fortunately, wrote Karmarsch, the appearance of technical schools was not merely a function of the need to industrialize, but also reflected "the awakening of a new spirit, of at least a partial revolution in the orientation [Tdtigkeitsrichtung] of the entire species." The age of science, technology, and materialism had dawned. This was a happy occasion, and it was the historic mission of the technical schools to encourage the trend. They would teach man "to apply the infallible yardstick of eternally true mathematics to all that is temporal so that he may avoid the illusions of unbridled fantasy; they carry the blazing torch of science into the twisted corridors of industrial activity so that spirit may animate matter and rule the hands, . . . This is the goal of polytechnics. " 92 Of course, such a dramatic reorientation in values had social and institutional dimensions as well, claimed Karmarsch. The technical institutes, having emancipated themselves from the lowly task of simple industrial training, had established themselves as academic institutions. They operated with the most rigorous scientific methods and had become the equals of the universities. "The whole world admits," Karmarsch claimed, "that a technical or modern [realistische] education has placed itself on a par with a so-called scholarly education; the higher burgher school has emerged next to the Gymnasium. "93 Trying to provide a quantitative measure of his institute's grown stature, he reported with pride that the average time students spent in school had increased from two to three years — "proof of the gratifying fact that longer studies . . . have recently become more frequent than in the past." 94 It was a singular perspective that termed such increases a cause for joy. Nothing illustrates better than this seemingly innocent remark the vast gulf between the concerns of the engineering profession's professorial and industrial segments. Fortunately for the entrepreneurs, Karmarsch's claims were still an exaggeration around the middle of the nineteenth century. He had expressed the aspirations of his class, whose professional responsibility it was to advance the cause of industry and technology, but whose social consciousness remained anchored in the values of a different world. This 91 Karl Karmarsch, Die Polytechnische Schule zu Hannover, 2nd ed. (Hanover: Hahn'sche Hofbuchhandlung, 1856), 219-20. 92 Ibid., 217. 93 Ibid., 219. 94 Ibid., 168.

Technical education and society before 1850 Janus-like position shows clearly in Karmarsch's memoirs. They portray a man who in his work made many contacts with industry and received at least one offer of a lucrative managerial post in industry - which he turned down. 95 Outside his work, contacts with business and industry were virtually nonexistent. Here Karmarsch revealed himself as a great emulator of officialdom and the traditional symbols of social prestige. He eagerly moved in civil-service and professorial circles, competing for social status and collecting medals, honorary titles, degrees, and memberships in scientific societies. The friends he made, or at least those he mentions, were exclusively other educators and prestigious bureaucrats with whom he came in contact. His acquaintance with professors at the Ecole polytechnique and rare introductions to royalty constituted high points for the talented and ambitious tailor's son. 96 Equally concerned with the scientific standing of his occupation, Redtenbacher was less infatuated than was Karmarsch with the traditional trappings of success.97 He had departed Vienna in 1834 for a position in applied mathematics at the Zurich industrial school and later became professor of mechanical engineering at Karlsruhe Polytechnic. Although the liberal Swiss climate was much to his liking, the Zurich school's social standing and economic purpose were comparable to those of Beuth's Prussian schools.98 This soon compelled Redtenbacher to ponder the relationships among social structure, technical education, and economic development. Only a few isolated fragments of Redtenbacher's views on the question survive, but they are revealing. Like Kunth and his eighteenth-century Enlightenment predecessors, Redtenbacher was intrigued by the idea that the continuing rigid social separation between the industrial classes and educated society was the fundamental problem of his times. Exploring the theme in an 1840—1 notebook, he wrote that "cultivated people are right if they call the industrial class crude in its present state. But they are wrong if they believe that real cultivation is incompatible with industrial work; unfortunately, that is the prevailing attitude, which has harmed and inhibited Germany's industrial development to the highest degree. Talented and refined people will not readily enter a profession [Stand] that is not respected." 99 To ameliorate this situation, Redtenbacher wrote, he spent much time and energy raising the general cultural level of the industrial classes. His efforts as a teacher were "aimed not merely at the scientific theory of the machine," but rather at improving "the culture of the 95 96 97 98 99

Karmarsch, Erinnerungen, 143. Ibid., 74. Redtenbacher, Skizze, 57. Ibid., 26-32, 48. Ibid., 33; Pfetsch, Wissenschaftspolitik, 139-

41

42

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

industrial public in general" and changing the narrow, profit-oriented mentality of the entrepreneurs. 100 All this sounded much like the program of the early Prussian reformers. There was, however, a major difference. Redtenbacher and colleagues like Karmarsch had large professional and personal stakes in breaking down the barrier between industrial and scholarly cultures. To them, industry existed not merely for the sake of making profits, nor even to regenerate the state. It was a culturally worthwhile activity in its own right and was associated with a better society. As Redtenbacher asked rhetorically, "is there no scientific, no humane standpoint for {industry]? Only ill-will or stupidity can maintain this; I say shallow stupidity, which does not recognize that the scientific point of view can be maintained here just as rigorously as in any other [field]." 101 Redtenbacher did not propose merely to dismantle the narrow policy of teaching science to the productive classes within the confines of traditional artisanal culture, nor was he satisfied with bridging the gap between Bildung and technology for economic reasons. He was really talking about the relationship between profits, or capitalism, and scientific technology — about an unacknowledged and early "socialism" born of professional-technocratic aspirations. To Redtenbacher and other professionalizers, the social and economic benefits to be derived from emancipating industrial and technical work in a broadly cultural sense would go hand in hand. If technical training could be changed into a broad, generic type of education, industrial work might come to be accepted as a socially and culturally respectable form of activity. It would then attract the kind of people with elevated vision and breadth of thought who might liberate industry and technology from their exclusive dependence on narrow financial interests and capital. Criteria other than money and profits would then determine the course of technological and industrial development, and technical education would be able to teach topics far beyond the immediate needs of current industrialists and factory owners. It went without saying that the engineering professors and educators who inspired all this would become society's new elite. 102 Redtenbacher did not quite put it this way, but these conclusions were implicit in his brief sketch

100 Redtenbacher, Skizze, 33. 101 Ibid., 33. 102 American engineers held comparable views some forty years later; Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971), 25-133; Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking Press, 1933; originally published 1921); in general, on professionalization, see Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

Technical education and society before 1850 of the "fundamental purposes of an industrial school." His piece was one of the earliest manifestations of a variety of technocratic thinking that would become stock-in-trade for broad segments of Germany's academically trained engineers and engineering professors.

43

Nationalism, industrialization, and technology: the first years of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure

Prior to the mid-1860s, the deep cleavage between engineers that would result from state educational policies remained dormant. The manifest result of introducing industrial education was to stimulate technological development by producing a class of men who possessed considerably more technical know-how than had earlier generations of artisans and manufacturers. In the context of preunification Germany this had a groupformative effect, rather than a fragmenting effect. 1.

BACKGROUND

Commenting on the peculiarities of his country's technological culture, an observer of the industrial scene noted in 1879 that "basically we had technical schools in Germany before there was a truly developed industry, while in other countries the reverse was the case/' 1 Though an exaggeration, that observation came close to the mark. Starting industrialization with schools meant that the critical personnel of German industry from the outset had close ties to the technical institutes. Government efforts in the field of technical education gave rise to industrial technicians, entrepreneurs, and managers who had been exposed to some theoretical training in schools, or at least had colleagues who answered to this description. 2 Taken together, these men represented a preliminary synthesis of theory and practice. They ranged between the traditional social types of 1 Joseph Schlink, "Ueber die soziale Stellung des deutschen Technikers," GA 4 (May 1879): 312-19. 2 On the role of technically trained personnel in German industrialization, see Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmer in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), 42— 54; Alfred Schroter, Die deutsche Maschinenbauindustrie in der industriellen Revolution (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962), 6 4 - 7 4 ; Peter Lundgreen, Techniker in Preussen ivdhrend der fruhen Industrialisierung: Ausbildung und Berufsfeld einer entstehenden sozialen Gruppe (Berlin: Colloquim Verlag, 1975), 178-272.

44

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

45

apprenticeship-trained tradesmen and the educated classes. Regardless of whether they were entrepreneurs, employees, self-employed consultants, or teachers, these early engineers no longer fit the old dualistic social typology. They constituted a hybrid and a new social phenomenon. Their marginality, which at one time or another characterized other segments of Germany's educated and economic classes as well, had a group-formative effect.3 Max Maria von Weber, a railroad engineer with a sharp eye for the social problems of his profession, described it in 1854: Standing right in the middle between the scholarly professions, artists, merchants, and businessmen, related to them all and yet distinguished by his own unique characteristics, in need of certain parts of the knowledge and the subject matter of these occupations and yet always left uncertain as to the extent of this need, viewed as an unwelcome new arrival and a necessary evil by the old professions, he [i.e., the engineer] occupies a position in the world whose precariousness and uncertainty is disproportionate to its significance for the structure of society.4 The net contribution technical schools made, then, was to stimulate the formation of a new "culture," a new group of men cognizant of their collective difference from other occupations, no matter how varied their class positions or educational backgrounds vis-a-vis each other. The engineers' budding professional consciousness coalesced with the broader sociopolitical ambitions of the German middle classes in the middle third of the nineteenth century and became part of a general movement for the realization of bourgeois society. 3 The combination formed an integrative force that manifested itself in the establishment of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) in 1856. The essential characteristic of the VDI, which became the dominant organization of German engineers in the private sector, was to merge the putative synthesis of industry and science with other aspirations for middle-class emancipation 3 For the group-formative effect of marginality, see Graeme Salaman, Community and Occupation: An Exploration of WorklLeisure Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 1974), 30—2, 75—8. On the Burgertum, see Jiirgen Kocka, ed., Burger und Burgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987); Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 1: Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in international Vergleichen (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985). 4 Max Maria von Weber, "Ueber Bildung der Techniker und deren Pruning fur den offentlichen Dienst," Der Civilingenieur (1854):99; Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie: Ein Beitrag zur Emanzipation der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), 76. Weber, one of the few aristocrats to became an engineer in the middle of the nineteenth century, was a son of the composer Carl Maria von Weber; Conrad Matschoss, Manner der Technik (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1925), 287. 5 M. Rainer Lepsius, "Zur Soziologie des Biirgertums und der Burgerlichkeit," in Burger und Burgerlichkeit, 8 8 - 9 6 ; Rudolf Vierhaus, "Der Aufstieg des Biirgertums vom spaten 18. Jahrhundert bis 1848/49," in Burger und Burgerlichkeit, 6 4 - 7 8 .

46

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

into a progressive, patriotic-idealistic vision of the future.6 Formal schooling was an important ingredient in the VDI's mixture, but did not exhaust it. Faith in the emerging world of industrial technology and enthusiasm for its cause in a future united Germany were just as significant. Insofar as this program failed to generate enthusiasm, the engineering association was inherently lacking in cohesion and ambivalent: oriented one way toward the clearly defined traditional world of higher education and the state and the other way toward an equally unambiguous notion of capitalist industry and society. But to the extent that its members were inspired by the vision of a new man in a new world, the VDI's strategy had significant group-formative powers, especially at a time when industry was still in its infancy and Germany was still divided. The consequent ideology laid claim to high prestige for the engineer in a new social order that would realize the kind of liberal changes once envisaged by a Kunth. By the early 1850s, such liberal hopes, narrowed in scope, had come to center on natural science, but above all on German unification and nationalism. After 1848 the belief was widespread in the middle classes that "objective science" and specialized empirical scholarship would succeed where the "naive idealism" of the Vormdrz had failed.7 At the same time, nationalism had lost none of its appeal as an ideology of emancipation, though its socioeconomic dimensions increasingly outweighed its political aspects. The nation-state stood for a rational infrastructure with a single set of laws, tariffs, weights and measures, and currency, as opposed to the myriad barriers and obstructions to economic progress associated with Kleinstaaterei.8 The economic middle class therefore viewed the nationstate as the answer to economic backwardness and as the natural complement to industrial progress. Just as unification would overcome the 6 For a comparable perspective, see Peter Lundgreen, "Die Vertretung technischer Expertise 'Im Interesse de gesamten Industrie Deutschlands' durch den VDI 1856 bis 1890," in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856—1981, ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and

Wolfgang Konig (Diissseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981), 67-132. For the universalistic, "bourgeois," and emancipatory functions of Verein and of nationalism, see Thomas Nipperdey, "Verein als soziale Struktur in Deutschland in spaten 18. und friihen 19- Jahrhundert," in Geschichtswissenschaft und Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Hartmut Boockman et al. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 1-44; Heinrich August Winkler, "Der Nationalismus und seine Funktionen," Nationalism™, ed. H. A. Winkler (Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1978), 5-46; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, "Wie biirgerlich was das Deutsche Kaiserreich?" in Burger und Burgerlichkeit, 260, 26871; David Blackbourn, "Kommentar," in Burger und Burgerlichkeit, 283-84. 7 Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 115, 120. 8 Robert M. Berdahl, "New Thoughts on German Nationalism," American Historical Review 11 (February 1982): 65-89; Theodore S. Hamerow, The Social Foundations of German Unification 18581871: Ideas and Institutions (Princeton University Press, 1969); Helmut Bohme, Deutschlands Weg zur Grossmacht: Studien zum Verhdltnis von Wirtschaft und Stoat wdhrend der Reichsgrundungszeit 1848—

1881 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1972).

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

Al

political insignificance of the bourgeoisie, so it would end economic disfranchisement. "Unity," wrote the Cologne Chamber of Commerce in 1862, "is the fundamental condition for successful creative activity by Germany in the economic sphere because only unity can remove the unnatural barriers which still hinder the exchange of goods in the domestic market." 9 This kind of economic nationalism had its roots in the decades before the revolution. In the 1830s and 1840s, the appearance of railroads in Germany had already inspired hopes that economic and technological rationality in itself would be powerful enough to bring about a nationstate. According to Conrad Matschoss, no further demonstration of the need for unification was required at that time than the fact that "the age of the locomotive reduced many small German [states} to a few railroad stations." Waxing lyrical, one enthusiast in 1838 celebrated shares in railroad companies as "checks drawn on the future unity of Germany" and described rails as "wedding bands [that} seal the marriage and lovingly exchange lands." 10 Even earlier, in the 1810s and 1820s, Friedrich List, the "impassioned prophet of the industrial state," had begun to agitate for national unification on economic grounds. 11 For List, writes Robert Berdahl, "the unity of the nation [was} the fundamental condition of prosperity." 12 The lure of material gain and economic progress, however, was not List's only reason for promoting unification. His writings reveal a more subtle connection between nationalism and industrialization. Nationalism and unification became ideological rallying points in their own right ideals that then inspired entrepreneurial and industrial innovation. In other words, it was their faith in a higher, noneconomic mission that enabled men "to break through the barriers of stagnation in a backward country" and that ignited their imaginations more powerfully than the "prospect of high profits" ever could. 13 Nationalism, especially the lofty concept of the nation as the highest manifestation of a cosmopolitan universe, could claim the moral standing of altruistic service on behalf of supreme ethical values. 14 The original relationship between nationalism and economic progress was reversed. 9 Quoted in Hamerow, Ideas, 103-4. 10 Quoted in Matschoss, Preussens Gewerbeforderung und ihre grossen Manner: Dargestellt im Rahmen der Geschichte des Vereins zur Befbrderung des Gewerbfleisses in Preussen, 1821-1921 (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1921), 81. 11 Franz Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehntenjahrhundert, vol. 3: Erfahrungswissenschaften und Technik, 2nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1950), 336, 350, also 3 3 0 - 5 4 , 363-90. 12 Berdahl, "Thoughts," 73. 13 Alexander Gerschenkron, "Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective," in his Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966), 24. 14 Friedrich Meinecke, Weltburgertum und Nationalstaat (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1969).

48

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Overcoming economic and technological backwardness became a vital patriotic duty, endowed with quasi-religious significance. 15 List directly appealed to such sentiments when he wrote (on the occasion of the campaign for a national tariff union in 1819) that "he who has the misfortune of living near a border where three or four [German} states come together lives his whole life among hostile customs clerks and toll collectors; he has no fatherland. " 16 Paraphrasing List's National System of Political Economy (1841), Franz Schnabel writes that "without developing industry, a great future for the German fatherland was inconceivable."17 The inversion of objectives also had the potential of enabling nationalism as an ideology of industrialization to take on a decidedly anticapitalist coloring. For certain segments of the middle class, capitalism as the relentless pursuit of private gain and profit conflicted with the strongly holistic values embodied in the "nation" and "national industry." The capitalist primacy of financial criteria could also appear irrational on scientific-technological grounds. The alleged objectivity of scientifically based technological thinking was therefore often a natural complement to the "unpolitical" approach of conservative thought. 18 Such attitudes became a crucial ingredient in the VDI's ideology and in its professional ethics. The engineering society's manifest goal became national unification and national glory, and industrial and technological progress was merely the means to achieve it. As a consequence, the engineering association, like so many other voluntary organizations of the emerging middle classes, initially exhibited few of the characteristics of a modern professional association.19 "The VDI was founded as an association for the advancement of technology, not as an interest organization for the benefit of the engineers," writes Gerd Hortleder. 20 Except for failing to note the nationalistic component of its mission, Hortleder is 15 For the quasi-religious powers of secular ideas, see Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," in American Civil Religion, ed. Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 21-44; see also the literature cited in notes 5 and 14. 16 Quoted in Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 3, 332. 17 Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 3, 346-7. 18 See Chapters 3, 8, and 12 in this volume; also see Dietrich Ruschemeyer, "Bourgeoisie, Staat und Bildungsbiirgertum: Idealtypische Modelle fur die vergleichende Erforschung von Biirgertum und Burgerlichkeit," in Burger und Burgerlichkeit, 109. For comparable tendencies in the United States, see Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking Press, 1933); Edwin T. Layton, Jr., The Revolt of the Engineers. Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971); for the classic statement on "conservative thought," see Karl Mannheim, "Conservative Thought," in From Karl Mannheim, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (Oxford University Press, 1971), 132-222. 19 Lepsius, "Zur Soziologie des Biirgertums," 88—90. 20 Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbilddes Ingenieurs: Zumpolitischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 20; Wolfgang Jonas, Die Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure: Erster Abschnitt 1856 bis 1880 (Habilitationsschrift der wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultat der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, 1962), 96.

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

49

correct. The engineers' own social emancipation as a profession was subordinated to realization of the higher goal, in the naive supposition that they meant the same thing. The founders of the VDI believed that the engineer by his very nature posed a challenge to the inherited socialoccupational structure; the protagonist of a new bourgeois public order, he stood for society's modernization. As the latter succeeded, so would the former. In fact, something very different happened. Whereas unification, national glory, industrialism, and to a large extent bourgeois society all became realities, the supposed correlate, the engineer's social triumph, did not materialize. On the contrary, the profession's "higher master" eventually would serve as a barrier to the social and economic emancipation of the bulk of its members. Why that was so will become clear in subsequent chapters. 21 2.

T H E VDI

The configuration of faith in science, technology, nationalism, and industrialization was heady stuff for the handful of young engineering graduates who founded the VDI. 22 Convening in the town of Halberstadt in May of 1856 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their Berlin student organization, the Hiitte, they had decided to make this reunion the occasion for founding a much more ambitious, nationwide engineering society. The Hiitte had been established in the mid—1840s, partly as a reaction to the strict discipline of the Berlin Technical Institute and partly to fill a need for informal social and scientific-technological contact among the students. It had been a "place where technology celebrates its greatest triumphs, . . . where the human spirit wrestles with the most immense powers of nature over the mastery of the earth and subjugates them with godlike fist to serve under the yoke of man's purposes." 23 Now this student fraternity was to be expanded by combining the concept of scientific technology with the "German idea." Planning for a nationwide engineering society in the mid-1850s, the Hiitte's members envisaged an association "that would advance in closed phalanx and make a breach in the bulwark that loomed large between German brothers, that in the realm of German technology would trample the mentality of narrowmindedness and discord." 24 To preserve the spirit of technical ra21 See Chapters 8-12 in this volume. 22 VDIZ(1857):3, 12-14; VDIZ (1864):222. 23 Ludwig Damm, Geschkhte der Hiitte von ihrer Griindung bis zu ibrem sechszehnten Stiftungsfeste (Berlin: 1862), quoted in Paul Wentzcke, Franz Grashof: Ein Fuhrer der deutschen Ingenieure (Berlin: VDIVerlag, 1926), 32-324 Wentzcke, Grashof, 36.

50

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

tionality, nationalism, industrialization, and comradery that they had encountered in Berlin, the alumni and their former teacher, Franz Grashof, determined to found an association in which "departing Hiitte members belong also after completing their studies and entry into practice, an association that allows them to encourage and teach each other as well as to combine their forces for the development of national industry, even though they were living in the farthest corners of the fatherland." 25 The VDI was the result. Though scrupulously "unpolitical," the new association exhibited the same national fervor as its immediate predecessor.26 It was likewise imbued with optimistic faith in scientific progress and driven by a desire for "harmonious" industrial growth. The founders conceived of industrialization as selfless duty to the nation, an ethical activity that would benefit society as a whole and avoid the social conflicts associated with private economic gain and special interests. The VDI amalgamated its own particular occupational interests, technology and engineering, with these ecumenical values. 27 The heavy emphasis on "universalistic" ideals, accompanied by the absence of restrictive admission policies and monopolizing tendencies, gave the VDI more the character of a broad ideological movement than of a professional association. 28 What set the VDI apart from other proto-professional groups was not these ideological beginnings but its inability to develop into a full-fledged professional organization. Like their more idealistic ancestors, professions commonly espouse high-sounding goals, but they typically do so in order to achieve or legitimize special privileges. They soon begin to push for, and often succeed in prescribing, a fixed training program, limiting access, establishing exclusive jurisdiction, separating the qualified from the incompetent, and eliminating the dirty work. Thus, they tend to develop into hard-nosed, self-serving interest groups. That was not the case with the VDI. The polarity between German engineering's constituent types of the scholar and the entrepreneur, intensifying "normal" levels of initial variegation, was too great to allow crystallization of a core of shared material and cultural interests. Specific social and economic objectives 25 VDIZ(1857):1. 26 For the theme of the "unpolitical" in German history, see Fritz Stern, "The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German," in his The Failure of llliberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of

Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 1971), 3—25; Friedrich Zunkel, "Das rheinischwestfalische Unternehmertum 1834-1879," in Problem der Reichsgrundungszeit 1848-1879, ed. Helmut Bohme (Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968), 104, 113; Walter Bussman, "Zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus im 19- Jahrhundert," ibid., 94—6; Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1967), 46—60; Helmut Plessner, "Der Einfluss der industriellen Revolution auf die unpolitische Haltung des deutschen Biirgertums," in his Die verspdtete Nation (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1959), 72-82. 27 For the term "ecumenical," see Vernon K. Dibble, "Occupations and Ideologies," American Journal of Sociology 68 (September 1962): 229-41. 28 Cf. Lepsius, "Zur Soziologie des Biirgertums," 88-90.

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

51

thus remained underdeveloped, while the ideological and rhetorical components in the engineering association were disproportionately large. One of the earliest articulations of the VDI's standpoint came from its longtime leader, Franz Grashof (1826—93). An instructor of theoretical mechanics and mathematics at the Berlin Technical Institute since 1855, Grashof "forever imprinted his state of mind on the new association" and played a crucial role in its early history. 29 He assumed the VDI's "directorship" (general business manager) and became the editor of its Zeitschrift. For the next twenty-five years Grashof reigned as the engineering association's single most influential member. 30 In 1856, Grashof wrote the VDI's programmatic statement for the first issue of the Zeitschrift: "It will be our duty to participate in the common patriotic work, chiefly by mutual education and encouragement and, in that way, by the advancement of technology, which ranks with science and art and stands between them as a cultural-historical achievement of the human spirit in general and the German nation in particular." 31 For Grashof, technology and engineering were not primarily concerned with the solution of practical problems in the service of a utilitarian promotion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number: "Technology should not be viewed, in opposition to pure science or art, as the self-seeking servant of pleasure and comfort." Grashof elevated technology to the status of an autonomous cultural endeavor, meaningful in its own right as a new form of intellectual effort and a new realm of inherently valuable human expression. The founders of the VDI had "joined together to prove. . . that [engineering] can legitimately claim to be the equal of science and art as an achievement of the mind, of genius, and of diligent thought — an achievement that in its own right inspires the exponents and disciples of technology with enthusiasm and with a spirit of self-sacrifice."32 Grashof s position was representative of the thinking of the other founders. The VDI's purpose, listed in paragraph 1 of its statute, was to promote "intimate cooperation of the intellectual powers of German technology for their mutual encouragement and continuing education in the interest of the whole of German industry." 33 Friedrich Euler, a metallurgical engineer and the society's first chairman, described the VDI in 1857 as 29 Wentzcke, Grashof, Al. 30 On Grashof, see Wentzcke, Grashof. In the 1890s the VDI adopted the "Grashof commemorative medal" as its highest honor for great engineers. 31 VDIZ (1857): 14-15. 32 VDIZ (1857): 16. This orientation would change in the late 1870s; cf. the following, directly opposite, statement by Conrad Matschoss from 1919: "Technology is never an end in itself; the question is always its economic application. Technology and economy condition each other and are inseparable." Quoted in his Einjahrhundert deutscher Maschinenbau: Von der mechanischen Werkstdtte bis zur Deutschen Maschinenfabrik 1819-1919 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1919), 250. 33 VDIZ(1857):4.

52

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

"an association that does not promise material advantages but on the contrary demands sacrifices and, based only on intelligence and progress, is founded for the benefit and welfare of our entire German industry." 34 The young metallurgist Richard Peters, perhaps the most enthusiastic of the founders, exhorted the membership at the 1867 annual convention "to cooperate unanimously and with all your powers, everyone in his own sphere and yet as part of the whole, in the common work and above all never to forget that we have before us a noble goal, . . . the honor and power of our fatherland!"35 Its allegedly transcendent nature infused even the most mundane problems with moral qualities. "What blessing it would be for engineering practice if we had one standardized measure in all of Germany!" Euler exclaimed in 1857. "What worthy a goal to free our industry of its dependence on foreign nations." 36 It has been suggested that the VDI founders' faith in the socially transformative power of technology not only led them to neglect their material interests as a profession but also made them oblivious to their social position — that they had "no concept of society to speak of."37 Insofar as the engineers had any social acumen, this argument goes, they unreflectingly adopted the "early industrial entrepreneur [as] the only social model" with which they could identify. 38 This is misleading at best. It is certainly true that prior to the 1880s a substantially larger percentage of engineers were owner-entrepreneurs than in subsequent years, and the owner-entrepreneur was indeed one social model for engineers. But the ability of this group to function as a reference group for the profession as a whole was strictly limited. In the first place, businessmen were not particularly worthy role models in nineteenth-century Germany. 39 Second, a much more obvious and much worthier reference point existed in the engineering professors. As academics, civil servants, and scholars, the teachers of technology epitomized the idea of engineering as an autonomous intellectual and therefore socially higher value. While looking forward to a new social order, the social thinking of VDI founders such as Grashof, Peters, and Euler still had not abandoned 34 35 36 37 38

VDIZ (1857):225. VDIZ(1867):820. VDIZ (1857):226. Hortleder, Gesellschaftsbild, 30, also 18-20, 29-31. Ibid., 31-7; emphasis added. Also see Wilhelm Treue, "Ingenieur und Erfinder: Zwei Sozialund technikgeschichtliche Probleme," Vierteljahrsschrift fiir Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 54 (December 1967): 456—76; Ludwig Brinkmann, Der Ingenieur, vol. 21 of Die Gesellschaft, ed. Martin Buber (Frankfurt a.M.: Rutten & Loenig, 1908). 39 Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847-1914: Zum Verhdltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 166-84, 528-33. For "reference group," see Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), 225-386.

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

53

the concept of a society permanently structured as a two-tier hierarchy of occupational status groups - its higher levels occupied by an educated elite concerned "with the cultivation of the inner values of society." 40 They were intent on proving that technology, in conjunction with nationalism and natural science, represented values rightfully belonging to this universe of "higher" occupations and to the Bildungsburgertum that populated it. This is what they really meant when they spoke of the new age of technology in which the engineer would find his rightful place. They failed to see the inner contradiction of their wish: that it could come true only insofar as industrialization, technological progress, and the dynamics of capitalism were able to undermine this "structural essence" of society. The VDI's founders repeated on a larger scale what Redtenbacher had already done some fifteen years earlier. They redrew the line dividing the higher from the lower occupations so that it no longer ran between the aggregate of all economic-industrial activities and scholarly intellectual culture, but between a higher realm that included scientific technology concerned with an indivisible "national" process of industrialization and a lower world of private material gain. As Grashof interpreted the VDI's official statement of purpose in 1867, "it expresses two things in particular . . . the advancement of German technology for its own sake with the intellectual means of research and teaching in contrast to the pursuit of personal material interests and, secondly, the uniform embrace of the entire German nation, excluding all preferential treatment for particular regional or local interests." 41 This idealistic and seemingly selfless pursuit of technology on behalf of the national welfare in fact dovetailed exactly with the engineers' social ambitions. The more they recast technology and engineering in the image of selfless dedication to a higher goal, and succeeded in portraying it as a new version of Bildung, the more they were deserving of social prestige and recognition. Such expectations may have been unrealistic, but they were not evidence of a lack of a "concept of society." Moreover, the VDI's heavy emphasis on general goals and the absence of references to specific social objectives also had a group-formative effect when the educational and social conditions of professional cohesion were lacking. The appeal to higher values not only helped legitimize the capitalist dimensions of entrepreneurial engineering activity but also obscured the potential for conflict between those VDI members who would Hrness technology to capitalism (the 40 See Chapter 1. 41 VDIZ(1867):824.

54

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

entrepreneur who was only secondarily a technician) and those who would subordinate capitalism to technology (professionalizes, academics, salaried employees, consultants, and municipal or government engineers). Thus, the men who had joined the VDI were addressed by Chairman Euler in 1857 as "spiritual comrades." This made good sense, because the association had not made any rules to restrict membership (e.g., to graduates of approved technical institutes or to engineers who had established a certain name for themselves in private practice or industry). Nor would the VDI make such rules in the future.42 On the contrary, it was truly ecumenical in its membership policy. Ordinary membership was "unconditionally open to: (a) practicing engineers {Techniker}, (b) teachers of technology and technical sciences, (c) owners and managers of technical establishments [and] (d) non-engineers." 43 This policy of open arms contrasted dramatically with the rigorous educational criteria used for admission to government service, and it has been adduced as evidence of the founders' capitalist mentality: In a profitoriented industrial economy, formal education could never entirely replace individual achievement as a standard of judgment. According to this view, the VDI's liberal membership policy was simply an illustration of the ideal—typical differences between capitalism and government bureaucracy.44 Though valid for the period after 1890, this interpretation is problematic for the VDI's early decades. What is most striking about the engineering association was not its deliberate rejection of formal educational membership requirements in favor of criteria more appropriate from the capitalist entrepreneurial point of view — individual achievement, for example, or proven shop experience — but the absence of specific membership requirements of any kind. Membership was open to almost anyone who cared to join - preferably accomplished in some aspect of technology, but that was not a requirement. Lack of a standard - any standard cannot be construed as proof of market rationality or of a competitive, profit-oriented spirit. The VDI's policy of unrestricted membership also appears to have been unique to Germany. It had no counterpart in the engineering societies of other capitalist countries. In the United States, for example, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, 42 VDIZ (1857):226. The VDI's approach contrasted with the practice of British engineering societies to structure their membership hierarchically into "aspiring," "associate," and "full" members by means of a qualifying mechanism; Geoffrey Millerson, The Qualifying Associations: A Study in Professionalization (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, "Professions," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1930-7), 4 7 6 80; idem, The Professions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). In Germany, the state engineering corps, with rigid, education-based admission standards and state licenses for engineers and architects engaged in public construction projects, took the place of private certification through qualifying associations. 43 VDIZ (1857):4, 243. 44 Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung, 170—1.

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

55

founded 1880) "was, like the shop culture it was to supplement, a personal affair, almost a kind of gentlemen's club," writes Monte Calvert. The ASME "was and would remain for at least the first twenty years of its life an elite organization of the profession and the shop, into which one entered through the personal recommendation so characteristic of shop culture." 45 In Britain, the Institution of Civil Engineers (1818) was from the beginning a strict qualifying association, "founded to consolidate status." The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (1847) followed a similar pattern, albeit less pronounced. 46 In France, informal, though highly elitist, organizations based exclusively on formal school training appear to have been the rule. 47 The VDI was not itself a business enterprise, and none of its founders (with one possible exception) qualifies as an entrepreneur. 48 The "profit logic" that might compel private industrial employers to be skeptical of educational certificates as proof of competence therefore did not apply in the case of the engineering association. What did apply - the logic of technical achievement per se - was in some respects very similar indeed to the entrepreneurial standard of success in the competitive marketplace. As in business, success in engineering could to a large extent be measured apart from formal education, on which it was only partially dependent. But unlike the world of business, technology, as conceived by the founders of the VDI, was an autonomous intellectual-practical and national achievement, not an activity tied to profit or money. This self-proclaimed autonomy was part of a larger configuration. Franz Schnabel noted that the "bond between technology and capitalism" was absent in the attitudes of the early industrialist Friedrich Harkort (1793— 1887). Wolfgang Jonas finds this bond lacking in the "reality of German 45 Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830—1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 111-12. 46 Millerson, Associations, 56—7, 67—8. 47 Charles P. Kindleberger, "Technical Education and the French Entrepreneur," in Enterprise and the Entrepreneur in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century France, ed. Edward C. Carter II, Robert Foster, and Joseph N. Moody (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 3-40; Robert R. Locke, "Industrialisierung und Erziehungssystem in Frankreich und Deutschland vor dem 1. Weltkrieg," Historische Zeitschrift 225 (October 1977): 265-96; John Hubbel Weiss, The Making of Technological Man: The Social Origins of French Engineering Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982); idem, "The Lost Baton: The Politics of Intraprofessional Conflict in NineteenthCentury French Engineering," Journal of Social History (Fall 1982):3-19; Terry Shinn, "From 'Corps' to 'Profession': The Emergence and Definition of Industrial Engineering in Modern France," in The Organization of Science and Technology in France 1808—1914, ed. Robert Fox and George Weisz (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 183-203; James M. Edmonson, From mecanicien to Ingenieur: Technical Education and the Machine Building Industry in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Garland, 1987). 48 The exception was Friedrich Karl Euler. In 1864, Euler borrowed enough to start an ironworks and foundry in Kaiserslautern. At the time of his death in 1891, his firm was thriving and employed over 600 people; VDIZ (1891): 485-6.

56

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

social conditions" in general before 1850. 49 In other words, the eventual nature, scope, and form of the relationship between technology and capitalism were still unsettled and were matters of contention in these early years. The example of the VDI in its founding period thus tends to support Ralf Dahrendorf s view that "industrialization in Germany . . . in the full sense of the term [was] not capitalist." 50 The VDI's open membership policy at this stage was an integral part of that peculiar faith in nationalist industrialization, selfless technology, and dedication to the welfare of the whole that its founders so ardently espoused. The invariable references to harmony, national glory, and industrial might whenever engineering is mentioned make it difficult to speculate about how technology would have fared as a basis for occupational identity and group formation without this context. There is no way to answer this question. The organizing principle of the VDI was not just technology, but technology as an "intellectual power" and "in the interest of the whole of German industry." 51 3.

THE VDl'S MEMBERSHIP, 1856-76.

Expectedly, the engineering association's membership composition reflected its ecumenical ideology and loose admission standards. A look at different class positions and educations of the men who came together in the VDI confirms that they were an extremely varied lot. 52 Table 2.1 summarizes the different employment situations of the VDI membership during the first twenty years of the association's existence. Reliable figures regarding educational background pose a more difficult problem. The VDI's membership lists are too summary to allow for the reconstruction of educational background. But the engineering association's Zeitschrift regularly published obituaries, which provide a good deal of information about both class and education. The results of an analysis of the obituaries of some 106 engineers whose age profile matched that of the VDI's founding generation are shown in Table 2.2. 53 Table 2.2 49 50 51 52

Schnabel, Deutsche Geschkhte, vol. 3, 281; Jonas, Geschkhte, 3 4 - 7 8 (especially 61). Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy, 39, 40, 42. VDIZ (1857):227; see also the literature cited in notes 3, 5, and 6. For a more detailed, quantitative analysis of the VDI membership and structure of the engineering profession, see Kees Gispen, "Selbstverstandnis und Professionalisierung deutscher Ingenieure: Eine Analyse der Nachrufe," Technikgeschkhte 50 (1983): 3 4 - 6 1 ; Hortleder, Geselischaftsbild, 2 2 58; Jonas, Geschkhte, 9 8 - 1 1 1 . 53 For purposes of manageability, the more than fifteen variations in educational careers were reduced to seven categories:(l) No higher technical education. This includes (a) possession of Abitur or Primareife from Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung, respectively, their south German equivalents and predecessors and successors, (b) attendance at a Gymnasium or Realschule without graduation or Primareife, attendance at a hb'here Burgerschule, (c) attendance at a trade or a vocational school, e.g., Provinzialgewerbeschule, Gewerbeschule, Industrieschule, (d) self-taught engineers or those who

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

57

Table 2 . 1 . Employment situations ofVDI members, 1857-76 (percentiles) Employment situation" Owner Director Employee Professor Consultant Civil servant Other/unspecified Total N

1857 15

9 37 5 3 2 30 101 309

1867

1876

25 10 31

26 16 25

22 12 31

4 4 3

3 5 5

22 99

21 101

4 4 3 24

1,164

2,981

Mean

100 —

"Owner = entrepreneurs, partners, owner-operators; director = senior managerial; employee = designers, superintendents, lower managerial; professor = all types teachers, publicists, editors; consultant = consulting engineers, patent consultants, sales representatives; civil servant = government engineers, military and municipal engineers. Source: VDI membership rolls for 1857, 1867, and 1876.

reveals that owner/entrepreneurs were clearly the least-educated group of obituary recipients. Only some 22 percent had a technical education based on Abitur, which was the generally accepted index of educational respectability or of candidacy for membership in the educated middle class. Expectedly, professors were the most highly educated. In descending order of educational achievement, the civil servants, employees, consultants, and directors ranged below the professors and above the owners. For the purposes of this discussion it is assumed that the educations of the various categories of obituary recipients were representative of the educations of their counterparts in the general population of the VDI membership. The information contained in Table 2.2 then sheds an indirect but revealing light on the enormous educational variety of the VDI membership as a whole. It is also possible to compare the employment situations of the obituary made their way in the traditional apprenticeship manner, (e) persons with known preparatory education but for whom the lack of higher technical education was indicated. (2) Higher technical education at a polytechnical school (any one of those institutes known by the end of the nineteenth century as technische Hochschulen) based on Abitur or Primareife from Gymnasium or Realschule I.

Ordnung, again also taking into account south German equivalents. (3) Higher technical education at any one of the same institutes as in category 2, but based on less than Abitur or Primareife, viz., (a) an unspecified period of attendance at a Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung or (graduation from) hohere Burgerschule, (b) vocational or trade school (often a and b were taken in combination sequentially), (c) apprenticeship or self-study. (4) Higher education as in categories 2 and 3, based on unknown preparatory education. (5) Higher technical education at a mining academy. (6) Higher education at a university, based on Abitur from Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung. (7) Unknown education.

Table 2 . 2 . Educational backgrounds of obituary recipients by employment situation (percentiles) Employment situation Education No higher technical education Higher technical education with Abitur Higher technical education without Abitur Higher technical education, unknown preparation Mining academy University Unknown education Total N

Owner

30 15 33 7 0 7 7

99 27

Director

30 26 11 7

4 4 19 101 27

Employee 20

40 40 0 0 0 0 100 5

Professor 7 13 20 13 7 40 0 100 15

Consultant

19 31 25 13 0 6 6 100 16

Civil servant

0 15 31 23 0 31 0 100 13

Other 0 0 0 0 0 0

3 100

3

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

59

Table 2.3. Employment situations of obituary sample compared with class situations of VDI membership, 1857-76 (percentiles)

Employment situation Owner Director Employee Professor Consultant Civil servant Unspecified Other Total

3

1 Obituary sample

2 Membership 1857-76

Index

25 25

22 12 31

1.1 2.1 0.2

5 14 15

4 4 3

12 0

15

3 99

100

9

3.5 3.8 4.0 0 0.3 —

sample with those of the VDI's membership as a whole. This is done in Table 2.3, which gives an indication of the bias of the obituaries. To highlight the asymmetries, column 3 shows an index of the relative overrepresentation and underrepresentation of the obituary sample. (A value of 1 connotes perfect proportionality, with numbers larger or smaller than 1 showing the degree of bias.) The most striking disproportions in column 3 are those for professors, consulting engineers, and civil servants on one hand and for employees on the other. The membership directories contain much smaller fractions of those highly educated engineers and much larger proportions of relatively less educated ones (owners, employees, directors) than the frequencies that give the obituary sample its favorable educational profile. This finding is suggestive. It appears to confirm the view that the higher occupations of the traditional social order provided at least as influential a role model for the engineers as did managers and entrepreneurs. Column 3 of Table 2.3, then, may be viewed as an index of the reference value of ''school culture" and of the inherited occupational hierarchy for the VDI. The academic professions obviously provided just as important an object of emulation for the engineers as did the new and dynamic but undereducated and socially unattractive example of the capitalist engineerentrepreneur. The engineers' split social identity that can be inferred from these findings seems paradigmatic for the VDI: a professional association almost by definition suspended between "theory" and "practice," between science and industry. To synthesize the two elements, the integrative ideology that emphasized technology for its own sake, industrialization, and, above all, nationalism was critical. The language of the obituaries confirms the pattern suggested by their

60

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

bias. The obituaries rarely acknowledge their subjects' capitalistcommercial achievements or their purely scholarly contributions, but tend to emphasize the engineers' national contributions, their achievements for German industry. A case in point is the obituary of Eugen Langen (1833— 95), best known for his leading role in making the internal-combustion engine a commercial success: "For many years one of the stars of our profession [Zierde unseres Standes}," Langen's achievements "as a preeminent practicing engineer in his own businesses" were certainly acknowledged. But he was praised above all for his energy "in the service of the general welfare [Allqemeinheit]^ and his sometime chairmanship of the VDI was lauded as evidence of his "considerable merit on behalf of our association as well as German industry." 54 As late as 1895, Langen and his fellow engineers are still cast in the role of latter-day heroes in the realm of modern technology and national industry. 4.

SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THE VDl'S INTEGRATION STRATEGY

The socioeconomic concerns and the material interests of the VDI's members differed in direct proportion to their educational and class variety. Initially, however, the ideological commitment to technology, industry, and nationalism and the absence of specific social-interest policies and membership criteria were powerful enough to overcome these centrifugal tendencies. The VDI's formula was both appealing and flexible enough to accommodate under the umbrella label "engineer" such diverse elements as small-scale individual entrepreneurs, a wide range of salaried employees, secondary-school teachers, self-taught inventors, owners of medium-sized firms, mechanics, craftsmen, professors, technical and commercial managers, big businessmen, consultants, government employees, and teachers at trade schools. The VDI's program promised technological benefits and social and economic emancipation to them all. The question was, how convincingly, and for how long? The VDI's integrative mechanism became progressively less viable as the institutionalized representation of direct socioeconomic interests became an increasingly dominant feature of public life in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. 55 The weakness of the bond between the various categories of VDI members would be exposed in the face of their increasingly important social and economic differences. To keep itself from falling apart in those circumstances, the engineering association would adopt a policy of neutrality in all controversial social issues. Al54 VDIZ (1895): 1245-7. 55 Cf. Lepsius, "Zur Soziologie des Biirgertums," 91-6.

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

61

though that policy succeeded in preserving the VDI's existence, it also weakened its appeal to a membership increasingly caught up in socioeconomic issues that could not easily be disentangled from technological ones.56 The VDI's ecumenical strategy of integration, however, points to a more fundamental problem. The ideological orientation that expressed itself organizationally in a wide-open membership policy suggests that even the engineering society itself had no precise concept of what really defined an engineer. If being an engineer did not depend on formal education or tangible technical achievements, or both, then on what did it depend? The implicit answer the VDI gave to this question was twofold. First, a concept of the engineer was implied in the emphasis on idealistic faith in technology as an intellectual-cultural achievement, valuable both on its own terms and as a force for the well-being of the whole nation. Though initially an informal affair, this idea easily fed into a "school culture" that was heavily influenced by the values and institutions of Germany's traditional, education-dependent social structure. At heart, it denied engineering's vital link with business. In the course of the period 1850-75, at a time when industrial development led to an enormous strengthening of capitalism, this orientation gradually evolved into a distinct social policy and professionalization strategy on the part of the VDI's professorial leadership. In turn, this led to a highly problematic relationship within the VDI between proponents and opponents of this trend, as well as between the business community and the engineering association as a whole. By the late 1870s it had crystallized to the point where open conflict between the two factions had become unavoidable. The chapters that follow discuss these developments in some detail. Here it remains to say something about the VDI's second concept of the engineer and some of its implications. The fact that a very loose connection with industry and technical matters sufficed for joining the VDI made membership a virtually meaningless distinction. If anyone could be a member, membership conferred no status or prestige. The absence of membership criteria in the VDI was therefore a problem that would come to haunt the association and deeply frustrate its more statusconscious members. Big business, self-made men, engineering entrepreneurs, and all others who benefited from openness, however, successfully fended off all attempts at introducing closure, educational certification, and the other corporate monopolies normally associated with the concept "profession" until deep into the twentieth century. 57 56 Hortleder, Gesellschaftsbild, passim; see also Chapters 9—12 in this volume. 57 Only in 1965 did the FRG's Bundestag pass a comprehensive "law for the protection of the occupational designation 'engineer.' " Declared unconstitutional in 1969, it was replaced by a series of identical laws at the state level in 1971. Formal technical education now is the criterion

62

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Highly problematic from a social and professional point of view, the occupation's diversity probably had a positive effect on the course of German industrialization and most likely was one of the reasons for its remarkable speed, thoroughness, and success. The protracted heterogeneity and absence of a clearly dominant, single type of German engineer and the existence of all sorts of technical schools and avenues into engineering probably were optimal conditions for rapid technological progress in the half-century before World War I. The German pattern in this regard appears to have differed substantially from the French and British experience, where technical schools were either more rigidly structured or almost nonexistent. If this is correct, the problem of the sizable national differences in economic growth in nineteenth-century Europe may have been brought one step closer to a satisfactory solution. 58 This hypothesis cannot be proved, but as the example of the VDI's membership composition strongly suggests, technological progress in Germany was not predominantly derived from the scientific rigors of "school culture." Nor was it chiefly dependent on pragmatic empiricism. German technological development, as reflected through the prism of the VDI's membership structure, was not technocratic in the sense that an allpowerful technological "school culture" might have tended to stress technology for its own sake over technology as a means to business ends, nor was it as much subordinated to capitalism as in a more Anglo-American kind of "shop culture." Instead, it evolved in a permanent dialectical tension between these two poles. The following example may lend some credence to this view. After the onset of the Great Depression in 1873, German engineers and businessmen engaged in considerable soul-searching concerning the possibility that German technology might have been one of the reasons for business failure. Chauvinistic pride was temporarily replaced by a careful assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of foreign and German technology. In this context, an engineer published a paper in 1876 in which he compared Germany and the United States. Among other things, the author drew attention to the differences between railroad locomotives in the two countries. His conclusion was that "the Americans had. . . remained very conservative." While American engineers had limited themselves to "a few, standard constructions that are produced with almost exact identity and with only few modifications of individual details by the various manufacturers, . . . the basic principle of the American 'bar-frame'. . . legally defining an engineer in Germany; H. Griinewald, ed., Die neuen Ingenieurgesetze der Lander der BRD (Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1971). 58 On this entire problem, see Robert S. Locke, The End of the Practical Man: Entrepreneurship and Higher Education in Germany, France, and Great Britain, 1880-1940 (London: JAI Press, 1984), Chapters 1—2; idem, "Erziehungssystem" ; Kindleberger, "Technical Education."

Nationalism, industrialization, technology

63

could no longer be justified from the standpoint of current technology." The author also noted that although German locomotives commonly operated with boiler pressures of ten atmospheres or more, the Americans had stayed with the much cheaper and easier-to-manufacture boilers using eight atmospheres. 59 In 1884, another engineer made comparison between French and German locomotives. Having had "the very doubtful pleasure of building twenty-eight locomotives . . . after drawings of French origin" for a German railroad, this observer noted that "locomotives of French design are substantially more expensive to build than ours, because when building machines the French engineer (whose inventiveness and acknowledged superiority are emphatically mentioned b y . . . the Genie Civil) pays so little attention to production difficulties that one suspects he is not even aware of them." 60 What this anecdote suggests is that, at least for the technology in question and for reasons that relate to the different "engineering cultures" of the societies under discussion, German engineering at this time steered a middle course between a stereotypically French emphasis on theoretical design at the expense of capitalist production rationality and an equally stereotypical American emphasis on reliability, cost factors, and ease of production, rather than technological sophistication for its own sake. 59 H. Heine, Professor Reuleaux und die deutsche Industrie: Eine Skizze aufGrundlage amerikanischer sowie deutscher Beobachtungen und Erfahrungen (Berlin: Polytechnische Buchhandlung A. Seydel, 1876), 17. 60 Emil Freytag, "Die Herstellungskosten von Maschinen," GA 13 (1884):50.

3 The pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI, 1856-1876

1. THE PROBLEM

Though ambitious and imaginative, the engineering society's synthesis of industry, scientific technology, and nationalism was not particularly stable. The tension between "shop" and "school" was not resolved by appeals to nationalism or by the postulate of the engineer's spontaneously materializing social superiority in the future. All the glowing rhetoric notwithstanding, the cleavage between professorial and entrepreneurial visions of engineering soon surfaced as the most dynamic element in the young profession's existence. The same rift also casts light on the problem of the engineers' failure to emerge as the new elite of industrial Germany, even as they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in transforming the country's society and economy. The engineers' function of combining theory and practice may be thought of as taking place anywhere on the spectrum that connects theory at one end with practice at the other. l In terms of technological progress, any point on this spectrum has the potential of becoming a successful engineering application. The social counterpart to this image would be an infinitely gradated occupational structure, reaching from the pure scientist to the self-taught mechanic. Something like this actually came into being. In the course of the nineteenth century the simple dualism expressed by the preindustrial social divide separating the scholar from the artisan gave way to a much more complex and diffuse occupational structure. Engineers, collectively constituting a chain of hybrids between scholar and artisan, became a common phenomenon and a preeminent example of the division of labor and specialization in modern society. In the social hierarchy, as distinguished from the occupational structure, the same diffuseness did not materialize so easily. The two arche1 Carl G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), 135-228.

64

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

65

types inherited from the preindustrial social hierarchy proved much stronger than the engineers' tenuous synthesis of state and society and came to be repeated as separate and competing principles of social identity formation and ranking in industrial Germany. On the one hand, the original artisanal-entrepreneurial and commercial dimension of preindustrial society evolved into a social stratifier of its own. Heir to the lower, economically active segments of preindustrial Germany's population, this scale was ordered predominantly on the basis of class. In Marx's categories, this was the spectrum that ranged from proletariat to capitalist bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the academic and civil-service, noneconomic pole also remained a powerful social force in industrial Germany, primarily for all those groups and individuals that did not quite fit, and objected to, the class model. Typically, this was the realm of Weber's status — the broad range of salaried employees, professionals, civil servants, in short, all those whose ''capital" consisted in one way or another primarily of education or who depended on the state for their livelihood. The adherents of this second orientation interpreted industrial society as a variety of the traditional, occupational status pyramid (berufsstdndische Gesellschaft). The exceptional power of these two overlapping social ranges effectively counteracted the unifying moment of technical work or engineering as a synthesis of status and class, or school and shop, and it prevented the rise of engineers to the position of a new and cohesive social elite. As a profession, engineers scattered across and fell between both worlds, giving rise to enormous fragmentation, frustration, and internecine conflict. The VDI's solution in its founding period had been to try integrating the "engineers" simply by encompassing the entire spectrum that ranged from academic theory to artisanal practice and cementing it with the rhetoric of nationalistic ideology. This initial synthesis began to come apart as soon as the first generation of the VDI's leadership — mostly professors and self-employed consulting engineers — proved more interested in establishing engineering as a socially respectable profession and a more or less traditional academic discipline than in continuing to occupy the social no-man's-land at the juncture of theory and practice. This tendency found its clearest expression in the leadership's educational policies. The way technical education had been grafted onto the main educational system made it almost inevitable that the engineering educators would seek to overcome the inferior social status inherent in the exclusion of technical training for industry from the realm of higher values and occupations — concretely, from access to higher civil-service positions. Given the continued authority of the preindustrial social hierarchy in

66

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

the 1850s and 1860s, it was almost a foregone conclusion that engineering teachers, as civil servants, would establish themselves at the outset as the VDI's leaders. They transformed the VDI's progressive ideology into a strategy of professionalization through educational reforms that aimed at eliminating the invidious distinction between technical training for government positions and training for private industry. The leadership sought to do everything in its power to promote and upgrade the scientific caliber of technical education, to get rid of its specialized occupational stigma, and to make it conform to established notions of what constituted higher education for the "cultivated classes."2 To the extent that such tendencies bore results, they became the cause of subsequent reactions from the profession's managerial and entrepreneurial segment. The professorial strategy manifested itself not only in excessive emphasis on technologically useless erudition and general cultivation but also in a conception of scientific knowledge that was partially at odds with modern technological-economic criteria. The knowledge engineering professors imparted and aspired to until the late 1870s was "pure" rather than "applied" science, and science as an ethical good rather than as instrumental rationality. As a consequence, values that had originated in a preindustrial era, such as the specific kind of social honor that consisted of possession of Bildung, became part of the very occupation that embodied Germany's economic and technological modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century. The social aspirations and policies of the engineering society's leadership therefore illustrate how the values of Germany's traditional social hierarchy adapted to, and survived, the challenge of industrialization.

2. EARLY ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP OF THE VDI

On the most fundamental level, the VDFs inability to close the gap between school and shop manifested itself in the association's early organizational structure and in the composition of its leadership. Prior to a reorganization in 1881, the VDI was structured in a highly decentralized, democratic fashion. Typically, members would belong to one of the local or regional chapters, which possessed a great deal of autonomy and had their own unpaid chairmen and executive committees - usually notable entrepreneurs, managers, or respected employees. Meetings at that level served both as social events and as occasions for professional exchange, 2 The pattern is a good illustration of what Fritz Ringer calls the "generalist shift" in The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction 1870-1920,

ed. Detlef K.

Miiller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 7—8, 62—3, passim. For the social appeal of Bildung, see Konrad H . Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic I/liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), 4 3 .

Pursuit 0/Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

67

such as the discussion of shop experiences, the presentation of papers, or visits to technical installations. Expanding from an initial five chapters in 1856 to twenty-five in 1880, the locals were connected to the national level by the members' right to vote on policy decisions and vote for national officers at the annual convention, and by automatic subscription to the monthly Zeitschrift.5 Predominantly occupied with technological and industrial issues, the local chapters also debated whatever social and professional issues emerged spontaneously or were passed along from above. Considering the membership's socioeconomic diversity, it is not surprising that such discussions frequently remained inconclusive and that many an issue did not survive preliminary debate. Designed to stimulate the development of "engineering culture" from the bottom up and to promote internal democracy, the VDI's organization therefore appears to have functioned precisely the opposite way: to inhibit successful aggregation of nontechnical professional interests from below. The national level consisted of an annually elected committee of seven. One of these was the Direktor, who served permanently and was paid for his efforts. The Direktor was responsible for conducting all the day-to-day affairs of the association and for editing the Zeitschrift. In addition, the national level served as a general clearinghouse, submitting all proposals relating to policy or requiring a united stance to the local chapters for discussion and approval. These tasks required the establishment of a small part-time staff on salary as early as 1859. 4 In 1875, the VDI's national level and local chapters counted some 134 leadership positions, or slightly under 5 percent of the entire membership of 2,741. This elite came predominantly from the ranks of managers and entrepreneurs. 5 Of the twelve men who occupied the national chairmanship between 1856 and 1881, six were senior managers, two were entrepreneurs, three were consultants, and one was a civil servant. Not a single educator was chairman during this period. 6 A sampling of local-chapter executive boards, summarized in Table 3.1, reveals a similar predominance of entrepreneurs and directors. The national executive made a somewhat better showing for educators, but not much. Of the forty-two individuals who served on the national 3 Conrad Matschoss, Der Verein Deutscher Ingenieure 1856-1926 (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1926), 59; VDIZ(1857):l6ff. 4 For salaries, see VDIZ (1865, 1867, 1868), the Direktor s reports at the annual meetings; Theodor Peters, Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure (Berlin; Verlag des VDI, 1912), 8; Paul Wentzcke, Franz Grashof: Ein Fuhrer der deutschen Ingenieure (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1926), 46. 5 Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verhalten der technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 4 9 - 6 5 (especially 51). See also Peters, Geschichte, 41—6. See also Chapter 6 in this volume. 6 Matschoss, VDI 1856-1926, 5 3 - 4 .

68

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Table 3.1. Employment situations of the membership of executive committees of seven selected local chapters'* Employment situation Owners Directors Employees Professors Consultants Civil servants Unspecified and others Total

No. 27 18 22 10 14 3 2 96

"Average of the years 1864, 1868, and 1875 for Berlin, Aachen, Cologne, Westfalen, Magdeburg, Thuringia, and Palatinate-Saarbriicken chapters. Source: VDIZ (1864):82f., 117, 353; VDIZ (1868): 281f.; VDIZ (1875): 167, 233.

board in 1868, 1871, 1875, and 1879, nine were professors, as compared with eight entrepreneurs and eight directors. The remainder were employees, consultants, civil servants, and others. As these figures show, the employment positions of the VDI elite alone do not yield a significant clue to the weight of professors in the association. 7 That is largely because prior to 1881 the critical positions were not the honorary chairmanships, nor the local and national executive committees with their unpaid members, but rather the incipient bureaucracy at the national level. The things that mattered were the post of permanent VDI Direktor and, to a lesser degree, the other staff functions pertaining to the VDI's allimportant project: publication of the Zeitschrift. A look at this periodical's title page in 1864 makes the point: ('Zeitschrifi des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, edited by Dr. F. Grashof, Professor at Baden's Grandducal Polytechnical School in Karlsruhe and Director of the Association; R. R. Werner, Professor at the Royal Industrial Institute in Berlin and Private Consultant; Dr. R. Weber, Member of the Royal Technical Deputation for Trade and Instructor at the Royal Industrial Institute in Berlin; and H. Ludewig, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Confederate Polytechnical School in Zurich and Private Consultant." The VDI's only two "corresponding mem7 Wolfgang Jonas, Die Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure: Erster Abschnitt 1856 bis 1880

(Habilitationsschrift der wirtschafts-wissenschaftliche Fakultat der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, 1962), and Hortleder, Gesellschaftsbild, fail to note the significance of technical educators as role models.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

69

bers" were Gustav Zeuner and Franz Reuleaux, both professors at the polytechnical school in Zurich. Its two honorary members were Professor Julius Weisbach of the mining academy at Freiberg (Saxony) and, all alone in this august company of educators, Alfred Krupp. In 1868 the Zeitschrift had six editors, five of them technical educators. The new editor-in-chief was Rudolf Ziebarth, a private teacher and consulting engineer in Berlin who was one of the most aggressive professionalizers in the entire VDI. 8 Of the seven honorary members elected before 1881, three were engineering professors, two were high-ranking mining officials with doctorates, and two were entrepreneurs (Alfred Krupp and Werner Siemens). Of some forty-one technical papers published in the Zeitschrift during its first year of existence, twenty-five were written by eight educators. As early as 1857, Chairman Euler characterized the relationship between his own duties and those of the Direktor as follows: "The office of chairman is an honorary position and the work involved in it is minimal. Everything has instead been concentrated in the hands of the Direktor. The well-being of the association depends on him. All your attention should therefore be focused on this office."9 Its occupant, from 1856 through 1890, was Professor Franz Grashof, since 1863 the successor of Ferdinand Redtenbacher in Karlsruhe. Both in his professional outlook and in his personal career, Grashof embodied the VDI's social ambitions for the engineering profession. His close ties to other leading technical educators made the national leadership of the association the almost private affair of a small circle of engineering professors. Grashof also possessed the enormous energy necessary to make the engineering association a success, and he was its prime mover in its first seven years of existence. Until 1863, his home served as national headquarters, and he spent long hours putting the monthly issues of the Zeitschrift together and writing many of its early articles. In the first year alone he authored seven papers, and in the next three years his name appears above another twelve pieces. In 1857, professors and teachers accounted for almost 60 percent of such articles, and ten years later the 4 percent of the VDI membership who were educators still accounted for 43 percent of all publications with a byline. Another ten years later, the figure had dropped to about 30 percent, where it appears to have remained until the outbreak of World War I. 10 It would be wrong to draw conclusions about the content of professorial writing on the basis of its volume, but there is little doubt that the large 8 See Chapter 6 in this volume; Rudolf Ziebarth, Der Verein Deutscher Ingenieure: Seine Entwicklung und Wirksamkeit in den vergangenen 25 Jahren (Berlin: A. W . Schade, 1881), 3 1 - 8 . 9 VDIZ (1857):227. 10 A spot check of the percentages of publications by professors and teachers in the VDIZ for the

70

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

number of items authored by educators was indicative of a strongly theoretical bent of the Zeitschrift. As one critical observer of Germany's technical literature remarked in 1877, "it can safely be maintained that the center of gravity of the . . . representative organ of all German engineers lies in theoretical discussions." 11 3. THE EDUCATION AND CAREER OF FRANZ GRASHOF

Born in 1826 into a family of philologists and Gymnasium teachers, Grashof showed little inclination for the classics. In 1840 or 1841 he left Diisseldorf 's Gymnasium to become apprenticed to Georg Wilhelm Nottebohm, his stepmother's father and a local mechanic. Grashof thus became acquainted with his master's son, Friedrich Wilhelm Nottebohm, the future director of the Berlin Industrial Institute. He supplemented his training with private mathematics instruction from Nikolaus August Druckenmiiller, a colleague of his father at the Diisseldorf Gymnasium. In 1849, Driickenmiiller became the younger Nottebohm's predecessor as director of the Berlin Industrial Institute. Grashof also attended the Provincial Trade School in Hagen and stayed at Diisseldorf's new Realschule long enough to earn his one-year volunteer exemption. In the fall of 1844 he enrolled in the Berlin Industrial Institute. 12 Some remarks he made after becoming a professor suggest that in spite of having followed his intellectual interests, the young Grashof had much resented the loss of status he suffered from having failed to graduate from a Gymnasium. Lamenting the absence of a more dignified educational path for the sons of the cultivated classes who wished to study theoretical years 1857, 1864, 1867, 1876, 1882, 1889, and 1912 shows the following: Year 1857 1864 1867 1876 1882" 1889 1912"

Percentage of articles

Percentage of membership

60

4.5

47 43 30 29 30 30

4.1 3.3 3.5 3.5 3.6

"Percentages of membership for 1882 and 1912 are based on a sample of six selected chapters. All data are from the VDIZ and VDIW tables of contents and membership lists. 11 Joseph Schlink, "Die Bestrebungen der technischen Lehranstalten und die Anforderungen des praktischen Lebens," 2 (January 1878):37. 12 Wentzcke, Grashof, 1—20; also Gustav Griiner, Die Entwicklung der hb'heren technischen Fachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet (Brunswick: Westermann, 1967), 31; Matschoss, Manner, and the obituaries for Grashof in VDIZ 1893:1469-72, 1894:46-8.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

71

mechanics and mathematics at the high-school level, he described his own irregular secondary education in 1864 as a "descent from a superior to an inferior sphere." For the young man who knew about the higher world of the humanities, it was "depressing to find himself temporarily out of place among classmates who by and large stand on a low level of general cultivation and pursue an entirely different, inferior goal in life."13 His studies in Berlin interrupted by conscription in 1847, Grashof loyally served the Prussian king during the revolution. Even so, he was seized with romantic unification fever and upon completion of his tour of duty decided to devote his life to the future glory of a united Germany by becoming a naval officer. In the spring of 1849 he enlisted as a sailor on a merchant vessel. The boredom of the routine navigational calculations during his eighteen months at sea cured him of his initial enthusiasm. While still at sea, he became aware that he was not cut out for the "life of a practical man." Toward the end of the voyage he had realized that he lacked "a truly practical eye and manual dexterity, as well as a real interest in practical work." He recognized that he should not choose a practical profession "if I am not. . . going to let my life go to waste. . . . I really belong at the lectern [Lehrstuht] of a trade school or a modern school. There I will not be hindered by not having gone to university, and there the disciplines I prefer are the ones in favor."14 Remarkable testimony indeed for someone destined to become the leader of an association of engineers — that essence of the practical man. Grashof reentered the Industrial Institute in 1852. The next year, while still taking classes, he started lecturing in mechanics and was invited to write the first of what would be a long list of publications, an entry on mechanics in the Allgemeine Enzyklopddie der Physik. In 1854 he passed the government examination for instructor at the Prussian Provincial Trade Schools and became a full-time lecturer at the Industrial Institute. In 1863 Grashof accepted an invitation to succeed Redtenbacher in Karlsruhe. An extremely productive scholar, and the recipient of countless official medals and honors, he remained in Baden until his death in 1893. 15 Grashof's theoretical inclination was so strong that even among technical educators and admirers it was considered excessive.16 It also hurt his teaching. One of his mildest critics and a former student was content to point out that "teaching skills, as I see it, were the weaker side of Grashof's talent." 17 A colleague at Karlsruhe was more revealing when 13 "Ueber die der Organisation von polytechnischen Schulen zu Grunde zu Legenden Prinzipien," VDIZ 1864:595. 14 Wentzcke, Grashof, 20-915 Wentzcke, Grashof; obituaries for Grashof in VDIZ (1893): 1469-762; VDIZ (1894):24-6; Conrad Matschoss, Manner der Technik (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1925). 16 Wentzcke, Grashof 4 9 - 5 4 , 64-6; Matschoss, Manner, 94. 17 Hermann Zimmermann, quoted in Wentzcke, Grashof, 66, 107.

72

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

he mentioned Grashof's "total abstraction that went almost too far and avoided all visual aids [Zeichnungen] . . . [and] demanded a high degree of understanding and intelligence that frequently exceeded the average comprehension of the students." 18 The most damaging testimony came from August Foppl (1854-1924), a former student of Grashof and himself a mechanics professor at Munich. According to Foppl, who claimed he had never understood Grashof's lectures, "Grashof was muddle-headed and had not fully mastered the fundamentals of [his} science. . . not much remains in science that still bears his name." 19 Whatever the truth of these accusations, there is little doubt that Grashof did his best to make engineering education as "scientific" as possible. In the process, clarity of exposition apparently was sacrificed all too readily. Although it surely contained an idiosyncratic element, what may be called Grashof's "metaphysical pathos" was also calculated to impress a society in which, in the VDI Direktor's own words, Germany's "intellectual class had a biased representation in the humanities and civil servants' circles only." 20 As another observer put it in the 1860s, "in today's civilized society the engineer is known as a parvenu and an unauthorized intruder." 21 Clearly, Grashof placed so much emphasis on the importance of natural science in general, and on an impenetrable variety of theoretical mechanics in particular, because he hoped that this would lift engineering from the social gutter to the level of the higher occupations. Personally, Grashof was fortunate enough to succeed in this effort beyond expectation. The institutional aspects of the situation, however, caused him to develop a lifelong professional interest in the relationships between social stratification and the educational system. The inferior status of engineering education compelled him — as well as numerous others inside and outside the VDI - to demand changes in the German states' educational systems and to seek to improve the social standing of the engineers.

4. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA, 1830-70

How did Grashof and like-minded engineering educators go about their mission, and what were the results of their efforts? A brief review of Prussian industrial education since the 1830s will put the answer in perspective. The dominant trend in the history of Germany's technical 18 Karl Keller, a colleague of Grashof at Karlsruhe, quoted in Wentzcke, Grashof, 64—5. 19 Foppl had additional devastating commentary on Grashof in his Lebenserinnerungen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1925), 84-5. On Foppl, see Matschoss, Manner, 76. 20 Wentzcke, Grashof, 16. 21 The Dresden mathematician Schloemilch, in 1868, quoted in Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitat, Technische Hochschule und Industrie: Ein Beitrag zur Emanzipation der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1979), 77.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

73

schools for industry had been their growing scientific stature. 22 This was true for Berlin's Industrial Institute as well. From a humble school for builders, chemists, and machine builders in 1821 it had evolved into a sizable institute with academic pretenses in the 1860s.23 Competition with its privileged sibling, the Bau-Akademie, had been the key factor in this development. The Bau-Akademie was essentially a civil engineering and architecture school that prepared one for a technical career in the civil service. Hence, it had strict admission standards: Since 1849, it required graduation from a classical Gymnasium or from a Realschule I. Ordnung (established 1859)-24 Its graduates, who took great pride in their civil-service standing, paraded as "classically educated" men belonging to the cultured classes and looked down with contempt on the mere "mechanics" of the Industrial Institute. The latter emphasized mechanical engineering and related industrial subjects whose scientific standing was still in its infancy, and it prepared its students exclusively for private industry. Originally its academic level was lower than that of the Bau-Akademie, and admission standards were therefore also lower: Graduation from a Provincial Trade School or from other nonclassical secondary schools sufficed until the reforms of 1878— 9. Access to the higher civil service, even in mechanical branches such as the Prussian state railroads, was blocked to its "vocational" graduates. 25 To overcome this invidious distinction between "state" and "society," educators at the Industrial Institute introduced more and more theory in the curriculum and increased its length. By 1830, the program had expanded from the original two years to three years. In a major reorganization in 1850, the rigor of entry-level instruction was increased drastically, and a higher admission standard was introduced. Graduating from a Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung or passing the final exam at a Provincial Trade School was officially required, although exceptions continued

22 Manegold, Universitdt, passim. 23 Enrollment at the Industrial Institute had reached 395 in 1864. This compared with 432 students at the Bau-Akademie and 1,972 at the university. Friedrich Wilhelm Nottebohm, Cbronik der kb'niglichen Gewerbe-Akademie zu Berlin: Festschrift zur fiinfzigjdhrigen Bestehens der Anstalt (Berlin: R. v. Decker, 1871), 82f. For the Bau-Akademie, Cbronik der Koniglichen Tecbnischen Hochscbule zu Berlin 1799-1899 (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1899), 24 If. Also see Peter Lundgreen, Techniker in Preussen wdhrend derfruhen Industrialisierung: Ausbildung und Berufsfeld einer entstehenden sozialen Gruppe (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1975), 282; idem, Bildung und Wirtschaftswacbstum im Industrialisierungsprozess des 19. Jabrhunderts (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1973), table E4 on 157; Wilhelm Lexis, ed., Das Unterrichtswesen im deutschen Reich (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1904), vol. 4, 44-5ff., and vol. 1, 118. 24 K. E. O. Fritsch, "Das preussische Staatsbauwesen," DBZ (1872):305. 25 Gustav Holzmiiller, "Das technische Schulwesen," in Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit, vol. 5, 3rded., ed. K. A. Schmid (Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung, 1902); Richard Peters, "Ueber die Stellung der Maschinentechniker im Staatsdienste," VDIZ (1869): 5 9 6 - 6 0 1 .

74

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

to exist.26 Director Driickenmiiller, Grashof's former mathematics teacher, also introduced specialization and differential calculus. The physical space initially reserved for instructional workshops, which had already suffered encroachment to make room for more lecturing, was virtually eliminated. The cumulative effects of these changes were such that they amounted to a fundamental alteration in the character of the institute. At least one old-time teacher who had not lost sight of the initial conception of the Industrial Institute lamented the whole trend: The "academizing process" had gone so far, complained Professor Brix, that it was perhaps better to "reconstitute" the institute as a "higher polytechnical institute . . . in imitation of the Paris Ecole poly technique, which, incidentally, has an entirely different purpose. And how will industry then get its due?" 27 Few of his colleagues shared that view. Additional reforms soon followed. Scholarships having been eliminated in 1850, the school's extreme discipline continued, but lost its legitimacy. This led to student unrest, which calmed down only when compulsory attendance with roll call was eliminated in I860. At that time, students were also permitted to select their own courses and course loads, and they started paying their instructors on a course-attendance and coursefrequency basis - a standard practice at the universities. Second-year students got the privilege of attending lectures at the university. 28 Meanwhile, the process of curricular upscaling continued. The building trades specialty was dropped in I860, to be replaced by a more ambitious program in naval engineering. In 1864, Professor Franz Reuleaux, newly arrived from Zurich, began offering courses in kinematics, a new and highly esoteric teaching field for the "deductive" approach to the "science of machines." 29 Another teacher expressed the hope "that it w i l l . . . be possible to reach the highest goal: namely, to gradually transform the field of mechanical engineering [Maschinenwissenschaft] into a pure science."30 The cumulative effect of all these changes was such that it has recently been described as a "paradigm-shift." 31 Then, as now, certain observers 26 Lundgreen, Techniker, 49-62. Graduates from Gymnasium and Realschule I. Ordnung played only a minor role prior to 1879. Until that time, 70% of all students attended Provincial Trade Schools for their preparatory training; Holzmiiller, "Schulwesen," 299. 27 Lundgreen, Techniker, 63—72; Nottebohm, Chronik, passim. On Brix, see obituary in DBZ (1870):95-7. 28 Nottebohm, Chronik, 35-45. 29 Hans-Joachim Braun, "Methodenprobleme der Ingenieurwissenschaft, 1850 bis 1900," Technikgeschichte 44, 1(1977): 1-18; Nottebohm, Chronik, 43-7. 30 Professor Hormann, quoted in Schlink, "Bestrebungen," 10. 31 Braun, "Methodenprobleme," 7, 11; Hans-Joachim Braun and Wolfhard Weber, "Ingenieurwissenschaft und Gesellschaftspolitik: Das Wirken von Franz Reuleaux," in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universitdt Berlin, 1879—1979, ed. Reinhard

Rurup (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1979), vol. 1, 285-300; Wolfgang Konig, "Wissenschaft und

Pursuit ofBMung:

Grashof and the VDI

75

interpreted the growing scientific caliber of the polytechnical schools as "immanent" in the dynamics of scientific development. 32 Others were unable to close their eyes to the fact that science, in the words of a critic from 1878, was a "golden goose [butternde Kuh] for the professorate, which yields it not only salary and pensions but frequently also fringe benefits like honoraria, commissions, titles, decorations, and, in general, all the advantages of a secure civil-service position." 33 Both factors no doubt played roles. A different question is whether or not the whole trend was particularly valuable for the progress of engineering at that time. Though this question cannot be answered here, it probably should not be overlooked that one of the crucial German inventions of the period, the gaspowered internal-combustion engine, was made by a traveling salesman who had not had any formal technical training. As for the social consequences, the academizing trend had succeeded in undermining the validity of the traditional differences in rank between the Industrial Institute and the Bau-Akademie. As the substantive gap between state and society tended to disappear, preservation of formal career barriers and invidious social distinctions became increasingly intolerable to status-hungry engineers and engineering educators. At the same time, however, the scientific and status aspirations of the Industrial Institute had created major problems for its leading preparatory schools, the Provincial Trade Schools. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Prussia had approximately twenty-five Provincial Trade Schools, with a combined enrollment of 1,240 students in I860. Considering the growing need for technical training and the efforts of other German states, these statistics are not particularly impressive. One reason for the schools' underdevelopment was inadequate funding. Another was the government's refusal to grant them the kind of privileges, such as the one-year volunteer exemption, that drove enrollments at other schools.34 The Provincial Trade Schools' most serious problem, however, centered on their purpose. Praxis: Schliisselkategorien fur die Entwicklung des deutschen technischen Ausbildungssystems," Mitteilungen der Technischen Universitdt Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig 20, 2(1985):30—6; Alois Riedler, "Das Maschinen-Ingenieurwesen," in Lexis, Das Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 131—2. 32 Braun, "Methodenprobleme," 18; Nottebohm, Chronik; Lundgreen, Techniker, 63—84. 33 Schlink, "Bestrebungen," 400. 34 Lundgreen, Techniker, 98, 121; Holzmiiller, "Schulwesen," 299; Oskar Simon, Die Fachbildung despreussischen Gewerbe- und Handelsstandes im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Heine, 1902), 734; ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2 . 2 . 1 , Nr. 27669, 321, 385; ibid., Nr. 29970, 32; "Denkschrift iiber das technische Unterrichtswesen," in Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen: Sammlung amtlicher Aktenstucke des Handelsministeriums smvie der beziiglichen Berichte und Verhandlungen des Landtags aus 1878/1879 (Berlin: Oswald Seehagen, 1879), 2 2 - 6 2 ; Gustav Schmoller, "Das untere und mittlere gewerbliche Schulwesen in Preussen," in his Reden und Aufsdtze zur Sozial- und Gewerbepolitik der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890), 2 4 7 - 7 6 ; Sitzungsberichte des Vereins zur Beforderung des Gewerbfleisses (1883): 166; see also Chapter 7, this volume. In 1850—1, one-year volunteer status was granted to the small number of graduates of the Provincial Trade

76

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Besides preparing students for the Industrial Institute, the Provincial Trade Schools provided vocational training for ordinary tradesmen and artisans. Because they had to change and upgrade their curricula continually to meet the Industrial Institute's rising requirements, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the two functions. That problem became a central issue in the Provincial Trade Schools' future. A first attempt to address the question was made in 1850. At that time the schools themselves had long since opted for the preparatory mission, and they increasingly shunned their vocational duties. As with the Industrial Institute, the collective effort of the faculty was the principal cause of this development. The teachers aimed to convert their lowly schools into more prestigious ''modern" institutions. The government was not ready to capitulate in 1850 and sought to reaffirm the dual mission that was part of the schools' original design. Thus, the Ministry of Trade emphasized that "it cannot be approved and tolerated any further that in their lectures on pure mathematics some Provincial Trade Schools go far beyond the limits mentioned in the Organizational Plan and. . . try to surpass other schools."35 The government also refused to permit the teaching of general topics like modern languages, history, and geography; it insisted on preserving their "character as . . . specialized occupational [schools] for artisans and the vast majority of the industrial population." 36 At the same time, however, the reforms of 1850 expanded the curriculum from one to two years, increased the mathematics and science load, and raised admission standards - all to facilitate the preparatory function. The net effect, in Gustav Schmoller's words, was to assign the "trade schools the task of preparing their people for the Industrial Institute more than had been the case before; thus they already became half and half 'modern schools.' " 37 The contradictions eventually resulted in the reforms of 1870. At that time, the curriculum was extended to three years, modern languages, history, and geography were introduced, and entrance requirements were raised again (to Untersekundareife, i.e., completion of the first five years of a Gymnasium or the equivalent). Even so, the government reiterated its old stand that the "trade schools must remain specialized occupational schools." Concretely, that meant a prohibition against introducing Latin Schools who enrolled in the Berlin Industrial Institute. In 1870, this privilege wasfinallyextended to all students who successfully completed the first two years of the three-year program. 35 ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 29970, instruction of 1850. 36 "Denkschrift 1879," 8. Also see the instructions of the Ministry of Trade to all Regierungen of 1850 in ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 29970, 32; Prussia, Ministerium der geistlichen, Unterrichts- und Medicinalangelegenheiten, Denkschrift iiber die Gewerbeschulen (Berlin: 1881), 1-5. 37 Schmoller, "Das gewerbliche Schulwesen," 260.

Pursuit 0/Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

77

into the curriculum and thereby widening the schools' privileges. As the admonition continued, "topics of instruction are therefore limited to German, French, and English and to geography and history." 38 So long as the government insisted on classifying the Provincial Trade Schools' preparation for the Industrial Institute as "specialized occupational training," the latter was unable to validate its claim of equality with the Bau-Akademie. If it recruited its students from a "vocational" school instead of a general secondary school, how could it claim the rank of higher education? This was not simply a question of nomenclature. Despite all the upgrading, the students who came to the Industrial Institute from the Provincial Trade Schools — 70 percent of enrollments as late as 1876 — continued to have much greater variety in social and educational background than their counterparts at the Bau-Akademie. 39 It is true that the reforms of 1850 and 1870 theoretically had made it impossible for the sons of artisans whose formal schooling went no further than an ordinary primary education to enroll in the Provincial Trade Schools. In practice, however, it was not too difficult to bridge the gap, and the new admission standards were not that strictly observed. In view of their marginal enrollment, strict observance probably would have spelled death for the Provincial Trade Schools.40 The largest proportion of students therefore continued to come from artisan backgrounds even after 1850. As late as 1866, 36 percent of the graduates from a sample of six Provincial Trade Schools had only a primary education at entry, whereas 62 percent still came from artisan families. 41 Thus, the overall education of Provincial Trade School graduates remained very uneven. Their preparation in mathematics and natural science was significantly better than that of Gymnasium students, but their "general cultivation" was worse. The key to the engineers' professional standing thus was increasingly their preparatory education. For the professionalizers, the question was whether they should cut their ties to the Provincial Trade Schools to facilitate assimilation to the higher occupations or, conversely, embrace them because of their advantages for engineering. That question and the related question of the Industrial Institute's relationship to the BauAkademie became issues of paramount concern to Grashof and his followers in the 1860s and 1870s. 38 39 40 41

ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 29970, 58-9, instruction of 1870. DBZ( 1876): 161. Griiner, Fachschulen, 33. Lundgreen, Techniker, 98, 103. Also see Breidenstein, "Ueber die Organisation der deutschen Mittelschulen als Vorbereitungsanstalten der polytechnischen Schulen," VDIZ (1867): 187—206, 233-9.

78

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order 5. GRASHOF'S MANIFESTO OF 1864 AND THE VDI

As early as 1858, Grashof had already articulated one of the basic aspirations of socially ambitious engineers: to gain the same right of access to civil-service careers as the civil engineers/architects trained at the BauAkademie. He demanded that engineering, which had achieved parity of intellectual standing with its older rival some time earlier, should "be freed from its subordination... in terms of its legal rights vis-a-vis the state as well." Inequality might have been justified in the past, but the "engineering profession [Ingenieurstand] must now be given equal rank with architecture." 42 In 1864 Grashof returned to this theme with a major address on technical education to the VDI's annual convention in Heidelberg. "On the Basic Principles of Organization for Poly technical Schools" became the manifesto of the social ambitions of private-sector engineers in Germany and defined the issues that would be contested for years to come. 43 Reduced to its bare essence, Grashof's address was a blueprint for the reorganization of German higher technical education. It would do away with the principles that had shaped policy in the early nineteenth century, replacing them with a completely different design. Except for one major change, Grashof's plan would be implemented almost to the letter in the course of the next several decades. Instead of the existing system of separate and unequal technical schools for state and society, the VDI Direktor proposed just one kind of institution: an integrated "technische Hochschule. "44 Fully the equal of the universities, the new school would provide nothing less than a "scientific education that meets the highest possible standards" and that would be equally suitable for the top positions in government and industry. Naturally such an institution would have to forgo all thought of preparing other students for middle-grade careers - at that time still a common practice among the higher technical schools for private industry. The integration Grashof envisaged would "finally and thoroughly eliminate the lingering opposition, unjustly tied up with the notion of inferiority and superiority, between engineers trained at the Industrial Institute and those trained at the Bau-Akademie." Once Prussia had taken that step, the rest of Germany would follow. 42 Quoted in Jonas, Gescbichte, 137. 43 Reference to Grashofs speech in Lexis, Das Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 12-13. Also see Lars U. Scholl, "Der Ingenieur in Ausbildung, Beruf und Gesellschaft 1856 bis 1881," Karl-Heinz Manegold, "Der VDI in der Phase der Hochindustrialisierung 1880 bis 1900," Wolfgang Konig, "Die Ingenieure und der VDI als Grossverein in der wilhelminischen Gesellschaft 1900 bis 1918," all in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscber Ingenieure 1856—

1981, ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981). 44 All quotations from the address are from the text published in VDIZ (1864):591-6l8.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

79

The success or failure of this plan hinged on the preparatory education of future engineering students. Grashof's key proposal in that regard was the introduction of uniform high admission standards for the technische Hochschule. These were necessary because a school's "character as an institution of higher learning is . . . determined less by the upper limits . . . to which it aspires. . . than by the lower limits from which it starts." Concretely, that meant eliminating the Provincial Trade Schools as preparatory schools. Those institutions, he thought, should be reformed to devote themselves exclusively to training second-tier, nonacademic engineers and technicians - in essence taking on the responsibility for educating the type of practical and applied engineers with whom the new technische Hochschule could no longer be bothered. The latter would accept only the kind of "generally cultivated" students admitted to the Bau-Akademie: graduates from the Gymnasium or preferably the Realschule I. Ordnung. Only such students possessed the prerequisites for acquiring the "higher positions in life," that is, Latin, which the VDI Direktor described as the "most natural, almost indispensable foundation for a solid study of modern languages, . . . by virtue of its highly developed grammar and concise sentence structure . . . even suited to promote the study of mathematics and the natural sciences." Surely this was a remarkable statement for the leader of an engineering society that ostensibly aspired to transform German society. It reflected his profound identification with inherited and backward-looking notions of professionalism. Grashof was nonetheless too conscious of the curricular deficiencies of the Gymnasium and the Realschule I. Ordnung with respect to mathematics and science to be satisfied with the existing Abitur from these institutions, which he said would have to be reformed. In the interim, future engineering students should make up for their lack of mathematics and science with an additional year of intensive preparation in these subjects. Finally, Grashof advanced a series of ancillary propositions designed to demonstrate the university-like standing of the technische Hochschulen. Disciplines like forestry and business education should be excluded because of the "lower average level" of their students. Workshops and laboratories were to be dismantled as much as possible because they were unworthy of the pure science that engineering education was to become. On the other hand, the technische Hochschule would incorporate generally cultivating disciplines such as languages, history, literature, economics, and aesthetics in its curriculum, because "familiarity with them guarantees a higher cultivation of the mind, which corresponds to that social rank for which the higher technical institute is to give the final preparation." In keeping with this approach, the technische Hochschule would have all the other trappings of the universities, such as academic freedom, collegial

80

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

organization, the right to make faculty nominations, departmental organization, annually rotating chancellors, Privatdozenten, and Habilitation. In short, if Grashof had his way, Germany's engineers would be educated to become, in Max Maria von Weber's words, "whole men whose general Bildung and life-style matched that. . . of civilized society." That was the "whole secret and the only solution of the problem." 43 The VDI's reaction to Grashof's proposals was generally very positive. 46 There was widespread agreement that the polytechnical schools were entitled to the "rights reserved for the universities," that their " r a n k . . . in the state is indeed the main question," and that higher technical education for the private sector and for government careers should be integrated into one institution. 47 A commission formed to study the Direktors recommendations accepted almost all of them, with only minor changes, and in that version they were adopted as the engineering association's official policy in 1865. 48 There was only one serious point of contention: Grashof's demand for disqualification of the Provincial Trade Schools as preparation for the technische Hochschule and his call for secondary education from the established, Latin-based schools. Few disagreed that implementation of this revolutionary departure from the occupation's existing recruitment pattern would facilitate assimilation to the established professions. But many were unwilling to sacrifice for this the principle of educational modernism and the functional advantages for engineering embodied in the Provincial Trade Schools. Accordingly, the VDI's 1865 resolution had watered down Grashof's proposals with regard to preparatory education. Not surprisingly, the teachers at the Provincial Trade Schools were in the forefront of this opposition. Grashof's gain would be their loss. If the VDI Direktors plans succeeded, their efforts to transform the Provincial Trade Schools from vocational schools into general secondary schools without Latin would be permanently defeated. It was not merely that their professional standing, which depended on breaking the link between Latin and Bildung, would suffer a setback; so would the larger struggle for emancipation of nonclassical education and all that was associated with it at the time — progress, liberalism, industry, specialization, and experimental knowledge. Partly out of conviction and partly out of necessity, therefore, the Provincial Trade School teachers became front-line soldiers 45 Max Maria von Weber, "Wo steht der deutsche Techniker?" in his Aus der Welt der Arbeit (1854), 487. 46 The only dissonant note was sounded by the steel industrialist Leopold Hoesch in the annual meeting of the metallurgy branch chapter of 1865, VDIZ (1865):572. 47 VDIZ(1864):633-4. 48 VDIZ(1865):703-25.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

81

in the battle against classical secondary education and for recognition of pedagogical "modernism" (Realismus) in its most radical version. 49 To Provincial Trade School teachers such as Walter Zehme, Wilhelm Gallenkamp, and Dr. Breidenstein, Grashof's proposals constituted a reactionary policy of social expediency and a betrayal of the engineers' larger societal mission. 50 Their views were summed up by Eduard Wilda, an Austrian official and expert on industrial education. Wilda argued that the equation between a classical secondary education and a "monopoly on universal Bildung" had been proved false long ago. He castigated the engineers for putting stock in such antiquated notions: "Especially the engineer, that child of the modern age who was thrust from his study into the midst of practical life, should have no sympathy whatsoever for such ideas." 51 As the Provincial Trade School teachers saw it, the only secondary schools that were truly "modern" were those entirely without classics, not the so-called Realschulen that year after year had increased the number of Latin hours. The only school that met the needs of a bourgeois society, one that espoused equality of opportunity and the career open to talent, was their own. Its openness to individuals from all social classes was "fundamentally opposed to the exclusiveness of all those institutions whose program cannot be broken up because of a Latin curriculum spread out over many years." 52 Thus, it was the preferred choice of all those who aspired to goals "that can be achieved and maintained only by ceaseless energy — which is exactly the essence of that bourgeois [burgerliche] independence that is created by industry and trade." 53 Such arguments struck a responsive chord with the entrepreneurial segment of the VDI and with all those engineers for whom the substance and efficiency of their education were more important than its social standing. Hence, Grashof's "Principles" provoked considerable debate at the local level. All told, some thirteen items dealing with secondary education can be counted in the Zeitschrift from 1865 until 1867, when Grashof was able to shut off these discussions. 54 Considering the decen49 Also see Lundgreen, Techniker, 77—84. 50 Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 302; Wilhelm Gallenkamp, Die Reform der hb'heren Lehranstalten, insbesondere der Realschulen (Berlin: Carl Habel, 1874). 51 Eduard Wilda, Wahrnehmungen und Gedanken tiber technisch-gewerbliches Schulwesen (Leipzig: G.

Knapp, 1879), 78. 52 Breidenstein, in VDIZ (1867): 179. 53 Ibid., 239. 54 (1) Lenne chapter, "Vorbildung fur das technische Studium," VDIZ (1866):298-9, resolution for the Realschule 1. Ordnung; (2) Hermann Grothe, "Entwurf fur die Begrundung resp. Umgestaltung der Lehranstalten zur Vorbildung fur hohere polytechnische Studien," VDIZ (1866): 5 35— 44, recommends some improvements in the existing Provincial Trade Schools; (3) Hermann Grothe, "Wie eignet man am Besten den in und fur die Technik wirkenden Menschen nach den

82

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

tralized and democratic nature of the VDI, as well as the great social and educational variety of its membership, it is not surprising that there was little agreement and much confusion about the matter. Significantly, however, several local chapters, among them the metallurgy branch chapter, a stronghold of managerial and entrepreneurial interests, supported the non-Latin education espoused by the Provincial Trade School teachers. The inconclusiveness of the discussions gave Grashof a chance to regain the initiative. At the VDI's 1867 annual meeting, he belittled the deliberations that had taken place over the past two years as amateurish and insignificant, and he declared that only professors of the poly technical schools, such as himself, were qualified to determine the necessary preparatory education of their students. His motion to halt further discussion at the local level and to turn the matter over to him and other engineering professors easily defeated a Provincial Trade School teacher's counterproposal to try to reach consensus through continued debate. 55 Despite protestations from below, therefore, Grashof in 1867 was able to retain his grip on the engineering association. His own great prestige, his position as Direktor, and the VDI's loose federal structure gave him an opportunity to determine its educational policy and to proceed as he saw fit. The VDI Direktor did not fail to take advantage of this opportunity. He immediately arranged a conference of professors from the poly technical schools of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart to advance the cause of Latin-based preparatory education. Held in Pforzheim in June of 1867, the conference unanimously resolved that the "polytechnical school must require as admission standard evidence of the type of general Bildung achieved by way of graduation from a Gymnasium . . . or a Realschule based on Latin." 56 The verschiedenen Standpunkten des Erfordernisses technische Bildung an?" VDIZ (1867): 127-34, calls for graduation from a Realscbule I. Ordnung or attendance of Oberprima at a Gymnasium, plus a mathematical preparatory school; (4) Breidenstein, "Ueber die Organisation der deutschen Mittelschulen als Vorbereitungsanstalten der polytechnischen Schulen," VDIZ (1867): 187-206, 233-40, advocates a non-Latin secondary school to be created out of the Provincial Trade School; (5) Metallurgy Branch chapter, "Organisation der Vorbereitungsanstalten zum Besuche polytechnischer Hochschulen," VDIZ (1867):359-64, see text; (6) Breslau chapter, "Vorbereitungsschulen," VDIZ (1867):420, resolution for Realscbule I. Ordnung; (7) Cologne chapter, "Ueber die Frage der Vorbildungsanstalten fur polytechnische Schulen," VDIZ (1867):421—2, resolution for the Realschule I. Ordnung; (8) Upper Silesia chapter, "Ueber die Lehranstalten zur Vorbildung fiir polytechnische Schulen," VDIZ (1867):679—80, recommends improvement of existing Provincial Trade Schools; (9)—(11) annual convention of 1867, "Bericht iiber die Gutachten der Spezialvereine betr. die deutschen Mittelschulen hinsichtlich ihrer Bedeutung als Vorbereitung fiir die technische Hochschule," VDIZ (1867):868-70, summary of the above positions plus other positions by Upper Silesia chapter (a resolution for the Realscbule I. Ordnung), by Aachen chapter (disqualifying itself), by Westphalian chapter (calling for a new type of school); (12) Berlin chapter, "Ausbildung der Techniker," VDIZ (1868):92, inconclusive; (13) Palatinate-Saarbrucken chapter, "Vorbildung zu polytechnischen Schulen," VDIZ( 1868):342-4, inconclusive. 55 VDIZ(1865):725; ibid. (1867):868-70. 56 VDIZ (1868):204.

Pursuit of Bildung; Grashof and the VDI

83

next step would be to arrange a conference of all German-speaking polytechnical schools and produce yet another resolution in support of Grashof's "Principles." If that could be achieved, the VDI Direktor wrote optimistically, the professionalizes would "not fail to get the closest attention also from the relevant public authorities," and implementation of the proposals would come within reach.57 Prussia's refusal to participate dealt Grashof's plans for the nationwide congress a mortal blow. It is not clear why the Prussian engineering educators declined to participate, but it appears likely that the Bau-Akademie-trained state corps of engineers and architects, which exercised considerable power in these matters, felt threatened in their exclusivity and decided to torpedo the whole idea. 58 Following the collapse of his plans in 1868, Grashof appears to have abstained from further public involvement in the matter until 1876, when he once again delivered a major address on technical education and the status of engineers to the VDI's annual meeting in Berlin. 59 His remarks were occasioned by developments, discussed more fully in the next chapter, that had caused the Prussian government to announce its intention to start reorganizing higher technical education along the lines of the "Principles" of 1864. Grashof rose to defend these plans, which were being jeopardized by ferocious opposition from the state corps of engineers. The major issue the VDI Direktor chose to address was the corps' insistence on maintaining the segregation of the Bau-Akademie and the Industrial Institute. This remained the most blatant example of the social disfranchisement of the private sector's mechanical and metallurgical engineers. Grashof denounced with special vehemence the claim that the two institutes ought to remain segregated because of the allegedly irreconcilable differences in their fundamental purposes and basic natures. He ridiculed the argument that as a civil-service school the Bau-Akademie represented the "ideal" dimensions of life, whereas the Industrial Institute's function was to foster a "healthy realism," the main purpose of which was commerce and trade, and that these differences were so fundamental that students of the two directions should be kept in strict isolation from each other. Though acknowledging that the majority of academically trained mechanical engineers would end up as employees in the private sector (Beamten eines grosseren gewerblichen Gemeinwesen), the VDI

Direktor maintained that such employees' foremost duty lay in loyalty to their firms and that as such their situation was essentially identical with that of civil servants. The minority of engineers who became entrepreneurs in no way diminished the validity of his analogy, Grashof contended, because entrepreneurial engineers for their part were comparable to 57 Ibid., 207, letter from 10 July 1868. 58 Ibid., 579-80; DBZ (1869): 187, 200, 219, 221, 606-7. 59 VDIZ(1876):624-40.

84

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

princes, whose legitimate authority was based on functioning as the "first servant of the state." Just so, "the owner of an industrial business [gewerbliches Unternehmen] is a small prince, . . . who must be viewed as the first officer [Beamte] of the community [Gemeinwesen] in question," whose overall well-being is his moral responsibility. 60 This remarkable line of reasoning once again demonstrates Grashof's backward-looking notions of professionalism. For Grashof, just as for his opponents among the state corps of civil engineers and architects, the issue was not one of dismissing as antiquated rhetoric the traditional division between state and society, civil servant and private citizen, or of denying the importance of being concerned with the interests of the community as a whole, instead of engaging in the money-tainted pursuit of private interests; rather, it was a question of where academically trained, cultivated mechanical engineers and industrial firms based on the systematic utilization of technological intellect belonged in this dichotomous social scale. As far as Grashof was concerned, the answer was perfectly clear. The reasons for his refusal to recognize the distinction between capitalist-industrial bureaucracy and the state's civil service are equally obvious. The social rank of the private sector's engineers was a function of their ability to emulate the cultivated higher civil servant, the preeminent and traditional model of selfless professionalism in the German context. 61 Of course, this was impossible so long as the secondary educations of the two categories of engineers remained unequal. Grashof therefore once more repeated his demand for graduation from Gymnasium or a Realschule I. Ordnung, asserting that his views were shared by the vast majority of Germany's technical associations. He pointed out that "leading engineers in private industry . . . will only command the same kind of respect from government as well as the people at large [as civil-service engineers] if they are not merely on the same level with respect to technical competence but also with respect to general scientific [preparatory education]." 62 More clearly than a decade earlier, however, Grashof in 1876 realized that his insistence on the Abitur was open to criticism on practical grounds. It would be physically impossible, economically wasteful, and financially prohibitive to organize higher technical education and a general secondary education for all engineers in the private sector. Industry and its enormous range of technical problems had already become too large, too differen60 VDIZ(1876):629. 61 For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Kees Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, 3(Summer 1988):550-74; Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847—1914: Zum Verhdltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 171-5, 184-96. 62 VDIZ(1876):630.

Pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI

85

dated, too specialized, and too hierarchical to make that feasible. Moreover, the number of positions requiring technically trained personnel of one sort or another would undoubtedly continue growing by leaps and bounds even though the economy was in a depression just then. The VDI Direktor in 1876 therefore paid more attention to the need for nonacademic engineering schools than he had in 1864. Like classical secondary education, such schools emerged as a precondition for the upward mobility of the mechanical engineering elite. Grashof again recommended that the Provincial Trade Schools take on the task of training all those technicians and engineers who were to occupy the most rapidly growing numbers of positions in industry, which were in the middle-grade and lower-grade technical functions. He was not alone in calling for the establishment of such a system of intermediate, practical training situated below the polytechnical schools and expressly prohibited from sending its students on to higher technical education. He joined a general trend in engineering and industrial circles with similar objectives that had emerged after the onset of economic crisis and depression in 1873- 63 But it is significant that Grashof, contrary to most others who advocated this kind of practical technical training, did not do so for economic reasons, but for social ones. Lower-level technical schools, he believed — mistakenly as it turned out — would help eliminate menial work, create educational uniformity, and therefore facilitate the development of the mechanical engineering elite into classically educated "staff officers of technology." 64 As the Deutsche Bauzeitung put this idea in 1877, "if. . . there existed between engineers with higher education and artisans a class of second-rate engineers, . . . the status of German engineers in society would scarcely leave anything to be desired." 65 The VDI's 1876 meeting upheld Grashof's views in all their essentials and adopted them in the form of several resolutions. The critical point of a humanistic secondary education, which in earlier years had proved a stumbling block, was now accepted without dissent. The Provincial Trade Schools meanwhile found no serious defenders at the meeting. 66 It is impossible to tell if that was the result of an accidental majority at the annual meeting or if it reflected a change in the opinions of the association's membership. In light of prior and subsequent tensions within the VDI, however, the former appears to have been the case. Whatever the reasons, there is no doubt that as late as 1876, Professor Grashof was still in a position to make the VDI follow his lead in educational and status questions. 63 64 65 66

See Chapter 7, this volume. VDIZ(1876):631. DBZ (1877):226. VDIZ(1876):638-40.

reform of technical education in Prussia, 1876-1879

Grashof had given his 1876 address at a time when the problems of the engineers were first emerging as issues of broader public concern. One reason for this was the stepped-up agitation for educational reform by the engineering professorate. During the 1870s, numerous educators at the polytechnical schools spoke up to demand the liberation of engineering science from its stigma of narrow specialization, insisting it be based firmly on either the Gymnasium or the nine-year Realschule with Latin. They called for a merger of the Industrial Institute and the Bau-Akademie or even the integration of higher technical education and the universities. 1 The loudest and most effective agitation for reform, however, came not from this direction but from disgruntled junior members of Prussia's corps of civil engineers and architects. The reorganization of Prussian technical education in the late 1870s resulted primarily from this group's public exposure of backwardness and growing professional incompetence in the engineering corps. 2 All this took place against the background of the economic depression 1873-9. The postcrash atmosphere did not influence reform directly, as it would the events described in Part II of this study. To all appearances, issues of status, assimilation with the established professions, and concern with Bildung remained dominant. Underneath the surface, however, one detects important shifts in the meanings of these terms and in the ambitions of the parties involved. That, in turn, set the stage for what came 1 Lothar Meyer, Die Zukunft der deutschen Hochschulen und ihrer Vorbildungsanstalten (Breslau: Maruschke & Berendt, 1873); Carl Weihe, Franz Reuleaux und seine Kinematik (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1925), 17; VDIZ(1876):76l-2. 2 Peter Lundgreen, Techniker in Preussen wdhrend derfruhen Industrialisierung: Ausbildung und Berufsfeld einer entstehenden sozialen Gruppe (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1975), and Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hockschule und Industrie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), overlook the corps and overrate the role of the VDI in the reforms of 1876—9. For a recent history of the technische Hochschule in Berlin, see Reinhard Riirup, ed., Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universitdt Berlin 1879-1979 (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1979).

86

Reform of technical education in Prussia

87

after. The reform of Prussian technical education in the years 1876—9 was therefore a culmination of one trend even as it signaled the beginning of another. 1. THE BAU-AKADEMIE AND THE CORPS OF CIVIL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS

Strictly speaking, Prussia's technical civil service was not a real corps. A separate "General Building Department" (Ober-Bau-Department) had been established in 1770 to supervise the state's various public construction needs, but the technically trained personnel who served below that cabinet-rank agency were integrated into the hierarchy of the regular, administrative civil service. Despite their distinct rank designations, uniforms, and the prerequisite of a Bau-Akademie education, the bulk of the technical civil servants were therefore part of the general district administrations or Regierungen. In this capacity they experienced constant discrimination in career mobility, promotion, pay, work load, and responsibility when compared with their legally trained counterparts. The latter started at a higher rank, moved up the ladder more quickly, and almost always went further than the technical civil servants. The "lawyers' monopoly," as it was called, was one of the corps's chief frustrations and played a major role in causing the troubles that developed after the middle of the nineteenth century. 3 Unlike comparable institutions elsewhere, Prussia's technical corps did not distinguish between civil engineering and architecture. The two fields were considered merely different aspects of any competent builder's professional skills, as indeed they had been in earlier centuries. Members of the corps were known collectively as Baubeamten ("building officials"), their rank designations invariably contained the prefix Bau-, and their professional school, with its rigid, undifferentiated curriculum, was known as the Bau-Akademie. The exceptionally difficult Prussian state examinations were the same for all aspiring to join the corps, regardless of whether one was in fact an architect or a civil engineer. Even today the language reflects this historical lack of differentiation in the closely related words for architecture and civil engineering: Hochbau (literally, "building above grade") and Tiefbau ("building below grade"). As time passed, the Prussian organization became increasingly untenable. Developments such as industrialization, urbanization, and the astonishing growth of the technical disciplines placed ever larger demands on builders' technical skills and intellectual energies. This drove home 3 "Das preussische Staatsbauwesen" [twenty installments in Deutsche Bauzeitung (DBZ), September 1872 to December 1873], DBZ (1872):375.

88

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

the need for professional specialization and bifurcation of engineering and architecture to anyone who was serious about professional competence. Other German states, therefore, if they had known the older arrangement at all, gradually abandoned it during the first half of the nineteenth century. Only in Prussia did it survive without significant change until the reforms of 1876-9. 4 There were both administrative and fiscal reasons for maintaining the undifferentiated system, but the primary cause was social.5 As a senior corps official explained it in 1874, "differentiation between the two main areas of construction . . . must be rejected at all costs" because the "general Bildung of the Baumeister" (the rank that went with passing the second state examination required for a tenured position) "demands advanced knowledge in both branches." The handicaps of the corps' members in the administrative hierarchy engineer Gartner thought, were consequences of their "lesser general Bildung that results from not requiring a Gymnasium Abitur" and accepting graduation from a Realschule with Latin as sufficient. The problem would merely be aggravated "if only half as much specialized technical and scientific knowledge were required." In other words, the combined study of architecture and civil engineering was "necessitated by the general Bildung of a man who lays claim to a higher level of professional knowledge." 6 Gartner and other senior technical officials like him believed that the undivided and huge training program in architecture and civil engineering was needed to demonstrate the technical civil servant's all-round "cultivation." Bildung, in turn, was needed to contest the legitimacy of the lawyer's monopoly on all critical posts in the civil service. Bildung appeared to entitle the lawyer to his ascendancy in the government bureaucracy and in the social hierarchy alike. Bildung, not specialized legal training or administrative expertise, allegedly made him a professional. It followed that the government engineer bent on achieving similar social and career mobility also needed Bildung. In fact, other qualities were more important for the power of lawyers in government. The monopoly of jurists on all vital positions in the higher civil service was based on the emergence of the Rechtsstaat in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Government by law made lawyers indispensable and unassailable as the preeminent technical experts 4 Josef Becker, Von der Bauakademie zur technischen Universitdt: 150 Jahre technisches Unterrichtswesen in Berlin (Berlin: 1949), 7—13; Jiirgen Kocka, Unternebmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847—1914: Zum Verbaltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 177-80; DBZ (1872):297-9, 305-9, DBZ (1873):35. 5 DBZ(1872):419, 305-96 DBZ(1874):28-9.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

89

in the development and maintenance of legally correct government. 7 Specialized skill directly pertaining to the most sensitive aspects of government as such, rather than "general cultivation," was decisive for their privileged position in the civil service. Whatever role Bildung may have played in this connection, by the second half of the nineteenth century it took second place, at best, and had become an ideological smokescreen that engineers erroneously mistook for the substance of the power of their nemeses.8 Misguided or not, the men at the top of Prussia's engineering corps stuck with the pursuit of "general cultivation" as the most important proof of their professionalism. Their claim of glory attendant on allegedly comprehensive mastery of both engineering and architecture, however, was not matched by the facts. Understaffed and underfunded, the corps was overwhelmed by the onslaught of urbanization and building activity in the 1860s and early 1870s. Heavy involvement with trivial administrative duties and the need for utmost financial frugality had given it the reputation of a technological backwater. Problems were compounded by a tendency of corps members, especially in times of boom, to accept lucrative and interesting positions in the private sector rather than endure the hardships of a frustrating career in the Prussian civil service.9 The most serious problems centered on the Bau-Akademie, which by the early 1870s had fallen on hard times. In theory it was, after the mining academies, still the most prestigious and the most demanding of all technical institutes. This standing was enshrined in formidable admission standards and an intimidating curriculum. Its actual conditions were less enviable. The school was located in an old building that could no longer accommodate its grown student body. In 1873, when enrollment stood at 809, there was classroom space for 520 students. The administration counted on large numbers of students skipping class to avoid the worst of the overcrowding. In 1876, the library and the inadequate collection of instructional models had to be put in storage in a building at an inconvenient distance from the academy.10 Unlike the Industrial Institute, the Bau-Akademie had not made any changes toward a more academic, collegial form of organization. Described by one of its critics as a "dead machine," it was run in authoritarian style by an executive committee of three of the corps' top officials in the 7 Otto Hintze, "Der Beamtenstand," in Soziologie und Geschichte: Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, PolitikundTheoriederGeschkbte, 2ded., ed. Gerhard Oestreich (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), 102-3. 8 For a recent version of the engineers' old complaint, see Jakob Weber et al., Ingenieure tm offentlichen Dienst (Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1978), vii. 9 DBZ (1868):257; DBZ (1872): 289-90, 403; DBZ (1873):63, 84; Zeitschrift fur Bauwesen (1879):289-305. 10 DBZ (1872):388-9; DBZ (1876):21-2, 73-5, 81-3, 91-3, 99-101.

90

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Technische Bau-Deputation, the section for public works in the Ministry of Trade. 11 These men were practicing government architects or engineers of an earlier generation, rather than professional educators. Their rigid regime had negative consequences for the morale of the faculty, who were treated like so many "common laborers." 12 Instruction also suffered from a chronic shortage of teachers and from imbalances in their composition. According to one critic, the Bau-Akademie in 1872 was essentially no more than a "school for draftsmen," with an overemphasis on the artistic aspects and an "extraordinarily meager diet for engineering and public works construction [Kameral-Bau}."l?> Not a single civil engineer remained on the tenured faculty after the well-known hydraulics specialist Ludwig Franzius left for Bremen in 1875. 14 In addition to the small regular teaching staff, there were substantial numbers of part-time instructors. Their primary orientation, like that of the tenured faculty, was toward their outside employment. Many were younger engineers or architects, temporarily stationed in Berlin and compelled to teach one or two courses at the Bau-Akademie. In 1876, prior to unification with the Industrial Institute, the Bau-Akademie offered the least number of courses of any higher technical institute in Germany. 13 By far the largest problem was the refusal of the corps' administration to make separate specialties of architecture and civil engineering. This lack of differentiation led to tensions between architects and civil engineers and to mutual recriminations between the younger and older generations in the corps. Inevitably, civil engineers complained about excessive training in drawing, artistic subjects, and architectural styles, whereas architects believed that there was too much emphasis on science, civil engineering, construction technique, hydraulics, and railroad design. The combined program, described at one time as a "forced marriage," required an exceptionally long and difficult course of study and examinations in both areas.16 Even so, the result was insufficient knowledge and "dilettantism" in civil engineering as well as architecture. 17 One architect summed up the situation in 1867: "With force they want to make us simultaneously into architects and engineers. And what do they achieve other than that we are in truth neither architects nor engineers but dilettantes in both fields, merely administrators with technical knowledge." 18 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

DBZ(1876):388. DBZ (1872):93, 371-3, 379-82, 387-9DBZ (1872):395. Prussia, Haus der Abgeordneten, Verhandlungen (HdA), 17 March 1876, 743—4. "Von der Bau-Akademie zu Berlin," DBZ (1876):21-2, 73-5, 81-3, 99-101. DBZ(1872):418. DBZ (1872):297, 307, 372, 392, 418. DBZ (1867):443.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

91

The shortcomings of the Bau-Akademie were most aggravating to the younger generations of graduates and to those who had left the corps or were contemplating leaving it for the private sector. For civil engineers or architects to work outside of government was a relatively novel development in the middle of the nineteenth century. The opportunity to do so arose first for architects, and mostly in Berlin, where urbanization occurred earlier and on a larger scale than in the rest of Germany. The concomitant building activity and growth in contracting business, particularly after the introduction of freedom of trade in construction in 1868, created the conditions for architectural entrepreneurship or private employment that had largely been absent before. Civil engineers faced somewhat greater difficulties in this regard, as the construction of roads, hydraulics projects, railroads, or other large-scale engineering projects tended to remain a government affair longer than did housing. 19 But even for them the trend was in the same direction. Regardless of whether or not the Bau-Akademie's graduates stayed in government, all of them felt the need for better professional training. Thus, it is not surprising that the most vociferous criticism and the initial impetus for reform came from the corps's younger generation in Berlin. In 1866, a group of seven mavericks decided to take the offensive. Confident that the future would belong to those who excelled in their profession first, and only secondarily in "cultivation," the young architects and engineers envisaged a "fundamental reform of [their] employment conditions and [their] training at the Bau-Akademie." 20 They formed a partnership to publish a new technical journal that would reflect their outlook. The founders of the Deutsche Bauzeitung, a commercial venture, were all junior members of the staid Architekten-Verein in Berlin. Founded in 1824, this association still bore the "patriarchal imprint of a family of all the older and younger members of the Prussian state's technical civil service residing in Berlin" and was known for the "unlimited domination [Herrschaft] of the directorate," which consisted exclusively of senior corps members employed in the Ministry of Trade. 21 The Deutsche Bauzeitung soon developed into one of the leading publications for civil engineers and architects in Germany. It owed its initial success primarily to its publication of incisive and persistent criticism of conditions at the Bau-Akademie and in the corps. From its founding in December 1866 to the announcement of reforms in the late 1870s, the Deutsche Bauzeitung's two central themes were abolition of the "lawyers' 19 Not until 1920 did a separate society for civil engineering see the light: Der Bauingenieur 1 (1920):l-2, 281-2, 485. 20 DBZ (1872):290; DBZ (1867):443-4. 21 DBZ(1916):53O.

92

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

monopoly" and "differentiation" (Trennung der Fdcher) between architecture and civil engineering. 22 The chief editor and driving force of the Deutsche Bauzeitung was Karl Emil Otto Fritsch, in 1866 a twenty-eight-year-old Berlin architect. 23 Fritsch worked incessantly and successfully to arouse public opinion, the only force that would "eventually decide the question in spite of all conservative efforts to the contrary." 24 He inveighed against the "highest exponents of railroad technology [who] considered a specifically architectural training for railroad engineers indispensable," attacked the "odious privilege" of lawyers in the Prussian railroad administration, and accused certain high corps administrators of incompetence and laziness. He felt vindicated when top political officials of the Ministry of Trade expressed concern about the lack of professional competence of corps railroad engineers. 25 Eventually his exposes of abuses and mismanagement caught the attention of the Prussian Landtag. 26 Fritsch and his companions were not merely muckrakers; they also developed detailed plans for reorganization and improvement. They opposed the plans of the corps' conservative elite to exclude the Realschule with Latin and to restrict admission to the Bau-Akademie and the state examinations to Gymnasium graduates. 27 They urged replacing the excessively difficult and wide-ranging second state examination with a simplified test of the candidate's competence in his chosen specialty, architecture or civil engineering, without requiring knowledge of all police regulations and administrative procedure. 28 As for the Bau-Akademie, under the rubric of "intensification of professional training" ( Vertiefung der Fachbildung), Fritsch called for elimination of the obligatory but ineffective apprenticeship year with a corps member prior to enrollment. It should be replaced with an additional year of courses at the BauAkademie, which would then take four years to complete. The expanded curriculum should be divided into a lower and an upper division of two years each. Modeled on the Parisian Ecole poly technique, the lower division would cover a common program in the basic auxiliary sciences and drawing for all students, concluding with a comprehensive examination. The upper division would be a specialized professional school, with ar22 23 24 25 26

DBZ (1867):443-4; DBZ (1872):289-91; DBZ (19l6):526-32. On Fritsch, see DBZ (1915), supplement to No. 71 (following 408). DBZ(1867):443-4. DBZ(1871):328. DBZ (1872):291, 297; DBZ (1873):4l0; DBZ (1876):21, 83, 100-1; DBZ (1877):31-42; "Die Organisation des Bauwesens in Deutschland und der Ausbildungsgang der deutschen Baubeamten," DBZ(1867):57-8, 62-3, 69-70, 81-2, 115-16, 150-1, 190-1, 240, 296-7, 3589, 369-71, 464-5, 492-3. 27 DBZ (1873): 129. 28 DBZ(1873):373.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

93

chitecture and civil engineering going their separate ways. Its final examination was to be coterminous with the first state examination — in either civil engineering or architecture. 29 The logical conclusion of these recommendations was to abolish the Bau-Akademie in its existing form. 30 Once it was changed and organized around specialized engineering disciplines, instead of as a civil-service academy that emphasized technical-administrative subjects, the school should merge with the Industrial Institute. Their combination would create the kind of comprehensive institution that already existed in most other German states under the name of technische Hochschule.31 In the end, only this would solve the basic problem: the Bau-Akademie's incompetent governance by a small clique of old-fashioned and aged officials in the Ministry of Trade's section for public works. 32 Despite an initially hostile reception by the Architekten-Verein's older generation, the Deutsche Bauzeitung soon gained a large following. 33 By the early 1870s the logic of its arguments had created broad support for a technische Hochschule. To defuse the remaining opposition, Fritsch, in a meeting of the Architekten-Verein in April of 1874, addressed himself to the mistaken idea that "uniting the Bau-Akademie with other technical schools is identical with its demotion to a lower rank and exactly contrary to all attempts at raising the standing of our discipline [Fach] and our profession [Stand]."54 Such views, he argued, were rooted in antiquated notions of professional rank that equated the latter strictly with civilservice employment. The misguided corps members who believed that were "no longer even aware of the natural connections between their discipline and the other technical specialities" and had nothing but contempt for their "colleagues who have no connection with the civil service."35 That such attitudes were mistaken was evident from the example of the universities, Fritsch contended. He argued that the essence of the universities' social superiority over the technical schools lay precisely in their combining in one institution a universe of disciplines. This gave an advantage not merely because it made possible the kind of specialization lacking at the Bau-Akademie but primarily because of the climate it created for intellectual exchange, comradery, stimulation, and contact between the various disciplines. The university experience in and of itself 29 30 31 32

DBZ DBZ DBZ DBZ

(1872):380. (1873): 129. (1873): 130. (1873): 130, 363-4, 371-3.

33 Within a few years, all but one of the Architekten-Verein's approximately 850 members (1871) had taken a subscription; DBZ (1916):532; DBZ (1871):311. 34 DBZ(1874):78-9, 85-6, 95, 124-6. 35 DBZ (1874): 125.

94

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

managed to create a social and professional elite that dissolved the old barriers between state and society. In contrast, the technical specialties were segregated into a petty hierarchy of separate academies and schools for their various subfields, and they were racked by mutual suspicion, jealousy, rivalry, and hostility. Unless this internal divisiveness and narrow-minded bigotry could be overcome by banding together in a comprehensive technische Hochschule, engineers would continue to "struggle in vain . . . for greater significance . . . in the public life of our nation." 36 As future developments would show, Fritsch vastly overrated the powers of higher education and of the practical Bildung he emphasized to create social solidarity and respectability. The employment setting was just as important in this regard, perhaps more so. The engineers would soon overcome the educational fragmentation he criticized, but they did not thereby acquire the unity or the social power to which they aspired. Even so, Fritsch's arguments focus attention on the problem of a changing occupational and social structure. His attacks on the conservative opponents of a technische Hochschule were symptomatic of Germany's transition from a preindustrial social-occupational structure to a capitalistindustrial structure. In the older setting, professional status was almost automatically equated with employment in the higher civil service. In the more modern industrial constellation, occupations in the private sector that called for the same kind of academic qualifications as formerly demanded only by government service had grown enormously in relation to the past. As a consequence, the division between the higher and the lower occupations no longer coincided with the division public versus private. In the pluralist and differentiated occupational structure of capitalist-industrial society, the professions came to encompass a range of employment settings and to rely more heavily than before on a mixture of education, career opportunities, function, and income for distinguishing them from the lower occupations. 37 Fritsch's critique also highlights a related issue: the growing conflict between the social dimensions of professionalism and its substantivespecialized dimensions. Technological development, industrialization, and urbanization were causing a change in their traditional balance. The kind of professionalism in which market forces take precedence over "social honor" increasingly came into conflict with the older variety that stressed "universal cultivation." As time went on, the former reduced to ever 36 DBZ (1874): 124—5. For a modern and more sophisticated version of this argument, see Dietrich Riischemeyer, "Bourgeoisie, Staat und Bildungsbiirgertum," in Burger und Biirgerlkhkeit im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Jiirgen Kocka (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 110. The socialization role of the universities is also the theme of Konrad H. Jarausch's Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982). 37 Kees Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, 3(Summer 1988):550-74

Reform of technical education in Prussia

95

smaller proportions the latter and the allied notion of service toward society at large - an orientation in which the economic-financial aspects of professionalism were decidedly less pronounced than the social-status aspects. The problems of the engineers in the German historical context so magnified the normally hidden tensions between these two dimensions that the actors became conscious of the larger historical process they were acting out. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE IN BERLIN

Fritsch's arguments in favor of integrating Berlin's higher technical institutes in the Architekten-Verein's debates of 1874 carried the day, and in April of that year the association, with a large majority, passed a motion urging Minister of Trade Achenbach to "integrate the BauAkademie and the Industrial Institute into a single, large Technische Hochschule. "58 The desire for reform evident in the resolution passed by Berlin's influential Architekten-Verein and the unrelenting editorial agitation in the Deutsche Bauzeitung were reinforced by similar resolutions from the VDI and other technical associations, such as the Verband Deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine. 39 The pressures on the Prussian government to alleviate such massive discontent coalesced in 1874 with two other developments to provide the circumstances that resulted in the reorganization of Prussian higher technical education. The first of these was a growing sensitivity to the dictates of economic and technological rationality among politicians and business leaders, following the collapse of the economic boom of the early 1870s. The other factor was energetic support from the Landtag and from Heinrich von Achenbach, the new minister of trade. 40 At the end of 1873, Achenbach had succeeded Itzenplitz, who had resigned over a scandal involving the Ministry of Trade's administration of Prussia's railroads.41 The episode caused Achenbach to review conditions in the corps precisely at a time when the Deutsche Bauzeitung s campaign against the ministry's public works section was at its height. Following 38 DBZ (1874): 124-6. 39 DBZ (1874):311; DBZ (1870):231. On the VDAIV, see VDIZ (1869): 1-8 following 602; VDIZ (1871):712-17, 772-3; DBZ (1869): 193-5, 205-6, 383-4; DBZ (1870):20-l, 175-7, 1967, 2 3 1 - 3 ; Siegfried Weil, Die Hauptorganisationen der deutschen Technikerschaft, ihre Entwicklung

und Tdtigkeit (Lahr: Moritz Schauenburg, 1912); text of resolution, DBZ (1874):313-15. 40 On Achenbach, see Neue Deutsche Biographie, s.v. "Achenbach, Heinrich," by Heinz Gollwitzer. Achenbach's brother Adolf, a mining engineer, was chairman of the Kuratorium of the mining academy at Clausthal. Also see DBZ (1875): 154-6. 41 On the scandal, see DBZ (1873):63-4, 94-5; HdA, 14 January 1873, 7 February 1873; G. R. Mork, "The Prussian Railway Scandal of 1873," European Studies Review 1 (1971):35-48.

96

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

up on a suggestion by Fritsch, Achenbach, on 6 and 7 April 1875, convened a "conference on the reform of the education of Prussian technical civil servants." The twenty-four participants constituted the elite of Prussia's civil engineering and architecture world. Besides Achenbach himself, eight of his top officials from the ministry's sections for public works and railroads took part, as did five other corps engineers, three engineering professors, including the directors of the Bau-Akademie, Lucae, and the poly technical school at Aachen, von Kaven, and the two top technical officials of the city of Berlin. The representatives from the private sector included three directors of private railroad companies, all former civil servants, two well-known private architects, Martin Gropius, the greatuncle of Walter Gropius, and Julius Raschdorff, the designer of Berlin's new cathedral, and, finally, Fritsch. 42 The result of the conference was an almost complete vindication of Fritsch's views. Though the issue of a technische Hochschule did not arise, Fritsch's recommendations for reform of the Bau-Akademie, such as differentiation, simplified examinations, and a four-year curriculum, were all accepted.43 In addition, the conference addressed itself to the question of admitting mechanical engineers to the corps. The need for this was a result of the growing mechanical complexity of public works projects, especially those pertaining to the railroads. The problem was that Prussia's mechanical engineers were trained only at the Industrial Institute and generally did not even possess the Abitur of a Realschule with Latin. They could therefore not be admitted to the corps in their current form. On the other hand, mandating the Abitur for this group threatened the flexibility and openness that was deemed essential for technological progress and economic efficiency in the private sector. In Fritsch's words, requiring the Abitur probably would result in a "sharp class distinction between the scholarly and the practical machine builders, which would be detrimental to the healthy and organic development of this discipline." This had to be weighed against the benefits, "namely that. . . the number of bigots who believed machine builders were inferior to the Baumeister belonging to the sphere of the civil service and the divinely inspired deputies of Art . . . will gradually die out." 44 The inability of the conference to settle the matter foreshadowed future developments and indicated the key problem to be resolved before the Industrial Institute and the Bau-Akademie could be merged. 42 "Das Handelsministerium und die Verwaltung des offentlichen Bauwesens in Preussen," DBZ (1874): 393-5, 401—2, 410—13; also see "Konferenz zur Beratung von Reformen im Ausbildungsgange der preussischen Staats-Baubeamten," DBZ (1875): 154-6. 43 Regulations of 27 June 1876, in VDIZ (1876):688-92. Only the proposed separation into compartmentalized lower and upper divisions was rejected. 44 DBZ (1876):317; DBZ (1875):156.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

97

Still, the conference had made much progress, and Fritsch looked to the future with the "best of hopes." 45 In fact, the first of the series of reforms and changes that eventually led to the establishment of the technische Hochschule in 1879 were introduced in 1875. Starting with the winter semester of that year, Achenbach approved a new charter for the Bau-Akademie, and a beginning was made with the differentiation between architecture and civil engineering. Moreover, to soften its bureaucratic regimen, a small academic senate and general faculty council with limited powers were established. 46 Though small, the changes of 1875 clearly pointed to a future technische Hochschule and therefore sufficed to mobilize opposition from the old guard in the ministry's public works and railroad sections. The center of opposition was the Technische Bau-Deputation, which served as the supervisory board and examination commission of the Bau-Akademie. Fearing for their jobs, worried about contamination by "uncultivated" mechanical engineers, and locked in a competitive struggle for power and prestige with legally trained civil servants, the members of the Technische BauDeputation resisted all change that would undermine the autonomy and exclusiveness of the corps and of the narrow gateway into it, the BauAkademie. Asked by Achenbach in late 1875 or early 1876 for an opinion on the question of a technische Hochschule, the Technische Bau-Deputation replied that it opposed the plan by a vote of eleven to five.47 Such opposition caused the Deutsche Bauzeitung to intensify its agitation. In January of 1876 it launched a new, five-part series of editorials "On the Bau-Akademie in Berlin," running concurrently with the session of the Landtag and urging it to pressure the government into action. The Landtag was in a good position to do so. The government had included in its budget a request to fund additions to the Bau-Akademie and the Industrial Institute. The member of the budget commission responsible for these items was the National Liberal publicist and representative, Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig. Wehrenpfennig, a former Gymnasium teacher and co-editor of the Preussische Jahrbucher with Heinrich von Treitschke, took it upon himself to look closely into the matter. 48 It appears that he established contact with Fritsch in early 1876 as part of his investigations and made the latter's cause his own. 49 The arguments Wehrenpfennig advanced in the Landtag on behalf of a technische Hochschule were in part verbatim quotations from

45 46 47 48 49

DBZ (1875): 156. DBZ (1875):492; DBZ (1876):99. DBZ (1876): 126. On Wehrenpfennig, see DBZ (19OO):375-6. "Das Project einer Polytechnische Schule," DBZ (1876): 124-6.

98

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

Fritsch's articles in the Deutsche Bauzeitung.50 Going along with Wehrenpfennig, the budget commission became the conduit whereby the Deutsche Bauzeitung s demands became the reform program of the Prussian Landtag. In the plenary session of 17 March 1876, it voted a resolution requesting the government to set up a technische Hochschule.51 The famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow and Finance Minister Otto Camphausen expressed their support for the project. Eduard Lasker summed up the feelings of the majority when he concluded his speech on the topic by saying that "we want a Polytechnikum."52 Once again, the crucial question of admission standards was left open. The budget commission had been unable to reach an agreement on this point, but had not wanted to let the issue stand in the way of the technische Hochschule project itself. Wehrenpfennig was originally inclined to adopt Fritsch's view that graduation from a Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung was "essential." 53 But some of the other members, as well as Achenbach, were unwilling to "exclude in future the Provincial Trade Schools as preparatory institutions." 54 Because a major educational reform bill was slated to be introduced by Culture Minister Falk in 1877, it was decided "to forgo precise determination of admission standards at this point." 55 The Landtag's resolution apparently stiffened Achenbach's resolve to proceed.56 Backed by the legislature and supported by the Staatsministerium, in the next few years he forced the technische Hochschule down the throats of the stalwarts of the corps of engineers and architects. In the spring and early summer of 1876, a building site near the zoological gardens in Charlottenburg was approved by the Staatsministerium and the king. In August, an ordinance was passed excluding from admission to higher technical education after 1878 graduates of those Provincial Trade Schools that had retained the organization of 1850. Also in August, graduates from all German polytechnical schools who had the proper Abitur received the right to take the Prussian state examination for admission to the corps.57 In June of 1876, new "regulations for training and examination for Prussian government service in the building and mechanical specialties" were promulgated. They followed the recommendations of the 1875 con50 51 52 53 54 55

HdA, 17 March 1876, 732-6; DBZ (1876):21-2, 73-5, 81-3, 91-3, 99-101. HdA, 17 March 1876, 732-46 (especially 735). Ibid., 742. DBZ (1876): 101. HdA, 17 March 1876, 735. Ibid., 733—5. Also see Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen: Sammlung amtlicher Aktenstiicke des Handelsministeriums sowie der beziigtlichen Berichte und Verhand/ungen des Landtages aus 1878/1879 (Berlin: Oswald Seehagen, 1879), 93. 56 HdA, 17 March 1876, 733, 736; HdA, 14 February 1877, 531. 57 HdA, 14 February 1877, 531-3; DBZ (1876): 126, 362, 399.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

99

ference almost to the letter and created a separate civil service examination for mechanical engineers. Significantly, the latter were allowed admission to the state examination and the corps on the basis of graduation from those Provincial Trade Schools that had adopted the 1870 reorganizational plan. The fact that admission to the mechanical engineering branch of the corps became possible without classical secondary education was a revolutionary change and a big boost for the social ambitions of the Provincial Trade Schools (model 1870) and their supporters. 58 3. THE PROBLEM OF PREPARATORY EDUCATION

Following this flurry of activity, the technische Hochschule project appears to have entered a phase of stagnation. It was not until March 1879 that its capstone, the new charter finally integrating the Bau-Akademie and the Industrial Institute, was granted. By that time the political climate had completely changed. The government's collaboration with the liberals had come to an end, and Achenbach had been replaced by the more conservative Albert von Maybach. That the socially liberal impetus driving the technische Hochschule project was nevertheless allowed to run its course probably was because of its emphasis on substantive professionalism, specialization, and technological rationality. These coincided with a similar predilection for efficiency and economic pragmatism that characterized the new, conservative outlook at the highest levels of government in the second half of the 1870s.39 The major reason for the interval between the initiation of reforms in 1875—6 and their conclusion in 1879 was the unresolved question of preparatory education. Senior corps engineers continued to resist the technische Hochschule for fear it would lower admission standards. In 1878, James Hobrecht, the arch-conservative chairman of Berlin's ArchitektenVerein, pointed to the danger "that admission standards might be fixed in a way that ran counter to the furtherance of the social interests of engineers." 60 The government and the backers of the technische Hochschule initially gave some weight to such concerns. In 1876, Achenbach stated that the different preparatory educations made the "question whether 58 VDIZ (1876):688-92; DBZ (1876):317-19. 59 The conservative predilection for pragmatism and dislike of humanism after 1878—9 is mentioned in Hans Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit: Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik

in Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1967), 125-6. Bismarck was certainly no opponent of modern and technical education, considering it a safeguard against political radicalism from a classically educated but increasingly unemployable academic proletariat; ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 22307, 173-9. Extended discussion of this theme can be found in James C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton University Press, 1983). 60 DBZ(1878):420.

100

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

separate schools or a unified institute should be established. . . highly disputable under any circumstance." 61 In 1877, Fritsch attacked the Provincial Trade Schools because they provided "too little general secondary education and a harmful excess of prematurely specialized education." 62 Fritsch, incidentally, had no illusions concerning the true value of the Abitur from Gymnasium or Realschule I. Ordnung. But so long as the state and the public at large insisted on measuring Bildung that way, "a single profession can ill afford to emancipate itself from the general custom." 63 Breaking with the old ways, however, was precisely what the government eventually decided to do. It reformed the Provincial Trade School into a completely new institution, the Oberrealschule. The new school was promulgated in November of 1878, following a conference of experts — all of whom for one reason or another favored non-Latin secondary education — organized by the Ministry of Trade in August of the same year.64 From a program consisting of the last three years of school before the Industrial Institute, the curriculum was expanded to nine years. Five years were added at the bottom, and one at the top. 65 The untenable situation that the trade school did not have regular linkage with established patterns of primary education and therefore always had irregularly and ill-prepared students was thereby terminated. Classified as a "generally cultivating" school, the Oberrealschule cast off the last remnants of vocational training for industry. It became parallel to the Gymnasium and the Realschule I. Ordnung, with the exception that it did not offer Latin, but stressed modern languages, mathematics, the natural sciences, and drawing. It was given the right of admission to all departments of the future technische Hochschule as well as to the state examinations in all branches of the corps, except mining. 66 It did not receive rights of admission to any other branches of the civil service, nor to university study, all of which lay outside the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Trade. Its creators' expectations for wider rights in the comprehensive education bill being prepared in the Ministry of Culture failed to materialize. The changing political constellation prevented the bill's introduction, and in 1879 its primary sponsor, Adalbert Falk, the National Liberal minister of culture, fell from power. The Oberrealschule, which was the most controversial aspect of the reforms in technical education of 1876—9, was largely the creation of Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig. Backed by influential parliamentarians like Johannes 61 62 63 64

HdA, 17 March 1876, 739. DBZ(1877):453. DBZ (1876): 161. Das technische Unterrkhtsivesen in Preussen, 7—22, 284; also see "Zur Reorganisation der preussischen Gewerbeschulen," DBZ (1878):323-4. The Oberrealschule is also discussed in Albisetti, Secondary School Refrom, 8 2 - 9 8 . 65 Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 16. 66 DBZ(1878):482.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

101

Miquel, the future finance minister, Wehrenpfennig had emerged as one of the most perceptive critics of Prussia's system of technical education. 67 The severity of the economic depression after 1873, he argued, was in part a consequence of the disappearance of nonacademic technical education when the Provincial Trade Schools had in effect become preparatory schools for the Industrial Institute. Because it was impracticable to return them to their prior status or convert them into vocational schools, they should be officially changed into what they already were anyway: general secondary schools without Latin. Nonacademic technical schools could then be founded anew and separately. Recognizing Wehrenpfennig's abilities and strong interest in the problem, Achenbach in 1877 invited the Landtag deputy to join the Ministry of Trade as head of the new Bureau of Industrial Education. Wehrenpfennig accepted, survived Achenbach's fall, and in the next two decades played a key role in the implementation of a whole new organization for Prussian technical education. 68 Soon after accepting his new post, Wehrenpfennig emerged as an advocate of non-Latin secondary education, popular with many liberals as an expression of their desire for greater social pluralism and educational diversity in the higher ranks of society. The section for commerce and trade in the ministry, where Wehrenpfenning found his new colleagues, moreover, had also always been partial to genuinely modern schools. This preference, part of the long-standing economic liberalism of the Prussian Ministry of Trade, went back all the way to Kunth and Beuth. 69 Wehrenpfennig established contact with the teachers and directors of the Provincial Trade Schools, who had long sought to change their schools into "generally cultivating" institutions; they provided him with the models for the 1878 reform of the Provincial Trade School into the nineyear Oberrealschule.70

Such ideological aspects blended with practical and organizational concerns. The Provincial Trade Schools, since 1876, gave admission to the mechanical engineering branch of the corps and sufficed for informal attendance at the Bau-Akademie. But their students were excluded from admission to the state examinations in civil engineering and architecture. The invidious distinctions sanctioned by these regulations had no basis in the reality of modern life, according to Wehrenpfennig. He pointed out that "the responsibilities of a governmental mechanical engineer are no less than those of a governmental civil engineer or architect." Moreover, 67 HdA, 14 February 1877, 5 1 5 - 4 1 ; Lundgreen, Tecbniker, 82. 68 Cf. note 48. 69 Rudolf Hoffmann, "Geschichte des Realschulwesens in Deutschland," in Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit, ed. K. A. Schmid (Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1901), vol. 5, sect. 2, 1—106; also see the Landtag debates reprinted in Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen. 70 ZSTA II, Rep. 92 Wehrenpfennig B III 5, 2 0 - 1 ; Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 79.

102

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

the state could "not tolerate that the architect or engineer who works for the population at large can study technology with a lesser preparatory education — and on the average will therefore be a worse engineer — than he who works in government service." 71 When a certain "preparatory education was considered good enough to study. . . at the academy, it should also be good enough for the subsequent state examination. "72 From all this it followed, Wehrenpfenning continued, that the existing rights of the Provincial Trade Schools had to be either abrogated or, after their reorganization into real secondary schools, expanded. The government opted for the second choice because it suited the requirements of modern society better than Latin-based schooling and because of the bigotry that equated Bildung and the classics. It could "not be acknowledged that mastery of the dead, classical languages is essential as the mark of higher general Bildung. . . . Such an attitude confuses the concept of Bildung with that of scholarly study of language and history and is based o n . . . arrogance toward a large part of the nation's educated classes." 73 The Landtag's budget commission shared this view. As its chairman, Count von Limburg-Stirum, put it in January of 1879, "care should be taken lest higher technical education be damaged by demands for classical preparatory education." The latter was "not essential for the higher Bildung that is definitely required for the purposes served by the Polytechnikum." The crux of the whole affair, said Limburg-Stirum, was that the "monopoly of classical preparatory education for {higher technical education] is broken up in a decisive way." 74 Such progressive intentions notwithstanding, the Oberrealschule was in fact highly problematic. In name "generally cultivating," its narrowly circumscribed rights - admission to the technische Hochschule and the technical civil service only — put it at a great disadvantage vis-a-vis the Gymnasium and the Realschule I. Ordnung. In practice this amounted to sanctioning not only its own social inferiority but also that of higher technical education. The new school was good enough for engineers, but not for any of the other professions.75 Nor were its handicaps reduced by very small numbers — initially (1882) there were only 12 Oberrealschulen, as compared with 251 Gymnasia and 86 Realgymnasia — and minuscule enrollments - an annual average of about 4,500 students during the 1880s, as compared with more than 102,500 at the two other school types. 76 71 72 73 74 75

Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 18. Ibid., 280; emphasis added. Ibid., 18-20. Ibid., 103. Theodor Peters, "Die neunclassige lateinlose Schule," in VDIW (1879):30-2, 38-40; also see Rudolf Ziebarth, in VDIZ (1879):60.

16 Detlef Miiller and Bernd Zymek, Sozialgeschichte und Statistik des Schulsystems in den Staaten des

Reform of technical education in Prussia

103

4. THE REACTION OF THE ARCHITEKTEN-VEREIN

Not surprisingly, the announcement of the Oberrealschule caused tremendous agitation in engineering circles. In Berlin's Architekten-Verein, the reform proposals stirred a debate in which the opposing sides broke down along the lines that divided civil engineering and architecture. James Hobrecht, the Verein's chairman and highest-ranking civil engineer in Berlin's building office, came out with a sharp denunciation of the projected reorganization in the meeting of 7 October 1878. If put into effect, warned Hobrecht, the reforms would "amount to a promotion for the trade school and a demotion for the technische Hochschule." The corps's engineers would have to fight the "attempts aimed at lowering the rank of our profession [Stand}." It could not be tolerated "that the Realschule without Latin will now also be given rights . . . for the special purpose of preparatory education of civil servants and engineers who are called upon to work in the higher positions of life."77 Hobrecht's warnings fell on fertile soil in the Architekten-Verein, and his speech received tumultuous applause. 78 The issue came up again at the following week's meeting. With an audience of over 300, almost twice the usual attendance, it was the turn of supporters of the new school. Architect Bockman, a senior partner in the prestigious firm of Ende and Bockmann and one of Germany's leading architects, marshaled the arguments in favor of the reforms. Bockmann, one of the participants in the ministry's August conference, stressed the "priceless advantages" for technical expertise and excellence of professional achievement of the new school's emphasis on modern languages. In addition, the Oberrealschule emphasized mathematics and natural science, which were definitely equal to Latin and Greek both with respect to their "ideal value" and as a method of intellectual training. 79 Bockmann acknowledged that the social position of engineers in the civil service was indeed a concern for all members of the profession. Though not denying that they encountered discrimination, he dismissed such treatment as the product of "historical conditions" and did not think the handicaps of technical civil servants would be any more difficult to surmount after the projected reform had taken effect. He echoed the liberal ethos of individual achievement, personal merit, and self-reliance that the new school would promote when he said that "the order of our times is such that the truly excellent and able man will not have any trouble deutschen Retches (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 5 3 - 5 ; Albisetti, Secondary School

Reform, 82-7. 77 DBZ(1878):420-l. 78 DBZ (1874): 124. 79 DBZ(1878):431.

104

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

asserting his worth in the face of that kind of prejudice." Technical excellence, to be achieved by emphasizing specialization, expertise, and a type of education that made them possible, was the road to social recognition, not the kind of retrograde harping on Latin and Greek of a Hobrecht. 80 Aware of the powerful sentiments against the Oberrealschule, Bockmann concluded with a plea for moderation. He urged the Architekten-Verein not to expose itself to the "public odium of pursuing a policy of narrow parochialism." 81 But Hobrecht's motion that the Architekten-Verein submit a petition to the minister of trade requesting cancellation of the projected reform was accepted, with 264 votes in favor and 24 against. 82 The majority's petition, for which its authors had in short time been able to collect some 1,600 signatures from all over Germany, was submitted to the Ministry of Trade in October of 1878. 83 It pointed out that breaking the Latin barrier for engineers and architects could mean only one of two things: Either the "lack of a classical education is no lack of general cultivation or . . . a civil engineer—architect does not need general Bildung." The first choice obviously was false, because all other professions required a curriculum that included the classics. That left the second choice, which not only was an intolerable affront but also would result in dire consequences: "If the civil engineer and architect are forced down the social ladder in relation to the other higher occupations [hb'here Berufsspha'ren] . . . the harm caused by it will soon become noticeable in the whole of our public life." 84 A counterposition from the Architekten-Verein's minority soon followed. It stemmed, for the greatest part, from architects in private business. Although it carried no more than thirty-six signatures, these belonged to the profession's "most respected and famous" figures.85 Fritsch, who had dropped his insistence on a classical secondary education, was also in this camp. The dissenters stressed the pluralism of the modern world, which allowed social prestige to be derived primarily from specialized skill and professional achievement, rather than general cultivation. "If German engineers do not yet occupy that position in state and society that our professional colleagues in France and England have achieved," they argued, this was not the result of insufficient Bildung, but was "due in the first place to the fact that their artistic and technical skills . . . have not yet reached the same height." The new school would remedy this 80 81 82 83 84 85

Ibid. Ibid. DBZ(1878):432-98. Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 284. DBZ(1878):498-9. Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 305.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

105

deficiency, whereas the Gymnasium and the Realschule I. Ordnung failed to give adequate preparation in mathematics, general science, and drawing instruction. These traditional schools were "incapable of conveying to their students the drawing skills based on confidence of eye and hand that the engineer [Techniker] . . . needs before entering upon his professional study." 86 The government's decision to ignore all objections and implement the reforms as originally planned only stimulated the uproar in engineering circles. In December of 1878, Hobrecht and his followers submitted to the Landtag a new petition with 2,054 signatures of architects and civil engineers from all over Germany, demanding legislation to undo the reforms.87 In January of 1879, the Verband Deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine presented a resolution opposing the new Oberrealschule.88 A majority of about ten to one of its approximately 5,000 affiliated members condemned the Prussian government's policy. Altogether, the Landtag received four petitions against the reform, of which Hobrecht's was the most formidable. It also received forty-six separate petitions in favor of its policy, "in part from architects and engineers, in part from municipalities, Chambers of Commerce, school boards, and teachers of trade schools, as well as a large number of trade associations [GewerbeVereine]."89

The Landtag considered the petitions in late January of 1879- Wehrenpfennig pointed out that the opposition did not ask what was "the best preparatory education for technical studies, but which is the most functional for reaching equality with the lawyers." The most consistent opposition intended to allow only the classical Gymnasium. That school's well-known curricular shortcomings were being "ignored in the interest of alleged social honor [Standesehre]." Hobrecht and his followers forgot "only one thing, that in order to reach equality. . . with lawyers they would eventually also have to replace the Technische Hochschule with the university and study law instead of drawing and designing." 90 The Landtag was steadfast in its support of the government. Johannes Miquel summed up the sentiments of the majority when he remarked that "today, two paths to higher Bildung in fact exist, the natural scientific one, i.e., the 'modern' one, and the classical-formal one." He concluded by observing that "subsequent to the Reformation . . . we were theologians for a while here in Germany. Then we were philologists for some time, and our Gymnasien are still too eager to train philologists. But now we 86 87 88 89 90

"Zur Reform der preussischen Gewerbeschulen," DBZ (1878):489. Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 73—4. DBZ(1879):31-3Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 282-3Ibid., 89.

106

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

want to become practical men as well, and that is why the [reorganization} of the Provincial Trade Schools . . . is legitimate." 91 The decision to become a nation of "practical men" increased the tensions within Berlin's Architekten-Verein to the breaking point. A few months after the Landtag had sustained the Ministry of Trade's creation of the Oberrealschule, the minority of architects who had favored nonclassical secondary education made good on an earlier threat and broke away. They formed a new professional organization, the Association for the Representation of Architectural Interests (Vereinigung fiir die Vertretung baukiinstlerischer Interessen), which in 1915 merged with the Bund Deutscher Architekten. The latter, founded in 1903, was an association of independent, "free-creative" architects who stressed the integrity of artistic design and excluded contractor-architects from membership. 92 Besides causing the departure of these progressive members, the conflict over the Oberrealschule disrupted the Architekten-Verein's relationship with the Deutsche Bauzeitung. In January of 1879 a new Weekly for Architects and Engineers (Wochenblatt fur Architekten und Ingenieure) saw the light. This periodical published rabid agitation against the Oberrealschule and urged Culture Minister Robert von Puttkamer, whose department acquired jurisdiction over higher technical education and the Oberrealschule in 1879, to undo the reforms. A lead article in the issue of 31 December 1880, entitled "Fostering Ideals," restated in nearly obscene language the position of the majority petitioners of two years before. As civil servants, government engineers occupied a "higher standpoint than the common man" and did their work in selfless dedication to science — an attitude they owed to the Gymnasium. Puttkamer was praised as a man "who does not share the view of those who damn the Gymnasium as a preparatory school for engineers — such as Herr Wehrenpfennig and his grateful allies who lack good will. . . and who want to . . . degrade the technische Hochschulen to institutions for the relief of urgent needs." The reactionaries begged the new minister "to prevent a small faction from depriving us any further of idealism, abandoning us to the grossest realism, and . . . delivering the civil-service profession to depravity." 93 Initially such scurrilous rearguard actions backfired. The government struck back by abolishing the Technische Bau-Deputation and replacing it with a new Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering {Akademie des Bauwesens), whose membership was subject to ministerial approval and 91 Ibid., 208-9. 92 Herbert Ricken, Der Architekt: Geschichte eines Berufs (Berlin: Henschelverlag der Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1977), 93; Bernard Gaber, Die Entwicklung des Berufsstandes der freiscbaffenden Ar-

chitekten (Essen: Verlag Richard Bacht GmbH, 1966), 33. 93 "Bediirfnisanstalt," which has connotations both of production on demand and toilet; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, Bd. 1-2, 89, 134.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

107

excluded the most outspoken critics of the new policy. 94 But that did not stop agitation over the issue, and the opposition even scored a temporary success when in 1886 the government briefly withdrew the Oberrealschule"s limited accreditation privileges - only to reinstate them permanently in 1890. 95 5.

THE

REACTION OF THE

VDI

The Oberrealschule not only convulsed the world of civil engineering and architecture but also drew mechanical engineers into the uproar, and the VDI, too, launched petition drives to the Landtag and broke down into a large majority and small minority. 96 Their respective positions, however, were the reverse of those in the corps. Only a handful of the VDI's membership opposed the government's reforms. Led by Rudolf Ziebarth, chief editor of the VDI's Zeitschrift, and by Berlin consulting engineers Johannes Gutermilch and Albert and Heinrich Putsch, a group of seventytwo mechanical engineers submitted a petition opposing the government's reforms.97 They had the support of Theodor Peters, the younger brother of the deceased (1869) VDI founder Richard Peters, and the VDI's chairman-elect for 1879. 98 Staunch Grashof supporters, the group justified its stance by referring to the VDI's resolution of 1876 in favor of the Gymnasium or the Realschule I. Ordnung. Preponderantly employed in the private sector, the VDI's status seekers made an argument slightly different from that of their colleagues in the corps. Instead of using the civil service as their reference point, they looked to the higher circles of society and industry. In November of 1878, engineer Albert Putsch conceded that, strictly speaking, the technical competence of engineers did "not require knowledge of Latin authors." Latin, however, was needed to create generally cultivated men "capable of taking the initiative in public life." 99 Without it, engineers remained "narrow-gauge" thinkers who would never reach positions of responsibility. "Free movement in the better circles of society and in the head offices," Putsch and his group argued, was "hardly imaginable without knowledge of the classical languages." 100 Apart from such substantive reasons, learning the classics was simply the social price to be paid for having been born in Germany, Putsch argued. "In actual fact, the pre94 ibid. 95 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 7, Bd. 1, 8 3 - 4 ; Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 82—7, 235—6; also see Chapter 6, section 5, in this volume. 96 Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 306—13. 97 VDIW (1878):427-9, 4 3 1 - 4 3 ; VDIW (1880):95. Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen, 74. 98 Cf. note 75. On Peters, see Chapters 6 and 7 in this volume. 99 VDIW (1878) :427. 100 Ibid., 432.

108

Emulation: Bildung and the bureaucratic order

vailing opinion in Germany, whether justified or not, is that only he has general Bildung who has studied the classics. Every profession, including engineers, has to take this into account as a fact of life." 101 Spokesmen for the VDFs majority countered by accusing Putsch of obsequiousness and snobbery. Professor Kossak of the Industrial Institute believed that engineers should not uncritically accept the prevailing social standard just to further their status ambitions. They ought to "investigate whether these opinions are justified" and combat them "if proven erroneous." Fritz Dopp, a Berlin factory owner, contended that classical preparatory education required too many sacrifices of time and money and was so deficient in modern languages and natural sciences that the Oberrealschule was far preferable.102 To counter the petition of Ziebarth, Gutermilch, and Putsch, a large but informal group of VDI members submitted to the government its own "petition of Prussian industrialists and engineers," bearing 845 signatures and strongly supporting the Oberrealschule.103 Officially, the engineering society remained neutral, though most of the items dealing with the Oberrealschule in the VDI's weekly publications between November 1878 and December 1879 welcomed the government's action. Of the eleven articles in question, only two were critical of the reforms. The others were strongly in favor.104 One of these items actually took pride in the engineers' lack of polish and social grace. "The engineer, more dependent on 'know-how' than on 'knowledge,' quite naturally develops into a specialist," argued a certain engineer Kathreiner. "And specialists," he continued, "will always encounter less understanding for their [inconspicuous] achievements . . . than, for example, an architect for a splendid facade or a lawyer for a brilliant defense oration in court." 105 Another mechanical engineer warned the advocates of Latin and Greek to take at least enough English to make sure their children would still comprehend the "infinitely valuable and fitting proverb, 'Time is money.' " 106 Director Conrad Erdmann of the Duisburg Machinery Works spoke of the "sick ambition" of those who approved only of a "so-called humanistic education [as the] basis for a higher rank in personal life." He compared the inimitable leaders of Germany's industry, who by and large did not have classical preparatory education, with the majority of recently trained engineers, in whom he observed "only the harmful after-pangs of an im101 Ibid., 427. 102 Ibid., 428-9, 431-2. 103 Das technische Untenicbtswesen in Preussen, 78, 306-13; VDIW (1880):94-6; VDIW (1879): 102-6. 104 Against: VDIW (1879):30-2, 38-40, 106. For: VDIW (1879): 15-16, 22-4, 60, 100, 102, 174, 200-1, 207, 439. 105 VDIW(1878):346. 106 VDIW (1879):22.

Reform of technical education in Prussia

109

practical education." The only thing that mattered to Erdmann was the "practical training" of engineers. Everything else was unimportant. 107 The fact that the Oberrealschule found numerous supporters, while classical secondary education had but few adherents at that time, contrasted markedly with the VDI's official position on education only a few years earlier. As recently as 1876 it had still supported Grashof in favor of the Gymnasium and Realschule I. Ordnung. In early 1879, the VDI Direktor could do no more than issue a lame statement about internal divisiveness and complain about the government's failure to consult the engineering society in the matter. 108 The change was part of a fundamental reorientation in the attitudes of the VDI's articulate membership toward technical education and professionalization. Shaken by the nineteenth century's most severe economic depression, many engineers were no longer prepared to accept uncritically the leadership of their professorial mentor and his faction. Thus, a phase in the history of the engineering occupation was drawing to a close — a phase in which the drive for professional status had focused almost exclusively on strict emulation of Bildung and on a kind of engineering scholasticism modeled on the "pure" natural sciences, while the practical dimensions of engineering and the personnel requirements in industry had received short shrift. A renewed interest in the virtues of shop culture and educational rationality in terms of the needs of industry was breaking through in the late 1870s. Henceforth, such economic considerations would play a dominant role in the further development of the engineering profession. 107 Ibid., 207. 108 Ibid., 165, 189.

PART II Reorientation: industrial capitalism and a "practical" profession <<4

Reorientation in the engineering industry, 1876-1884

1.

INTRODUCTION

The impact of the Great Depression from 1873 to 1896 on German politics and society is a familiar theme. Historians have drawn attention to the catalytic effects of the Great Depression on the emergence of "organized capitalism" and on changes in mentality, political culture, economic and social policies, and foreign policy. 1 As the preceding chapter has shown, it cannot be ignored in a discussion of the reorganization of Prussian technical education in the late 1870s. In contrast to its subtle workings in this arena, however, the Great Depression's impact on the private sector and the economy was overwhelming. This had major consequences for the occupational structure, specifically the course of professionalization for engineers. The deep initial recession of 1874-9 focused all the attention of the private sector's engineering community on financial and commercial considerations. Questions of business rationality in design and production 1 Hans Rosenberg, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit: Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1967); idem, Machteliten und Wirtschaftskonjunkturen: Studien zur neueren deutschen Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschicbte (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus, 3rd ed. (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1972); idem, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1981 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), recently translated as The German Empire 1871—1918 (Leamington Spa, Dover: Berg Publishers, 1985); idem, "Der Aufstieg des organiserten Kapitalismus in Deutschland," in Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfdnge, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 3 6 - 5 7 ; for criticism, see Volker Hentschel, Wirtschaft und Wirtschaftspolitik im wilhelminischen Deutschland: Organisierter Kapitalismus und Interventionsstaat? (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1978); Thomas Nipperdey, " 'Wehler's Kaiserreich.' Eine kritische Auseinandersetzung," Geschtchte und Gesellschaft 1 (197 5): 5 3 9 - 6 0 . A different line of criticism centering on the "peculiarities" of German history is found in David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press, 1984); also see Robert G. Moeller, " The Kaiserreich Recast? Continuity and Change in Modern Geman Historiography," Journal of Social History 17 (1983); Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847-1914: Zum Verhaltnis vom Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), passim (especially 316-19); Martin Kitchen, The Political Economy of Germany 1815-1914 (London: Croom Helm, 1978).

113

114

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

and competitive pricing without sacrificing quality and profitability came to overshadow everything else. The economic crisis of the 1870s thus displaced social issues in favor of economic issues as the first order of business in the further development of the profession. This is not to say that aspirations toward professional status were suddenly dropped or that economic rationality had been absent before. On the one hand, social concerns continued to play a large role after 1873. After the establishment of the technische Hochschule in Berlin, academically trained engineers and engineering professors embarked on a final struggle for equality of the higher technical institutes and modern secondary education with the universities and the classical Gymnasium. Their endeavors were crowned with success in 1899 when the technische Hochschulen finally acquired the right to confer engineering diplomas and doctorates that were the legal equivalents of university degrees. 2 In 1900, the Oberrealschule and the Realgymnasium (formerly Realschule I. Ordnung) gained equality with the classical Gymnasium as far as their admission rights to academic study and government service were concerned. 3 On the other hand, the adherents of "shop culture" had been suspicious of the professionalization strategies of men like Grashof all along. As early as 1865, Leopold Hoesch, a noted steel industrialist and one of the founders of the VDI's metallurgical branch chapter, had expressed frustration with the fact that "young engineers were certainly equipped with much knowledge but with little know-how." He had wanted to know if Grashofs "Principles of 1864" would "address [this] evil — the gap between school and practice." 4 What the economic crisis of the 1870s did was to alter the balance between social and economic concerns that had prevailed until then. Business rationality and concern for the practical problems of engineering rapidly gained the upper hand. Technology and technical education were ruthlessly subordinated to the problems of how to stay in business and make a profit. If Grashof in 1857 had been able to speak of technology as an endeavor that "inspired its representatives and its servants and could make them bring sacrifices for its own sake," Conrad Matschoss, a future VDI Direktor, stated categorically in 1919 that "technology is never its own end. The crux is always its economic application. Technology and 2 Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, technische Hochschule und Industrie: Ein Beitrag zur Emanzipdtion der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), 2 4 9 - 3 0 5 ; idem, "Der VDI in der Phase der Hochindustrialisierung, 1880 bis 1900," and Wolfgang Konig, "Die Ingenieure und der VDI als Grossverein in der wilhelminischen Gesellschaft 1900 bis 1918," both in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856—1981, ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981). 3 Friedrich Paulsen, German Education: Past and Present (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912), 211. 4 VDIZ(1865):570-l.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

115

economy condition each other and are inseparably intertwined." 5 The decisive period for this change in priorities was the late 1870s and early 1880s. The effect of the new outlook on the engineering profession was twofold. It much strengthened Germany's economic machine, accelerating the growth of the country's engineering industries from mediocrity to a position of world leadership. In the process, managerial and entrepreneurial engineers were able to increase their power dramatically. The primacy of financial and business considerations, however, also interrupted the emergence of engineers as members of the established higher occupations. The new emphasis on business rationality forced partial abandonment of the model of a classical profession, replacing it with an occupational form that was better adapted to the organizational requirements of production in the engineering industries than in the traditionally defined higher occupations. 2.

THE REULEAUX EPISODE

In the summer of 1876, Germany's worried manufacturing community received yet another shock: Franz Reuleaux's Letters from Philadelphia. Reuleaux, a well-known professor of theoretical mechanics and the director of what was then still Berlin's Industrial Institute, was as a leading authority on technological development. 6 In this latter capacity he was a frequent delegate to international industrial expositions, and in 1876 he had been appointed commissioner-general to the industrial exhibition and centennial world fair in Philadelphia. His ten letters on Germany's performance at the exhibit appeared over the summer of 1876 in Berlin's liberal Nationalzeitung and gave a devastating critique of the quality of Germany's industrial products and design as compared with those of other industrialized nations, notably the United States. Reuleaux summarized his criticisms in the first letter. He saw it as his duty to "proclaim loudly that Germany [had] suffered a momentous defeat at the Philadelphia exposition. Our achievements fall behind those of other nations in the vast majority of items displayed. For but a few products are we, upon closer inspection, their equal, and in only very few cases are we ahead." 7 The criticisms of Germany's industrial performance could be summarized in three short theses, one more crushing than 5 VDIZ (1857): 15; Conrad Matschoss, Ein Jahrhundert deutscher Maschinenbau: Von der mechanischen Werkstatte bis zur Deutscben Maschinenfabrik 1819-1919 (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1919). 6 On Reuleaux, see Hans-Joachim Braun and Wolfhard Weber, "Ingenieurwissenschaft und Gesellschaftspolitik: Das Wirken von Franz Reuleaux," in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universitdt Berlin, 1879—1979, ed. Reinhard Riirup (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1979), vol. 1, 285-300. 7 Franz Reuleaux, Briefe aus Philadelphia (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1877), 3—4.

116

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

the other. First, "Germany's industry has the basic principle 'cheap and bad.'" Unfortunately, Reuleaux continued, "this motto is in fact on the whole axiomatic for our industry, at least ruthlessly when it comes to its first half and thus as a consequence also when it comes to its second half." Second, "Germany no longer knows any other themes in industrial design and the fine arts than tendentious-patriotic ones that really have no place in international competition and that no other nation has put on display; the country no longer has a feeling for nontendentious, autonomous aesthetics." The endless repetitions of kaisers, Bismarcks, Moltkes, and Roons as ornamentation and the grossness of Krupp's giant guns were humiliating signs of the "flowering of chauvinism and Byzantinism" in Germany. 8 Third, German industrial products were characterized by "lack of taste in applied art and lack of progress in the purely technical." 9 Reuleaux did not merely criticize; he also diagnosed the causes of the problem and outlined a basic strategy for economic recovery and enduring survival. He observed that many German industries had drifted into a false course of making "spasmodic efforts to come up with new products that were only profitable in the immediate, short run while the perspective on a future higher development was absent." It was absolutely essential that the country "take a serious look at itself when it comes to its national product." 10 Germany's long-term economic success and international competitiveness among the industrialized nations, Reuleaux suggested, required a fundamental change in business style. Reuleaux urged manufacturers to drop their preoccupations with shortterm financial gain and with price competition at the expense of quality. They ought to do exactly the opposite: concentrate on superior quality and technological sophistication. Systematic exploitation of the most advanced scientific technology, Reuleaux argued, would make possible specialization, mass production, and labor-saving techniques. These, in turn, would succeed in keeping prices down far better than would the murderous competition that currently prevailed and sacrificed quality. This is how Reuleaux phrased the point in his tenth letter: Germany must turn away from the principle of merely competing on the basis of price and make a decisive transition to competition on the basis of quality or value. To produce nevertheless goods that are inexpensive and marketable, the machine, or more generally speaking the scientific-technical apparatus, must be employed in all those cases where physical effort can be eliminated or reduced and where mass repetition forms the foundation of production.11 8 The interesting question of the effect, if any, of Reuleaux's incriminations of poor taste on the evolution of German industrial design and the emergence of modern aesthetics unfortunately cannot be pursued here. 9 Reuleaux, Briefe, 5-6. 10 Ibid., vi. 11 Ibid., 95.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

117

The initial reaction at home to the Letters from Philadelphia was one of shock and outrage. Reuleaux's criticisms aroused widespread nationalistic indignation and chauvinistic furor in German industrial circles. He was accused of almost everything imaginable: lack of prudence, insensitivity with regard to his official position as representative of the German empire, ruining Germany's exporting and manufacturing industries, and outright lies and treason.12 The VDI's metallurgical branch chapter, for example, issued a furious counter-proclamation to Reuleaux's "unfounded assertions," which had "given foreign competitors an opportunity" to advertise everywhere "the wretchedness of German manufactures — attested and given the seal of approval by an 'eminent' German specialist — only to extol their own products all the more successfully." The steelmen unsuccessfully demanded that the government reprimand Reuleaux and disavow his statements in public. 13 Although the timing and wording of Reuleaux's criticism may have lacked delicacy, his intent was far from treasonous. On the contrary, he viewed it as a "breach of patriotic duty" to cover up Germany's defeat, or, as Friedrich Engels put it, "Philadelphia, the industrial Jena." 14 In fact, it is plausible that Reuleaux had deliberately chosen the time, place, and form of his attack with an eye to its maximum impact. His outspoken formulations likely were calculated to excite the nationalistic fervor and competitive spirit of Germany's manufacturing community in the hope that such a reaction might stir up enough anxiety to inspire the changes he thought necessary. That was precisely what happened. Even as the uproar over Reuleaux's letters continued, the substance of his verdict struck many of his compatriots in the industrial community as accurate. Berlin's Nationalzeitung reported in its issue of 6 July 1876 that "the instances in which we have come across fundamental denials of Reuleaux's assertions are exceedingly rare. And in the mail that we have received they are almost without exception admitted." 15 An article in the business supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung of 28 July 1876 pointed out that "Reuleaux's indictment of 'lacking progress in the purely technical' applied primarily to machine construction, [and that] in machine building Germany admittedly did not march at the head of nations." 16 Engineer Schlickeysen, a Berlin manufacturer of internationally reputed

12 G. Hirth, ed., Franz Reuleaux und die deutsche Industrie auf der Weltausstellung in Philadelphia (Leipzig: G. Hirth, 1876); H. Heine, Professor Reuleaux und die deutsche Industrie: Eine Skizze auf Grundlage amerikanischer sowie deutscher Beobachtungen und Erfahrungen (Berlin: Polytechnische Buchhandlung A. Seydel, 1876). 13 Hirth, Reuleaux, 39-40. 14 Reuleaux, Briefe, 4 - 5 ; Ernst Barth, Entwicklungslinien der deutschen Maschinenbauindustrie von 1870 bis 1914 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973), 50. 15 Hirth, Reuleaux, 11. 16 Ibid., 49.

118

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

building-construction machinery, made the same point in an article written for the Nationalzeitung of 23 July 1876. He contended that "today, just as ten to fifteen years ago, almost all worthwhile technical innovations are of foreign origin and indiscriminately conquer German as well as world markets." Schlickeysen conceded that "occasionally German copies pop up next to foreign originals, but this does not alter the basic pattern. We are downright flooded by a cornucopia of new and practical ideas from France, England, and especially America, which literally control our entire domestic, industrial, and public life." Most German machine-building factories, meanwhile, were busily reducing outlays for capital investments and labor, concentrating instead on cheaply made imitations. As a consequence, German machinery producers hardly dared exhibit their products anywhere else than in backward Russia, as it was too embarrassing to display their poor copies right next to superior originals in the country of origin — or they had to be so brazen as to defy the whole idea of world fairs and acknowledge their immoral "theft of intellectual property" just so long as they could clinch a sale. 17 More systematic analysis of the various allegations and counterallegations soon followed. Impressionistic treatment of the issue in the daily press yielded to careful examination of the German engineering industry in technical periodicals and trade literature. American machine building, especially its competitive lead due to far-going specialization, served as the standard of comparison. The inquiry essentially confirmed the truth of Reuleaux's charges, which have been upheld by modern scholarship as well. 18 Compared with American engineering, the German machine-building industry of that period was backward. Its products were generally of low quality, imitative, and awkward. "As for the achievements of the American machine industry," wrote the German engineer H. Heine in 1876 in his pamphlet Professor Reuleaux and German Industry, "I admit wholeheartedly that they a r e . . . far superior to ours." 19 According to Heine, the gap was especially large in light machinery, hand tools, specialized machine tools, farm equipment, and other mass-produced mechanical equipment that was "simultaneously a standard commodity." 20 American 17 Ibid., 15. 18 David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1730 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 1969), 305-17; Alfred Schroter and Walter Becker, Die deutsche Maschinenbauindustrie in der industriellen Revolution (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1962); Barth, Entwicklungslinien, 14—18; Otto Polysius, Verbandsbestrebungen in der deutschen Maschinenbau (Dessau: Martin Salzmann Verlag, 1921); Conrad Matschoss, Einjahrhundert deutscher Maschinenbau; idem, Geschichte der Gasmotoren-Fabrik Deutz (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1922); idem, Die Maschinenfabrik R. Wolf Magdeburg-Buckau, 1862-1912 (Magdeburg: A. Wohlfeld, 1912). 19 Heine, Reuleaux, 11. 20 Ibid.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876-84

119

machinery of this sort was lower in price and higher in quality, and therefore its sales were not nearly so depressed as those of German industry. German manufacturers and consumers generally preferred the imported machinery of this kind, which entered the country in large quantities, to domestic products. There was little specialization, standardization, or use of advanced machine tools in German machine building, which relied heavily on skilled manual labor and individualized assembly. The prevailing type of shop was of the "general machine-building" variety; that is, in principle it made any product from the most complicated steam engine or transmission to the simplest metal fabrication. Contemporary assessment of the causes of backwardness and inefficiency inspired a major effort to introduce the reforms Reuleaux had outlined. As early as 1882, Director Emil Blum of the Berlin-Anhaltische Maschinenbau AG in Berlin noted significant new departures and encouraging developments. Though the overall situation of the industry was still bleak at that time, and most shops of the "general machine-building type" continued to languish, "a great many of our machine factories [had] used the crisis period in effect since 1873 to develop and perfect specialties." 21 Blum emphasized repeatedly that "American competition had been the decisive stimulus" toward innovation and high quality in German machine building. 22 Machine shops that had followed the "shining example" of the United States in the use and manufacture of specialized machine tools had no lack of orders or profits.23 The result of the new impulses, Blum contended, was that "nowadays our specialized machine building is reaching levels of excellence that make it competitive in the world market in every respect." 24 German sewing machines and locomobiles, for example, had become just as good as American or British products, Blum asserted. In several areas Germany had succeeded in forcing out foreign imports altogether and had reconquered the domestic market (e.g., in steam engines, boilers, and transmissions). The internal-combustion engine was a German triumph, and German printing presses, particularly those of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg, Blum claimed, were the best in the world.25 Two years later, Blum was able to observe a consolidation of the pattern he had detected in 1882: stagnation and decline for the "general machinebuilding" shops, but thriving business for those that had specialized. Concluding his review of the industry, he paid his respects to Reuleaux: "The central fact that emerges from the foregoing exposition is that our 21 22 23 24 25

Emil Blum, "Die wirtschaftliche Lage des Maschinenbaus," VVBG 61 (1882):385. Ibid., 482. Ibid. Ibid., 385. Ibid., 385-6.

120

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

German engineers and manufacturers have learned to place the issue of quality in the foreground, so that despite the generally unfavorable condition in machine building, a whole number of specialized factories are operating successfully and are enlarging their sales and markets." 26 Other engineers made similar observations. In 1883, Professor Wiillner, the new rector of the technische Hochschule at Aachen, remarked in his inaugural address that the deterioration in the material conditions of industrial enterprises that developed in the middle of the 70s . . . did not merely fail to cause a regression in technology; it was rather the occasion for great technological progress. Precisely the minimal profitability of enterprises confronted leading engineers with the pressing challenge of producing the best quality less expensively, to utilize by-products and wastes that used to be considered almost worthless. . . and take advantage of available sources of energy that were not used in the past.27 The actual transformation of the machine-building industry was neither quite as rapid nor as complete as Blum's and Wiillner's optimistic remarks would suggest. The conversion to specialization, standardization, and mass production proceeded slowly. In the critical machine-tool industry, for example, it took at least until 1900 before Germany reached the level of American technology. Until then, American lathes and boring and milling machines were widely used in Germany and were much more popular than comparable domestic products. 28 Furthermore, Germany's engineering industry did not make the wholesale transition to specialized mass production that Blum advocated. By 1914, it had evolved to a state that was characterized by the existence of three types of firms: (1) the traditional "general machine-building" shop, (2) the specialized factory for standardized mass products, and (3) the most prevalent kind of establishment, an intermediate form between the first two. This third type of firm built a variety of related (high-technology) specialties that have made German machine building famous. It produced not on an assemblyline basis but in serial production (i.e., still with a relatively high proportion of individualized design features), and it assembled to order on the basis of only partially standardized components. 29 The limited and partial nature of Germany's adaptation to American production techniques contributed to the survival of organizational forms in the engineering industry that had major implications for the social 26 Blum, "Lage," VVBG 63 (1884): 156. 27 VDIW (1883):282-3. Similarly VDI chairman Dittmar in his address to the 1883 annual meeting; VDIW(1883):364-9. 28 Barth, Entwicklungslinien, 51 (also see 47-58). 29 Landes, Prometheus, 305—58; Polysius, Verbandsbestrebungen, 55; Barth, Entwicklungslinien, 14—18; Matschoss, Wolf; idem, Deutz; idem, Einjahrhundert.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

121

history of engineers before World War I. 30 Even so, it is evident that the beginnings of profound change and innovation in the engineering industry date from the late 1870s. A new mentality, centered on high quality and high technology, took hold at that time. The Reuleaux episode, which substituted the United States for Britain — Germany's traditional foreign model — as the new reference point for measuring technological progress and economic performance, was instrumental in precipitating this change in course.31 3.

REASSESSMENTS OF GERMANY'S ENGINEERING CULTURE

According to the analysts of the 1870s, what were the reasons for German backwardness vis-a-vis the United States? Not surprisingly, they singled out numerous causes: a history of Kleinstaaterei, responsible for the fragmentation of Germany's market; absence of a nationwide patent law; faulty and archaic bidding procedures for government contracts; the misguided "technological culture" of its engineers. 32 It is this last aspect of the problem that is of particular interest here. Germany's engineering industries had remained backward, this part of the diagnosis went, because its manufacturers and engineers were not accustomed to thinking in the right way. What David Landes has called "entrepreneurial" or "technological rationality" thus came under scrutiny from contemporary critics. 33 Director Emil Blum, discussing the problems of Germany's machinebuilding industry in 1877, made explicit reference to the misguided, dysfunctional orientation of the country's engineers. A basic flaw of Germany's current technological culture, suggested Blum, himself an engineer, was the engineer's penchant for a kind of technocratic individualism in design that ignored criteria of financial or economic rationality. German engineers were infatuated with design for its own sake, whereas they neglected other critical problems such as cost, reliability, and ease of construction. The German machine manufacturer, he explained, "is much too much a graduate from the technische Hochschule, who is convinced he has done his duty when he comes up with a new and original design every day." Whereas American machine building was "thriving mainly because of its success in mass producing single products, most of our manufacturers 30 See Chapters 9—12 in this volume. 31 Polysius, Verbandsbestrebungen, lA. 32 On the history of the patent law to 1877, see Alfred Heggen, Erfindungsscbutz und Industrialisierung in Preussen 1793—1877 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975). See discussion of Kleinstaateri in Heine, Reuleaux, 14, 2 4 - 3 1 ; for bidding procedures, see Blum, "Lage" (1882):384; GA 1 (1877):190; Heine, Reuleaux, 11, 32, 33; VDIW (1877): 1 3 2 - 3 , 317; VDIW (1878): 143, 282; VDIW (1880):274-80, 308; VDIZ (1884):928-30; Theodor Peters, Geschkhtedes VereinsDeutscher Ingenieure (Berlin: Verlag des VDI, 1912), 28, 30, 5 2 - 3 . 33 Landes, Prometheus, 3 5 3 - 5 .

122

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

until recently took pride in the fact that they made just about everything and had an individualized design for each and every tiny part of a machine mounting." 34 The American system — specialization and concentration on just one or two items - enabled the manufacturer to "apply all this talent to perfection of the product in terms of design and construction, putting him in the position to produce better and more cheaply than any of his competitors and therefore also to earn more," Blum stated. 35 If the German machinery producers were going to survive, he continued, it was imperative to ''steer [them] decidedly in other directions." The industry would have to "adopt more and more the American way of production, i.e., to design as little as possible but to produce this little all the better, and all the more and better." 36 The German mechanical engineer, one might paraphrase Blum, was possessed by aspirations toward universalistic creativity in design that appear, from a later vantage point, not simply as early industrial but as a technocratic variation of the traditional, status-related ideal of Bildung. Such aspirations clearly were also related to the individualist ethos of liberalism. This attitude, Blum contended, would have to change in favor of greater specialization, professional expertise in just one area, and greater awareness of the economic, as opposed to the purely technical, dimensions of engineering. Later students of the German engineering industry have confirmed this evaluation. Conrad Matschoss, for example, writes of the famous mechanical engineer Hermann Gruson that he was "an excellent designer, for whom . . . cost factors did not seem to play a role. Gruson tried to redesign from scratch every new locomotive that was ordered. Even true and tried designs were put aside." 37 The misguided outlook of Germany's engineers, thought Blum and other analysts like him, was largely the fault of the system of technical education. Thus, the engineer Heine, who had spent many years working in the United States, argued that a major contributor to business failure in the 1870s was the technische Hochschule, with its heavy emphasis on theory and science, and its various social and professional pretenses. Heine believed that the "way we train [our personnel] for many branches of industry is entirely wrong. In general we suffer from being forced into a stereotyped mold of scientific education. This tendency is most pronounced in mechanical engineering." 38 The fundamental problem in German technical education, according

34 35 36 37 38

GA 1 (1877): 189. Ibid. Ibid. Matschoss, Wolf, 18; idem, Deutz, 126-33; Polysius, Verbandsbestrebungen, Al-9. Heine, Reuleaux, 36.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876-84

123

to Heine, was its excessive emphasis on book knowledge, while it ignored at its own peril the enormous benefits to be derived from practical training in the machine shop. The German engineer certainly excelled in the former, but his practical skills, his feeling for form and good design, were entirely undeveloped. This often prevented him "from making use of his painstakingly accumulated learning." The Americans, who proceeded in technical education from the other end of the spectrum, had reached their unparalleled excellence in mechanical engineering almost wholly on the basis of shop training and the apprenticeship system. "The Americans," Heine contended, "are only vaguely familiar with poly technical schools." Yet their achievements in engineering were the envy of all. He pointed out how "at age fifteen or sixteen, aspiring mechanical engineers in America are without exception sent to the model woodworking shop in the larger machine-building factories." The woodworking shop, which "in America has been the principal school of the most distinguished men who made a name for themselves in the field of mechanical engineering . . . is not sufficiently appreciated in this capacity in Germany, even though in conjunction with the. . . foundry, it is the real basis and the soul of our entire machine building." 39 Engineer Karl Teichmann, an instructor at the Building Trades School in Stuttgart, agreed. In 1880, Teichmann pointed out that the German engineer's "appreciation for form must be developed. The great importance that practical engineers attach to the training of the young engineer in the foundry and the model woodworking shop shows that the [technical schools] do not do enough in this respect. . . . Often, the model maker in the wood shop has to do part of the work of the designer, who has but inadequately solved the problem." 40 The most devastating criticism of Germany's technical education came from the engineer Joseph Schlink, technical and managing director of the Friedrich Wilhelm Works in Mulheim on the Ruhr. 41 If it were true, Schlink argued in an 1878 article, "Tendencies of the Technical Schools and the Demands of Practical Life," that there existed a positive correlation between the theoretical predilections of Germany's highly developed system of higher technical education and good industrial performance, Germany should have been far ahead of its competitors in the world market. "But since . . . our products are in part too expensive and in part, according to Professor Reuleaux, 'cheap but bad,' we seem to be suffering from other ailments and our beautiful theoretical efforts to have had but little 39 Ibid., 36-7. 40 VDIW (1880):287. 41 On Schlink see Hans-Joachim Braun, "Wirtschafts- und gesellschaftspolitische Anschauungen von Ingenieuren am Ende des 19- Jahrhunderts: Das Beispiel Joseph Schlink," Technikgeschichte 45 (1978):215-28.

124

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

success." Schlink did not doubt that "we are on the wrong track" in technical education and that "a speedy turnabout is necessary." He was convinced that "in the German technical world, the 'professor* plays much too large a role; practice, in contrast, not nearly enough of one." 42 Schlink's criticisms of "school culture" epitomized the hostility large numbers of practical engineers, managers, and entrepreneurs felt for the general orientation of German technical education of the preceding decades.43 His outbursts represent the release of their frustrations, accumulated during years of deference and submission to the professorial leadership of the occupation, including the ideology of "technology for its own sake" and the pursuit of a traditional notion of professional status. His attacks loosened an avalanche of further criticisms, denunciations, reexaminations, defenses, and counterattacks and in general signaled the birth of a much more businesslike attitude toward technical education as the newly dominant trend in these matters. 44 Afterward, there was no turning back to the old formulas. Schlink himself played a large role in this reorientation. With the tacit backing of the entrepreneurialmanagerial wing of the occupation, he maintained a constant barrage of attacks on the hitherto prevailing tendencies in engineering education and the VDI until they were broken and a decisive change in course had been effected. In the article of 1878, Schlink reminded his readers of such excesses as the "extravagant Redtenbacher cult" at Karlsruhe, in which he had foolishly participated as a student, to illustrate the German engineer's unhealthy infatuation with his teacher at the poly technical school. The engineer who went into industry, however, soon sobered up. Once in the "real world," the young graduate had to confront the fact that "he has not brought any miracle medicine from the polytechnical school and instead must jettison much of his school ballast if he wants to amount to anything." Undaunted by any of this, Schlink continued, "our professors blithely amble on, in technical journals, technical societies, as official government representatives, etc., etc. Everywhere they play the first violin, though occasionally one or two of them become a bit too loud and ruffle the audience." 45 Quoting extensively from speeches and papers by contemporary engineering professors to illustrate their misguided attempts "to reach the highest goal, i.e., to convert the knowledge of machines gradually into a pure science," Schlink showed the true way for engineering instead: 42 GA 2 (1878):8. 43 On this theme, see Hans-Joachim Braun, "Methodenprobleme der Ingenieurwissenschaft, 1850 bis 1900," Technikgeschichte AA (1977): 1-18. 44 VDIW (1878):97-8, 418-20; GA 2 (1878):72-82, 270-2. 45 GA 2 (1878):9.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

125

"All industrial products have their only standard of value in money. The difference between cost of production and selling price - the profit forms the only justified and possible foundation for operating an industrial business. The most perfect production process is an economic absurdity if it sustains a financial loss." For the pure sciences, in contrast, financial rationality was irrelevant, and according to Schlink this was the essential difference between them and applied science or engineering. The difference explained why pure science was not a good model for engineering, a point that had to be stressed over and over to drive home "that economic criteria alone should be allowed to carry weight" for engineers. The technical schools, Schlink concluded, "must not train scholars, not future professors, but energetic industrialists who want to increase their wealth and thereby that of their country. Profits are the ultimate goal and not training in sterile Katheder-wisdom."46 Schlink's assessments, which the relevant industrial circles uniformly shared, were positively received by some of the more forward-looking engineering professors as well. Hermann Ludewig, a professor of mechanical engineering at Munich, for example, had for some time been advocating greater emphasis on shop training for students at the technische Hochschulen. In 1879, after the technische Hochschule at Berlin had been established, Ludewig pointed out that during the past several decades and down to the present, "it was all the rage to raise the poly technical school - in its development to technische Hochschule - to a level of equality with the universities. Incorporating into the curriculum a rational method of practical training by way of instructional workshops clearly did not accord well with such efforts."47 Now that social-status objectives had been reached, Ludewig argued, it was time to refocus attention on the practical training of engineers, for things had gotten so bad in the meantime that industry "much preferred young graduates from technical trade schools to graduates from the technische Hochschulen. . . . A semi-education is victorious because semi-knowledge much more often combines with practical know-how than a completed, thoroughly scientific education." 48 Dissatisfaction with the prevailing orientation in mechanical engineering education was not limited to criticism of the technische Hochschulen. The VDI, which under Grashof s leadership and the editorship of some four other educators manifested many of the same qualities as those for which the poly technical schools were being castigated, also came under 46 Ibid., 11-12. For comparable sentiments in the United States, cf. the following statement by the president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at approximately the same time: "We must measure all things by the test, will it pay?" Quoted in Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910:

versity Press, 1967), 225. 47 VDIW(1879):313. 48 Ibid., 315.

Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-

126

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

heavy attack. Schlink reserved some of his harshest criticism for the engineering society and its Zeitschrift. "An equally one-sided tendency as exists at the technical schools also prevails in Germany's technical periodical literature," he wrote. "Most journals are edited, or at any rate heavily influenced, by scholars. As a consequence, the contents are largely theoretical treatises." The example Schlink cited as proof for his contentions was Germany's largest technical publication, the Zeitschrift of the VDI. Its contents were "heavily weighted toward theoretical discussions," and its remaining pages were only rarely satisfactory and usually aroused "little interest." Most German engineers, according to Schlink, felt that the Zeitschrift could not begin to compare with Engineering, the British trade journal that was widely read in Germany. 49 The VDI's Zeitschrift was becoming a periodical "exclusively devoted to professorial boasting," and "if the present editorial board was incapable of rinding better material," Schlink "would not consider their resignation, or even the temporary folding of the Zeitschrift, a great tragedy." 50 In another article, "On the Social Status of the German Engineer," Schlink dealt with what he believed to be the fundamental causes of the engineers' mistaken penchant for theoretical knowledge and neglect of practical know-how: their failure to grasp the essence of modern society and its principles of stratification. Most engineers, he contended, did not realize clearly enough that they were fundamentally different from the other higher occupations, such as lawyers, the military, the professorate, the clergy, and physicians. These traditional, preindustrial professions were all to a greater or lesser extent constituted on the principle of estates or corporations, fortified by compulsory classical Bildung and in most cases by civil-service standing as well. The engineer, in contrast, was "subject to different influences and must get recognition in a different way." The German engineers were "not a corporation," Schlink argued, and hence they could not "claim a definite social status as a collective body. The individual [engineer] must fight for his status on his own." 31 Heinrich Macco (1843-1920), a well-known consulting engineer in Siegen, concurred in Schlink's diagnosis, though hardly considering it a cause for joy. In an 1877 letter to Grashof, Macco lamented the fact that "we do not have the same kind of foundation for the engineering profession [Stand der lngenieure] as exists for lawyers, physicians, or governmentemployed engineers {Baumeister} in examinations and the graduation from certain schools."52 Schlink took a much more positive view of this state of affairs. He did "not expect great results from [an examination] for the 49 50 51 52

GA 2 (1878):37. Ibid., 225. GA4(1879):313-14. VDIW (1877):348.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

127

social status of the engineers. For the most part, they enter into the private service of industrial magnates or corporations, and these do not ask much for examinations, emphasizing above everything else practical usefulness." 53 Mentioning famous engineer-entrepreneurs such as Siemens, Borsig, and Krupp, Schlink asserted that engineers should discard the traditional, corporate model of the social hierarchy in favor of the more accurate, liberal-capitalist model, in which "the value of a man is based on his personality and not on his membership in an estate [Stand]." Schlink contended that prestige had come to depend above all on property, and if engineers wanted to advance their social status, they should keep that crude but important lesson clearly in mind. "To summarize the conditions for a secure and good social position," he lectured, "they are to be found in property, knowledge, and know-how, honor in business, in personal life, and in manners. Property clearly ranks far above the others." Schlink did not think it was a morally "edifying spectacle" that rank depended so much "on the extent of [a person's} property," but it was an "evil that prevails everywhere in the world" and that had to be reckoned with. 54 Schlink's views on social status deserve a brief comment. When juxtaposed to contemporary attacks on liberal economic policy and on individualism in design and production, his espousal of a liberal-capitalist and individualist social hierarchy illustrates how the relationships among individualism, liberalism, capitalism, and industrialism became more and more contradictory as industry matured and technology progressed. At the same time, his recommendations for engineers point to the effect of industrialization on Germany's preexisting system of social stratification. Schlink's contempt for examinations and his emphasis on private property and wealth register the intrusion of a dynamic private sector into an older system of stratification. The former was based on individual achievement and economic power, whereas the latter derived its criteria for assigning status and honor from the configuration of civil-service and military ranks, university study, and classical secondary education. His suggestions to take cognizance of the new social realities, though extremely problematic for the majority of employee-engineers, thus focused attention on the increasing importance of class, or possession of money, vis-a-vis these inherited noneconomic determinants of status. Finally, Schlink's remarks about the social status of the German engineers draw attention to the limitations imposed on the older model of professionalism by work in industry. His emphasis on the achievementoriented class system of stratification signaled the stiffened resistance in industrial-managerial circles to the professional corporate tendencies that, 53 GA4(1879):316. 54 Ibid., 314.

128

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

under the leadership of the professorial wing of the occupation, had prevailed until then. Such attempts at traditionally denned professionalization, because they called for the broadest and most generalized knowledge and were equated with the pursuit of theoretical wisdom, were perceived by Schlink and other avowedly "practical men" as contrary to optimal economic efficiency, business rationality, and cost-effectiveness. The liberal class model of social stratification, in contrast, was believed to match these needs much better, because it had no bias against specialization and practical know-how. Schlink's observations highlight the central social dilemma of Germany's engineers, who were predominantly employed in the private sector, but derived their models of prestige and status primarily from governmentemployed colleagues and from the preindustrial social hierarchy that was still everywhere in evidence around them. These told them that possession of universalistic Bildung - in practice, a classical secondary education, "pure" scientific knowledge, titles, examinations, and contempt for application as well as manual skills — was critical for membership in the higher occupations. A large proportion of school-trained engineers had tried to move up the social ladder along this traditional path. They did so even as the substance of their increasingly specialized and economically revolutionizing work undermined the older ranking system and helped usher in another one. In this newer system, economic class and demonstrable, tangible skills played much larger roles, and the connections between formal education and potential for achievement were much looser than in the older stratification system. It was, in short, a system much more heavily weighted toward the ideal type of capitalist society. Of course, most engineers did not go with education, or Bildung, as the means for upward mobility simply out of "false consciousness." Often they had no alternative, because a career as capitalist entrepreneur was not open to most of them, and yet they wished, as employees, or, strictly speaking, "proletariat" in the class model, to be counted among the higher occupations.55 Thus, they had a great stake in rescuing and preserving the older ranking mechanism under conditions of advanced industrialization. Partly owing to such social interests, partly as a result of the great rapidity of industrialization in Germany, the inherited ranking mechanism continued to survive in modified form alongside the class model and in fact adapted to industrial conditions, gaining a new lease on life. Industry's bureaucratization and growing dependence on technical education and scientific knowledge in the more advanced stages of industrialization contributed to this development. A contradictory stratification system emerged that near its top resembled the traditional professional complex, 55 Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung, passim.

Reorientation in engineering, 1876—84

129

whereas near the bottom it was more akin to "proletarian" class or skilled labor. At the same time, attributes of class or money became relatively more important in the upper echelons of this system, whereas, conversely, education and professional competence penetrated deeply into the lower, class-structural regions. Consequently, a firm dividing line between the two halves became increasingly difficult to draw. The gradations often were minute, ranks were not strictly tied to formal education, and the whole system came to look like a continuous chain of slightly different admixtures between elements of status and class. Schlink's rhetoric notwithstanding, therefore, the propertyless but "cultivated" higher civil servant was a natural, even necessary, model for all those would-be professional engineers who were not entrepreneurs. For reasons mentioned earlier, Bildung often outweighed the civil-service aspect of this model for mechanical engineers. Almost imperceptibly, however, as specialized expertise and employment in the private sector replaced universalistic "cultivation" and government service, the model took on many of the qualities of what C. Wright Mills has called the modern "managerial demiurge." 56 At the same time, the purely capitalist class model continued to exert its powerful influence as well. German engineers were thus caught in the contradictions and tensions between these two competing and simultaneously operating principles of social stratification — a condition that, owing to the fact that no single model of social stratification has been realized to the exclusion of all others, exemplifies the general problem of permanent status inconsistencies and insecurities in modern industrial society.57 56 C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (Oxford University Press, 1951), passim. 57 Max Weber, "Class, Status, Party," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford University Press, 1946), 181-95; Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (New York: Free Press, 1953).


Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877—1890

The perceived dysfunctionality of technical education and the changing conception of what engineering was about could not fail to affect the VDI. 1 Discontent with its penchant for abstraction and theory, its predilection for arcane mathematics and obfuscating language — in short, its engineering scholasticism — soon expanded into a wholesale attack on the leadership. These attacks eventually resulted in major changes and in the adoption of policies much more congenial to shop culture and business interests. The new course, in turn, affected the shape and development of the profession as a whole, owing to the VDI's critical role in defining the educational requirements for engineers. Even as it embarked on its new course, the VDI did not completely surrender its earlier ideology concerning the professional autonomy and group-formative powers of engineering activity as an act of national loyalty. At the ideological level, the VDI leadership was able to mute the extreme versions of the managerial vision of technology. It did so not because it remained unalterably opposed to the idea of specialization and cost-consciousness but because the new orientation patently served the material interests of managerial and entrepreneurial engineers. As such, the new outlook ran counter to the social aspirations of most ordinary engineers and professionalizes, and it might easily have destroyed the VDI. Nominal adherence to the older principle — albeit increasingly redefined as pragmatic neutrality in social, economic, and political questions, and limited to a narrow and insular conception of technology — allowed continued integration of its socially diverse membership. The transition was extremely painful and caused a deep crisis that was resolved only when a viable alternative was found to the threat that the 1 See also Lars U. Scholl, "Der Ingenieur in Ausbildung, Beruf und Gesellschaft 1856 bis 1881," and Karl-Heinz, Manegold, "Der VDI in der Phase der Hochindustrialisierung 1880 bis 1900," both in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856-1981,

ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981), 1-66, 133-66.

130

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

131

VDI might go under, either by persisting in the old, discredited ways — the tendency of the society's original leaders — or by becoming a mere appendage of industry — the answer suggested by managerial engineers like Joseph Schlink. The entire process was mirrored in the VDI's fate as a publisher. Collapse, disorientation, and renewal were reflected in the repeated experimentation with different editorial policies and changes in the association's publishing ventures between 1877 and 1883. During that seven-year period, the engineering society departed from its customary policy — both before and after — of publishing only a single wellconceived journal. Instead, it produced two ill-considered periodicals intended to oblige the professorial and managerial audiences at the same time. The temporary lack of direction thus became embodied in a dualistic publishing policy that satisfied no one. When a more successful formula was finally found in 1883, the crisis was over, and the VDI had been launched on its new course. 1. THE EMERGENCE OF A COMMERCIAL WEEKLY

In the summer of 1877, a new technical journal for mechanical engineering, metallurgy, and related areas of civil engineering was launched in Germany. In the first issue of Glaser's Annalenfur Gewerbe und Bauwesen, which soon developed a solid reputation, the Berlin-based publishers explained what had motivated them to start yet another technical publication. What they wanted, editor F. Schotte asserted, was to eliminate the "noticeable shortcomings in the technical periodical literature" that prevailed "despite the great competition" in the field. The current, excessively academic, technical literature was largely irrelevant for industry, and "now that industry needed the support of the [technical] press more than ever," this evil could no longer be tolerated. Though he did not mention the VDI and its Zeitschrift by name, Schotte obviously had them in mind. He concluded by assuring his readers that "Our Annals shall not be a dump site for scholarly or would-be scholarly treatises." 2 Similar discontent existed within the VDI. As early as 1869 there had been agitation in several of the local chapters for publication of a more practice-oriented Wochenschrift, or weekly, in addition to the scholarly monthly, the Zeitschrift. In a debate in the Westfalen chapter in 1869, the fundamental issue had immediately surfaced: "dirty" commercialism or "pure," unadulterated science. A certain engineer Leitzmann believed that a weekly comparable to the British journal Engineering was a good idea. It might contain all the less serious, practical items, thereby appeasing the clamor for practice but keeping the monthly Zeitschrift free 2 GA 1 (1877): 1-4.

132

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

from material that would inevitably be commercially tainted. Engineer Berger disagreed, arguing that it would be better to reform the monthly instead and make /'/ more practically relevant. He opposed a separate weekly because for financial reasons it would have to be commercial and therefore one-sided and beholden to the articulation of particular private interests. This was in direct conflict with the VDI's ideals and would destroy its character as a membership-supported association "above the parties." 3 Practicality, in other words, was interpreted as antithetical to science and as opening the door to commercialism, which in turn was equated with crass materialism and the base pursuit of private interests. The debate therefore illustrates the interrelatedness of the VDI's theoretical tendencies and its self-conception as an ecumenical, national technological association. Only on the level of broad theoretical abstractions and abstruse mathematics, which ignored the intrusive realities of concrete engineering problems and of specialized, branch-specific and therefore economic interests, was it possible to maintain the fiction of a general, noncommercial engineering science and an all-inclusive engineering community - of "technology for its own sake" and its social-status corollaries. At the same time, only this concentration on "pure" technology allowed integration of a membership of engineers whose internal cleavages of class and status mirrored those of the society at large. The issue of greater practical relevance in publishing having been defined in this particular way, it is not surprising that the VDI proved reluctant to address the problem. At the 1871 annual convention, Grashof supported demands for separate publication of a practical weekly, because, as he put it, the Zeitschrift "would thereby become a purely scientific technical monthly." Joseph Piitzer, one of the association's original founders and director of the Provincial Trade School in Aachen, opposed a weekly because the VDI could not finance it without selling advertising space and therefore commercializing itself. Carl Gaertner, an engineerentrepreneur from Magdeburg, rejected the proposal for exactly the same reasons Grashof supported it, namely, that it would only encourage already existing tendencies to convert the monthly into a purely scientific and theoretical publication, and therefore it would be irrelevant for practicing engineers. Unable to reconcile their differences, the assembled engineers decided to do nothing. 4 Expectedly, the issue resurfaced soon after the onset of the recession of 1874-9. Dissatisfaction with the one-sided emphasis on theory was becoming stronger by the month. At the 1875 annual meeting, the chief topic of discussion was an urgent motion by the management-dominated 3 VDIZ(1870):92-3. 4 VDIZ(1871):717-20.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

133

metallurgical branch chapter to reform the existing Zeitschrift. The steelmen demanded "more rapid publication of the proceedings of the [local chapters}" in the monthly Zeitschrift and also asked the editors to devote more space to this material. The reason for focusing on the local-chapter proceedings was that they contained the bulk of information most interesting to practical engineers. Rather than accept fragmentation of the VDI's technical literature into two separate publications, one devoted to theory and the other to practice, the metallurgists thought the existing Zeitschrift should publish the chapter proceedings, because it was precisely the combination of theory and practice in one journal that yielded the "most stimulating exchange of ideas." 5 Afraid that adoption of the motion would destroy the Zeitschriffs scholarly integrity, Grashof urged the meeting to accept the alternative of publishing a practical weekly and a theoretical monthly. If the VDI must become more practical, at least this option had the advantage of leaving his treasured Zeitschrift untainted. Moreover, because a weekly would appease the general clamor for greater practical relevance and publish some of the "practical trivia" currently still cluttering the Zeitschrift, the latter might even benefit from the change. "The technical-scientific Zeitschrift will not only not suffer," Grashof stated, revealing his true motives, "but, after severing from it those elements which are bothersome to it, be able to flower all the better." 6 Grashof carried the day. On 1 January 1877, the VDI began publishing two periodicals: its traditional monthly, as before free from advertising and becoming more scholarly than ever, and a weekly, financed in principle by advertisements and dedicated to the satisfaction of practical needs. 7 The decision to start a commercial weekly turned out to be a decisive event. Patterned after other scholarly societies and patriotic associations, the VDI during the first twenty years of its existence had given little thought to financial or business questions. Limited by lack of revenues, as well as by conception, publication of the Zeitschrift had barely financed itself and had been run as an amateur affair. Dependent on the volunteer efforts of active members - most often educators who published anyway to maintain their scholarly reputations — for its unpaid technical articles, the VDI had been, in Schlink's apt phrase, "some sort of technical freemasonry. " 8 The professorial editors were all part-time and lived in different cities, which resulted in numerous delays and inefficiencies.9 5 6 7 8

VDIZ(1875):848-52. Ibid. VDIZ(1876):349-50, 695-700. HA/GHH, Nr. 3OO1O72/O, 10: "An die Mitglieder des technischen Verein fur Eisenhuttenwesen," 6. 9 VDIW (188O):216; HA/GHH, Nr. 3OO1O72/O, 134, 6-7; Rudolf Ziebarth, Der Verein Deutscber

134

Reorient atton: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Starting with the weekly of 1877, all that began to change. Bringing out the new publication was the VDI's first wavering step toward becoming what it is today: a thriving publishing house and the owner of a technical publishing empire. Turning the press into a capitalist business supported by advertising enabled the VDI to become wealthy. Wealth, in turn, could safeguard at least part of its cherished autonomy vis-a-vis industry and yet avoid stagnation in a relentlessly commercializing and specializing environment. Conversion to the new course, which brought not only radical changes in the format and substance of technical literature but also centralization and bureaucratization of the VDI itself, was not completed until 1883. In the meantime, the VDI was still groping for its new identity, internally divided and hesitant to abandon the old model of a membership-supported technical fraternity oriented more toward social honor than cash. Only the pressure of external events and the threat of imminent collapse finally changed the engineering association. 2. PROBLEMS AND REFORMS, 1877-9

From a financial point of view, the decision to add a weekly soon proved to have been a good move. Despite initial difficulties, advertising revenues began to pick up in 1880, thereafter producing steady improvement in the VDI's finances. In 1876, income from sales of the Zeitschrift to outsiders had covered no more than 16 percent of production costs. By 1884, 54 percent of such costs came from advertising revenues, which generated a surplus by 1899. Over that same period, the circulation and size of the VDI's publications increased approximately fivefold. By the turn of the century, the association's net worth had reached M. 735,000, from a paltry M. 16,000 in 1876. 10 From an editorial and organizational point of view, the new course was at first a disaster. Neither the theoretical monthly nor the practical weekly could satisfy its readers, and the old editorial board and staff were unequal to their new tasks. In fact, the evidence suggests not merely incompetence but passive sabotage by chief editor Ziebarth of any real innovation and improvement. 11 As one irate critic put it in 1879, "the preponderance of theoretical treatises in the Zeitschrift admittedly creates the appearance of a strongly scientific character, but it does not fulfill its true purpose, which is to bring a repertory of practical engineering problems." Nor was Ingenieure: Seine Entwicklung und Wirksamkeit in den vergangenen 25 Jahren (Berlin: A. W . Schade,

1881), 35. 10 Theodor Peters, Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure (Berlin: Verlag des VDI, 1912), 1525; VDIW (1877):308; VDIZ (1884):633; VDIZ (1900):823-4. 11 VDIW (1877): 190; VDIW (1878):65-6, 149-50, 244; VDIW (1879):247; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 10, 6.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

135

it the purpose of the weekly "to bring verbose protocols in which the details of local-chapter proceedings, with all their irrelevant particulars, are reproduced with complacent leisure." 12 It took the decentralized VDI a long time to do something about this. The fundamental problems — poor management and failure to pay for articles — were identified early on, but it was not until the specter of closing down the whole VDI press was raised that the annual meeting adopted some reforms in 1879The basis for these changes was a plan by the Berlin chapter to start remunerating competent and knowledgeable authors for their contributions, to introduce deadlines, to focus on current technical developments, and to centralize operations in Berlin. All this was necessary because the old concept of voluntary authorship by the members had "proved a failure and in light of the strenuous professional life of most members, cannot but be a failure." 13 Like the idea of financing by advertisements, the proposal was a step toward converting the VDI's publishing endeavors from amateur status to a full-time, paid professional activity. It aimed to anchor the VDI press, as a business, firmly into the rapidly developing commercial market for technical literature, thereby paving the way for the association's survival as an independent producer and marketer of technical knowledge. This presupposed tuning in to the actual needs of its readers and emphasizing usefulness and practice — commercial application — over abstraction and theory. A far cry from the old vision of technology for its own sake, the plan amounted to a full-scale revolution in the intellectual life of the VDI. Grashof 's willingness to accept the essence of this plan and make the monthly Zeitschrift more practically relevant was a consequence of the avalanche of complaints about the weekly and the monthly and of developments such as the successful launch of the competing Glaser's Annalen. There also was repeated talk of shutting down the whole press. 14 The most insistent in this regard was Joseph Schlink, the driving force of the VDI's metallurgical branch chapter. The steelmen, mostly managers in the heavy machinery and iron and steel industry, were the most formidable opponents of the VDI's old ways. They were particularly frustrated because at Grashof's urging the "pure" engineering association had refused to join the "materialistic" Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller when it was formed in 1876. 15 They also resented the introduction of the weekly, which they rightly saw as a halfhearted measure designed to protect the scholarly purity of the Zeitschrift. In December of 1877 Schlink had gone on the attack with a series of polemical articles in Glaser's 12 13 14 15

VDIW (1879): 127; VDIW (1878):290-l. VDIZ (1878):244. VDIW (1878):244; 290-1. VDIZ(1876):704-5; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 10, 7.

136

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Annalen, urging, among other things, that the steelmen break away from the VDI. 16 He motivated the split in part with the "inferiority of the Zeitschrift, . . . completely worthless for the special purposes of the metallurgical society." 17 Under these circumstances it was a foregone conclusion that the VDI's 1879 annual meeting would adopt most of the reform proposals. The Zeitschrift was to become more practical than before, and certain minor managerial changes were approved, as were paid review articles of recent technological developments in the major engineering specialties. As scholarly contributions, they would appear from time to time in the flagship Zeitschrift.ls The changes became effective in January of 1880, exactly three years from the date the weekly had first appeared. 3. THE REORGANIZATION OF 1881

The limited measures of 1879 failed to solve the VDI's problems. The Zeitschriffs new editor proved to be incompetent and had to be dismissed after a year and a half. The projected paid reviews never materialized, essentially because the managing editors refused to spend the money allocated for the purpose. 19 Most important, the steelmen remained unreconciled.20 The changes in the press stopped far short of the unabashed capitalism they sought. Discussion of social and economic matters impinging on technology and engineering remained barred on principle from both the Zeitschrift and the weekly, and editorial policy in other matters also went against the steelmen. The paid review articles had been defined in such a way as to defeat their practical purposes. Above all, however, the steelmen wanted their own journal. Grashof had been willing to give it to them by dividing the Zeitschrift into two, but his proposals had been rejected by more traditionally inclined members, who argued that doing so would destroy the common bond that united all German engineers and create a "rift that threatens the innermost being of the association."21 Despite recognition of the need to become more practical, therefore, the VDI still resisted interpreting the need for change as having to subordinate technology to capitalism. Despite economic recession and a clamor for cost-consciousness and specialization, it still retained allegiance 16 17 18 19

VDIW (1878):97-8, 258-62; GA 2 (1878):98. HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 10, 3-12. VDIW (1879): 153-6, 240, 409-11. VDIW (1881):229-30, 328; VDIW (1879):154, 279; VDIW (1880):2l6, 280; VDIW (1882):357; HA/GHH, Nr. 3OO1O7/O, 134, "Bericht uber die Generalversammlung des technischen Verein fur Eisenhiittenwesen am 21 November 1880," 5. 20 HA/GHH, Nr. 3OO1O7/O, 98-134, "Protokoll uber die Vorstandssitzung am l4Oktober 1880," and "Bericht uber die Generalversammlung am 21 November 1880." 21 VDIW (1879): 138.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

137

to its original conception — the autonomy of a nationalistic, all-inclusive, scientific technology, an ethical suspicion of business, and the superiority of a technocratic engineering individualism over commercial rationality, as well as belief in their mutual irreconcilability. This attitude emerged with particular clarity in a debate in late 1878 between Joseph Schlink and Theodor Peters, the VDI's chairman-elect for 1879. Setting forth his reasons for leaving the VDI, Schlink mentioned not only the "absence of a specialized, well-managed" periodical but also the VDI's "loose and disorderly organization," the lack of "tight, centralized leadership," the lack of effective interest representation, and a shortage of funds. In the end, all this could be traced to one fundamental error: the mistaken notions concerning the autonomy of technology that prevailed in Germany. 22 Far from being autonomous, technology and business were two sides of the same coin, Schlink said. Thus, the aims of the steelmen and of an economic interest group like the Association of German Iron and Steel Industrialists "overlapped and were complementary." The latter had the "money and the power, and we want to make use of these powerful levers for our technical purposes as well." 23 Association with the VDI, in contrast, caused nothing but trouble. "The only weak link still holding us together consists of the pious but muddled sentiment of general occupational fellowship - some sort of technical freemasonry as it were." 24 Peters defended the VDI's notion of technological autonomy as "eminently practical and useful." Even if technical and economic functions were performed by one and the same person, Peters asserted, "they appeal to entirely different intellectual powers." There were numerous examples to show that "it is correct to separate tasks of an economic nature essentially questions of money and power - from those of the shop floor, technology, and science."25 Schlink and his faction wanted to associate with the iron and steel industrialists and break their bond with the VDI for all the wrong reasons. They did so not to improve the quality of their professional life but "to gain money and power, and they seem to be hoping that acquiring these will then raise the quality of intellectual life all by itself." Inexorably that would lead to the demise of engineering as a real profession and to its subjugation under monied interests. Schlink's "road, however desirable money and power. . . may be, will lead to a point where the metallurgical society is no more than an appendage of another association."26 Peters's argument availed nothing. In July of 1880 the steelmen voted 22 23 24 25 26

HA/GHH, Nr. 3OO1O72/O, 10, 8. Ibid., 4-5. Ibid., 6-7. Ibid., 8-9. Ibid., 10.

138

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a ''practical'' profession

to secede from the VDI and approved a new charter for a separate Association of German Metallurgical Engineers (Verein Deutscher Eisenhiittenleute, VDEh). 27 Its stated goals were the "perfection of practical iron and steel technology; representation and defense of the interest of this industrial branch; [and] promotion of the consumption of iron and steel in all forms." 28 Its organization was modeled on that of the typical German business corporation: centralized, with effective power concentrated in a small executive committee. Its first chairman was Carl Lueg, managing and technical director of the Gutehoffnungshiitte (GHH), one of Germany's largest and best-run industrial firms, with interests in coal, iron, steel, and heavy machinery. Its substitute chairman and guiding spirit was Joseph Schlink, and its new journal, Stahl und Eisen, soon became one of Germany's leading technical journals. 29 The secession of the steelmen was not the only blow the VDI received in 1880. 30 In December, another group abruptly announced its intention to leave and to set up its own organization. The engineers in question resented the VDI's failure to act as a true professional organization and defend its members' socioeconomic interests. Disgruntled by the VDI's official passivity in the matter of the Oberrealschule, a small group of prominent mechanical engineers left to found the Society of German Mechanical Engineers (Verein Deutscher Maschinen-Ingenieure, VDMI). Established in March of 1881 with 137 members, the VDMI offered membership to the "best elements of the profession" only. The thirty-six original founders included men like Joseph Schlink, the locomotive manufacturer Louis Schwartzkopf, Professors Slaby and Wiebe of the technische Hochschule in Berlin, and Director Rudolf Haack of the Vulcan shipyards in Stettin. A plurality, however, comprised senior mechanical engineers in the railroad section of the Prussian civil service. The basic aim of the new society was to secure for mechanical engineers equality of rank and pay with architects, civil engineers, and lawyers in government service. 31 Buffeted by the defection of the VDEh and the VDMI, the VDI reacted by taking stock once again of its own shortcomings. The fact that the new associations mixed technical and other interests naturally raised questions about the VDI's own narrow platform. Attempts to widen it were briefly resurrected in 1881, but once again the exponents of orthodoxy successfully resisted them. Theodor Peters explained why: "In economic associations it is not just intelligence that speaks but also money; and the 27 HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 80, "Vorstandssitzung am 14 Oktober 1880." 28 VDIW(1879):409-ll; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 66-7. 29 HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0, 102-3; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/2a, 77; Stahl und Eisen 1 (1881): 1-2, 34-6. 30 VDIW(1880):44l. 31 M. Geitel, Verein Deutscher Maschinen-Ingenieure: Festschrift zur Feier des 25 jdhrigen Bestehens (Berlin: Grunnert, 1906), 1-3.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

139

kind of relationships that exist in our local chapters, where the employee is perfectly free to engage his boss on purely technical matters, cannot possibly exist in the treatment of economic questions." The moment economic policy issues were allowed in the door, they would "kill all others. To remain a society of engineers, therefore, ours must keep at a distance all such matters that do not concern it immediately." 32 Formation of the new, competing societies did not simply point up limitations in the VDFs conception; more than anything else it focused attention on its cumbersome organization, which was incapable of responding effectively to the recent developments. The lasting disarray of the VDI press could be traced to the same origin. Thus, the idea took hold that organizational inadequacies were at the bottom of the VDFs troubles. In sharp contrast to the VDI's reticence about modifying ideology, deficiencies in organization were readily admitted, and almost as a matter of course it was decided to address the VDFs problems on this plane. 33 Once again, the Berlin chapter came up with the answers. Its plan, adopted with several modifications at the annual meeting of 1881, called for massive organizational changes. The VDFs administrative structure had until then consisted of a national executive committee of seven, only one of whom, Direktor Grashof, was a permanent member, the other six being elected yearly by the annual meeting. The members of this directorate lived all over Germany, communicated with each other in writing, and often hardly knew each other. They were in no position to supervise the Berlin-based administrative agent or the editorial board, nor could they deal with the authorities in Berlin, arrive at a common policy, or even coordinate the activities and viewpoints of the local chapters. All decision-making powers were vested in the annual convention, which generally was poorly attended, as a consequence of which its decisions tended to be the products of accidental majorities or manipulation by a small elite or a combination of both. 34 Coherent policy or a unified stance on any matter could be arrived at only by an elaborate and time-consuming consultative process in the pages of the VDFs Zeitschrift or its weekly, or through ad hoc conventions of delegates lacking decision-making power. To reform this medieval system, the new organization elevated the informal institution of the ad hoc delegate convention to a parliamentlike permanent executive council, composed of annually elected representatives from each of the local chapters. This larger council delegated its authority to a smaller, three-member executive committee elected by the annual meeting. It was composed of the VDFs first chairman and vice32 VDIW (1881):224, 334-40; Peters, Geschichte, 42-4. 33 VDIW(1881):6l-2. 34 See Chapter 3, section 5, in this volume.

140

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

chairman and the permanent Direktor (Grashof). The new organization also introduced a "General Secretary," or business manager. The business manager, the VDI's first full-time managerial employee and its senior executive officer, was responsible to the larger council or, when not in session, to the small executive committee. Residing in Berlin, he was in charge of all daily operations, including the right to hire and fire staff personnel, and he served as the managing editor of the VDI's publications. He was authorized to remunerate authors of all articles and set the fee schedules as well, because "a large number of members submit their often highly valuable papers to other journals, which pay as a matter of policy." 35 The business manager also represented the VDI in all negotiations and dealings with third parties, including the government. In short, all the powers needed to run the association on a daily basis (powers formerly vested in the annual meeting or simply nonexistent) were to be concentrated in this new, centralized office modeled on the example of the industrial pressure groups. 36 The changes took effect in January 1882, and the new post of business manager went to Theodor Peters. 37 Peters had a reputation of adhering strictly to the VDI's platform of engineering as an autonomous professional endeavor. Linked to the traditional orientation by close family ties and personal involvement, he adamantly opposed mixing economic or business matters and technical questions. Peters believed that the blatantly capitalistic version of engineering propounded by the metallurgists was both undignified for an ethical force like technology and disruptive of the VDI's cleavage-ridden membership. But he was also an astute businessman and very much the type of the practical engineer as well. Unlike Grashof, his de facto predecessor, Peters was not a theoretically inclined professor, having been a partial owner and managing director of a machine shop in Siegen.38 He was able to combine his belief in the autonomy of the engineering profession with his practical and managerial inclinations. Peters forged their synthesis in a formula that proved a viable alternative to the conflicting pressures of a managerial version of technology entirely subordinate to capitalism and a professorial model of the traditional profession capping a loose, ideological engineering movement - though in time Peters became more and more managerial in his outlook. Remaining at the helm of the VDI until his death in 1908, he gradually steered the

35 36 37 38

VDIW(1881):6l-2, 230. Ibid., 222-5, 229-33. Ibid., 325-8, 333-40. Conrad Matschoss, Manner der Technik (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1925), 203; VDIZ (1908): 1541-8.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

141

VDI closer and closer into the wake of ever more powerful business interests. In practice, his new course was to make the VDI's Zeitschrift a technical publication of the very highest order. Under Peters's management, the VDI developed into Germany's foremost technical publishing agency and soon established a reputation for first-rate publications of an applied scientific nature. The business of technical publishing became the engineering society's highest priority and its principal identity. At the same time, Peters also helped shape a policy that did not reject out of hand all discussion of nontechnical issues, but restricted it to those on which a high degree of consensus existed — issues like standardization, educational reform, steam boiler inspection, industrial safety, and mechanical codes. In this area, increasingly important for rationalization of society's technological-economic infrastructure, the VDI became Germany's leading authority and lobbying agency. Although discussion of economic policy questions and other controversial topics continued to be excluded, under Peters the VDI nevertheless became "practical." It did so by concentrating more and more on a broadly defined version of mechanical engineering and, to gain the widest possible readership and succeed as a publishing business, by attracting authors who wrote about concrete matters and emphasized criteria such as application, cost-effectiveness, fuel efficiency, material strength, and ease of construction. Without becoming simply a mouthpiece of the engineering industrialists, the VDI changed its reputation for irrelevant scholasticism. Capitalism entered the "pure" version of engineering it espoused not in the demonstrative fashion of the steelmen, but more subtly, from within. At the most fundamental level of invention, design, and construction, economic rationality became a prime consideration and a first principle from the outset. Even as the VDI stuck to its traditional rhetoric, therefore, the reforms of 1881 provide clear evidence that in fact it adopted a forward-looking approach. The pragmatic organization adopted at that time, superfluous for an ideological movement, was needed for efficient aggregation of the diverse views of the VDI's growing number of local chapters and for its lobbying tasks. It was essential for the engineering association in its new capacity as a market-oriented publishing business. 4.

CONSOLIDATION OF THE MONTHLY AND THE WEEKLY, 1882-3

The changes of 1881 were complemented by a restructuring of the business side of the publishing operations. Troubled by the weekly's meager advertising revenues in its first three years, the VDI's leadership had begun to explore the possibility of a joint venture with a commercial publisher.

142

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

The result was an agreement with the firm of Julius Springer in Berlin, which franchisee! the weekly's advertising in exchange for a lump sum plus a percentage of revenues above the basic formula. 39 Taking effect in January of 1881, the new arrangement was merely a prelude to the next, critical stage in the transformation of the VDI's publications: consolidation of the weekly and the monthly. The driving force of this project was Peters. Though he advanced several noneconomic reasons for the plan, his real motives were financial. Changing the existing awkward format of two separate journals was required by the advertising system, Peters contended. 40 He calculated that if the monthly was integrated into the weekly, the most advantageous combination of text and advertising for the lowest shipping and production costs would result. Springer offered the VDI much better terms for its franchise if the plan was adopted, because consolidation had the potential of creating a more attractive publication, from both the editorial and the marketing points of view. The existing weekly lacked advertising appeal because its contents still were geared primarily toward the particularistic concerns of the VDI membership. The increasingly valuable monthly did not take any advertising at all. Their combination would eliminate both weaknesses and therefore generate a much higher income. Peters accurately predicted that a combined scientific-practical journal would not simply attract more and better advertisers; it also would cause them to take greater interest in the journal as such, leading to increased distribution and in turn to even higher advertising rates and better franchise contracts — in short, the prospect of unlimited growth. "I am convinced," he stated in February 1883, "that really satisfactory exploitation of the 'advertising potential' of our society's periodicals can only be realized if we give the advertisement-carrying journal the most valuable contents possible." 41 Peters's proposals encountered stiff resistance from the VDI's traditional rear guard, which fervently opposed his money-making priorities. Dominated by educators, the Wiirttemberg chapter provided his most outspoken opposition. The professors opposed commercialization "because the association's publications thereby run the risk of losing part of their independence." 42 Dependence on advertising income, they contended, would hurt the VDI's autonomy as a scientific organization. Financial considerations would inevitably affect editorial policy and ultimately shape a whole orientation structured around defining success and excellence in a way that dovetailed exactly with capitalist interests. "It was inevitable," Professor Carl Bach argued, that commercialization via advertising "would 39 40 41 42

VDIW(1881):360-l. VDIW (1883):46-7; VDIW (1882):345-6; VDIW (1883):46-7. VDIW(1882):359. Ibid., 230.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

143

act as a brake on the freedom to criticize products of firms that annually contribute huge sums to the society's maintenance in the form of advertising fees."43 Peters countered that with money of its own, the VDI gained rather than lost independence, and he denied that advertising in any way influenced editorial policy or contents. The strict separation between editorial functions and commercial functions guaranteed full autonomy. 44 Both views were only partially right. The influence of advertising on contents was not blatant but subtle, just as the meshing of capitalism and science was not nearly as direct in the version of engineering championed by the VDI as it was in that of the steelmen. The dynamics of commercial operation of the press and of the competition for survival clearly did have substantive consequences, changing the format and contents of the VDI's publications from an ill-conceived dualism between theory and practice into a unified journal that was the exponent of applied science and a modern conception of engineering, directly trained on the capitalist-industrial community and radically different from the earlier, more or less otherworldly approach. The annual meeting of August 1883 approved the merger of the weekly and monthly on the terms Peters had recommended. It also adopted statutory revisions that sealed the VDI's organizational changes of 1881. Henceforth, proposals of the new executive council could no longer be amended by the irregular annual meeting, but only rejected or accepted in their entirety. 45 The two changes signaled completion of the VDI's crisis-ridden search for an alternative to the vision of technology espoused by a class-oriented business community and the model championed by a status-oriented coalition of engineering ideologues, professors, and oldstyle professionalizers. The organizational and publishing formats that had crystallized by 1883 reflected the emergence of a new identity combining both versions, mixing elements of a capitalist business and a scientific-ideological society. Significantly, it was a combination that mirrored the ambivalent and complex social identity of the engineer as such. 5.

THE VDI AND SECONDARY EDUCATION IN PRUSSIA, 1879-90

Although it proved a success, the new formula left little room for deviation from the narrow path that ran through the minefield of conflicting interests of educators, managers, employees, and self-employed engineers. The VDI therefore maintained its position of neutrality in almost all of the controversial social, economic, and political issues of the day. Education was 43 VDIW (1883): 151. 44 Ibid., 46-7. 45 Ibid., 358, 360-1.

144

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a ''practical" profession

the one exception. The VDI's new orientation soon resulted in renewed educational initiatives and a new educational policy. A first sign of this had come in 1878 when the VDI's rank and file and its managerial segment had successfully rebelled against Grashof 's advocacy of the classical Gymnasium and the Realgymnasium, siding instead with the Oberrealschule.46 Once the internal paralysis had been overcome, further initiatives in this direction followed, showing that the traditional support for Grashof's policies in favor of classical secondary education had completely eroded. Aggressive lobbying for modern secondary education, particularly the Oberrealschule, emerged as an essential ingredient of the VDI's educational policy in the 1880s.47 These efforts, in turn, were at the center of a wider reform movement that eventually led to the well-known Prussian school conferences of 1890 and 1900 and the subsequent reforms.48 The effect of the reorientation was to align the VDI with those forces and social groups in German society that pursued their emancipation not by way of assimilation but by reform and attack on the dominant professional-bureaucratic-educational complex. Unquestionably this amounted to a major detour on the road to professional status. But even avid professionalizes such as Grashof finally resigned themselves to the altered situation, realizing that in its new constellation the engineering society had no other choice. As the VDI Direktor put it in 1881 in a striking turnabout from his earlier position, "the most dignified and . . . in the long run also the most effective means for the VDI to improve" the social standing of the engineer was "to demonstrate how selfless idealism and dedication can also thrive on the basis of modern education." He realized, however, that the "dominant attitudes of the 'cultivated' segment of our people" did not mesh with this view and that therefore "by its very nature," attaining equality with classical education would be a "slow process."49 Grashof's comment illustrates how, in spite of itself, the engineering community was inexorably moving toward an adversarial stance vis-a-vis the inherited social hierarchy. The VDI's new policy began to take shape in 1884, when two local chapters proposed to back the Realgymnasium and to reject both the classical Gymnasium and the Oberrealschule as inadequate. 50 When the VDI's executive council discussed this proposal in August of 1885, the Oberrealschule found strong defenders. Grashof, converted to nonclassical education, 46 See Chapter 4, section 5, in this volume. 47 Friedrich Paulsen, German Education: Past and Present (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912), 207; Wilhelm Krumme, "Ueber die durch den Besuch hoherer Schulen zu erwerbenden Berechtigungen," VDIZ (1885):94l-5. 48 James C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton University Press, 1983), 158-60, 166, 191, 195, 202, 205. 49 VDIZ(1881):338. 50 VDIZ (1884):646-7.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

145

recommended against acceptance of the proposals and convinced the meeting that the engineering society should develop its own master plan for all aspects of German education. 51 The educational commission charged with drafting the master plan was headed by Theodor Peters, who decided to deal with secondary education first. Completed in March of 1886, the report recommended a complete restructuring of all secondary schools preparing for higher education. Instead of the Gymnasium, the Realgymnasium, and the Oberrealschule, the commission proposed a uniform school for all students in the first six years (counting from age nine or ten). This stage would have no classical languages and would be demarcated from the final three years by the right of one-year voluntary military service. At that point, where the vast majority of students who had not dropped out earlier left school anyway, the system would fork into a classical direction and a modern direction for the final three years leading to the Abitur.52 The Peters commission proposed to do away with the classics at the first stage because "the arduous memorization involved in the learning of Latin and Greek syntax {does not] provide a special, formal, and ideal 'cultivation' of the mind." 53 In fact, contended the report, it was a "mystery how the subject of Latin instruction - grammar and Roman authors — ennobles." 54 What Latin and Greek did was provide specialized preparatory training for the traditional, learned professions of law, theology, and philology. A general secondary school should not mix such specialized, proto-occupational training with general education, the commission argued, echoing Humboldtian reasoning, though arriving at radically different conclusions. During the first six years the school should give a general education "without special regard for the future occupation." 55 It should offer a curriculum geared to the demands of modern culture, "which is characterized by the enormous progress of the natural sciences and their application in the unfolding of technology and almost boundless links of communication from land to land, across mountains and oceans." This necessarily excluded Latin and Greek grammar but — conveniently — included lots of mathematics and natural science, modern languages, and drawing. 56 51 VDIZ (1885):693; VDIZ (1885):597-9, 642-3, 730-1. 52 Bericht der Schulkommission des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure zur Frage des fiir hd'here wissenschaftlkhe Laufbahnen vorbereitenden Schulunterrichtes, supplement to VDIZ no. 16 of 17 April 1886; Krumme, "Berechtigungen," 943; 50% of students dropped out before reaching the one-year volunteer exemption; 66% of the remainder left after reaching it. 53 "Bericht der Schulkommission," VDI, Bericht der Schulkommission (1886):2. 54 VDIZ (1886):871. 55 "Bericht der Schulkommission," VDI, Bericht der Schulkommission (1886):5. 56 Ibid., 4—6; also see Friedrich Paulsen, "Der Sieg der Einheitsschule oder das Ende des klassischen Gymnasiums," Preussische Jahrbucher (1891):866-75.

146

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

The commission realized that its sweeping proposals had little chance of implementation any time soon. Therefore, it demanded legal equality and equal rights for the Realgymnasium and Oberrealschule with the Gymnasium as a first step. 57 The benefits of equality would be twofold. First, it would remove the unnatural tension between what was best from a social-status point of view and what was optimal from a substantivefunctional perspective. A level field would make possible fair competition between all three schools - a condition that in the eyes of the commission would surely favor modern education. Second, equality would end official sanctioning of the unjust social hierarchy among the higher occupations. To dismantle these invidious distinctions remained one of the VDI's basic objectives: "We declare that the German engineers have the same needs with respect to their general Bildung and wish to be subject to the same standards as the other higher professions."58 The Einheitsschule and, as a preliminary stage, equality of all three secondary schools were needed to combat the prejudice that "the engineer in the eyes of many was — and partly still is — an advanced artisan, neither requiring nor deserving the higher Bildung offered by the Gymnasium. "39 The VDI's executive council and the annual meeting approved the report, with minor modifications, in August of 1886. 60 The recommendations were then routinely submitted to the various state governments. Had it not been for a deadly assault on the Oberrealschule taking place at exactly that juncture, the VDI in all likelihood would have dropped the matter. But on 6 July 1886, Albert Maybach, the Prussian minister of public works, had issued new regulations for admission to the corps of engineers and architects. Starting in 1890, graduates of the Oberrealschule would no longer be entitled to register for the civil-service examination in architecture or civil or mechanical engineering. By a stroke of the pen, the school's only government-career privilege had been eliminated, and the old, invidious distinction between classically educated government engineers and socially inferior engineers in private industry had been brought back.61 Maybach's ruling resulted from the Oberrealschule's inability to gain comparable rights in other civil-service branches, such as mining and forestry, and came after almost eight years of relentless agitation by reactionary civil engineers and architects in the corps. It was also a con57 58 59 60 61

"Bericht der Schulkommission," VDI, Bericht der Schulkommission (1886):6. Ibid. Ibid., 2. VDIZ(1886):825. Adolf Ernst, "Bemerkungen zu den neuen preussischen Vorschriften iiber die Ausbildung und Prufung fiir den Staatsdienst im Maschinenbaufach," VDIZ (1886):723-6; also see "Vorschriften iiber die Ausbildung und Prufung fiir den Staatsdienst im Maschinenbaufach," VDIZ (1886):72835. Also see Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 87.

Crisis and renewal in the VDl, 1877-90

147

sequence of widespread fears of an "academic proletariat" in the 1880s and of efforts to stem the flood of university students, making the new Oberrealschule particularly vulnerable. The Landtag failed to stand up to these pressures, which the Conservatives and the Center Party supported. In March of 1883, Freiherr Wilhelm von Minnigerode, a Junker and reactionary Rittergutsbesitzer from East Prussia, had come to the defense of the civil-service engineers and their conception of professionalism. Considering that they were being swamped with Oberrealschule graduates, Minnigerode said, it was no wonder the corps's engineers were in a state of convulsion. "The major contingent of their new recruits stems from circles that have acquired their education merely at such lowly schools." And it was a natural reaction for the older or better-educated members to "fear a subordinate mentality within the technical civil service in the future." 62 The Center Party's Ludwig Windhorst agreed, arguing that the Oberrealschule "should be abolished" because it "promoted a superficial education." The technical branches of the higher civil service "should only admit such individuals as had their minds sharpened by training in at least one classical language." 63 When the Prussian government explained to the Landtag why it had decided to take away the rights of the Oberrealschule, it pointed out that the only branch of the higher civil service accepting its graduates was the engineering corps. Government engineers took this as a mark of inferiority that they sought to eradicate at all costs. Even if one acknowledged that their "professional consciousness" (Standesbewusstsein) had strong overtones of "professional prejudice" (Standesvorurteil), "such prejudices frequently had to be taken into account, [for] if they had a negative influence on work morale, that would have to be considered undesirable." Hence the need to return to a Latin-based secondary education. Only that could "raise the technical civil service to the higher level it deserves and earn for the Baufuhrer and the Baumeister the ranks of Referendar and Assessor." It was absolutely critical, another defender of the corps's old ways pointed out, "that this feeling of belonging to a profession [Standesgefuhl] and the notion of honor that exist in the occupations with higher education [studirte Stdnde] are retained for this profession [Stand] as well." 64 The VDI's response was immediate. At the executive council meeting of August 1886, Professor Johann Zeman (Stuttgart) pointed out that the new regulations contradicted the new emphasis on substantive professionalism and pragmatic education. "Competition in the world 62 HdA, 1 March 1883, 1058. On the "academic proletariat," see Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University

Press, 1982), 52-72. 63 HdA, 1 March 1883, 1062. 64 VDIZ(1886):384.

148

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a ''practical" profession

market demands of the engineer solid knowledge of English and French, of mathematics and natural science, and therefore he must forgo learning the classical languages in addition to all that." 65 The meeting then passed a motion by Theodor Peters deploring the government's new policy and stating, among other things, that the VDI considered "erroneous" the view that "a general education without Latin is inferior to a so-called humanistic one." The VDI failed to "see how learning Latin in one's youth only to forget it quickly afterward — excepting philologists and theologians — has an enduring and beneficial influence on general Bildung."66 Peters did not rest content with adoption of his motion. During the next two years he placed frequent reports on the issue in the Zeitschrift, consistently criticized the Prussian government's attitude, and became deeply involved in organizing opposition to its reactionary school policy. He established contact with the directors, teachers, and other supporters of the Oberrealschule, helped publicize their petitions to the Landtag demanding to undo Maybach's decree of July 1886, and generally coordinated a rapidly emerging alliance between the wider educational reform movement and the VDI. 67 In early 1887, Peters became one of the founders, as well as the business manager and executive director, of the Society for School Reform, a broadly based educational pressure group that immediately organized a massive petition drive and campaign to influence public opinion, demanding general reform of secondary education along the lines spelled out in the VDI's school report of 1886. Peters's codirector of the Society for School Reform was Dr. Friedrich Lange, publisher of the Tdgliche Rundschau in Berlin. The new organization's board of directors was made up of an elite of engineers, businessmen, liberal politicians, and educators. It included Grashof, Alfred Krupp, Professor Carl Bach (Stuttgart), Friedrich Euler, one of the VDI's original founders and a four-time chairman, the noted armaments manufacturer and engineer Hermann Gruson, and the Brandenburg mayor Reuscher, as well as a host of other luminaries and a large number of politicians from various political parties. 68 In early 1888, the educational reform movement submitted a long memorandum detailing its position to Gustav von Gossler, the Prussian minister of culture. It followed this up with a petition to Bismarck on 30 September 1888 that carried 22,409 signatures. Some 4,000 notable businessmen had signed, as well as about 2,500 senior and managing engineers, 2,300 teachers, directors, and rectors of secondary schools, 65 66 61 68

VDIZ (1886):826. Ibid., 825-6, 875. VDIZ (1887):210, 381-4, 401-2, 423-4, 444, 668, 811, 857. Mitteilungen des Vereins fur Schulreform 1 (1889): 1—3. On the school reform movement, see Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 158ff.

Crisis and renewal in the VDl, 1877-90

149

2,000 factory owners and entrepreneurs, 1,500 physicians, 1,100 middlegrade civil servants, 750 higher civil servants in the administrative and legal branches and about 700 higher civil servants in the technical branches, over 500 university and technische Hochschule professors, and, in smaller numbers, a wide variety of other occupational groups as well as numerous organizations like chambers of commerce, city governments, and local trade associations.69 In October of 1888, Gossler reluctantly received a delegation from the Society for School Reform. The minister enumerated the difficulties that implementation of the plan for a uniform six-year curriculum entailed, but faced with the evidence of broad-based discontent from the German establishment, he took a conciliatory stance. 70 Soon afterward, however, he made clear his continued opposition to reform. The Prussian government's resistance to school reform was defeated only because of the attitude of William II, who largely for personal reasons disliked the classical Gymnasium. Overcrowding in the traditional professions and fears of political radicalization by the "academic proletariat" and by discontented Gymnasium graduates played roles as well. To counter such dangers, the new kaiser favored modern education and technical and vocational training instead. He played a crucial role in convening the school conferences of 1890 and 1900 and the corresponding reform decrees of 1892 and 1901. 71 The first of these returned to the Oberrealschule the right of admission to the engineering corps. In addition, it granted this school all the rights the Realgymnasium already possessed. Under attack in 1890, the latter school gained no new rights, but Latin at the classical Gymnasium was curtailed. German language, natural science, and mathematics, on the other hand, were expanded. The Gymnasium's privileged legal position vis-a-vis the two other schools was maintained in 1892, but the reform decrees of 1901 abrogated its monopoly, placing all three secondary schools on an equal footing with respect to legal rights and admissions.72 69 VDIZ (1888):945-7; Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics, 104-5. 70 VDIZ(1888):975-6. 71 School reform succeeded because of the paradoxical combination of powerful emancipatory and progressive impulses, concern about German economic competitiveness, and conservative fears of a radicalized academic proletariat of Gymnasium and university graduates (whose excess numbers were to be reduced by diversion into productive technical or business careers). Clear evidence of this convergence of motives: Bismarck to William II, 16 March 1890, in ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 22307, Bl. 173-9; Wilhelm Beumer, "Die Berechtigungsfrage vom sozialen Standpunkte aus," VDIZ (1896):508-13. See also Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 17Iff.; Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics, 58-61, 70, 74, 100-9; Hartmut Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern im 19- und 20. Jahrhundert," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 1 (1984): 115-16. 72 Paulsen, German Education, 206—32; Rudolf Hoffmann, "Geschichte des Realschulwesens in Deutschland," in Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit, 2nd ed., ed. K. A.

Schmid (Berlin: J. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1901), vol. 5, 1-106.

150

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

The effect of the reforms on the numerical proportions among Oberrealschule, Realgymnasium,

and Gymnasium was immediate. T h e Oberreal-

schule, which had grown in number from twelve to just under thirty between 1882 and 1899, increased from thirty to eighty-five between 1900 and 1910 (183 percent). During this same ten-year period, the Realgymnasium went from 80 to 152 (90 percent). The Gymnasium grew only a little, from 310 in 1900 to 342 in 1910 (10 percent). 73 Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, a substantial part of the VDI's secondary school program of 1886 had in fact been achieved. At least on paper, one of the most fundamental barriers in the social and occupational structure had been broken. In practice, the victory was considerably more ambiguous. Nominal equality for the "nonclassical party" did not change inherited values and social prejudices overnight. On the contrary, intellectual and social contempt for modern education easily survived the legal adjustments of 1892 and 1901, the latter being a result of efforts to preserve the elitist nature of classical secondary education as much as it was a concession to demands for its dismantling. 74 In conjunction with other developments, this further complicated the engineers' integration into the established professions. 6.

TRENDS IN HIGHER TECHNICAL EDUCATION AFTER 1879

Around 1880, the major complaints about graduates from the technische Hochschulen centered on their lack of practical skills, their "unbelievable difficulties" in industry, and their "tendency, implanted by the schools, toward idle reflection." It was widely acknowledged that the young en73 Enrollment patterns also shifted decisively in favor of the Oberrealschule: Detlef Miiller and Bernd Zymek, Sozialgeschkhte und Statistik des Schulsystems in den Staaten des Deutschen Reiches, 1800—1945 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 1987), 53, 55; James C. Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 287—91; idem, "Systematisation: A Critique," in The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Chance and Social Reproduction 1870-1920, ed. Detlef K. Muller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 214. Proportional enrollments in Prussian secondary schools Year

Gymnasium

Realgymnasium

Oberrealschule

Other*

1882 1899 1910 1914

59% 54% 45% 42%

20% 14% 20% 23%

3% 8% 16% 18%

17% 16% 16% 17%

"Other: Progymnasium, Realprogymnasium, Realschule, hb'here Burgerschule. 74 Albisetti, Secondary School Reform, 87-98, 310-13. idem, "Systematisation: A Critique," 214, Detlef K. Muller, "The Process of Systematisation: The Case of German Secondary Education," 39—51, and Fritz Ringer, "On Segmentation in Modern European Educational Systems: The Case of French Secondary Education, 1865-1920," 64-68, all in The Rise of the Modern Educational System; Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics, 100-9.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

151

gineers lacked powers of "observation" and "appreciation of the importance of individual details." 75 These shortcomings were blamed in part on the scholarly inclinations of the professorate. In part they were also attributed to the absence of required practical training for engineering students. Shop training, customary at most poly technical schools until the 1860s, had been abandoned during the next two decades because it did not accord well with efforts to upgrade these institutes to academic status. 76 The problem was aggravated by the absence of effective patent protection before 1877, which made the engineering industrialists reluctant to take in engineering students as apprentices. There was widespread fear of industrial espionage and of losing secret designs, production methods, or technical processes on which competitive advantage depended. In this climate, which improved only after passage of the Patent Law in 1877, there was little room for student apprentices. 77 By the late 1870s, however, the most "rational training of the engineer for his occupation" had become "a question that very much [concerned] the interested circles." 78 Plans surfaced from several sides to reintroduce compulsory shop training for engineering students. As early as 1874, Professor Hermann Ludewig in Munich had drawn attention to the great benefits that were being derived from special instructional workshops connected with certain higher technical institutes abroad.79 Prior to 1878—9, Ludewig's pleas went unheard, but when the tide began to turn in the VDI, his ideas quickly gained currency. From 1879 to 1884, the VDI's educational policy concentrated largely on the question of shop training for engineering students at the technische Hochschulen. In August of 1879 the issue first appeared on the agenda of the annual meeting. A commission, chaired by Ludewig, began studying the problem. Owing to internal differences, it took the Ludewig commission almost five years to come up with its report. 80 But in 1884, after some 75 VDIZ (1874):315; VDIW (1879):46; also see Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), 145; Hans-Joachim Braun, "Methodenprobleme der Ingenieurwissenschaft, 1850 bis 1900," Technikgeschichte 44 (1977):5-10; August Hertwig, Der geistige Wandel der technischen Hochschulen in den letzten 100 Jahren und ihre Zukunft

(Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1950), 10-11. More recently, see Wolfgang Konig, "Wissenschaft und Praxis: Schliisselkategorien fur die Entwicklung des deutschen technischen Ausbildungssystems," Mitteilungen der Technischen Universitdt Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig 20, 2( 1985):30—

6, and the literature cited there. 76 Hermann Ludewig, in VDIW (1879):313-14. 77 Hermann Wedding, "Mitteilungen iiber die technische Erziehung in Nord-Amerika," VVBG 56 (1877):528—9- Also see Alois Riedler, Zur Frage der Ingenieur-Erziehung (Berlin: Leonhard Simion, 1895), 9-11. 78 Ludewig, in VDIW (1879):312. 79 Hermann Ludewig, "Das technische Unterrichtswesen auf der Weltausstellung in Wien, 1873, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung des maschinentechnischen Unterrichtes," VDIZ (1874): 1-8, 155-68, 265-78, 481-94, 534-56; VDIZ (1874):309-19. 80 VDIW (1879):412; VDIW (1880):354-5; VDIW (1881):349-51; VDIW (1882).286-7, 305-

152

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

of the most serious disagreements had been resolved, the VDI finally passed a resolution on the matter. It decided that a one-year period of "shop training for engineering students is absolutely necessary," to be held in a regular machine shop prior to admission to the technische Hochschule*1 Although the VDI was powerless to make the technische Hochschulen adopt its position, it could and did submit the shop-training resolution to the various state governments. Beyond that it had to rely on the moral authority of its opinion in engineering circles.82 The latter was considerable. In 1886 the technische Hochschule in Stuttgart became the first to require evidence of a "practical year" for admission to the preliminary examinations. In subsequent years, the other higher technical institutes gradually followed Stuttgart's example, and beginning in January of 1887 the Prussian government made admission to the Baumeister examination in mechanical engineering conditional on a practical year prior to enr o l l m e n t i n t h e technische Hochschule.,85 Industrial requirements influenced the curriculum at the technische Hochschulen in other ways as well. A more empirical and experimental concept of scientific research and more pragmatic teaching methods began making inroads into the excessively abstract approach of teachers like Zeuner, Grashof, and Reuleaux.84 Typically, the pertinent historical literature places this change in the 1890s. The reorientation in mechanical engineering education toward a greater concern for application, research laboratories, and experimentation usually is associated with Alois Riedler, professor of mechanical engineering at the technische Hochschule in Berlin since 1888. Riedler was indeed instrumental in the wholesale adoption of mechanical engineering research and teaching laboratories by the technische Hochschulen after 1895. 85 Karl-Heinz Manegold writes that only after the Germans discovered the advantages of American technical education at the time of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 did they "come to the realization that for the mechanical engineering departments, too, . . . teaching by way of experiments was indispensable." According to Ma-

81 82 83

84 85

6; VDIW (1884):758-9. For opposition by the technische Hochschulen, see VDIW (188O):355, 287-9; VDIW (1881):350; VDIW (1882):306; VDIW (1879):46; VDIW (1881): 178, 425-6; VDIW (1879):46; VDIW (1881):425-6; VDIW (1884):771. VDIZ(1884):758-9. Ibid., 885. Wilhelm Lexis, ed., Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1904), vol. 4, 253; Deutscher Ausschuss fur technisches Schulwesen, Abhandlungen undBerichtetibertechnisches Schulwesen, vol. 4: Berichte aus dem Gebiete des technischen Hochschulwesens (Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1912), appendix 6; also see VDIZ (1887): 104. Chronik der Kdniglichen Technischen Hochschule zu Berlin 1799-1899 (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1899), 182-3. See the literature cited in note 75.

Crisis and renewal in the VDl, 1877-90

153

negold, the changes of the mid-1890s "initiated a new and decisive period in the history of the [technische] Hochschulen."*6

It is true that the major leap occurred only after 1895. It came after the VDI, inspired by Riedler and several others, passed a highly influential and widely supported resolution calling for large-scale laboratories and laboratory instruction at the 1895 annual meeting in Aachen. Soon afterward, the various state governments began funding engineering laboratories, research institutes, and the like on a massive scale. But the quantitative breakthrough of the mid-1890s cannot obscure the fact that the fundamental reorientation originated in the late 1870s and early 1880s as part of the general shake-up of the engineering community then going on. The professors' "avoidance of all that was empirical" increasingly came under fire in the late 1870s, not just from practicing engineers but also from within the technische Hochschulen themselves.87 As Professor Riedler wrote in a 1904 review of the development of mechanical engineering education, "only by the end of the Seventies was the right path embarked upon - the path of research, of experimentation with the machines themselves and of scientific analysis of the research findings."88 The change, which had important consequences for the social history of the engineering profession, cannot be discussed here in any detail. But it is important to summarize two of its major aspects: (1) de-emphasis of calculus in favor of less precise but much more pragmatic graphic methods and (2) the adoption of laboratories for research and training in conjunction with a tremendous expansion of drafting instruction. As early as 1884, Professor Gustav Herrmann in Aachen launched an attack on the absurdity of routinely using unnecessarily difficult techniques like calculus for all problems. He pointed out how much more readily the vast majority of engineers grasped the same kinds of concepts if they were approached graphically. "The most abstruse formulas of hitherto customary turbine theory," for example, could "be dispensed with entirely" if a "simple diagram" was used. Herrmann argued that the "graphic method" was an "excellent device, incomparable with respect to clarity but one that is not yet appreciated nearly enough at the technical schools and therefore does not serve the practical engineer as much as it might." 89 In 1899, Professor Georg Meyer, a specialist in railroad machinery, made the same point in his survey of the development of the Mechanical 86 87 88 89

Manegold, Universitdt, \Al. Quoted in Manegold, Universitdt, 145. Lexis, Unterrichtswesen, vol 4, 132. VVBG 63 (1884):307-98; VDIZ (1884):887, 925; also see M. Schroter, "Methode der graphischen Behandlung mehrcylindriger Dampfmaschinen," VDIZ (1884): 19 Iff.

154

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Engineering Department in Berlin after 1880. "In view of the extraordinary expansion of the material to be taught," Meyer wrote, "much room had to be given to graphic methods. Speaking in general, development of the least complicated and most versatile methods of instruction had to be pursued while in the past the analytic method alone had stood in the foreground."90 Such sentiments soon multiplied, developing into what became known at the movement of "anti-mathematicians," in which influential engineering professors such as Alois Riedler, Adolf Ernst, and Aurel Stodola played a leading role. 91 The result was a revolutionary increase in the use of graphic methods of instruction, indicator and vector diagrams, probability and statistical techniques. The turn to empirical research, experimentation, and testing in mechanical engineering laboratories can also be traced to the late 1870s and early 1880s. To correct the mistaken notion that teaching laboratories for mechanical engineers were a fundamental innovation of the mid-1890s, Professor Riedler pointed out in 1895 that they were "not new." 92 The use of laboratories and experimentation originated in the late 1870s, when materials testing became important for industrial purposes. 93 Testing machine components for hardness, strength, elasticity, ductility, torsional resistance, and resilience became necessary for several reasons. The many innovations in iron and steel technology in those years continued to yield an array of potential applications and new construction materials. Before these could find commercial application, their qualities had to be clearly known. Materials testing was needed for another reason as well: to dispel a widespread prejudice on the part of German iron and steel consumers that imported steel was superior to German steel - an attitude that hindered the efforts of steel producers to expand or keep alive the domestic market for their products in the economic downturn of the 1870s. 94 In addition to these pressures for a more experimental approach, the example of American technical education in the 1870s helped focus the attention of German engineering educators on the advantages of research laboratories. In 1877, Hermann Wedding, the Prussian government's highest official for mining and metallurgy and an instructor at the Berlin Mining Academy, published a long article: "Technical Education in North America." 95 Visiting the United States on the occasion of the Philadelphia exhibit in 1876, Wedding had studied technical institutes on the East Coast, such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts Institute 90 91 92 93 94 95

Chronik, 182. Konig, "Wissenschaft und Praxis," 33—4. Riedler, Zur Frage, 4. Chronik, 267. HA/GHH, Nr. 3001072/0-3001072/2a. VVBG 56 (1877):528-48.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

155

of Technology, and Stevens Institute of Technology. Singling out Stevens, Wedding was most impressed with its physics laboratories and above all its large and well-equipped mechanical laboratory, "in which the students get to know the construction materials by way of experiments." He especially liked the fact that students had the "opportunity to participate in the experiments on steam engines, boilers, and other operations that occur in practical life." 96 Nothing like it existed anywhere in Germany, and Wedding immediately grasped the crucial significance of the laboratory, and all such laboratories, namely, that they were "the connecting link between science and industrial practice that had been missing until then." 97 German steelmen were much impressed by Wedding's report and recommended the establishment of a similar institution in Germany. 98 Shortly afterward, materials-testing laboratories took hold in Germany. At the same time, preexisting rudimentary operations of this kind began to be upgraded. The oldest materials-testing laboratory dated from 1868 and existed at the technische Hochschule in Munich. Run by Professor Johann Bauschinger, the small but influential Munich laboratory became a model for the development of other materials-testing laboratories connected to the technische Hochschulen." In 1877, the small Mechanical-Technical Experimental Station in Berlin was expanded, given increased funding, and integrated into the technische Hochschule, to become that institution's first semiautonomous research institute. 100 In 1881, Professor Carl Bach set up a materials-testing laboratory in Stuttgart. 101 The other technical institutes soon followed these examples. In a next phase, mechanical laboratories began to be used for instructional purposes as well. To some extent an extension of the materialstesting work for industry and government, this development was also inspired by the example of chemistry, which had long been based on the experimental laboratory method, and electrical engineering. Owing to the efforts of Werner Siemens and Professor Adolf Slaby, electrical laboratories emerged after 1882 at the technische Hochschulen, where they typically came under the jurisdiction of the mechanical engineering departments. 102 As early as 1875, Professor Carl Linde in Munich established 96 Ibid., 532. 97 Ibid., 536; Monte Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830—1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967). 98 V D I Z ( 1 8 7 6 ) : 3 8 1 - 3 , 6 5 1 - 6 . 99 On Bauschinger's laboratory and role, see VDIZ (1874):224; August Foppl, Lebenserinnerungen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1925), 134-8; Lexis, Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 230; Chronik, 267. 100 Entstehung und Entwicklung der Kbniglichen Technischen Hochschule Berlin (Berlin: 1914), 31—2; Lexis, Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 183; Chronik, 267. 101 VDIZ (1931): 1546. 102 Emil Hartig, "Besprechung iiber Nutzen und Einrichtung von Laboratorien und Versuchsanstalten fur mechanische Technik an den technischen Hochschulen," VVBG 63 (1884):90-104; Lexis, Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 142, 230, 252, 280.

156

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

a laboratory for theoretical mechanical engineering, used from the outset for teaching as well. 103 In 1879, Professor Ernst Hartig set up a small teaching laboratory for industrial and mechanical engineering students in Dresden. In a talk to the Verein zur Beforderung des Gewerbfleisses in 1884, Hartig urged mechanical engineering professors elsewhere in Germany to follow his example. 104 In 1882 and 1883, engineer A. Martens, director of Berlin's Mechanical-Technical Experimental Station after 1885, issued similar calls for expanding the functions of the testing laboratories to include teaching. 105 In 1892, the Berlin materials-testing laboratory opened its doors to students. 106 Shortly afterward came Riedler's address on mechanical engineering laboratories and then the wholesale adoption of his program. The new laboratories not only exposed all students to extensive practical training but also permanently transformed mechanical engineering education. From a stepchild of the natural sciences it matured into an autonomous professional discipline with its own particular subject matter and methodology. The fundamental principles of its method were model building, scientific experimentation, and measurement. 107 Closely related to the new trend was a heavy emphasis on drafting and design. Once again Riedler was instrumental in bringing about the change. Students were made to spend long hours in the drafting rooms of the technische Hochschulen, learning how to become practical designers and do the work of ordinary draftsmen, in order to develop their powers of spatial conceptualization and shed erroneous notions about the easy road to success through technical education. 108 The cumulative impact of all the changes showed perhaps most dramatically in the shifting distribution between lectures and classroom hours on one hand and applied and laboratory training (including drafting and design exercises) on the other. In Berlin, laboratory and drafting hours went from roughly 35 percent of the total time devoted to instruction in 1881-2 to 45 percent in 1886-7, 48 percent in 1888-9 and 1895-6, and over 70 percent in 1898-9. 109 The result of all these innovations, accompanied by steady expansion of the technische Hochschulen and dramatic growth in their enrollments, was that by the second half of the 1890s, mechanical engineering education had radically transformed itself. It produced large numbers of graduates 103 104 105 106 107

Lexis, Unterrichtswesen, vol. 4, 230; Riedler, Zur Frage, 4. VVBG 63 (1884):90-104; reprinted in VDIZ (1884):490-2. GA 12 (1883):95-6. Chronik, 184. Konig, "Wissenschaft und Praxis," 33-5; Manegold, Universitdt, Techniscbe Hochschule und Industrie, 144-56. 108 Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie, 144-56; see also Braun, "Methodenprobleme," passim; August Hertwig, Der geistige Wandel, 11-17. 109 Chronik, table following 182.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

157

who were much more specialized, more practical, and, if they could find the right job, more quickly usable in industry than earlier generations of engineers. Judging by Germany's rapid technological progress, by its surging industrialization, and by its engineering triumphs in the quartercentury before World War I, the new orientation was an unqualified success from an economic point of view. Socially the results were not so good. On the eve of World War I the vast majority of engineers had turned into an embittered and fragmented lot, marked by internecine warfare, deep frustration, and double-edged resentment of the big industrialists and Germany's older, ''cultivated," professional elites. The reasons for this state of affairs will become apparent in the chapters that follow. But the fanatical emphasis on practical utility and extreme specialization at the technische Hochschulen after 1880 was a major contributor to the crisis. It was not that the new trend in engineering education interrupted the academization process of the technische Hochschulen. On the contrary, these schools continued to evolve into ever more formidable institutions — a development that culminated in 1899 when William II granted them the right to confer academic degrees the nominal equivalent of university degrees. The same Professor Riedler who had been one of the foremost critics of the older abstract-theoretical trend in engineering education played a key role in organizing this victory for the technische Hochschulen.110 But in conjunction with the gospel of practical usefulness, constant drafting practice, and early specialization, the official recognition granted the institutes and their graduates did present a problem. Higher technical education began to produce large quantities of "narrow specialists." Precisely such engineers, however, were also supplied in ever growing numbers by a new system of nonacademic, intermediate engineering schools that emerged in the 1890s. The result, wrote one commentator in 1950, was that "for all practical purposes the difference between graduates of nonacademic technical schools and the technische Hochschulen disappeared, which led to unfortunate competition." 111 Though an oversimplification, as well as an understatement, that observation was essentially correct. The nonacademic engineering schools that sprang up in the 1880s and 1890s had none of the trappings of professionalism of the technische Hochschulen, but they produced a species of engineer eminently usable in industry and qualified for many of the same positions that the graduates of the higher technical institutes hoped to 110 Manegold, Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie, 249—305; also see Wolfgang Konig, "Die Ingenieure und der VDI als Grossverein in der wilhelminischen Gesellschaft 1900 bis 1918," in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856— 1981, ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981), 235-87. 111 Hertwig, Der getstige Wandel, 14.

158

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

reserve for themselves. In other words, the actual technical skills of engineers trained at the technische Hochschulen were not all that different from those of their nonacademic colleagues. The heavy emphasis on practical training and early specialization was largely responsible for this. It had been achieved at the cost of students' reduced command of the fundamentals of mathematics, mechanics, physics, and chemistry - that is, precisely that intellectual versatility and depth that would have qualified them for the most creative tasks, made for a more profound distinction from the vocational engineers, and thereby better sustained their claims of professional standing. The militant espousal of nonclassical secondary education only made matters worse. In light of these observations, one can agree with the following assessment of the state of engineering education on the eve of World War I. Its author was a certain Friedrich Bendemann, who held one of the recently created doctorates in mechanical engineering. In 1907, Bendemann noted that ever since the 1880s, "we have had a particularly strong emphasis on the practical direction at our Hochschule [Berlin], and in the beginning that was good." The new orientation had been a much needed corrective to the days "when it was said of the technische Hochschulen that their graduates had too much impractical theory and school wisdom in their heads." Unfortunately, the current trend had gone too far, said Bendemann, for "all human developments come in cycles, going from one extreme to the other. . . . Today it must be concluded that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction." The result was that the distinction between the higher technical institutes and the nonacademic engineering schools had "become blurred" and that the engineering industrialists did "not value the young engineers from the technische Hochschulen all that much more than the graduates from trade schools." The only remedy was once again "greater emphasis on theoretical training at our technische Hochschulen."112

The picture that emerges from Bendemann's observations is one of a cyclical pattern in nineteenth-century German engineering education: two large, diametrically opposed trends, driven partly by exogenous factors and partly by their own dialectic. In the first swing from the 1820s to the mid-1870s, a socially motivated drive for professional standing had been accompanied by the progressive dismantling of technical education below the level of the upwardly mobile poly technical schools. The result was the emergence of the technische Hochschulen and the disappearance of applied training and schools such as Prussia's Provincial Trade Schools. During the second swing, a countertrend from the late 1870s to 1914, academically educated engineers with a strongly practical bent emerged. 112 VDIZ(1908):711.

Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877-90

159

This development was complemented by the rebuilding of a whole new system of nonacademic technical schools, designed to suit the requirements of a rapidly expanding, bureaucratizing, and differentiating industrial sector, as well as to mitigate the socially destabilizing consequences of industrialization among the lower classes. Whereas the first part of this cycle had been fueled by status ambitions, which then caused their own backlash from the profession's entrepreneurial segment, the second trend was propelled by concern with industrial competitiveness and substantive expertise, which in turn would provoke a socially inspired reaction. The reason for this second backlash was not that academically trained engineers of the years before 1914 viewed themselves as too practical or not professional enough, but that the practical orientation at the technische Hochschulen evolved in tandem with the reestablishment of a system of nonacademic technical schools. The latter soon advanced social and intellectual ambitions of their own. The result was that the two educational paths converged, and no clear functional or even social distinction between academically trained engineers and nonacademic engineers could be drawn. This development and its ramifications for German society as a whole are investigated next.

7 The rebirth of nonacademic engineering education, 1879-1901

In spite of the turn to applied science and practical engineering, the organization of the technische Hochschulen after 1879 all but made inevitable the reestablishment of simpler schools for the masses of rank-and-file engineers. Industry could not possibly fill its rapidly growing number of positions with engineers who had the Abitur and a four-year higher technical education. Contemporaries recognized this fact - and the consequent inevitability of two distinct categories of engineers. At the time, no one thought this would cause problems. Quite the contrary, Grashof and others reckoned that it could only improve the social position and careers of academically trained engineers. All the less desirable and routine functions would go to nonacademic engineers, permitting the engineers from the technische Hochschule to concentrate on the more prestigious tasks. In fact, the opposite happened. The nonacademic engineering schools, established in part to remedy the ravages of the Industrial Revolution among the lower classes and to stabilize the social order at the point where it seemed to need shoring up most, eventually gave rise to indiscriminate intermingling of the two categories of engineers. The consequence was fierce competition, internecine warfare, resentment of all those who could remotely be blamed for this state of affairs, and a major career crisis in the engineering profession. In other words, the nonacademic engineering schools may have contributed to industrial success and to the integration of the working class into German society, thereby reducing the threat of revolution from the left. But this achievement was bought at the price of dislocation and chaos higher up the social scale. There it contributed to the formation of attitudes that eventually proved to be far more destabilizing. 1 1 For a related discussion of the problem of the relationship between supply and demand of educated personnel, and some of its unintended consequences, see Hartmut Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern im 19- und 20. Jahrhundert," Gescbichte und Gesellschaft 10, 1( 1984):93—121 (especially 120); idem, "Enrollment Expansion and Academic Overcrowding in

160

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879-1901

161

It is difficult to say how this development could have been avoided, given the evolution of technical education since the 1820s. It is clear, however, that the timing and circumstances of nonacademic engineering education's rebirth exacerbated the problem, as did the power struggle between the VDI and the Prussian government over control of the new schools. 1. STAGNATION (1879-80) AND RENEWAL (1890-1914)

When the Industrial Institute became the technische Hochschule and the Provincial Trade Schools became Oberrealschulen, nonacademic engineering education disappeared in Prussia. Of the nineteen "Reorganized Trade Schools" (model 1870) and the eight Provincial Trade Schools (model 1850) surviving in 1877, only fourteen remained in 1890. Six of these had become nine-year Oberrealschulen in 1878-9; the remaining eight became lower, six-year Realschulen. None was therefore a technical school any longer, though in some cases vestiges of their former selves remained in the form of special courses — so-called Fachklassen, a four-semester program of mechanical instruction associated with the general school. With combined enrollments of a mere 198 students in 1890, such courses existed in Gleiwitz, Breslau, Barmen, Aachen, and Hagen. 2 There were also two small municipal schools for foremen and technicians in Bochum and Cologne, a moribund technical school in the rural town of Einbeck, and two neglected artisan schools for cutlery and bronze work in Remscheid and Iserlohn. The total number of students at these five schools was about 400 in 1890. 3 This nadir of nonacademic technical education in Prussia came at a time when demand for skilled technicians was about to take off. Employment and career opportunities for engineers of all kinds would surge during the 1880s and grow by leaps and bounds until the early 1900s. The size of this demand is difficult to gauge, but it is generally agreed that between 1880 and 1914 the labor market for nonacademic engineers and technicians was at least three times that for academically trained engineers.4 In 1890, combined enrollments at Prussia's three technische Germany," in The Transformation ofHigher Learning 1860-1930, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (University of Chicago Press, 1983), 57-88; idem, "Ueberfiillungskrisen in akademischen Karrieren: Eine Zyklustheorie," Zeitschriftfur Pddagogik 27 (1981): 187—224. Unfortunately, Titze ignores technical education and technical careers. 2 DS(1891):73, Bl. 91. 3 Ibid., 22-8. 4 Ratios mentioned by contemporaries varied from 2 : 1 to 5 : 1 in technologically advanced shops, and from 7 : 1 to 10 : 1 in less sophisticated shops: 2 : 1 in MHG, Das technische Unterrichtswesen in Preussen: Sammlung amtlicher Aktenstucke des Handelsministeriums sowie der bezuglichen Berichte und

Verhandlungen des Landtages aus 1878/79 (Berlin: Oswald Seehagen, 1879), 21; 2 : 1 in VERH. (1898):6, Bl. 44; 3 : 1 in VDIZ (1898): 1198-9; 2.8-4. 2 : 1 in Reinhold Jaeckel, Statistik uber

162

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Hochschulen were 2,546. 5 Assuming that the labor market's demand was equal to the annual output of the four-year technische Hochschulen, one would arrive at roughly 600 academic and 1,800 nonacademic new engineering jobs in 1890, or a need for a system of two-year schools that could accommodate about 3,600 nonacademic engineering students. The actual demand undoubtedly was a multiple of these figures, and the severe shortage of schools for nonacademic engineers showed in the thousands of young Prussians flocking to proprietary technical "colleges" and "academies," such as the Technikum Mittweida, the Polytechnikum Kothen, and the Technikum Hildburghausen.6 Much criticized for their exaggerated claims of achievement, lack of state supervision, open admissions policies, profiteering, and other abuses, the proprietary schools nevertheless became very popular, capitalizing on the neglect of nonacademic engineering education in Germany's largest state. They sprang up mostly in the 1880s and 1890s, tending to locate in the small Thuringian and Saxon states bordering on Prussia. Capable of making a significant contribution to the economy of smaller towns in these jurisdictions, the proprietary schools readily received permission to set up shop. The Prussian bureaucracy generally rejected all such applications. 7 In 1883, Prussia spent about M. 200,000, or 0.6 percent of its annual education budget of almost M. 34 million, on nonacademic technical education. That same year, expenditures for comparable purposes were more than twice as high in Saxony and about the same in Wiirttemberg — amounting in both states to about twelve times the level of per capita spending in Prussia.8 By 1889, spending had edged up to about half a million marks, still far short of the Ministry of Trade's own estimate of the annual cost of maintaining the small and modest program of mechanical instruction it was contemplating at the time. 9 die lage der technischen Privatbeamten in Gross-Berlin (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1908), 3; 5 - 7 - 1 0 : 1 in VDIZ(1908):713. 5 Wilhelm Lexis, Des Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, vol. 4: Die technischen Hochschulen (Berlin:

A. Asher & Co., 1904), 46, 188, 201, 219. Students with Abitur: 1,696; students without Abitur: 850. 6 DS (1896):32, Bl. 56. According to a contemporary estimate, in 1898 there were at least nineteen non-Prussian proprietary engineering schools, with a combined enrollment of 4,000 students; VERH. (1898): 47, Bl. 64. 1 Berlepsch to Miquel, 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120; E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 13. Also see VDIZ (1889):592, 788, 898 for 1888-9 enrollments at Hildburghausen (300) and Mittweida (800—900); also see Gustav Griiner, Die Enttvicklung der hb'heren technischen Fachschulen

im deutschen Sprachgebeit (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1967) 67, 102-18; Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure, Dem Ziele Entgegen. . . (Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1934), 23—5. 8 HdA (1883): 1069. 9 HdA (1883): 1069, 1071, and DS (1891): 12-13, for spending figures. Estimates of additional funding requirements for 1892-8 can be found in Berlepsch to Miquel, 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 26-7. Also see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, Bl. 238, 52-3 of draft, 1888 report to Frederick III.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

163

The Prussian government's failure to act during the 1880s prompted much criticism. 10 The critics advanced two basic arguments - one social, the other economic. The social argument initially centered on the need to protect and revitalize the artisan class. In the 1880s and 1890s, this group was alternately viewed as threatened by extinction owing to the rise of large-scale industry and as falling prey to the revolutionary agitation of Social Democracy. Technical education would immunize the owners of small shops and craftsmen against either danger, making them competitive under modern conditions of production or providing them with access to lower managerial positions in the factories. In 1883, a certain Dr. Schulz, director of the small municipal school for foremen in Bochum and a member of the Prussian Landtag, put this argument as follows: "we must use all possible means to check the progressive decay of our artisans and make them more capable of defending themselves. I believe that one of the best ways of doing this is to develop the worker's intellectual powers." Schulz thought this could be done by developing the artisan's aesthetic powers or his technical skills. Either choice would "make him master . . . over the machine that is now his merciless despot, [and} both roads pass through the trade school \Fachschule\"xx Cologne city architect J. Stiibben also had social stability in mind when in 1883 he suggested that nonacademic technical schools would be "one of the best ways to eliminate the social troubles felt especially strongly in our small business community [Kleingewerbe] and largely the consequence of inadequate technical competence." 12 Others concentrated on the political advantages of such schools, expecting them to "act as a counterweight to the efforts and covert activities of the opponents of order and social peace." 13 In 1910, when Prussia had acquired an impressive system of nonacademic engineering schools, Trade Minister Sydow restated the social case for such institutions. Though he no longer mentioned the artisan class, Sydow spoke of social peace through social mobility and of progress in the effort to end the class struggle. By supporting this type of education, the government corrected the dislocations caused by industrialization. Because they promoted social stability, nonacademic technical schools performed an important legitimizing function for the regime. 14 Sydow 10 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, passim; HdA resolutions and debates of 1882, 1883, 1885. Newspaper articles and clippings: Vossische Zeitung of 29 December 1882, Berliner Tageblatt of 14 February 1883, Westfdlischer Merkur of 6 April 1883, Dusseldorfer Zeitung

11 12 13 14

of 18 January 1884, Staatsburger Zeitung of 3 February 1884, Frankfurter Zeitung of 10 February 1885. HdA (1883):1069, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, Bl. 15. ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, Bl. 87, 129. Berlin industrialist Kaselowski, VERH. (1891):80-l, Bl. 81. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871-1918 (Leamington Spa, Dover: Berg Publishers,

164

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

credited the technical schools with having "contributed to lowering class tensions" and with having opened the door "for working people trying to raise themselves from humble economic conditions to more promising business opportunities \Erwerbsmoglichkeiteri\" They had "made possible . . . upward mobility to a higher social stratum and thereby also facilitated the latter's replenishment and renewal. . . . Thanks to the workings of the system of lower technical training there is a steady — albeit quiet and unnoticed — ascent from below to better circumstances." 15 The economic argument centered on the dangers of falling behind in international competition. Nonacademic engineering schools would provide the nation with a steady and abundant supply of highly skilled but relatively inexpensive technical personnel, needed to sustain the continued rapid pace of technological innovation on which Germany's success in the world depended. Karl Liiders, head of the government's Bureau of Industrial Education (BIE) and an ardent proponent of more industrial schools, remarked in 1883 that the new schools were needed "to make our industry more competitive on the world market," technical training being one of the "weapons nations wield in their struggle for the world market." 16 Pleading for funds in 1890, Trade Minister Berlepsch described the task of industrial education as helping German industry in "its struggle for the market." 17 In the early 1900s, when nonacademic industrial training was being strongly supported as part of the empire's Weltpolitik, Prussian Finance Minister Rheinbaben reminded William II of the necessity to continue along this path. Germany's ability to retain an edge 1985), 49; idem, "Der Aufstieg des Organisierten Kapitalismus und Interventionsstaates in Deutschland," in Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfdnge, ed. Heinrich August

Winkler (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 197'4), 48—9. Wehler speaks of government intervention in the economy to secure steady economic growth, which he sees as promoting stability and hence legitimacy without essential changes in the social hierarchy. The emphasis here is on education and the intentional promotion of social mobility to maintain stability, which is quite different. 15 Ministry of Trade to William II of 22 March 1910, ZSTA II, 2.2.1, Nr. 3695, Bl. 217-34. Similar concerns motivated the English Schools Inquiry Commission in 1868 to recommend the establishment of "third-grade schools" for the lower middle classes; see Brian Simon, "Systematisation and Segmentation in Education: The Case of England," in The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction 1870—1920, ed. Detlef K. Miiller,

Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 100—1. 16 HdA (1883): 1071. "The need for Technical Middle Schools grows from year to year, because . . . foreign competition forces industry to manufacture its products as inexpensively but also as excellently as possible. This can only be achieved when capable employees for the shops are available. As compared to other countries, for example England and America, the training of our young engineers, who mostly attend the technische Hochschule, is too slow and too expensive. Industry needs a less expensive labor force." Theodor Peters in VERH. (1898):6, Bl. 44. Educational authorities in France made similar arguments at approximately the same time; see Fritz Ringer, "On Segmentation in Modern European Educational Systems: The Case of French Secondary Education, 1865-1920," in The Rise of the Modern Educational System, 61-2. 17 Berlepsch to Miquel, 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, 32, Bl. 21.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

165

over its most dangerous industrial competitors, the United States and Great Britain, was largely the result of the ''extraordinary expenditures we have devoted to the development of our scientific-technological potential in the past few decades, [which] have borne hundredfold fruit indeed." 18 An 1889 study by the VDI contended that nonacademic engineering education was needed because the technische Hochschulen were too timeconsuming and expensive for the vast majority of industrial technicians above the ranks of skilled worker and foreman. The report stated that the technische Hochschule was needed "for only a fraction of the employees of our industry. There is a limit to the number of positions that. . . provide adequate compensation for the material sacrifices of such an extended time of study and schooling." 19 Owing to the lack of special schools for middlelevel personnel, the VDI continued, industry was "these days frequently forced to employ the engineers it received from the technische Hochschulen in positions with mediocre compensation — [positions] for which they are no longer suited in view of their education and their age." This harmed Germany's international competitive position. "Compared to other nations, especially the British and the Americans, . . . this is an expenditure of time and money for average technical requirements that. . . must put us at a permanent disadvantage." If German industry wished to survive in the age of Imperialism it urgently needed less expensive and less timeconsuming, nonacademic, engineering schools: Time and money are considerations no nation can afford to neglect if it wishes to survive in industrial competition. They command [us] to provide also for the training of individuals whose inadequate means force them initially to set their sights on modest goals in life. . . . Prudent frugality commands industry to limit itself with respect to the majority of its personnel [Hilfskrdfte] to a more narrowly circumscribed, specialized occupational training. 20 For more than a decade after 1879, neither the social argument nor the economic argument prompted the Prussian government to act. The reason appears to have been a combination of three factors: financing methods, political considerations, and disagreements among the experts. With respect to finances, the administration of nonacademic technical education in Prussia did not lie with the central government alone, but was shared between Berlin and the municipalities. Joint control was reflected in a 18 ZSTA II, Kultusministerium, Rep. 76, Vb. Sekt. 1, Tit. 1, Nr. 9, Bl. 42. 19 Bericht der Schulkommission des Vereines Deutscher Ingenieure iiber die Einrichtung Technischer Mittelschulen (Berlin: A. W. Schade, 1889), 1-3, 15. 20 Ibid., 4. Concern about an aging student population in the empire was not limited to the engineering elite; see Konrad H . Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberaltsm (Princeton University Press, 1982), 9 1 - 3 .

166

Reorient atton: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

complex joint funding method. 21 A holdover from administrative and political reforms in the early nineteenth century, the matching-fund formula essentially blocked renewal after 1879. It compared unfavorably with the funding of nontechnical schools, which the central government paid in full. The cities were therefore always tempted to establish — or to convert their technical and occupational schools into - general secondary schools. This is precisely what happened to the Provincial Trade Schools after 1879. 22 The matching-fund arrangement was also rapidly becoming outdated in the 1870s. To keep up with industrial developments, technical schools in the 1870s and 1880s had to become more specialized. This meant that increasingly they served only a selective clientele and no longer benefited an entire locality or all branches of industry in a given community. When this happened, the local political consensus on which school financing depended broke down. Without municipal contributions, the government withheld its matching share, and stagnation was the result. As Berlepsch explained to Miquel in 1890: "the city councils refuse the requested subsidies, because there will not be schools for all the different industries represented in the locality, or because a majority of the respective council members have no direct interest in the school and they do not want to increase their own tax burden or that of their fellow citizens." The consequence was that "for the past fourteen years, the demands placed on the municipalities have prevented the founding of mechanical engineering schools [Maschinenbauschuleri] in all the provinces." 23 Why was the prejudicial funding formula retained until 1890 - long after its harmful effects had become obvious and Prussia had fallen far behind other German states? The available evidence does not permit a definitive answer, but the invariably stated reason in government pronouncements on the subject - lack of money - was not true. For more than a decade the government ignored the Landtag's offers of funding for industrial education. On several occasions the minister of finance reprimanded officials in other government agencies for leaking information that in the Staatsministerium he always vetoed the requested funding increases.24 In 1888, Ministry of Finance officials informed their counterparts at the Ministry of Trade that they had explicit instructions to reject almost all funding requests for technical schools, "not because there was no money, but because already enough was being done for industrial edu21 Details in DS (1891):66-87, Bl. 88-98: ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 5-33- Also see Berlepsch memorandum of 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, 28, Bl. 19. 22 Cf. Section 1 of this chapter; also see DS (1891):73. 23 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, 36, 39, Bl. 24; also see DS (1891): 16. 24 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 3, Bl. 2 - 1 0 .

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

167

cation." 25 Because in truth nothing was being done, one may infer that political considerations were part of the explanation. Perhaps officials like Bismarck and his finance minister, Adolf von Scholz, were unable or unwilling to distinguish between higher technical education — the technische Hochschulen were adequately funded — and nonacademic, or vocational, technical training. Perhaps Prussia's top leaders perceived a broad-based system of nonacademic engineering education as a threat to the conservative-agrarian social order they were still seeking to uphold. 26 Perhaps their concerns about the overcrowding in other educational areas and about "educational inflation" in general made them unwilling to establish yet more schools — especially so when enrollments at the technische Hochschulen during the 1880s remained well below their peak of 1875—6. 27 More overt party-political motives may also have played a role. Nonacademic technical education in the 1880s was primarily a cause of liberals and progressives, who promoted it at least partially in the hope of retaining the artisanal and lower middle classes as their constituency. The government's blockage of funding may have been intended to deprive liberalism of its traditional socioeconomic base, which in fact it started losing during this period. 28 A final reason for the failure to develop nonacademic engineering schools in the 1880s was disagreement among the experts. 29 No one knew whether such schools should be tailored to the needs of the leading modern sectors of the economy, such as iron, steel, and the engineering industries, or to the needs of its more traditional branches in small business and the artisanal trades. Debate centered on two problems: how to fill the gap left by the government's elimination of the Provincial Trade Schools, and whether or not the Fachklassen attached to the (Ober)realschulen served any 25 Ibid., vol. 2, 28, Bl. 1926 This favors interpretations that continue to insist on a major discontinuity in 1890. Prior to Bismarck's departure, the state on balance still discouraged the pressures for imperialism, as well as the attendant faith in the miracle-cure powers of unleashing society's economically most advanced industrial and technological sectors. 27 Titze, "Enrollment Expansion," 78-9. Detlef K. Muller, "The Process of Systematization: The Case of German Secondary Education," in The Rise of the Modern Educational System, 38. On the other hand, precisely the establishment of nonacademic engineering schools might have served as a safety valve for overcrowding and the lower grades' "ballast" in the Gymnasia, which was the conclusion Bismarck belatedly reached in 1890. For enrollment figures, see Appendix Table 3. 28 On the problems of liberalism during this period, see Shulamit Volkov, The Rise of Popular Antimodernism in Germany: The Urban Master Artisans, 1873-1896 (Princeton University Press, 1978), 172-265; Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 19-40; Dan S. White, The Splintered Party: National Liberalism in Hessen and the Reich, 1867—1918 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1978), 181-238. 29 HdA (1883):1074; DS (1891):28, 67, 71-7; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, 126-33, Bl. 88; DS (1896):82-3, Bl. 82.

168

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

useful purpose. Requiring the one-year volunteer exemption for admission, these trade courses were intended to provide technical education for those segments of the Mittelstand who did not want, or could not afford, to go to the technische Hochschule but needed enough technical knowledge to manage their own businesses. In a speech to the Landtag in March of 1883, Bochum representative Dr. Schulz, self-appointed spokesman for the educational interests of the Ruhr industries, attacked the Facbklassen. Schulz accused them of being "incubators of intellectual superficiality [Brutstdtten der Halbbildung]," bringing into the world "second-class engineers" who are "neither real [academic] engineers nor real foremen, because they lack the knowledge of the engineer and the know-how of the foreman." Needed instead, according to Schulz, were schools for foremen. Admission would be dependent only on Volksschule and an extended period of practical experience. The curriculum would be aimed at mastering basic (mechanical) engineering tasks on the shop floor and in the office. Karl Liiders and Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig of the BIE defended the Fachklassen. Prussia needed not the two-tier system of technical education for academic engineers and foremen advocated by Schulz, but a three-tier system that would also consider the needs of the "small manufacturers, the intermediate businessmen, and the artisans," who wanted their sons to "acquire a basic survey of a trade, sufficient to enable them later to supervise the workers in their business and to be their own managers." 30 In 1882, the Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller (CDI) passed a resolution at its Nuremberg congress condemning the Fachklassen, stating that "intermediate technical schools. . . are not an economic necessity." The CDI concluded that there were not three but only two categories of engineers, namely, the strictly scientific kind and the purely practical one. 31 Engineer Stiibben likewise blasted the intermediate technical school as a product of "conceptual errors and blunders" in his 1883 paper on technical education, whereas the VDI strongly supported it in its 1889 report on nonacademic engineering education. 32 When Bismarck was dismissed in 1890, two men came into office who would play key roles in rebuilding Prussia's nonacademic engineering education: Trade Minister Hans Berlepsch and Finance Minister Johannes Miquel. Both were considerably more sensitive to the need for industrial education than had been their predecessors or Bismarck. The new emperor, despite the desultory nature of his "personal rule," also took an active 30 HdA (1883): 1068, 1072, 1074. 31 Cited in VVBG 62(1883):134; see also VDIZ (1888):555-6O. 32 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 1, Bl. 87 (180). For the VDFs views, see Section 2 of this chapter; DS (1891): 16.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879-1901

169

interest in questions of education and technology as part of the quest for German glory. These personnel changes coincided with a heightened concern about the political and social effects of overcrowding in traditional academic careers, which had prompted Bismarck on the eve of his dismissal in March of 1890 to recommend stemming thefloodof Gymnasium enrollments with, among other things, an "increase in the number of industrial and specialized occupational schools." 33 Berlepsch immediately began to push for the expansion and reform of industrial education. One of his first actions was an appeal to Miquel for substantial increases in the operating budget of the BIE. There is no record of the negotiations, but he immediately received a 55 percent increase in the 1891 budget for the schools under his jurisdiction. To rebuild the system, however, much larger increases were needed. Sometime in the spring or early summer of 1890, Berlepsch approached Miquel about the need for a fundamental change of policy. Receiving a cautiously favorable reply, Berlepsch, in consultation with Karl Liiders, the BIE's senior official, drafted a reform proposal. 34 The two men judged a long-range master plan for industrial education to be impracticable. Future economic and industrial developments could not be accurately predicted, the size of the demand for more specialized schools such as for mechanical engineering could not be determined beforehand, and the experts disagreed over the kinds of schools needed. 35 Instead of a new fixed funding formula, therefore, Berlepsch proposed an experimental program of gradual expansion, allowing the BIE maximum flexibility in determining which schools should be funded, where, and in what amounts: "the where, the what, and the how" could nowhere "be judged better than. . . in the Ministry I direct." 36 Berlepsch left open how much industrial education in the end would be enough for Prussia, pointing out that this depended on "how important industrial training is judged to be for increasing the national wealth, for the development of domestic consumption as well as foreign trade, for the correct distribution of the labor force over the various occupations, and even for the consolidation of the social order." As far as he was concerned, there was no question but that the government would have to "support the development of industrial education to the fullest extent that the available means allow. " 37 33 Bismarck to William II, 16 March 1890, ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 22307, Bl. 173—9; see also Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern," 115—16, 119; Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics, 58-60. 34 Berlepsch to Miquel, 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 5-33 (especially 5, 19, 20). See funding increase for 1890-1 in DS (1891): 13-14. 35 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 20-3, 32-5; DS (1891):65, 76. 36 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 22, 35. 37 Ibid., Bl. 25, 41.

170

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Excluding schools for blue-collar workers also under his jurisdiction, Berlepsch asked for an increase in the annual operating budget of the BIE of some M. 1.4 million, a 200 percent jump from the 1890-1 budget of M. 760,000. 38 There is no record of Miquel's reaction to Berlepsch's 1890 reform proposals, but the evidence suggests it was favorable. The BIE received the freedom to experiment that Berlepsch had requested. The old funding patterns were abandoned, and in the next ten years many new schools were founded, especially in mechanical engineering. Most were established as state schools, and with a few exceptions the existing municipal schools were gradually converted into full state institutions. In time, the teachers at these schools became civil servants, with regular promotion patterns and salary scales, pension rights, and the other perks of the state bureaucracy. The schools themselves were gradually standardized and given uniform admission standards and curricula. 39 All this did not mean that an era of unlimited funding and expansion for industrial education had dawned in 1890. Miquel's ministry continued to scrutinize all requests for budget increases, and it often took long and hard negotiating before the proposals of the BIE were finally approved. The conversion of the teachers to civil-service status also was slow and expensive. Moreover, the fresh start of 1890 almost proved abortive when the recession of 1890-4 prevented Miquel from following up the funding boost for 1891 with comparable increases the next few years. 40 It was not until the second half of the 1890s — when he initiated his Sammlungspolitik and Tirpitz embarked on his ambitious naval construction program — that Prussia's commitment to support the continued buildup of industrial education was finally secure. Still, from 1894-5 on, there was steady and consistent growth in government spending on industrial education, especially for mechanical engineering. By 1910 the BIE's operating budget had grown to over M. 13 million, almost twenty-three times the 1885 budget of M. 570,000. 41 Despite continued financing difficulties, the decisive breakthrough was 38 Ibid. 39 Sydow to William II, 22 March 1910, ZSTA II, Geheimes Zivilkabinett, 2.2.1, Nr. 3695, Bl. 217-34. 40 The 5% budget increases for 1893 and 1894 were so small that Liiders again publicly criticized the Ministry of Finance: ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 3, Bl. 2-10. 41 The figure for 1910 does not include municipal contributions on the order of some M. 2-4 million. It does include spending on the gewerbliche Fortbildungsschulen, which accounted for about one-third of all spending on industrial education. On the recession of 1890—4, see Hans Rosenberg, Grosse Depression undBismarckzeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1967), 53. For the slowdown in the BIE's budget increases, see DS (1896): 12-13. On 1897 as a year of consolidation for the commitment to nonacademic technical education, see Sydow's 1910 memorandum to William II, ZSTA II, 2.2.1, Nr. 3695, Bl. 217-34.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1 SI9-1901

171

the 1890 agreement between Berlepsch and Miquel. 42 This was especially true with respect to schools for the engineering industry. Outlays for the existing schools in Bochum and Cologne soon increased. In 1891 the government set up two new institutions of the same type, called Schools for Foremen (Werkmeisterschulen), in Dortmund and Magdeburg. By 1896 two additional Schools for Foremen had been established in Gleiwitz and Hanover, and by 1901 four more in Gorlitz, Altona, Barmen-Elberfeld, and Einbeck, making for a total often Schools for Foremen at that time. 43 The BIE in the late 1890s also established a number of more advanced engineering schools, known as Higher Machine Building Schools. Evolved from the old Fachklassen, Higher Machine Building Schools were initially set up only in Hagen and Breslau.44 By 1902, nine further schools of this type had come into being - either separately or in combination with the lower schools - in Barmen-Elberfeld, Altona, Einbeck, Stettin, Breslau, Posen, Cologne, Aachen, and Kiel. In 1910 there were twelve Higher Machine Building Schools.45 Compared with other industrial schools (textiles, building construction, arts and crafts), engineering education received a high priority. By 1910 there was an impressive network of twenty-six well-funded and highly developed engineering schools — the forerunners of Germany's Fachhochschulen (roughly comparable to American land-grant colleges). This was a more dramatic buildup than for any other type of industrial school. 46 In 1885 the engineering schools had received less than 3 percent of total spending on industrial education, which included continuing education for ordinary workers. By 1897 the figure had climbed to just under 13 percent, and it continued to rise slowly thereafter, reaching an estimated 18 percent of the total in 1910. 47 Budget figures at five-year intervals for

42 Berlepsch also reconvened the Permanent Commission for Technical Education in 1891 and 1896 after it had last met in 1883. 43 DS (1896):passim; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 330; Martin Dosmar, Technische Mittelschulen, reprint homjahrbuchfiirdiesoziale

Bewegung derIndustriebeamten 4( 1910):6—

11, which lists 12 LMBSs in 1910. 44 The 1879 plan to attach Facbklassen to Realschulen had succeeded only in Hagen and Breslau. 45 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 329; Oskar Simon, Die Fachbildung des preussischen Gewerbe- und Handelsstandes in 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Heine, 1902), 8 0 1 -

2; Sydow to William II in 1910, ZSTA II, MHG, 2.2.1, Nr. 3695, Bl. 217-34. One additional HMBS was opened in Hannover. 46 Details in Prussia, Landesgewerbeamt (LGA), Verwaltungsbericht (Berlin: Carl Heymans Verlag, 1906ff.), No. 4 (1912), 58-9, and No. 5 (1914), 43-4. 47 Details in DS (1891), DS (1896), and ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 4, Bl. 16, 27; also see DATSCH AB 2, 73. Also see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 4, Bl. 16, 27, Gotte memorandum of 14 January 1902; Sydow's memorandum to William II of 1910, ZSTA II, 2.2.1, Nr. 3695, Bl. 217-34; Prussia, LGA, Verwaltungsbericht (1910), No. 3, table following 48.

172

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Table 7 . 1 . Prussian government annual budget for engineering schools, 1886-1911, 5-year intervals

Year

Amount (marks)

1886 1891 1896 1901 1906 1911

33,190 84,852 189,312 625,780 1,063,048 1,437,720

As % of'86 100 256 570

1,885 3,203 4,332

Percentage increase over previous 5 years 155.7 123.1 230.1

69.9 35.2

the Schools for Foremen, Higher Machine Building Schools, and related schools for the metals industry are listed in Table 7.1. 4 8 2. SCHOOLS FOR FOREMEN OR TECHNICAL MIDDLE SCHOOLS?

In spite of the effort and money Prussia poured into nonacademic engineering education after 1890, the results initially fell short of expectations. The new schools did not succeed in slowing down the exodus of Prussian engineering students to proprietary schools in other German states or in reducing the growing numbers of irregular students and auditors at the technische Hochschulen.49 Nor did the state's nonacademic schools become especially popular in their own right. The relevant files of the Ministry of Trade contain frequent references to problems of underenrollment and difficulties in attracting students. In 1902, when their buildup was virtually complete, the eighteen engineering schools enrolled just over 2,800 students. More than 800 of these, however, attended only the evening and Sunday programs, which aimed at improving the mechanical skills of ordinary workers and did not provide an engineering education as such. In 1901-2, the best-attended school was that in Dortmund, with almost 600 students. The smallest was Posen, with eight students. Average enrollment that year was 166 students. 50 Graduating only some 1,000 48 DS (1891):14 (for 1885-90) and DS (1896):12-13 (for 1891-6). For expenditures for the MBSs from 1897 to 1901, inclusive of the specialized schools at Iserlohn and Remscheid, see memorandum of 14 January 1902, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 4, Bl. 16, 27. For 1901-12, see Prussia, LGA, Verwaltungsbericht 2 (1907):30, 4(1912):59, and 5(19l4):44. 49 Whereas overall attendance at Prussia's three technische Hochschulen jumped by some 280% between 1890 and 1901 (from 2,546 to 7,161), the number of irregular students and auditors as a percentage of total enrollment increased from 33% (850) to 34% (2,459); Lexis, Die technischen Hochschulen, 46, 188, 201, 219. 50 Simon, Fachbildung, 8 0 1 - 2 ; Griiner, Fachschulen, 67.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

173

students in 1902, the schools supplied probably no more than a quarter of the annual demand for nonacademic engineers.51 Why did the schools not attract more students? In the first place, they appear to have been perceived as too rigorous in relation to the careers for which they prepared. Though conferring certain privileges with regard to state railroad employment, the schools made only modest career promises in their announcements, such as for "shop-floor managers . . . and mid-level designers," but they had a demanding curriculum and strict admission standards.52 This contrasted with the wildly optimistic and exaggerated promises of the proprietary schools, which were much more expensive, but admitted just about anybody and turned them into "diplomized engineers" within a few semesters. The government's institutions were also handicapped by the practice of the technische Hochschulen to admit high-school dropouts and other irregulars as auditors and "guests." This was a popular option, because many such irregular students counted on better opportunities in industry if they could boast of having attended the technische Hochschule rather than a lowly nonacademic technical school.53 Finally, the state schools became mired in controversy and suffered from adverse publicity. In the second half of the 1890s, they came under attack from the VDI, which criticized them as the ill-conceived products of wellintentioned but misguided government bureaucrats. There were substantive grounds for such criticism, but the purpose of the engineering society's assault on the government's policy was not merely to bring about a more desirable type of nonacademic engineering education. The available evidence suggests that the VDI's managerial leadership also aimed to increase its professional power by seizing control and de facto jurisdiction over nonacademic engineering education from the Prussian state. 51 Estimate. In 1901-2, Prussia's three technische Hochschulen had a total of 6,359 students (including auditors), producing about 1,500 engineers annually. Assuming that the demand for nonacademic engineers was roughly three times that for academically trained engineers, one would arrive at 4,500 nonacademic engineers needed annually, or 4.5 times the supply of the Prussian state schools. Lexis, Die technischen Hochschulen, 46, 188, 201, 219; DATSCH AB 4, 103ff. The number of irregular students at the three technische Hochschulen was almost as large (2,459) as the combined enrollments of the 18 nonacademic engineering schools (2,639) in 1901-2. 52 Career purposes from VERH. (1896): 18. Also see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 300ff. Beilage Nr. 20 des Ministerial-Blatts der Handels und Gewerbe-Verwaltung, November 1901: Organisation der Handels und Gewerbeverwaltung unterstehenden Schulen zur Ausbildung von mittleren und niederen Beamten und Arbeitern der Maschinen- und Huttenindustrie, 2. 53 According to the VDI, in 1896-7 the three proprietary schools at Mittweida, Ilmenau, and Hildburghausen had 1,500, 800, and 900 students, respectively. The proprietary schools drew "away students from the more strictly run Prussian institutions, and [made] them into technicians deficient in education {Ausbildung] but rich in pretension [Einbildung]" ; Eingabe des VDI an den preussischen Handelsminister betr. Werkmeisterschulen und technische Mittelschulen of 27 July 1897, in

ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 121-3. See also VERH. (1898):47, Bl. 64; DS (1891):75-6. On the proprietary schools' advertising expenditures, see Donhoff in DATSCH AB 2, 58.

174

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

The VDI advocated the higher of the two types of schools under discussion in the 1880s. Admission would be set at the one-year volunteer exemption and two years of practical experience, and the teachers were to be trained at the technische Hochschulen.54 The crux and Achilles' heel of these recommendations was the one-year volunteer standard. This exemption, which made its holder eligible for reserve-officer candidacy and just a single year of military service, could be earned in several ways, the most common being attendance at a Gymnasium or other nine-year secondary school through the first six grades and receiving permission to go on to the seventh grade (the so-called Obersekunda). Around 1890, the one-year exemption was typically reached by age sixteen or seventeen, whereas the Abitur took until age nineteen or twenty. 55 Though not nearly as prestigious as the Abitur, the one-year volunteer exemption was a critical social distinction. Its primary significance was as a benchmark for demarcating the Mittelstand (middling secondary education, economic independence or a salaried position, preferably with some managerial responsibility) from the working classes (primary education, manual work and wage labor) on the one hand and from the higher occupations (nineyear high school, university education, professions, higher civil service) on the other hand. 56 As the VDFs 1889 report had put it, "in the first place we are guided by the uncontested fact that in our country it is extremely and exceedingly difficult for a young man who was unable to earn the right of one-year service to achieve that position in life that is essential for the engineers [Techniker] we are thinking of."57 The VDI's policy thus had been to synchronize the inherited sociomilitary hierarchy with occupational stratification in industry. The military distinctions between general-staff officers (technische Hochschule), frontline officers or noncommissioned officers (nonacademic engineering education), and the rank and file (blue-collar workers), which roughly corresponded to the civilian divisions between higher occupations, Mittelstand, and working class, were to be transplanted to the realm of industry and technology. At the same time, economic efficiency was served because the proposed arrangement still would save some five years over engineers trained at the technische Hochschule.58 54 VDI Bericht der Schulkommission (1889): 15. 55 The one-year volunteer exemption (known as the Einjdhriges) and its significance are discussed in Detlef Miiller and Bernd Zymek, Sozialgeschichte und Statistik des Schulsystems in den Staaten des Deutschen Reicbes, 1800-1945 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 1 6 - 2 5 . 56 Incisive comments to this effect are found in VDIZ (1883):407; VDIZ (1888):558-9, 956. The complexities of the relationships among the educational system, the economy, the social and occupational hierarchies in Prussia, France, and Britain are discussed in The Rise of the Modern Educational System. 57 VDI Bericht der Schulkommission (1889):9. Also see VDIZ (1883):407. 58 Technical Middle School: start at age 16; two years practice, two years school, one year military service; age at time of entry into industry, 2 1 . Technische Hochschule: start at age 20; one year

Nonacademk engineering education, 1879-1901

175

A sizable and influential minority in the VDI had dissented from the 1889 report. About one-third of the local chapters had objected to the one-year service exemption, arguing that it should play no role in structuring nonacademic engineering education or in determining career opportunities in industry. Trade school teachers were in the vanguard of the opposition. Their most outspoken and energetic exponent, Friedrich Romberg, director of the municipal trade school in Cologne, thought it was an "injustice to exclude competent young men, for whatever reasons they may have failed to earn [the one-year volunteer exemption], from the opportunity of further education." 59 Director Fiedler of the Oberrealschule in Breslau did "not want to obstruct in their life's career talented and excellent human beings who may have stood the test of practical life for perhaps four or five years and have faithfully eliminated the gaps in their general education." 60 The critics also advanced functional arguments. What mattered most for the middle-level engineer, they contended, was specialized occupational skill, not the technologically useless proof of having learned at least two foreign languages. 61 The Cologne chapter thought it "extremely questionable to let the social relations — or much rather the prejudices - of certain social classes exercise such decisive influence." Instead, the "determination of the necessary preparatory education should depend exclusively on its functionality for the occupation in question." 62 Whoever could follow the instruction and do the work should be allowed to attend. 63 The critics also asserted that authority in the factory was more a function of technical competence than of general education. Regardless of his prior education, a capable graduate of the Technical Middle School would surely find "the right tone in communicating with his superior as well as with the workers." 64 The VDI's inability to resolve this conflict had important consequences. With explicit reference to the internal disagreements of the engineering society, the government between 1890 and 1898 deemphasized the higher schools called for by the VDI, concentrating instead on institutions "about whose necessity and organization there were on the whole no disagreements" (i.e., the Schools for Foremen). Like the schools demanded by the VDI, they took four semesters to complete, but unlike the schools in engineering society's design, they required only Volksschule for admission, along with four as opposed to two years of prior practical experience.

59 60 61 62 63 64

practice, four to five years school, one year military service; age at time of entry into industry, 25 or 26. VDIZ(1889):901. VDIZ(1888):956-8. Ibid. VDIZ(1889):901. VDIZ(1888):956. Ibid., 741-3.

176

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Their curriculum was more basic than that envisaged by the VDI. In 1896, there were six such lower schools — in Dortmund, Duisburg, Gleiwitz, Magdeburg, and Cologne — and only one of the higher type. 65 In keeping with its social-mobility and social-stability objectives, the government gave the Schools for Foremen a more ambitious curriculum than the two-semester or three-semester programs for actual foremen that many experts in industry, including the VDI, believed were needed. Despite their name, therefore, the schools were not in fact designed to train foremen. They were targeted for young men from the working class and lower middle class in their late teens and early twenties, aiming to give a more or less comprehensive technical education. Providing opportunities for career mobility to individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds without the one-year volunteer exemption was an important part of their mission. 66 When the League of German Foremen (Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband, DWV) in 1897 criticized the schools for their misleading name, pointing out that the alumni were more likely to become "small manufacturers, master artisans, mechanics, engine men on ships, locomotives and in factories, senior draftsmen etc." than foremen in largescale industry, BIE officials privately agreed. Karl Liiders noted that "it is precisely for these [occupations] that our so-called Schools for Foremen are intended." 67 The government's reluctance to establish the higher schools soon gave rise to private initiatives aiming to remedy this situation. In 1890, the VDI leadership, in collaboration with city officials and its own local chapter in Cologne, began an experiment by funding reorganization of the local municipal trade school into a Technical Middle School. Mean65 VDIZ (1889):932; DS (1891):66-7, 73-7; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 13; Berlepsch to Miquel, 18 October 1890, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. I, vol. 2, Bl. 30-3; also see DS (1896):27-30. Though giving priority to the Schools for Foremen, the government in the first half of the 1890s did not completely ignore the more advanced institutions demanded by the VDI. In the mid-1890s the BIE began exploring the possibility of transferring the Fachklassen from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Trade. Initially the cost was prohibitive, and only in 1896 was there some movement. Hagen became the first to acquire a school of the VDI's 1889 design. Breslau soon followed suit. But that was as far as the BIE was willing to go with the higher schools in 1896, and all along it continued to exhibit strong preference for the Schools for Foremen. Another reason the BIE gave little attention to the higher school had to do with changes in its jurisdiction. When in 1885 it was transferred from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Trade, the Fachklassen, attached to general secondary schools, remained with the Ministry of Culture. Concentrating henceforth entirely on the so-called Schools for Foremen, the BIE actually turned against the Fachklassen. DS (1896):27, 29; VERH. (1896): 18; also see VERH. (1898):50; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 2, Bl. 30-3; DS (1891):26-8, 66-7, 77. 66 DATSCH AB 1, 121. "The idea of providing the less well-endowed classes with the opportunity of a solid technical education was the reason that during the years 1890-1899 the establishment of Schools for Foremen was pursued with exceptional vigor" ; BIE 1902 memorandum, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 4, Bl. 9. 67 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 55-6.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879-1901

111

while, the VDI's directorate, in particular Theodor Peters, had changed positions on admissions. Impressed by the booming demand for technicians and engineers, Peters had adopted the minority position rejecting the one-year volunteer standard. The Cologne school, in consequence, received a lower admission level: Volksschule, two years of practical experience, and two semesters of preparatory courses in basics such as mathematics, physics, and German. At the same time, a separate three-semester school for foremen and other shop-floor technicians was established in Cologne. The central government was not involved in the Cologne experiment and at first did not object to it. In 1895, however, in the context of its increasingly aggressive buildup of the Schools for Foremen, the BIE announced that it intended to start subsidizing the Cologne school the following year and then reorganize it. 68 Afraid that this would spell the end of its experiment, the VDI requested a delay until it had determined whether or not the Schools for Foremen actually did what they were supposed to do - train foremen for the machine industry. 69 The engineering society did not complete its deliberations until the summer of 1897, when it presented the government with a position paper, "Schools for Foremen and Technical Middle Schools. " 70 The report began by setting forth all the reasons why the government ought to follow the VDI's recommendations. With 12,000 members, among them numerous teachers of technical schools and other education experts, the engineering society, rather than the government, was the country's foremost authority in these questions. The Schools for Foremen had a curriculum too ambitious and too long and tended to "alienate the young fellows from a career in the shop." 71 Real foreman schools should last only two semesters and should "exclude everything from the curriculum that with regard to science exceeds the demands made on a foreman." Whereas the government's schools went beyond the needs of foremen, their curriculum did not go far enough to make possible advancement in the more professional careers for designers and shop-floor managers who were in such great demand. The Schools for Foremen therefore occupied an unfortunate intermediate position: Their alumni were diverted from productive and wellpaying blue-collar work to white-collar work, where they reached the limits of upward mobility in the lowest ranks and became an "office proletariat of technicians - and these folks very easily join the Social

68 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 287, 404, and vol. 1, Bl. 238. 69 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 1, vol. 3, Bl. 115-17. 70 Eingabe des VDI an den preussischen Handelsminister betr. Werkmeisterschulen und technische Mittelschulen of 27 July 1897, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 121-3. 71 Ibid., vol. 1, Bl. 121.

178

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Democrats." 72 The VDI concluded that there was no need for additional Schools for Foremen; the government should instead establish more Technical Middle Schools, which had the added social advantage of preventing formation of the dreaded engineering proletariat. 73 This amounted to a complete rejection of government policy since 1890. In effect, the VDI renewed its 1889 request for the establishment of Technical Middle Schools — with one major difference: By 1897 it had discarded the one-year volunteer admission standard. 74 The change of heart was dictated by concern for the international competitiveness of German technology, fueled by a mixture of nationalism and business interests. An 1896 memorandum of the Hanover chapter stated that "to utilize to the fullest possible extent the technological talents that exist in our population, . . . the one-year volunteer standard should be abolished; it mostly serves status interests and has rather little to do with instructional prerequisites."75 In an 1898 letter to the BIE, Theodor Peters wrote that "I am today of the opinion that in light of the exceptional difficulty of our industry's mission to emerge victorious in international competition, technical ability should be the primary consideration, and not a symbol of general education and of social status extraneous to technical education." 76 Specifically, explained Peters on another occasion, his change of mind had been inspired by the example of American technology and the "exceptional skill with which American engineers adapted themselves to production requirements of the shop." Although Germany might have the edge in scientific design, the Americans were considerably better in the allimportant area of manufacturing technology, for which, in Peters's opinion, general education was irrelevant. This was illustrated by American engineers working in Germany. "Their general education, we are told, is about equal to zero, though in their special technical field they demonstrate admirable knowledge and skills." If Germany was to remain competitive, it would have to adopt similar educational efficiency.77 Soon the VDI directorate began pressing for action. If real foremen schools were to have just two semesters, and if the one-year volunteer exemption was not necessary for the Technical Middle School, the question arose whether or not Prussia should have two overlapping types of a foursemester schools for the single category of intermediate engineers between academically trained engineers and foremen — Schools for Foremen and 72 C M . Sombart, a Magdeburg machine builder and town councillor, in VERH. (1898):43, Bl. 62; see also pages 7, 9, and 32 for repetition of this argument and use of the term Technikerproletariat. 73 All quotations and summary of the VDI Eingabe of 1897. 74 Ibid. 75 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 14If. 76 Peters to Hoeter, 11 May 1898, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 221, see also 2 2 0 - 3 . 77 VERH. (1898):7, 11.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

179

Technical Middle Schools. Peters answered his own question with an emphatic no. "It is impossible to maintain that the professional duties of intermediate technicians require [educational} bifurcation." Between the academically trained engineer and the foreman there were "innumerable positions, but [one] school is sufficient for" the common core of "tasks they all share." Naturally this single institution should be the VDI's Technical Middle School.78

3. THE VDI, THE BIE, AND THE REFORMS OF 1901

On the surface, the VDI's proposals of 1897-8 made good sense. Instead of the government's socially inspired emphasis on the Schools for Foremen, which allegedly produced effects opposite from those intended, the engineering society considered only economic goals. Even so, the social consequences were bound to be more beneficial, because the VDI's design created real opportunities for upward mobility. It would have a better curriculum than the government's hybrid School for Foremen and therefore would create more qualified engineers. It would also relax the socially restrictive and irrational admission standard of the one-year volunteer exemption, which the government insisted on retaining for the higher school. On closer inspection, it is evident that the VDI's position was far more problematic. Its apparent social progressiveness in admissions was primarily inspired by financial and business motives and therefore was actively supported only by the profession's managerial and business-oriented faction. Many other engineers, especially professionalizes and social climbers from the technische Hochschulen, would soon oppose it. So long as the employment boom lasted, this group paid little attention to nonacademic engineering education. They did not recognize that the VDI's policy threatened to dilute the profession with large numbers of nonacademic engineers who possessed advanced technical skills but lacked even such rudimentary proof of "cultivation" as the one-year volunteer exemption. Only when economic conditions changed in the early 1900s did they belatedly rebel. A second problem was the VDI leadership's inability to prove its case against the Schools for Foremen. In spite of all the elaborate arguments, "studies," and expert testimony it produced, the engineering society was unable to substantiate its claim that these schools diverted the majority of students from positions in the shop to dead-end white-collar posts that 78 Peters to Hoeter, 11 May 1898, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 221-2.

180

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

bred social discontent. 79 In fact, the preponderance of contemporary evidence, such as alumni career statistics kept by the schools, tended to disprove the VDI's charges on both counts. The School for Foremen and the Technical Middle School were in reality so similar, and the demand for technicians at that time was so great, that for most functions in the shop, as well as the office, the graduates of the one were about as well suited as those of the other. 80 Inevitably, the differences became even smaller when the engineering society dropped the one-year volunteer exemption for admission. Both schools had four semesters, both prepared for technical positions above the foreman level, and both recruited from the same vast pool of Volksschule graduates. This is not to say that there was no difference at all between the two designs, nor that one of them may not have been somewhat more effective for the specific needs of the engineering industry than the other. But such differences do not in the end seem to have warranted the protracted and bitter struggle that was about to ensue. The engineering society stubbornly persisted in its attacks on the Schools for Foremen. Puzzled at first by the VDI's combination of insubstantiality and ferocity, officials in the BIE gradually came to realize that the issue was not primarily substantive, but centered on an attempt by the engineering society to wrest control over nonacademic engineering education away from the Prussian state. At the very least it aimed for a position of power sharing, codetermination, and cosovereignty. Trying to ignore the VDI, the BIE responded only when it became aware that attempts were in the making to cut its funding by predisposing the Landtag against the Schools for Foremen. 81 In February of 1898 the BIE organized a conference of experts from industry, the VDI, the Ministry of Trade, and the engineering schools to discuss the matter. The evidence suggests that the participants in the conference, held in Berlin on 6 and 7 May 1898, were carefully chosen to produce a majority in favor of the government's position. 82 It was therefore not surprising that Peters, Romberg, Sombart, and other critics of the government made little headway. With the exception of Cologne's Friedrich Romberg, all the educators defended the one-year volunteer admission standard for the Technical Middle School. The teachers' most frequent argument was that "specialized technical ability, drawing talent, and proficiency in mathematics and 79 These complaints are summarized in Simon's memorandum of 21 April 1900, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 339f. 80 This was confirmed by DATSCH in 1909-10, when both the LMBSs and HMBSs together were classified in one category of intermediate, nonacademic engineering education; see Chapter 8, section 4, in this volume. 81 Letter of 3 February 1898, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 124-5. 82 Details in VERH. (1898): 19.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

181

the physical sciences were no substitute for the one-year volunteer exemption as a warranty of general education, sufficient training of the mind, and the ability to think logically." 83 Speaking for the government, Liiders maintained that only "completion of a six-year school or attendance of a Gymnasium, a Realgymnasium, or an Oberrealschule until the seventh year [Obersekundd] guarantees a certain completion of general education." 84 The government side also continued to give weight to traditional status considerations. Director Gobel of the Dortmund School contended that the students of the Technical Middle School came "from the middle ranks of the civil service and the somewhat better-off middle class [Burgerstand]" and that "if the existing admission requirements were not maintained, the schools would soon be used for the education of elements not suitable for the intermediate class of engineers {mittlerer Technikerstand}."85 When the issue came to a vote, only eight of the thirty-three conferees sided with Peters and the VDI's leadership. Except for Romberg, they were all from private industry. The government's men, the other educators, and about half the industrial managers (some of whom headed state-run enterprises) voted against the VDI's proposals. 86 The engineering society's leadership fared worse with the Schools for Foremen. The government conceded that the name was misleading, but effectively countered the other charges. These schools existed not only for the purpose of training foremen as the VDI defined this career but also for more general, social reasons. In the words of an assistant undersecretary of trade, Ministerial-Direktor Hoeter, their aim was to provide education for those people who "want to become technicians but cannot get into the Technical Middle Schools because they do not have the one-year volunteer exemption." 87 Though simpler schools were perhaps sufficient for foremen in large mechanical engineering shops, the Schools for Foremen also had to train people who "manage smaller businesses on their own and often are faced with the situation of having to design and execute small projects. These people need a more solid technical school." 88 Contrary to the VDI's allegations of dead-end white-collar jobs, the government could show that the overwhelming majority of alumni had gone into the shop. 89 By most accounts — industry continued to hire and promote them — the graduates were successful and could hardly be termed a "proletariat of technicians." As for the charge that the curriculum was too ambitious, the government said the charge was absurd. The existing 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 342 (6). VERH. (1898): 19. Ibid., 14. Ibid., 20. Hoeter at VERH. (1898):40, Bl. 61. Simon, April 1900, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 339-41. VERH. (1898):36, 64-5.

182

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

schedules conformed almost to the letter to the VDI's recommendations for a two-semester school. When the issue came to a vote, only a small core of four VDI supporters sided with Peters and Romberg. The other twenty-seven participants voted to retain the School for Foremen in its existing form.90 The one change the 1898 conference produced was purely formal. By a large majority it decided on a change in nomenclature. The higher school or Technical Middle School was thereafter to be called Higher Machine Building School (hbhere Maschinenbauschule, HMBS). The School for Foremen became the Lower Machine Building School {niedere Maschinenbauschule, LMBS). 9 1

The VDI hardly paused for breath before returning to the attack. Peters immediately wrote a long letter to Ministerial-Direktor Hoeter. Complaining about personal vindictiveness on the part of Liiders, he reiterated the engineering society's fundamental demands: a real foremen's school of only two semesters, and a single type of nonacademic engineering school with flexible admission standards. The crux remained the obstacle of the one-year volunteer exemption, on which Liiders had insisted with undue rigidity. Only "someone who believed that formal schooling until the one-year volunteer certificate gives a human being otherwise unobtainable mental powers, and an otherwise unobtainable capability for technical studies," Peters mocked the BIE chief, "would have to conclude it was necessary to stick to the demand for this certificate." 92 The ministry did not even bother to respond. Soon, however, the BIE was forced to negotiate more seriously with the VDI. What happened to produce this turnaround? The VDI's agitation against the LMBSs was harming their reputation, causing a drop in enrollment and diverting students to the proprietary schools. 93 The controversy also imperiled funding. Finance officials closely monitored and questioned expenditures for both Machine Building Schools (MBSs) — even in the most expansionary phases — owing to the experimental nature of the post-1890 reconstruction of technical education. 94 This surveillance caused the BIE to be unusually sensitive to outside criticism, for fear controversy might result in further encroachments on its territory by the Finance Ministry or in funding cuts. This was the configuration that played into the hands of the engineering society. 90 Ibid., 47. 91 Ibid., 51-2. 92 Peters to Hoeter, 11 May 1898, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 220-3f. 93 Gotte memorandum of 1902, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 4, Bl. 9f. (p. 14), Bl. 3-18. 94 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 1, Bl. 234-9, and vol. 2, Bl. 275-6, 1049, 160-3.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

183

Sometime in the second half of 1898, the Ministry of Finance received an anonymous, undated letter mailed in Cologne, together with a copy of the VDI's 1897 policy recommendations. Defending Cologne's municipal school, the letter attacked the policies of the BIE and its handling of the May conference. The agency was accused of ignoring the VDI and of stacking the list of participants, securing defeat for the engineering society's proposals in advance. The letter ended on a seductive note: The BIE's four-semester LMBSs were far more expensive than the VDI's twosemester schools. The BIE's policies therefore not only damaged industry but also burdened parents, students, and the treasury with unnecessary expenses.95 Miquel sent a copy of this letter to the Ministry of Trade, demanding an immediate explanation. He also pressed for additional justifications of the BIE's request to fund new LMBSs in the 1899 budget. Somehow the Ministry of Trade was able to stall for time, managing to delay its answer until March of 1900, even though it received two further summonses. 96 Meanwhile, Trade Ministry officials began seeking an understanding with the VDI. In late January 1899, Hoeter, on direct orders of Minister Brefeld, instructed the BIE to reopen the case. He ordered a new internal study of the questions raised by the VDI. At the same time, the BIE was told to suspend its plans for integrating Cologne's separate school into Berlin's design. 97 When the BIE reestablished contact with the VDI in February of 1899, it announced that in the future, admission to the HMBSs would no longer be exclusively based on possession of the one-year volunteer exemption. A separate entrance examination for those without it would be introduced. At the same time, the government demanded that the engineering society substantiate its charges against the LMBSs.98 The agency apparently still hoped to defeat the VDI's power ambitions by confronting it with its own trumped-up charges and internal disagreements. This tactic did not succeed. The VDI stalled, partially complied, and, with specious arguments that failed to hide its nonexistence, refused to provide the requested evidence.99 Frustrated by this evasiveness, Liiders realized that the engineering society's behavior was in fact a silent admission that the LMBSs were satisfactory after all. In public, meanwhile, the VDI continued to deny this, relying on the ministry's powerlessness to counteract the effects of 95 96 97 98 99

Ibid., vol. 2, Bl. 286-7. Ibid., Bl. 284-90. Ibid., Bl. 302-7. Ibid., Bl. 82-8. ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 14-17, VDI reply to BIE of March 22, 1899. Also see Gdtte's analysis in vol. 2, Bl. 404-9f.

184

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

negative propaganda and on circuitous attacks to get its own way. 10°The game continued throughout the spring and summer of 1899. The BIE requested specific information, and the VDI responded in ways that gave the appearance of compliance but in fact reneged on its earlier claims. 101 The VDI's maneuverings were a tactical success. They forced the government to make further analyses, which took time, and time was on the VDI's side. The longer the organization of the MBSs remained unsettled, the greater became the pressures on the BIE. Its controversial disagreement with the normally staid engineering association raised eyebrows and harmed the schools. The BIE was acutely aware of this problem and came to fear further confrontations with the VDI. In 1901, Fritz Donhoff, one of the agency's officials, was greatly alarmed at the prospect of the "old conflict between the engineering society and the government coming to life again - a conflict that would have very unpleasant consequences for the schools."102 In the light of such fears it is not surprising that a government study documenting the VDI's manipulations and the deficiencies of its proposals had no effect. Authored by engineer Alfons Gotte, a former teacher at the Dortmund MBS and the BIE's most dynamic, if also most junior, official, the study showed that a two-semester school for foremen was not feasible. Gotte questioned both the ethics of the engineering society's leadership and its competence, recommending that the VDI be told in no uncertain terms to stop meddling in affairs in which it was a dilettante and which were therefore none of its business.103 Gotte pointed out that the engineering association's 1897 recommendations had been occasioned by a desire to protect the Cologne school. They were nothing but a collection of "empty phrases," from which the VDI had been forced to retreat when the government requested details. 104 Had the government followed the VDI's advice, a disaster would have occurred. Only professional educators should be allowed to deal with matters of curriculum — not an engineering society easily manipulated by its leadership and with fundamentally other concerns. 105 The government should take a strong stand and protect the existing schools' "teachers from the crooked machinations of certain movers and shakers of the [engineering} society." 106 A professional educator, Gotte criticized the VDI's proposals primarily 100 Ibid., vol. 3, Bl. 14-17, and vol. 2, Bl. 404-9 (analysis by Gotte). 101 Ibid., vol. 2, Bl. 432-3, 440, and vol. 3, Bl. 22-8; for proposal of 20 May 1899 and Gotte's analysis of same, see vol. 2, Bl. 404—42. Also see Gotte memoranda, Bl. 403, 410. 102 Donhoff to Kleinstiiber, 20 March 1901, ibid., vol. 3, Bl. 207. 103 Gotte memoranda of 19 August and 23 September 1899, ibid., vol. 2, Bl. 394-442 (especially 403, 436-7f.). 104 Ibid., Bl. 419, 420, 437, 424-7. 105 Ibid., Bl. 418, 419, 427. 106 Ibid., 437f.

Nonacademic engineering education, 1879—1901

185

on grounds of their technical shortcomings. But he was also a civil servant. In that capacity he objected to the VDI's presumption of state power, arguing that the engineers' demands constituted an intolerable usurpation of governmental prerogatives. Although the engineering society insisted on representation and power sharing, it refused to (and as a private body never could) assume responsibility for its proposals. The VDI's demands should "be rejected out of hand" if the government wanted to retain sovereignty. "If the wishes of the gentlemen of the engineering society are fulfilled, the government would have to transfer the right to supervise the schools to the VDI and could limit itself to providing the necessary funds."107 Finally, the engineering society should be rebuffed because the MBSs were instruments of social policy as well as economic development, designed to benefit all social classes. If the VDI's recommendations were implemented, the schools would end up serving only the economic interests of large-scale industry and would reinforce the employers' stranglehold on the working class.108 Gotte failed to halt the politically more expedient shift toward accommodation with the VDI. The evidence suggests that the Ministry of Trade made a conscious decision to adopt some of the engineering society's proposals, essentially to end the paralyzing crisis of the MBSs, but also to eliminate the VDI's leverage. The new policy was reinforced by certain key personnel changes. In January of 1900, Karl Liiders, the BIE's head since the late 1870s and architect of the LMBSs, retired. His successor was Jacob Neuhaus, former Landrat in Hattingen and a man with less of a personal stake in these schools.109 Under Neuhaus, and then under Brefeld's 1901 replacement, Minister of Trade Theodor Moller, a former mechanical engineering entrepreneur from Bielefeld, the BIE became somewhat more accepting of the VDI than before.110 Gotte was forced to relent and grudgingly conceded that the engineering society's ideas should perhaps be tried out. "A priori there is no way of knowing whether a certain organization is successful," he wrote in 1900, concluding with the observation that only time and experience could tell what worked in practice and what did not. 111 This was the course the Ministry of Trade adopted. Though the evidence 107 Ibid., Bl. 423f. 108 Ibid., Bl. 413-417, 421-2, 438 (pp. 9-15, 24, 57). 109 Hans Heinrich Borchard, 50 Jahre Preussisches Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe 1879-1929

(Berlin: Reichsverlag Hermann Kalkhoff, 1929), 50-6; Walther Hubatsch, Grundriss der Verivaltungsgeschkhte (Marburg/Lahn: Johann-Gottfried-Herder-Institut, 1978), vol. 12A (1981), 206. 110 When the VDI in early 1900 petitioned to have Theodor Peters appointed to the seat on the Permanent Commission on Technical Education vacated by the death of Berlin industrialist Kaselowski, Hoeter thought it was a good idea: ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. I. Gen. Nr. 7, vol. 4, Bl. 18-20. Also see the internal study of 21 April 1900 by Privy Councillor Oskar Simon, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1. Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 336, 339-48. 111 ZSTA II MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 2, Bl. 349-56. (especially 352, 356).

186

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

is spotty, it appears that the BIE decided to incorporate part of the VDI's proposals, while avoiding further consultation with the engineering society as much as possible. 112 It took the BIE almost an entire year to complete work on the new organization, which was implemented in the regulations of 19 November 1901. 113 Although it did not accept the VDI's key demands, the organization of 1901 met the engineering society part way. The government refused to eliminate the LMBSs, and, with a few exceptions, it did not allow preparatory courses to take the place of the one-year volunteer exemption at the HMBSs. The entrance examination it had promised was introduced, but it was exceptionally difficult. On the other hand, the BIE stopped expanding the number of LMBSs and during the next few years converted a number of them into HMBSs. All new MBSs also were of the higher type only. This was a major concession and a significant shift in policy. The government also gave up its efforts to eliminate Cologne's engineering school, incorporating it instead as a "second route" into the official organizational plan. The VDI's two-semester schools were accepted on a trial basis. The BIE established four of them (in Frankfurt a.M., Bielefeld, Essen, and Halle a.S.) in conjunction with municipal artisan schools. 114 With this awkward compromise, the first phase in the development of nonacademic engineering education after 1879 had come to an end. 112 Hoeter to Theodor Lohmann, 21 April 1900, Ibid., Bl. 337. 113 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 203-4f.; special supplement to No. 20 of Ministerial-Blatt der Handels-und Gewerbe-Verwaltung, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV.

1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 300-19f. 114 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3, Bl. 203-4, 300-1, 328-9f.; Simon, Fachbildung, 798-803.

8 Public authority, private power, and the production of engineering personnel, 1901—1914

The reforms of 1901 were not a success. They combined the worst features of the VDI's program and that of the BIE: a reduction in the number of LMBSs - schools that were in fact quite satisfactory - whereas admissions to the increased number of HMBSs were not substantially relaxed. The net effect was that access to nonacademic engineering education in Prussia became more difficult. The technische Hochschulen and the proprietary schools meanwhile had taken in ever more students, resulting in a glut of engineers after the turn of the century. l Persistent underenrollment at Prussia's MBSs and doubts about their survival were the consequence. To promote its schools, the BIE soon embarked on a course of additional reforms. Blaming stagnation on the VDI, the government tried hard to avoid renewed interference from the engineering society. It adopted a policy of reducing the admission standards and upgrading the career goals of the MBSs - in effect borrowing from the VDI's design for the HMBSs without acknowledging it. Even before these plans could be fully implemented, they provoked an unexpected backlash from a side largely forgotten in the rush to increase the output of technically trained personnel: the segment of engineering professionalizes seeking assimilation with the Bildungsbilrgertum. The tensions created by the resurgence of this party, on the defensive ever since the late 1870s, forced the government and the VDI's managerial leadership into a compromise. They buried their differences and agreed to a permanent power-sharing arrangement that was advantageous to both - though not to the profession as a whole. 1. THE LANDESGEWERBEAMT AND THE REFORMS OF 1907

Figure 8.1 illustrates the development of enrollment in the MBS system between 1887-8 and 1913-14. Estimates of the proprietary schools' en1 See Appendix Tables 2 and 3.

187

6000 5500 5000

Proprietary Schools Prussian State Schools

4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 %

%

Figure 8.1. Enrollments at Prussian four-semester MBSs and related schools for the metals industry and German proprietary schools for mechanical and electrical engineering, 1887-1914.

Public authority and engineering personnel

189

Table 8.1. Enrollments at mechanical and electrotechnical nonacademic engineering schools in Germany, 1910 Type of school State schools Prussia Other states Combined Proprietary schools Totals

No. of schools

Enrollment

23 10

2,647 (25%) 2,244 (21%) 4,891 (46%) 5,824 (54%) 10,715 (100%)

33 38 71

rollments are included for purposes of comparison.2 As Figure 8.1 shows, enrollment growth slowed after 1901—2, became irregular, and for a while even declined. The aggregate annual growth rate in enrollments between 1891-2 and 1910-11 was almost 12 percent (7 percent for the proprietary schools), but during the decade from 1891-2 to 1900-1 it averaged 21 percent (11 percent for the proprietary schools), and from 1901-2 to 1910—11 it was only 5 percent (3 percent for the proprietary schools). In 1910, when Prussia's MBSs (both higher and lower) and related schools showed a combined enrollment of 2,647 students, the proprietary schools had some 5,824 students, or more than twice as many. Table 8.1 breaks down enrollments for proprietary and state schools in all of Germany in the year 1910. 3 The largest of the proprietary schools, the Technikum Mittweida, alone had 1,435 students in 1901, almost three-quarters of the combined enrollments of all the Prussian engineering schools.4 Faced with this situation, the BIE in the spring of 1904 concluded that the 1901 reforms were not achieving their goals and began to make changes. It discontinued the experiment with two-semester schools, which had been a failure. It also quietly returned to supporting the LMBSs.5 Having remained popular with students, they revived within a few years.6 2 Figure 8.1 is based on Appendix Tables 1 and 2. 3 Martin Dosmar, Technische Mittelschulen, reprint from Jahrbuch fur die soziale Bewegung der Industriebeamten 4(1910):6-ll. Prussian combined MBSs (LMBSs and HMBSs in one locality) were counted only once. Four related schools for the metals industry were included. In 1910, approximately 4,000 students were enrolled in twenty-three state schools, and 6,000 students in thirtytwo proprietary schools; estimate in DATSCH AB 2, 6-9, 129. 4 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 2, vol. 1. 5 Denkschrift des LGA betreffend die Reorganisation der Fachschulen fur die Metal Iindustrie 1907, in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 247-69, 4-5 (Bl. 251). 6 Appendix Table 1; see also ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 285. In 1900, the LMBSs still had more spaces than students, whereas the HMBSs had been forced to turn away students; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 2, vol. 1, Bl. 141.

190

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

3000 2800 2600 2400

HMBS LMBS Related Combined

2200 2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 -

0

Figure 8.2. Enrollments at four-semester MBSs and related schools for the metals industry in Prussia, 1901-14. As Figure 8.2 indicates, during 1906—7 the LMBSs made a somewhat better showing than did the slowly declining HMBSs. 7 Merely reopening a few LMBSs, however, did nothing to solve the most serious problem - the lack of popularity of the expanding network of HMBSs. 8 To address the problem, Alfons Gotte proposed a renewed overhaul of nonacademic engineering education and formulated a detailed reform plan. 9 Its essence was to lower the MBSs' admission standards and 7 Figure 8.2 is based on Appendix Table 1. 8 In 1905 and 1906, only 50% to 60% of the available places were filled; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 285. 9 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 5, Bl. 139-83.

Public authority and engineering personnel

191

raise their career sights. 10 Whereas the stated goal of the HMBSs in the 1901 organization was the training of "design-office technicians" (Konstruktionsbeamte) and "shop-floor technicians" (Betriebsbeamte), their new aim would be to prepare "managers [Leiter] of larger workshops" and "fullscale designers" (selbstandige Konstrukteure). Similarly, the purpose of the LMBS was to be changed from training only "lower shop-floor technicians" to training "lower shop-floor technicians as well as auxiliary designers and draftsmen."11

Although increasing the MBS enrollment was his first concern, Gotte also tried to cut off the VDI, which he blamed for the failure of the reforms of 1901. The engineering society, he believed, had caused the government to structure its schools too much for the benefit of the engineering employers (HMBSs instead of LMBSs). The effect had been to reduce the educational opportunities of would-be engineers and technical employees, instead of broadening them. In turn, this had caused students to enroll in the inferior proprietary schools in ever larger numbers. 12 The new reform plan sought to correct this problem by taking greater "account of the interests of the young people who are to be educated, i.e., the future employees," than had the 1901 organization. Rejecting the view that lowering admission standards might prove to be shortsighted catering to student preferences, Gotte stressed the social functions of technical education by arguing that it was the state's responsibility "to take care not only of the employers but also of the employees." 13 He concluded with a warning about the dangers of renewed interference by the VDI. If the engineering society tried influencing the Prussian government's plans once again, its claims of codetermination should be rejected from the outset, "unless the German engineering society concerned itself not merely with Prussian conditions, but also with other German states and with the proprietary schools." If not, loopholes would invariably remain, and the only result would again "merely be more business for the non-Prussian proprietary schools, which do not pay the slightest attention" to the VDI's recommendations. It followed that so long as there was not a minimum of national uniformity in nonacademic engineering education, the Prussian government had little choice but to proceed with the reforms he proposed.14 Lowering admission standards, raising career expectations, and keeping 10 Gotte proposed reducing the practice requirement from two years to one year at the HMBS and from four years to three years at the LMBS. He also recommended a major relaxation in the oneyear volunteer standard for admission to the HMBS. 11 Emphasis added, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 5, Bl. 139-83. 12 Ibid., Bl. 181-3. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

192

Reorient ation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

the VDI at bay became the government's policy.15 Ironically, this happened precisely when the labor market for technically trained personnel could hardly digest the existing supply. To implement the new plan, and also because administering the expanding network of nonacademic technical schools was becoming increasingly demanding, the responsibilities of the BIE were transferred in 1905 to a new agency, the Landesgewerbeamt (LGA). The directorate of the LGA, which remained with the Ministry of Trade, included simply the old BIE in a new guise. In addition, the LGA was an unwieldy consultative body of representatives from professional groups, other ministries, the Landtag, business organizations, teachers' associations, cities, and guilds. Its purpose appears to have been the creation of legitimacy with the interested parties, while diluting the excessive influence of key groups such as the VDI. The LGA's consultative mechanism proved too cumbersome in practice, and the advisory councils rarely convened.16 While the government began sounding out educators and other experts, it rebuffed the VDI. An inquiry of January 1905 from the engineering society, demanding that it be made an integral part of the reform process, received a summary, noncommittal reply.17 Meanwhile, the LGA did consult extensively with the local school boards, on which many individual members of the VDI, engineers, and businessmen were represented.18 The purpose was to make sure "that the industrialists receive an accurate briefing of the new plan and its rationale, and that they have an opportunity to express themselves in the matter. This will likely prevent attacks from their direction in the future. " 19 The LGA hoped to neutralize possible opposition from the VDI's national executive by building support with employers and engineers at the local level. Besides lowering admission standards and raising career expectations, the government's plan also called for an increase in the HMBS curriculum from four to five semesters. This was to make time for instruction in recent developments in electromechanical and internal-combustion engineering and would further enhance the competitiveness of the state schools against the proprietary schools. Compromise on various minor points with school boards and individual school directors secured grassroots support without changing the proposal's fundamental thrust. 20 The 15 Ibid., Bl. 139-4If. 16 On the LGA, see Hans Heinrich Borchard, 50Jahre Preussisches Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe, 1879-1929 (Berlin: Reichsverlag Hermann Kalkoff, 1929), 56; also see Handbuch des kgl. preussischenHof und Stoat, 1906, 1907 (Berlin: 1906, 1907), 125, 128; Prussia, Landesgewerbeamt, Verwaltungsberichte 1-5 (1905-1914) (Berlin: Carl Heymans Verlag, 1906ff.), passim. 17 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 6, Bl. 1-2. 18 Ibid., Bl. 68f., 188f.; vol. 7, 97-158, 232-9. 19 Simon to MHG, June 9, 1906, ibid., Bl. 189-90. 20 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 247-69-

Public authority and engineering personnel

193

final plan, therefore, was still expected to increase enrollments. It would do so by opening the HMBSs to more and more students without the one-year volunteer exemption, while modernizing and increasing the length of its curriculum, by reopening the LMBSs and sanctioning their training of office technicians and designers, and finally by more active advertising. The government next attempted to implement the reforms without interference from the VDI. On 1 July 1907, only three and a half weeks after its final position paper had first appeared in print, and without advance warning, the LGA convened a conference with the various public and private agencies — including the VDI — represented on its grand council. 21 The conference lasted only a single day and provided little opportunity for detailed discussion or meaningful consultation on the part of those who had not participated in the earlier negotiations. Reading the minutes of the meeting, one cannot help but notice that the VDI's representatives, Theodor Peters and Borsig director Max Krause, chairman of the Berlin chapter, were steamrolled by the weight of solid consensus in support of the government's proposals. From the vantage point of the engineering society's leadership, revival of the LMBSs and the increase from four to five semesters at the HMBSs were the main points of contention. Peters and Krause raised strong objections to both, but each time Minister of Trade Clemens Delbriick, who personally chaired the conference and acted as the government's chief spokesman, rejected the engineers' arguments by referring to the unanimous view of the experts. The conference closed without making a single concession to the VDI. 22 The Ministry of Trade wasted no time exploiting the situation. In early August of 1907 it requested the Finance Ministry's permission to implement immediately those parts of the reform that relaxed the admission standards and upgraded the purposes of the MBSs. 23 The plan almost succeeded. The Finance Ministry went along, and on 5 November 1907 the LGA issued its new "Regulations Concerning Purpose and Admission Standards for Intermediate and Lower Machine Building Schools," effective 1 April 1908. 24 The only part of the reforms still to be enacted was to increase the HMBS curriculum from four to five semesters. This had not been done because it required additional expenditures. Budget requests were submitted immediately, but LGA officials estimated it would take at least a year before the new curriculum could be introduced. 23 21 22 23 24 25

Ibid., Ibid. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

Bl. 273-97. Bl. 307-10. Bl. 328-9. Bl. 256f., 307-8.

194

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession 2. THE RIEDLER AFFAIR

The records of the Ministry of Trade are silent about the exact sequence of events after the new regulations of 5 November 1907 were issued. But the following day, Professor Alois Riedler of the technische Hochschule in Berlin gave a lecture on "the development of mechanical engineering studies" in the Berlin chapter of the VDI. 26 Before an unsuspecting audience of 350 listeners that included government officials and the elite of Berlin's engineering community — men such as Alfons Gotte and Fritz Neuhaus, general director of Borsig - Riedler dropped a bombshell. The flamboyant professor, a central figure in the drive to establish academically trained engineers on equal footing with the professions of medicine and law, launched a massive attack on nonacademic engineering education. Riedler accused the Prussian government and the VDI's leadership of having done irreparable harm to the cause of professionalization with the buildup of the MBS system. For the sake of the lowest possible labor costs and the "production of cheap auxiliary forces for industry," the Prussian government at the behest of the VDI's managerial leadership had invested vast sums in building a network of MBSs, spending even more on them than it did on the technische Hochschulen. Despite lavish expenditures, the schools, which "trained only office technicians and draftsmen," instead of competent personnel for the shop, were poorly attended, proving they were "not urgently needed." 27 Instead of recognizing its error and changing direction, the government was determined to make these undesirable schools viable - an attempt that would surely succeed - by lowering admission standards. This was being done because the nonacademic engineer was the darling of the engineering industry, which much preferred him to the academically trained, "cultured" engineer from the technische Hochschule. Unlike the latter, who not only expected a decent salary but also was suspected of harboring exaggerated career ambitions, the MBS graduate was inexpensive and assumed to be docile and grateful. Industrialists mistakenly thought they could get by with a very few highly talented academic engineers and a mass of undereducated technicians. The consequence was a limitation of employment opportunities for scientifically educated engineers. In the short run this might save some money, but in the long run industry was bound to suffer 26 VDIZ (1908):702-21. See also Alois Riedler, "Die Entwicklung und Zukunft der technischen Hochschulen," Internationale Monatsschrift fur Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 1 (1907):415-20, 4 4 4 - 5 0 . On Riedler, see Karl-Heinz Manegold, Universitdt, technische Hochschule und Industrie

(Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), 249-305; Volker Hunecke, "Der 'Kampf urns Dasein' und die Reform der technischen Erziehung im Denken Alois Riedlers," in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Technischen Universitdt Berlin 1879—1979,

(Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1979), 301-14. 27 VDIZ(1908):703.

vol. 1, ed. Reinhard Riirup

Public authority and engineering personnel

195

and experience a slowdown in technological progress. Even industry's immediate goal was being jeopardized, because large numbers of cheap auxiliary engineers could easily be unionized and — as had already begun to happen - collectively could demand higher wages. The crux of the matter for Riedler was the effect of all this on the social standing of the engineering profession. Lowering admission standards to the HMBS by substituting Volksschule and a two-semester preparatory course for six years of education at a general secondary school "amounted to the total elimination of general cultivation," resulting in the "mass production of the least educated all the way down to those of the lowest quality." Later on, such people could "call themselves 'engineer' — in our land of prescribed preparatory education and strict segregation of professions [Standestrennung]\" It was obvious that "the intermingling of cultivated academics with elements possessing an inadequate secondary education" caused great "harm to the occupational prestige of the entire engineering profession."28 There was a social danger in the new admissions policy as well, because it brought on the "proletarization of the entire profession. . . and therefore the creation of a discontented profession." 29 The chief culprit, according to Riedler, was the VDI itself. The engineering society had never lifted a ringer to protect the profession's standing, "never distinguished between engineers and auxiliaries, never even tried it," but instead had always given strong backing to nonacademic engineering education. The consequences of such "indiscriminate mass training of cheap auxiliaries" were so devastating and so damaging that he wondered if the "leaders and instigators of the affair" were fully aware of their actions. 30 Other professions unfailingly surrounded themselves with monopolies and state licenses and prescribed strict educational qualifications. "Only among the engineers is it the other way around. Engineers themselves bring about the mixture of scientifically educated engineers and auxiliaries with completely different education." 31 Such "democratic" policies were "entirely foolish" and evidence of a fateful "lingering in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land."32 The leaders of the engineering society should pay attention to the academically trained engineers and expel nonacademic engineers. Immediate action and protection of the professional designation "engineer" were needed if the VDI, despite all its "devil's money" and "huge numbers," was not soon to be revealed as a "colossus with feet of clay!"33 28 29 30 31 32 33

All citations from VDIZ (1908):703. Ibid. Ibid., 705-6. Ibid., 706. Ibid., 707. Ibid., 706.

196

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Occasioned by the LGA's reforms of 1907, Riedler's address became a turning point in the social history of the German engineers. To appreciate why this was so, one must view his remarks in the context of the surging numbers of technically trained personnel who flooded the labor market after the turn of the century. The enrollment figures for the technische Hochschulen shown in Figure 8.3 give some indication of the problem. 34 As Figure 8.3 illustrates, enrollments developed in typical boom-to-bust cycles. After an initial high of 5,449 in 1874-5 (25 percent of total enrollments in higher education), they had bottomed out at 2,549 in 1884—5 (8.8 percent of the total), then climbed uninterruptedly to reach a high of 12,687 in 1902-3 (26.1 percent of the total) - almost two and a half times as many engineering students as the previous peak. From the new high, enrollments dropped back to 10,817 in 1911-12 (15.8 percent of all enrollments in higher education) and then began a slow recovery that was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. 35 Whereas the enrollment drop after 1874-5 appears to have been a consequence of the depression of 1873-9 and student flight to the universities - possibly reinforced by the then growing demand for professionals outside industry - the same cannot be said for the decline after 1901-2. With the exception of the brief recessions of 1900-1 and 19078, the period 1896—1913 was one of sustained and rapid economic growth. The enrollment decline after 1902—3 was a product of deteriorating career prospects resulting from overproduction of technically trained personnel, probably compounded by another upturn in the fortunes of nontechnical careers and surging university enrollments since the mid-1890s. 36 Figure 34 See Appendix. See also Hermann von Laer, "Der Arbeitsmarkt fur Techniker in Deutschland: Von der Industriellen Revolution bis zum I. Weltkrieg," in Historische Arbeitsmarktforschung: Entstehung, Entivicklung und Probleme der Vermarktung von Arbeitskraft, ed. Toni Pierenkemper and Richard Tilly (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 1 5 8 - 6 1 . 35 On the inherence and regularity of cyclical enrollment patterns at German institutions of higher learning, see Hartmut Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 1( 1984):92—121; idem, "Enrollment Expansion and Academic Overcrowding in Germany," in The Transformation of Higher Learning 1860—1930, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch (University of Chicago Press, 1983), 5 7 - 8 8 ; idem, "Ueberfiillungskrisen in akademischen Karrieren: Eine Zyklustheorie," Zeitschrift fur Pddadogik 27, 2(1981): 187-224. Enrollment growth is also discussed, though misleadingly with regard to higher technical education, in Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic Illiberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), 2 3 - 7 7 (especially 32). 36 The extent to which enrollment fluctuations at the technische Hochschulen were related to overcrowding in nontechnical professions during the 1880s and 1890s remains to be studied, but it is plausible that the rising enrollments of the technische Hochschulen in the decades before 1902—3 were partly also a function of career crowding in traditional academic careers and stagnating - even declining - university enrollments from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. In the last decade before the war, this pattern reversed itself. Overcrowding in the engineering profession and declining enrollments at the technische Hochschulen were balanced by improving career prospects in the traditional professions and rising university enrollments. See Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern," 115—17; idem, "Enrollment Expansion," 58, 63, 73; Frank R.

17000 16000 15000 14000 13000 12000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0

Regular Students Total

^

I

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 1 I I I I I I 1 I I I

Figure 8.3- Enrollments at German technische Hochschulen from 1872-3 to 1913-14.

198

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

8.4 suggests the imbalance between the supply of engineers and their demand, as measured by the growth of industry as a whole. 37 It plots the growth of overall industrial employment and the growth of the value of industrial production against enrollments at the technische Hochschulen (1913 = 100, five-year intervals), showing that between 1885 and 1905 the rate of increase in the number of academic engineers alone had far outstripped the industrial growth rate. At the same time that the technische Hochschulen had expanded and increased their enrollments several times over, the numbers of nonacademic engineering schools and their students had also grown dramatically. Prussia's MBS system was built from scratch during the 1890s, while similar schools in other states grew as well. On top of that came the auditors and guest participants at the technische Hochschulen, a share of the alumni of the building trades schools, and all the students from the proprietary schools.38 Riedler had saved his special contempt for the latter, which accepted ''anyone who walks in off the street. Whoever is fit for nothing at all in life can always still go to a Technikum, and later on all those characters can call themselves 'engineer' too!" 39 The growth in the number of proprietary technical schools, peaking in the 1890s, is shown in Table 8.2. 40 All told, there may have been as many as 250,000 persons with some form of technical education or expertise above the level of foreman on the eve of World War I. Of these, probably no more than a quarter had true engineering functions. 41

37

38 39 40 41

Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974), 173-8; von Laer, "Der Arbeitsmarkt fur Techniker," 160-1. Sources for Figure 8.4: enrollments at the technische Hochschulen, Appendix Table 3; industrial production and employment, Wolfram Fischer, Bergbau, Industrie und Handwerk, vol. 2 of Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, ed. Hermann Aubin and Wolfgang Zorn (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1976), 531. Cf. Figures 8.1 and 8.2. VDIZ(19O8):7O3. Dosmar, Technische Mittelschulen, 1-13Reinhold Jaeckel, Statistiktiberdie Lage der technischen Privatbeamten in Gross-Berlin (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1908), 161; also see VDIZ (1909): 148, a 1908 estimate of 350,000-400,000 salaried technicians, engineers, and foremen in Germany. Heinz Potthoff put the total at 500,000 in 1905; Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 7 March 1905, 1805ff. Btib figures from 1910 to 1913 put the number of technical employees (shop-floor and white-collar functions above foreman but below senior management) in industry at 150,000, which appears to be the best estimate. That only about 60,000-70,000 individuals occupied true engineering posts is no more than a rough estimate. Determining the number of "real" engineers is impossible, because it was never clear to the historical actors themselves who exactly was an engineer, a matter over which they fought. The title was not protected, and education did not set the boundary of the profession until after World War II. Many graduates of the technische Hochschule ended up in functions that did not qualify as engineering work, whereas the reverse often was true for self-taught engineers, technicians, graduates and dropouts of proprietary and state nonacademic technical schools. Was a technische Hochschule graduate who became a blueprint worker or a corporate executive any more or less an engineer than the largely self-taught designer or shop-floor supervisor who made a superior construction or turned out to be a capable technical manager? This was the central issue

110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Employees Production Value Enrollments

1870

1875

1880

1885

1890

1895

1900

1905

1910 1913

Figure 8.4. Index of number of employees, production value, in industry and crafts, and enrollments at German technische Hochschulen, 1870-1913(1913 = 100).

200

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession Table 8.2. Founding dates of German proprietary schools for mechanical and electrical engineering

Founding date

Number

Percentage

7 13 7 1 10 38

18 34 18 3 26 99

Before 1890 1890-9 1900-9 1910 Unknown Total

Table 8.3. Annual salaries of academically trained and nonacademic engineers in private industry and government in Berlin, 1906 Academic Annual income Under M. 2,100 M. 2,100-3,000 M. 3,000 and up

Nonacademic

Industry

Government

Industry

Government

44% 25% 31%

3% 30% 68%

61% 25% 14%

17% 55% 28%

Despite the surge in supply, there appears not to have been any significant unemployment among technically trained personnel before 1914. 42 Instead, large numbers of engineers were employed in subordinate positions that paid very little or did not qualify as real engineering work; salary levels, especially starting salaries, declined; and a large proportion of engineers remained unmarried, became discontented, and were easily radicalized.43 According to a study undertaken by Reinhold Jaeckel for the Bureau fiir Sozialpolitik in 1907, 57 percent of the nonacademic engineers and 39 percent of academically trained engineers employed in private industry in Berlin in 1906 earned M. 2,000 or less annually - at a time when M. 2,000, the upper income limit for compulsory social insurance, was generally considered the dividing line between proletarian and bourgeois incomes.44 Table 8.3 shows Jaeckel's income figures for of the Riedler affair. The sociopolitical conflicts that grew out of the problem are treated more fully in Part III of this volume. 42 Jaeckel, Statistik, 86-94. 43 Ibid., 141-4. 44 Ibid., 66. Jaeckel mentioned M. 2,400 as the "minimum living wage" for a married engineer (p. 141).

Public authority and engineering personnel

201

Table 8.4. Annual salaries of engineers in industry, grouped by education, Berlin, 1906

Annual income Under M. 2,100 M. 2,100-3,000 M. 3,000 and up

Academic with diploma

Academic, no diploma

49% 26% 25%

38% 24% 38%

Nonacademic 61%

the two categories of engineers, compared with corresponding salaries for engineers employed by the city of Berlin. 45 Jaeckel then disaggregated the category of academically trained engineers in industry into those who had concluded their studies with the official examinations and those who had not. He was surprised to learn that the former were actually paid less than engineers not officially graduated. Table 8.4 illustrates this finding.46 Citing Riedler's address of 1907, Jaeckel explained this peculiarity in terms of industry's reluctance to hire graduated engineers because of their allegedly higher expectations with regard to income and responsibilities. In other words, he alleged — and there appears to have been — a tendency on the part of employers to look on the certified engineers as overeducated, overqualified, and already getting too old (between twenty-six and thirty) when they started their careers. The consequence was that their chances were not as good as those of their less well educated colleagues and competitors. 47 In conjunction with depressed salaries, grievances over conditions of work had given rise in 1904 to the formation of Germany's first engineering union, the Bund der technisch-industriellen Beam ten (Btib). At the time Riedler gave his address in late 1907, the Berlin-based Btib had already organized close to 11,000 engineers - of both the nonacademic and the academically trained variety. Alone among all the other organizations of salaried employees, it had consciously opted for a confrontational, blue-collar union relationship with management. The Btib also actively propagandized against the founding of further technical schools and vigorously counseled against choosing a technical career.48 45 Ibid., 62-8, 149-60. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 150, 160. 48 On the Btib, see Chapters 9—11. Its most prominent statement against choosing a technical career: Wilhelm Stiel, Die Aussicbten des technischen Berufs, 7th ed. (Berlin: Karl Sohlich, 1909). By March of 1909, some 126,000 copies had been distributed free of charge to 19,000 high schools, 1,000 newspapers, 20 of the largest weeklies, organizations of teachers and school directors, and others; DIBZ 5 (1909): 151. Similarly, DTV to MHG, 2 February 1908, ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 9, Bl. 29.

202

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

Because of its left-wing political reputation and aggressive tactics, the Btib was not as successful in organizing the engineering profession as it had hoped. From the pages of its periodical, the Deutsche Industrie-Beamten Zeitung (DIBZ), it is evident that the Btib formula had difficulty overcoming the professional consciousness of many academically trained engineers. 49 That was the case even though certified Diplom-lngenieure were instrumental in its founding, played a prominent role in its leadership, and joined in large numbers. But for every academic engineer it attracted, there probably was one repelled by the Btib's approach to the employment crisis, one who believed that unionization and association with educational inferiors in an adversarial relationship with management was not the answer to his problem. In anticipation of joining the higher echelons of the industrial bureaucracy, such engineers opted instead for a "collegia!" relationship with the employers. Though many of them remained silent, a militant minority expected improvements in their conditions to result from the expulsion of nonacademic engineers from the profession, from depriving alumni of the nonacademic engineering schools of the occupational designation "engineer," from a crusade to dismantle the MBS system, and from a monopoly on all engineering posts in industry for themselves. Prior to Riedler's address of 1907, the public articulation of such demands had been limited to a few isolated incidents, because the mostly young Diplom-lngenieure who espoused these views naturally received little sympathy from the leadership of the business-dominated VDI. As a result, the notion of collegiality with senior, managerial engineers was stretched to the breaking point. Riedler's inflammatory lecture signaled the beginning of a movement by these academically certified but frustrated engineers to band together. Collectively, and, if necessary, over the opposition of the management faction, they would seek to eliminate the employment crisis and the threats to their professionalization. The surfeit of engineers was to be reduced by changing the VDI's educational policy. The MBSs and all other nonacademic engineering schools would have to be closed, and nonacademic engineers should be expelled from the engineering society. When those efforts failed in 1909, the defeated reformers broke with the VDI and formed a new association of professional engineers, the Verband Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure (VDDI), composed strictly of individuals who had passed the Diplom examination at the technische Hochschule and were entitled to the academic degree of Diplom-lngenieur (Dipl. Ing.) or Doktor-lngenieur (Dr. Ing.).50 49 Articles regularly appeared that addressed the problem of the failing solidarity and "false consciousness" of the diplomized engineers; e.g., DIBZ 1 (1904-5):26; 2 (1906):219-20; 4 (1908): 216-17, 345-6, 379-80; 5 (1909):338-41, 371. 50 The Diplomprufung was the counterpart of the first state examination, the Baufiihrerprufung, and

Public authority and engineering personnel

203

3. THE REPLY TO RIEDLER

The VDI leadership's initial reaction to Riedler's address was outrage. The LGA's officials were extremely disturbed also. One of the consequences of Riedler's attack on the MBSs therefore was an immediate drawing together of the two former adversaries, in common defense against a potentially dangerous new enemy. The leadership responded to Riedler's accusations at a meeting of the Berlin chapter on 5 February 1908. Even more stormy than the earlier meeting, the session was attended by a capacity crowd of over 600 members and guests. Chief spokesmen for the VDI leadership were Theodor Peters and Max Krause, who made four basic points. First, they denied Riedler's accusations of hostility on the part of industry toward academically trained engineers, rejecting his charges of favoritism toward cheaper and more pliant nonacademic engineers. As Krause put it, "I must say that the pronouncements of Herr Riedler about the allegedly incorrect behavior of industry. . . toward its engineers and technicians have caused widespread consternation and anger." Peters was more outspoken, at once comparing Riedler's charges with Social Democratic agitation and accusing him of being a rabid reactionary. Peters did not understand why Riedler took "this hostile stance toward industry. All he had to do was speak of smokestack barons who founded nonacademic engineering schools to supply themselves with cheap labor and we would almost have had a Social Democratic propaganda speech." 51 At the same time, Riedler's advocacy of a monopoly for academically trained engineers and his attack on nonacademic engineers amounted to preaching the "crudest reaction, the worst backwardness, the blockage of the free development of the engineering profession!"52 The "fundamental flaw" in Riedler's approach, according to Krause, was his imputation of ill will to the VDI and his conspiratorial interpretation of a repugnant desire for cheap auxiliaries and easy profits. The reason industry employed nonacademic engineers in such great numbers had nothing to do with hostility toward engineers from the technische Hochschule; it was the consequence of the "brilliant development of our large-scale industry," which had created a "large number of positions for technicians came on completion of the prescribed four-year curriculum. Since 1902, the government had recognized the two as equivalent, and the designation Diplom-lngenieur (legally protected if written in German script) soon became the norm for engineers who had graduated from the technische Hochschule. For the wider societal context of these academic engineers' efforts, see Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics, passim (especially 403—4). More extensive discussion of the VDDI can be found in Chapter 12 of this volume. 51 VDIZ(1908):7l6. 52 Ibid., 717.

204

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

. . . that in no way can be rilled with academically trained engineers." 53 Citing a recent study by the Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Ans taken (VDMA), the influential trade association of the mechanical engineering industry, Krause pointed out that industry needed considerably more nonacademic engineers than academic engineers. Depending on the branch of industry, for every one engineer from the technische Hochschule there were openings for four to ten nonacademic engineers. Many of the technologically simpler types of businesses, such as agricultural machinery, textile machinery, and coach building, had little use for engineers from the technische Hochschule. What they needed were engineers with some theoretical background, but above all lots of practical experience. 54 Second, the VDI leadership denied that an excess of inferior nonacademic engineering schools produced a flood of cheap auxiliaries who deprived engineers from the technische Hochschule of their jobs. As Krause saw it, "the situation is exactly the reverse." Owing to Prussia's falling behind in the 1880s and its slow start in the 1890s, the supply of competent nonacademic engineers still did not meet the demand. In contrast, "the effect of the overproduction of engineers from the technische Hochschulen in recent years is such that today we can no longer place the entire new generation in suitable positions." Excess supply from the technische Hochschulen, rather than from the nonacademic schools, was the reason that the "young academically trained engineers apply so frequently to positions for which a nonacademic engineering education is more than sufficient."55 The third point centered on Riedler's allegations of the worthlessness of nonacademic engineering schools and engineers, and their disastrous commingling and competition with the "cultured," scientific engineers from the technische Hochschule. Though Riedler had spoken with "apparent authority about the inferiority of all Technical Middle Schools," said Krause, "the schools founded by the Prussian state do not merit such a judgment. Almost all of them are in excellent shape, and where this is not the case they are developing in an entirely sound direction." 56 It would, however, be a good idea to take action against "those questionable proprietary technical schools for which making money is the main thing." 57 As for the intermingling and competition between the two types of engineers, by and large it was rare, because they tended to perform clearly distinct tasks. Even so, said Krause, it was an "established fact that a great many of this group of nonacademic technicians have dem53 54 55 56 57

Ibid., 713. Ibid. Ibid., 712. Ibid., 713. Ibid.

Public authority and engineering personnel

205

onstrated eminent achievements in their profession and in the course of time frequently also advance to such positions as the engineers from the technische Hochschule would prefer to reserve for themselves." It followed that there was "therefore later in life in this manner entirely legitimate - and not unfair - competition between nonacademic engineers [Techniker] and academic engineers." 58 Peters denied that the VDI was responsible for the crisis and the competition. Commingling and competition for jobs were caused by the unalterable "facts of life." He had the "assurance of eminent leaders of large enterprises who employ many, many academic and nonacademic engineers that within a few years . . . this distinction is no longer noticeable in any way, insofar as a title does not mark the difference."59 The fourth and most important issue for the managers was Riedler's demand that all better functions in industry be reserved for academically trained engineers, in the manner of the civil-service hierarchy. Against this view, the VDI's capitalist leaders firmly asserted the right of management to keep total control over their operations. The ability and knowhow of nonacademic engineers made it inevitable that some of them would move on to higher positions. It was therefore impossible, said Krause, to "prescribe to industry which positions it is allowed to fill with nonacademic engineers [Techniker] and which ones not." The whole idea was based on an "unwarranted overestimation of knowledge over know-how" and an underestimation of the "individual competence of the nonacademic engineer." 60 Comments such as these show that nonacademic engineering schools here assumed a significance that transcended their actual function in the industrial process. These schools and their alumni became weapons to defend the sovereign powers of the business elite against the bureaucratic pretensions and status aspirations of academically certified engineers, whose models were the other, monopolistic professions. This is particularly noticeable in the remarks of Peters, who waxed lyrical about the nonacademic engineer's great abilities, his potential for career mobility, and the glorious openness of the engineering profession. He spoke at length of the traditional freedom of industry and engineering and the opportunities for unrestricted social advancement they offered. Though there is no reason to question the sincerity of such beliefs, the function of that panegyric on free enterprise and open competition in that context is clear. It enabled the managers to denounce Riedler's monopolistic claims as "crude reaction." Peters pointed out that the VDI had never been an association for the direct protection of the status interests of engineers. It had sought only to promote the prestige of the engineers 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 716. 60 Ibid., 713.

206

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

indirectly, by dedicating itself to the advancement of industry and technology. And who could deny, he argued, that in the wake of the world's industrialization and technological transformation the engineers had automatically risen to the considerable social prestige they had? It was futile to tamper with the order that individual achievement and talent alone had effected. Introducing artificial distinctions, monopolies, titles, buttons, uniforms, and so forth, was a waste of time, as life itself "eliminates all such distinctions of professional designation, and does not ask where and how one has been educated, but what one is and what one can do." 61 The economic necessity of an open profession was argued by engineer Ferdinand Dohne, like Krause a senior manager at Borsig. Unlike monopolistic bodies such as the state or other, closed professions, industry had to compete. This dictated that it "work as cheaply as possible and with good profits." Industry knew no other laws, and "despite all empty speeches and phrases that occasionally are made," was never allowed to know another law. "Industry is not a closed profession [Korporation] like those of the physicians or lawyers, but has to reckon with competition at home and at times even with the foreign competition." An industry that did not work as inexpensively as possible went under. It was for these reasons that managerial power had to remain as it was. 62 The VDI's leaders were not the only ones to take issue with Riedler. The LGA's Gotte did the same, and by his moderation proved to be one of Riedler's most effective opponents. Looked at from the state's perspective, Gotte pointed out, the nonacademic engineering schools had two objectives, one social and one economic. In neither area were the schools worthless or harmful. Socially, it was the responsibility of the government's educational policy not merely to take care of people from the better social classes; "it must also provide opportunities for advancement to ambitious and intelligent elements from the poorer strata." It was perfectly obvious that "not everyone can go to the technische Hochschule." The MBSs had this social-mobility function, even if in the final analysis the reason for their existence was economic. 63 The economic necessity of the MBSs spoke for itself, said Gotte, restating the managerial view. 6 4

It was his duty "to counsel urgently against undertaking a crusade against the MBS." What the VDI should do instead was to take into account the legitimate interests of all parties - academically trained and certified engineers, nonacademic engineers, and management. As far as 61 62 63 64

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

716. 719. 708, 714. 714.

Public authority and engineering personnel

207

the first group was concerned, they had a point in wanting to improve their social status, but they already possessed their academic degrees, and apart from trying to end the terminological confusion between the DiplomIngenieur and the ordinary Ingenieur, not much could be done. To eliminate the intermingling of nonacademic and academically trained engineers was impossible, short of nationalizing all private industry. If the academically trained engineers did not realize this, but rather insisted on nonnegotiable demands "that completely ignored the interests of others," they would end up with nothing. The best approach would be for all concerned to sit down and "investigate the question as to how many technical middle schools, how many lower schools" there should be. The technische Hochschulen should be included in this review as well. 65 The obvious place to begin addressing the problems of oversupply and inferior technicians, Gotte continued, was with the proprietary schools. If the academically trained engineers were going to attack any schools, these should be the ones, not the Prussian schools, in which everyone "worked hard and with great energy." Gotte concluded by reiterating that it was necessary to avoid extremes and "find the right measure on either side, both when it comes to establishing technische Hochschulen and intermediate and lower technical schools." If that was done, the academically trained engineer would have "no need to call on his big brother, the state, to protect him against competition." 66 Gotte's recommendations merit close scrutiny, because they anticipated and partially shaped the direction of future developments. Ever since the mid-1890s, the Prussian government's two largest problems with nonacademic engineering education had been its hostile relations with the VDI and the enrollment difficulties of the MBSs caused largely by the proprietary schools. Gotte saw that Riedler's attacks on the MBSs had unhinged this constellation and that the ensuing crisis created an opportunity for realignment. Despite their differences, the VDI's managerial leadership and the Prussian government both had a vested interest in the preservation and further expansion of the MBSs. Together they might be able to deflect the challenge of Riedler and the academically trained engineers — in the first instance by turning against the proprietary schools. Gotte realized that the latter, beyond the reach of the Prussian government, could be tamed only by means of an alliance with the leadership of the private, but nationwide, VDI. Its influential press, network of business and educational contacts, and professional authority did not halt at the boundaries of Prussia's jurisdiction and might now be mobilized against institutions that the LGA for a long time had unsuccessfully sought 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 715.

208

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

to supplant with its own schools. In addition to saving, even boosting, the MBSs, collaboration with the VDI therefore held an additional attraction. It opened up the alluring vista of extending Prussia's influence in matters of nonacademic technical education to the national level. Besides presenting a common front against the proprietary schools, industry and government would have to determine exactly how many engineering schools of each type were necessary and where and how their boundaries were to be drawn. In other words, a nationwide planning agency to study and coordinate such issues was implicit in Gotte's call for an inquiry into the size of the demand for the various engineering schools. Of course, there was a trade-off. In exchanging the old constellation for the new, the VDI's leadership would have to be granted the codetermination and the cosovereignty in technical education that it had long sought. At the time, that may have seemed a small price to pay. Though Gotte's suggestions would soon be taken up by the VDI's directorate, they did little to calm tempers at the meeting of 5 February. The evening reached its climax when Riedler responded to his "indictment." He reiterated his main point, the "question of the professional status" (Standesfrage) of the engineers. This was what had earned him Peters's accusation of being a "reactionary" — an expression he cavalierly dismissed because Peters had "simultaneously compared him with Social Democratic agitators." 67 As future events would prove, the incongruity was not so strong as Riedler assumed. Caught in a debilitating career squeeze, threatened simultaneously from above by the power of capitalist management and from below by nonacademic engineers, those academically trained engineers for whom Riedler served as a spokesman easily embraced a mixture of reaction and their own Utopian brand of socialism. Such tendencies were only reinforced by the engineers' inability to acquire the status of, or amalgamate with, older professional elites and to break the grip of lawyers on the leading careers in public life and the civil service. This gave their anticapitalist orientation an additional dimension of hostility toward the inherited social order and set the stage for what Jeffrey Herf has called the German engineers' "reactionary modernism." 68 Riedler's comments have a direct bearing on this problem. He reiterated his prior accusations, observing that his adversaries had passed in silence over a central issue, "the fact that the preparatory education for the training of technicians at the 'Higher' Machine Building Schools had been brought down to the lowest level." The VDI had failed to take any measures that might promote the professional prestige and general level of culture of the engineers, that might make them more competitive 67 Ibid., 717. 68 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 152-88.

Public authority and engineering personnel

209

with lawyers in industry or the civil service, or, finally, that might protect them against the machinations of lawyer-dominated administrations doing their best "to keep down the engineer who had appeared on the scene only recently and climbed too fast. In the engineer they detect the new man, who might cause trouble - therefore put him down!" And if lawyers succeeded, it was because the VDI encouraged the commingling of real engineers with people "who had no culture at all." 69 For that reason it was Riedler's opinion that "the new Higher Machine Building Schools . . . and the most recent reorganization of these schools [were] the largest squandering of public funds ever perpetrated." 70 Riedler concluded by saying that his views represented nothing new, that "hundreds and thousands" had thought it before him, and that if the VDI continued on its current course, a split of the engineering society was "entirely unavoidable." Unfortunately, the split was "in fact already there," for if an association was led as was the VDI, "academically trained engineers must get used to the idea of a split. The way the association proceeds I would like to characterize as nothing more nor less than selfcastration." Following this final outburst, Riedler apparently departed immediately. He soon resigned his membership in the VDI and withdrew for a decade from all public discussion of the issues he had raised, leaving his agitated audience to ponder the question of what to do next. 71 4. THE BIRTH OF THE GERMAN COMMITTEE FOR TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND THE REFORMS OF 1910

The reactions were surprisingly swift. Even before the meeting adjourned, followers of Riedler successfully moved to make graduation from the technische Hochschule or successful engineering practice the criterion for future membership in the VDI. In vain Ferdinand Dohne pointed out that the Berlin chapter had always represented and still represented Berlin's industrialists, whose responsibility it was "to produce inexpensively and to utilize their work force to the fullest possible extent." The pursuit of status objectives was irreconcilable with this mission. Graduates of the technische Hochschule should therefore form a "league" of their own. 72 Precisely such a league — the VDDI — appeared less than two years later, when it had become clear that the drive to reform the VDI along the lines of Riedler's recommendations was doomed to failure. 69 VDIZ(1908):718. 70 Ibid., 719. 71 Wurttembergischer Goethebund, ed., Milderung der Klassengegensdtze und die Bestrebungen zum

Schutze des Ingenieurtitels (Stuttgart: Verlag von Konrad Wittwer, 1919), 107; VDI membership rosters for 1907 and 1912 in VDIZ (1908):71972 VDIZ(1908):720.

210

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

A more promising and more successful initiative came from the temporarily embattled leadership of the VDI. Shortly after Riedler's November address, the executive committee had contacted the Ministry of Trade. It had requested suspension of the MBS reforms of 1907, in particular the proposed fifth semester that would only aggravate the competition between academically trained and nonacademic engineers, until the LGA had negotiated in earnest and reached an understanding with the VDI. Not surprisingly, the government obliged, on one condition: The VDI should coordinate its views with those of other major technical societies and industrial associations. If it refused, the government would be compelled to consult the other groups on its own. 73 A week after the second Riedler meeting in February of 1908, the VDI accepted the government's challenge. It set up a special committee to address the question of the MBSs. The committee, in turn, invited representatives from other technical organizations, as well as a Prussian government observer, to a preliminary conference in Berlin in May of 1908. Substantive issues were discussed at this meeting, but it soon became apparent that the reform of the Prussian schools could not be resolved in isolation. Not only was the fate of the MBSs bound up with that of the proprietary schools outside Prussia, but also decisions concerning the shape, boundaries, and purposes of nonacademic engineering education touched on the question of what separated this type of training from lower as well as higher technical education, and therefore the composition of the engineering profession. The May conference therefore decided to constitute itself as the nucleus of a larger, permanent nationwide organization that might systematically review this entire complex of interrelated questions. 74 The German Committee on Technical Education (Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen, DATSCH), convening its first meeting in December of 1908, quickly developed into one of the more remarkable institutions of pre—World War I Germany. Until its demise at the hands of the Nazis in 1939, the DATSCH's "significance for the entire system of specialized occupational schooling cannot be overestimated," writes Gustav Griiner, an expert on German occupational training. 75 For the 73 VDIZ (1909): 1483—4. The government designated the Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten (VDMA), Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE), Verein Deutscher Eisenhuttenleute (VDEh), Verband Deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieurvereine (VDAIV), Deutscher TechnikerVerband (DTV), Verein akademisch gebildeter Lehrer, Maschinenbauschulmanner-Vereinigung, Deutscher Beton Verein, Deutscher Aussschuss fur den mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht; DATSCH AB 1, 6; VDIZ (1910): 1605-7. 74 VDIZ (1908):559-60, 820; VDIZ (1909): 1483-4; DATSCH AB 1, 1-5. One model for DATSCH was the German Committee for Mathematical and Natural Scientific Education; VDIZ (1908): 158, 274-5. 75 Gustav Griiner, Die Entwicklung der hoheren technischen Fachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet (Brunswick: Westermann, 1967), 59.

Public authority and engineering personnel

211

first time, a central clearinghouse for the whole of technical education in Germany emerged. Employing their own outside consultants and experts, DATSCH committees systematically began to study all forms and aspects of technical education and offered guidelines, policy recommendations, and educational objectives. Thus resulted a degree of nationwide coordination, standardization, and rationalization of the chaotic conditions in existence before its emergence that surpassed anything the individual German governments, or professional societies acting alone, could have achieved. It also preceded by almost two decades similar initiatives in the nontechnical professions.76 The most interesting thing about the DATSCH, however, is not what it achieved, but how it did so. The origin and early center of the DATSCH was the VDI, which initially provided the DATSCH with all the necessary leadership, funding, and staff support. 77 At the same time, the DATSCH transcended the VDI. The membership consisted of Germany's leading engineering and technical societies, such as the VDEh (metallurgical engineers) and the VDE (electrical engineers), and included the powerful business association of the engineering industry, the VDMA. Several associations of educators also joined, as did subsequently all the major socioeconomic interest groups of engineers and technical employees - the DWV, the Btib, the Deutscher Techniker-Verband (DTV), and the VDDI. 78 In short, representatives of Germany's entire engineering and technical community in all its dimensions belonged — from corporate employer and engineering professor to anonymous employee and LMBS graduate. Meanwhile, the DATSCH maintained close contacts with government. Though the various German state governments were not members, strictly speaking, they were always kept up to date and in turn made their own contributions to the DATSCH. Officials of the LGA, such as Gotte and Donhoff, for example, actively participated in the DATSCH, whose guidelines then became government policy. Other German states did the same. There is no question that the managers of Germany's large engineering firms dominated the DATSCH. This was reflected in, among other things, its self-styled mandate: to articulate the educational needs of industry. In the words of Otto Taaks, the VDI's chief operating executive and the DATSCH's first chairman, the latter's mission was "to determine the 76 Owing to generally favorable career prospects in the nontechnical professions in the decade and a half before 1914, efforts to manage a debilitating oversupply of university graduates after the war did not develop until the 1920s and early 1930s; see Titze, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern," 118-20. 77 VDIZ( 1909): 1432-3. 78 For DATSCH membership, see note 73; in addition, the following belonged in 1910: VDI, VDDI, VDMI, DWV, Btib, the Schiffbautechnische Gesellschaft, and the Deutscher Gewerbeschulmanner-Verband; DATSCH AB 2, 62.

212

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

needs and requirements of industrial and business practice." 79 Though business interests predominated, government was represented and had a significant voice in the deliberations. To a much lesser extent this was the case for the salaried technical employees and ordinary engineers. 80 Even so, the DATSCH tackled the crisis in engineering education from a comprehensive perspective. By adopting a consensual style, it gave at least nominal representation to those whose fate was being decided. Thus, it served as a precursor of the various business-dominated agencies and formal or informal steering mechanisms — of a bilateral as well as trilateral nature, radiating from German industrial and technical circles — that proliferated during and after World War I. 81 A private body endowed with de facto public powers, the DATSCH was one of the first manifestations before 1914 of the "twilight of sovereignty" that Charles Maier views as a hallmark of post—World War I "corporatism." 82 In time, the DATSCH came to deal with all aspects of technical education. 83 The order in which it did so, however, followed from the circumstances of its founding. First on its agenda was the question of the MBSs and the other state schools for nonacademic engineering education. The key was to find a solution to the discontent and near mutiny in the rank and file of the engineering profession without jeopardizing the supply of nonacademic engineers and the existence of the MBSs. The proposed addition of one semester was crucial in this regard. The government's plan called for adding the additional semester at the top, as the fifth semester above the four current semesters of the HMBSs. This would have made them more competitive with the proprietary schools, many of which had five, and some even six, semesters. The LGA's plan thus did exactly 79 DATSCH AB 1, 10, emphasis added. On Taaks (1849-1924), see Conrad Matschoss, Manner der Technik (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1925), 270, and VDIZ (1924):381-2. 80 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 149. 81 Gerald D. Feldman, Army, Industry and Labor in Germany 1914-1918 (Princeton University Press, 1966); idem, "Der deutsche Organisierte Kapitalismus wahrend der Kriegs- und Inflationsjahre 1914-1923," in Organisierter Kapitalismus, ed. Heinrich August Winkler (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 150-71; Gerd Hardach, The First World War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970); KarlHeinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1974); Suzanne D. Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1981). Also see the literature cited in note 82. 82 Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I (Princeton University Press, 1975), 3-15 (especially 9). Heinrich August Winkler, ed., Organisierter Kapitalismus; Hans-Jurgen Puhle, ed., "Kapitalismus, Korporatismus, Keynesianismus," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 2(1984); Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch, eds., Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979); Ulrich von Alemann, ed., Neokorporatismus (Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag, 1981). 83 In the remaining years before the war, the DATSCH systematically tackled most other questions of technical education: the proprietary engineering schools in 1910 (DATSCH AB 2 and 3), training for skilled craftsmen in 1911 (DATSCH AB 3), and higher technical education in 1911— 14 (DATSCH AB 4, 5).

Public authority and engineering personnel

213

what Riedler and a VDMA study he had cited said that the nonacademic engineering schools were doing. They were becoming more and more ambitious and "wanted to be little [technische] Hochschulen." This encouraged career competition between academically trained engineers and nonacademic engineers from the outset, locating it in the educational sphere rather than allowing it to crystallize in the workplace. The industrialists conceded to Riedler that this tendency was indeed "disastrous for industry" and would "have to be fought with all available means." 84 The LGA and the vast majority of the HMBS teachers, on the other hand, were equally adamant, arguing that a fifth semester was necessary on pedagogical grounds. 85 Pressure to reach agreement was stronger than principle, and a compromise carried the day. The industrialists accepted a fifth semester, but convinced the government of the wisdom of "connecting it in advance," or adding it at the bottom, prior to the existing first semester. The difference from the original plan was important: "Pre-connecting" it in that way helped preserve the "strict separation" between the education of HMBS graduates and that of engineers from the technische Hochschulen. It would prevent extension of the schools' objectives, as well as the training of specialists, and instead would eliminate deficiencies in the variegated preparatory educations of entering students. 86 At the cost of some reduction in the social mobility function of the HMBSs — but without endangering the system as a whole — these changes partly addressed the problems identified by Riedler. The catch was that the new plan made the HMBSs once again less attractive from the students' point of view and thus benefited the proprietary schools.87 The DATSCH would therefore have to deal with the proprietary schools as well, which it did after completing work on the Prussian MBSs and similar state schools elsewhere. The DATSCH also tightened admission standards to the HMBS by reemphasizing the significance of the one-year volunteer exemption as the admissions norm and by making several other adjustments. The government accepted these proposals, surrendering the central part of its reform proposals of 1904-7. 8 8 For their part, the engineering industrialists abandoned their opposition to the two-tier system of nonacademic engineering 84 85 86 87 88

VDIZ (1908):712; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 273-97. DATSCH AB 1, 1-5. DATSCH AB 1, 3-4. ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 144, 4 February 1910. The DATSCH made admission to the preparatory courses dependent on (1) a special entrance examination and four years of practice for Volksschiiler or (2) graduation from "middle schools for boys" (mitt/ere Knabenschulen) and three years of practice, or (3) advancement to the fifth year of a nine-year high school and three years of practice. This represented a considerable tightening of standards compared with 1907. For the 1907 version, see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 8, Bl. 247-69; for the DATSCH's 1909 proposals, see DATSCH AB 1, 85-7; for 1910 reforms, see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 260-79.

214

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

education and accepted the LMBS. In 1907, Krause and Peters had still protested the latter's revival, but in 1909 Friedrich Frolich, a senior DATSCH official, as well as the business manager of the VDMA and an influential VDI member, made a special point of noting that the DATSCH recognized as valid the need for a subdivision between LMBS and HMBS. 89 The DATSCH's final report of June 1910 went out of its way to praise the two-tier system: "Based on different preparatory education, this division is entirely desirable and meets an existing need." 90 Though the need for compromise with the government played a role, the reasons for the change in this case, too, can be traced directly to the profession's overcrowding and crisis. Acceptance of the LMBS reduced the pressures for the lowest possible admission standards at the HMBS, whose graduates were the most immediate threat to engineers from the technische Hochschulen. The least-educated students could then safely be diverted to the lower school. Though the DATSCH accepted the distinction between LMBS and HMBS, it did so only on narrow, technical grounds. The overall objectives of the two schools were the same: "to provide our industry with the majority of its employees [Beamten] in design, drafting, and shop-floor management." 91 The two were therefore versions of a single category of nonacademic engineering education. The government went along, agreeing that both schools provided "specialized occupational training," with only marginal differences in career prospects. 92 The new mission descriptions touched on the sensitive issue of the relations between academic and nonacademic engineering education. The DATSCH drew a careful and subtle line between them, clarifying and acknowledging educational differences, but rejecting their extension to the workplace, where they might have led to the kind of fixed career tracking and monopolies demanded by Riedler and his followers. The DATSCH struck all references to implied career restrictions from the MBSs' official purposes and for the first time officially designated their training as "professional" - albeit of a nonacademic kind. 93 The "legitimate competition" between engineers from 89 DATSCH AB 1, 51, 54. On Frolich, see Rekhshandbuch derDeutschen Gesellschaft (Berlin: Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag AG, 1930), vol. 1, 499; see also Chapters 9-12 in this volume. 90 DATSCH AB 1, 158. 91 DATSCH AB 1, 82-4, 158-60. 92 In the 1910 regulations, the HMBSs trained "future machine technicians {Mascbinentechniker} in the design offices and on the shopfloorof mechanical engineering firms and comparable technical establishments." In addition, they provided "future owners of industrial installations with an opportunity to acquire the necessary technical skills." The LMBS prepared for "future workshop managers {Letter], as well as for future owners of smaller operations or for auxiliary technical personnel in design offices." ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 262, Bestimmungen uber die Organisation der HMBS, 3. 93 See Griiner, Fachschulen, 63, on the point that explicit reference to professional training was an innovation at that time.

Public authority and engineering personnel

215

the technische Hochschule and the nonacademic engineers to which Krause, Peters, and other managerial engineers had referred in the Riedler debate thus received the blessing of the DATSCH. Its 1911 report unambiguously "recognized that many of the technicians who graduate from the Technical Middle Schools later advance to the position of engineer. " 94 The VDI leadership was the major force behind this approach, which amounted to a declaration of war against the more militant DiplomIngenieure. Following the Riedler affair, the managers in charge of the VDI had become embroiled in a bitter struggle with academically certified engineers seeking to expel the nonacademic engineers. The leadership had been forced to start a review of membership policy, in which it proposed to make some nominal concessions, but otherwise hoped to fend off the challenges and to maintain the tradition of flexible and open admissions. As Otto Taaks explained in a meeting of the executive council in 1909, "the word 'Techniker' had been struck" from the newly proposed paragraph on membership requirements "not because. . . the gentlemen who have come out of our Middle Schools — schools that in the meantime have become so much more capable — no longer belong in the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure." Rather, it was his committee's "fundamental standpoint. . . that as a matter of course we look upon these gentlemen as being part of us — so

long as they do the kind of work that we in the world of practice view as engineering functions." Taaks explained this policy as follows: "We leave free where his education may have come from; we only stipulate one thing: the gentleman in question must exercise a function qualifying as engineering work by the standards of our current conditions." 95 Despite strong opposition, especially from the Berlin chapter's rebellious membership, these principles won out. They found their way into the VDI's new statutes of 1910, which neatly dovetailed with the educational policies of the DATSCH and the Prussian government. 96 The DATSCH's recommendations became law almost exactly as proposed.97 On 26 July 1910, less than four months after the DATSCH had first issued its study, the Ministry of Trade published new "Regulations 94 DATSCH AB 2, 128; also see Romberg in DATSCH AB 1, 83. 95 VDIZ (1909): 1287-8, emphasis added. 96 On the VDI's new statute, see VDIZ (1908—10), entries in table of contents under "Satzungen," especially 1908:559, 563, 1413, 1495; 1909:1077-8, 1286-300, 1473, 1653-4; 1910:1179, 1507-16; also see O. Biitow, Die Reorganisation des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure (Braunschweig:

Friedr. Bosse, 1909). 97 ZSTAII, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 156-90. The government's acceptance of the DATSCH guidelines directly contradicts Detlef Miiller's thesis that "course plans did not follow from economic and occupational demands; rather, the internal differentiation and hierarchical ordering of qualifications within the school system made possible the differentiation and hierarchical ordering of the occupational structure." Detlef K. Miiller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon, The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction 1870—

1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24.

216

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

for the Organization of the. . . Machine Building Schools" that closely followed the outlines of the DATSCH plan. Phased in after September 1910, they remained in effect without fundamental changes until 1950. 98 The DATSCH next turned its attention to gaining control over the proprietary schools. It did so in part through its ability to define educational categories, career patterns, and the relevant terminology. According to the DATSCH, there were only three types of technical education, uncoupled from career in all cases as much as possible. The top category was higher technical education. It was the exclusive province of Germany's eleven technische Hochschulen, which the DATSCH mentioned by name and defined as institutions requiring the Abitur from a nine-year high school for admission and typically possessing an eight-semester curriculum. At the other end was lower technical training, based on Volksschule and made up of part-time vocational schools for blue-collar workers and foremen, such as special evening and Sunday courses, factory schools, apprenticeship programs, and continuing primary schools for industry {gewerbliche Fortbildungsschulen).99

Between higher and lower technical training stood nonacademic engineering education. In contrast to higher technical education, the DATSCH did not define it in terms of a specific educational privilege, such as the one-year volunteer exemption. Its distinguishing principle was conveyance of a specific occupational or professional training that did not require the Abitur. An extended period of prior practical experience was an absolute prerequisite, as applied knowledge and know-how were the hallmarks of nonacademic engineering education. All the proprietary schools, regardless of whether they called themselves "engineering academy" or "polytechnical school" or chose other names calculated to confuse the public, belonged in the category of nonacademic engineering education. The DATSCH specifically recommended that industry give hiring preference to students from state schools, or such proprietary schools as conformed to its guidelines. 100 This, as well as more direct methods, gradually produced results. The DATSCH began annual publication of career-counseling pamphlets and educational guidance materials, which were printed in large numbers and distributed all over Germany. Coordinated by the DATSCH, the individual states began scrutinizing and regulating the proprietary schools. The worst offenders were closed or driven out of business, and the more reputable ones soon began to cooperate. 101 By 1914, the abuses associated 98 ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 10, Bl. 262, Bestimmungen uber die Organisation der HMBS, 3- Ibid., Bl. 261-79; see Gruner, Fachschulen, 40-77, for curriculum details. 99 DATSCH AB 1, 158-61. 100 DATSCH AB 1, 157-64. 101 The Verband hoherer technischer Lehranstalten comprised the following: Technikum Altenburg

Public authority and engineering personnel

217

with proprietary engineering schools were becoming things of the past, and for the first time the Prussian MBSs, having emerged as the national norm for nonacademic engineering education, were enjoying solid growth in enrollments. 102 5. THE OUTCOME

The final victory of the state schools over the proprietary institutions did not occur until after World War I. 103 It is evident, however, that its beginnings can be traced to the collaboration of 1909—14 between private industry and the Prussian government embodied by the DATSCH. The success of the state schools after 1910 thus raises the question who profited more from the reforms of 1910 - industry or the Prussian government? Obviously, their collaboration for purposes of crisis management was in the first place mutually beneficial. Fed by Germany's drive for world power and by concerns about lower-class unrest, the tremendous expansion of technical education after 1890 had turned on itself, giving rise within two decades to social dislocations at the center of the national industrial complex. Career and employment problems of middle-class engineers undermined the foundations of the social order in ways perhaps less directly threatening, but ultimately far more unsettling, than the Social Democratic bugbear.104 The uncontrolled swings of an educational "free-market" mechanism as regulator of supply and demand for the production of technical personnel had, after 1900, resulted in a continuously mounting glut of engineers, in turn producing a crisis in the engineering profession, as well as challenges to the policies of the Prussian state and the authority of the VDI's managerial rulers. Faced with these problems, which their (Saxony-Anhalt), Technikum Bingen (Hesse), Technikum Hainichen (Saxony), Technikum Hildburghausen (Saxony-Meiningen), Technikum llmenau (Saxony-Weimar), Ingenieurschule Mannheim (Baden), Technikum Mittweida (Saxony), Ingenieurschule Zwickau (Saxony); DATSCH AB 2,

44-5. 102 "The necessity of drawing attention to the state schools decreases from year to year. The more students graduate from the institutions in question, the more the schools and their achievements become known in wider circles. The DATSCH meetings, too, have been quite favorable for the MBS, and it can be observed that enrollments are slowly but surely on the increase." This 1912 LGA comment is in ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 11, Bl. 330. Also see DATSCH AB 2 and 3, passim, DATSCH AB 5, 97-100, and ZSTA II, Kultusministerium, Rep. 76, Vb. Sekt. 1, Tit. 1, Nr. 9, Bl. 100-400, passim. For enrollment patterns, cf. Figures 8.1-8.3. For examples of the DATSCH's collaboration with state authorities in controlling the proprietary schools, see ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. Xllf 3, Nr. 3, adhib. 2, vol. 2 (Die privaten Maschinenbauschulen, 1907-1917), Bl. 79-85, 91, 93, 128-30, 166-7, 180-200. The DATSCH's career-counseling pamphlets were drafted in cooperation with the Prussian LGA; ZSTA II, MHG, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 11, Bl. 362-3; ibid., vol. 12, Bl. 39-66; ibid., vol. 13, Bl. 34. On the MBSs becoming the national norm, see Griiner, Fachschulen, 74-5. 103 Griiner, Fachschulen, 103-9. 104 See Chapters 9-12.

218

Reorientation: industrial capitalism, a "practical" profession

struggle for control of nonacademic engineering education had only exacerbated, the two antagonists suspended their silent war. Instead, they opted for a collaborative, organizational approach, designed in part to recreate stability by way of a more efficiently regulated and rationally controlled environment for technical education, and in part to protect their investment in nonacademic engineering education. In terms of controlling overproduction, the new system was at best marginally effective. Even today it is notoriously difficult to coordinate the supply of educated personnel with demand, and the DATSCH before 1914 made no serious effort to estimate the economy's total requirements for the different kinds of engineers, set targets, or effect an equilibrium. 105 What it did do was make access to engineering education somewhat more difficult - at the level of the technische Hochschulen and at the level of the MBSs — and go after the proprietary schools. The alliance was considerably more successful in its other objective: to defend the nonacademic engineering schools against the attacks and monopolistic aspirations of academically trained engineers. Beyond this common advantage, the Prussian government scored some victories of its own. The most important was the VDI's acceptance of the two-tier MBS system. Despite industry's protestations concerning the schools' strictly economic purposes, this concession gave limited sanction to their social mobility role, thereby preserving the principle of the legitimizing and system-stabilizing function of nonacademic engineering education. The most significant gains for the Prussian government were no doubt the gradual extension of the MBS design beyond its own borders to the other German states and the (still programmatic) taming of its most formidable competitors: the proprietary schools. It was the beginning of a national system of nonacademic engineering education (which soon continued its own academizing trends) on a largely Prussian footing. Despite such government gains, there is little doubt that industrialists and the VDI's leadership were the big winners. Through the DATSCH, the managerial elite of the engineering profession was able to mold and subordinate the noneconomic functions of the engineering schools to its own needs. It thereby limited the tendencies of these institutions to become too autonomous or primarily serve needs other than those of business. It had also obtained a variety of substantive changes in the government's plans. The crucial point, however, was that with the formation of the DATSCH, the engineering society's leadership had emerged next to the Prussian government as cosovereign in the determination of technical education policy. In fact, it became more than coequal. In 105 The internal dynamics and the demographic structural causes of the problem are explored by Titze, "Ueberfullungskrisen in akademischen Karrieren"; idem, "Die zyklische Ueberproduktion von Akademikern"; idem, "Enrollment Expansion."

Public authority and engineering personnel

219

exchange for limited concessions and willingness to cooperate, it had gained recognition as the principal partner in a corporatist-like structure of decision making, thereby approximating the notion of irresponsible ''private government" that has been proposed in connection with the power of professions.106 Through the DATSCH, the VDI leadership had been able to make major progress in its quest for professional power and autonomy, and therewith progress in the advancement of a crucial aspect of the professionalization of the top ranks of engineering. 106 A. L. Mok, Beroepen in Actie: Bijdrage tot een Beroepensociologie (Meppel: Boom, 1973), 23, 2 7 32; C. L. Gilb, Hidden Hierarchies: The Professions and Government (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Also see Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe; Claus Offe, "Korporatismus als System nichtstaatlicher Makrosteuerung?" Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 2(1984):234-56.

PART III The crucible: technical careers and managerial power, 1900-1914

Career prospects and the Btib's reform efforts

The formation of the DATSCH had given the VDI's managerial segment a major voice in technical education and enhanced its power and prestige. As the Riedler affair and its aftermath showed, however, the price paid for this victory was extraordinarily high. In fact, the divisions and cleavages between the industrialists, the professionalizes, and other disadvantaged elements were indications of the limits of the VDI's effectiveness as a professional association and as an agency for the realization of managerial interests. The engineering association could survive only if it avoided the kind of bruising conflicts that pitted employers against employees and business interests against the concerns of professionalizers. In other words, neutrality - at least an unquestioned perception of neutrality - in all sensitive and controversial questions was essential. In many respects, that had always been the engineering society's policy, but now such tendencies were reinforced, and neutrality had to be observed even more strictly. In consequence, the VDI became increasingly marginal to the burning social and socioeconomic issues of the day. The initiative in these matters passed to other organizations, such as the VDMA for the engineering employers and, depending on their rank, position, and outlook, the Btib and the VDDI for less powerful engineers. The upshot was further fragmentation and more divisiveness in the engineering profession as a whole. The divergent pressures of class and status destroyed any remaining illusions about the existence of a community of professionals. The fact remains that by gaining control over nonacademic engineering education, the managers and industrialists had scored an impressive victory, enhancing the kind of autonomy typically associated with professional power. Combining varying degrees of Bildung, Besitz, and power, the managerial segment could therefore look back on a remarkable success story in 1914. Technical educators and corps engineers had also succeeded in their quest for professional standing. Closed and homogeneous subgroups of the larger technical community, they were protected by their 223

224

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

official Bildung, academic certification, and civil-service standing. Despite sometimes vicious intragroup rivalries, such as that over the Oberrealschule, they were solid members of the Bildungsburgertum and had considerable autonomy in their areas of expertise. The circumstances of the privileged minority contrasted with the fate of the vast majority of ordinary engineers. The dramatic increases in the production of all kinds of technically trained personnel after 1890 had given rise to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of inexpensive engineering talent in the last decade before World War I. This may have helped profits, and probably contributed substantially to economic growth as well, but it also exacted a high social price, ruining the career opportunities and extinguishing the hopes of virtually an entire generation of employee-engineers. 1. CAREER PROSPECTS FOR ENGINEERS, 1900-14

Obviously, the glut did not affect all employed engineers equally. Many of those who had found jobs and begun to climb the emergent corporate ladder in the early 1890s were at least partially exempt from the career crisis. So, on the whole, were earlier generations of engineers. But for those entering the labor market between the late 1890s and 1914, the prospects rapidly deteriorated, turning dismal in the last ten years before the war. It was therefore a distinct generational cohort that was hardest hit: engineering graduates in their mid-twenties from the technische Hochschulen, from the nonacademic engineering schools, and from the proprietary schools — most of the young men who entered the job market in the last fifteen years before World War I. In 1914 the oldest members of this group would have been in their mid-thirties. The engineers who lost out were overwhelmingly the young ones — a fact not lost on the industrialists who sought to contend with the sociopolitical consequences of the overcrowding.1 Not only were salaries extremely low - often below the pay of skilled blue-collar workers, sometimes less than that of janitors — but also vertical mobility and horizontal mobility were increasingly limited, becoming 1 On the generational problem, see Rieppel to Peters, 22 December 1905, 17 April 1906, Rieppel to Bavarian VDI chapter, 26 October 1905, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg 162/11; also see Peters and Neuhaus, in VDIZ (1908):702-21; DIBZ (1906):217; Max Krause, in VDMA ZM 5 (10 April 19O7):5; Ernst Zorner, VDMA meeting 21 June 1906, MAN Werksarchiv Augsburg, Nachlass Guggenheimer (NGug), 48/60. For a brief sketch of the labor market and career prospects for engineers from 1850 to 1914, see Hermann von Laer, "Der Arbeitsmarkt fur Techniker in Deutschland: Von der Industriellen Revolution bis zura I. Weltkrieg," in Historische Arbeitsmarktforschung: Entstehung, Entwicklung und Problem der Vermarktung von Arbeitskraft, ed. Toni

Pierenkemper and Richard Tilly (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 152-75; and see Alf Liidtke's comments on that paper in the same volume, pp. 176—81.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

225

functions of social connections, private means, or extraordinary talent. Even specialized engineering skills and experience were easily substituted, having become interchangeable commodities. Countless engineering graduates who expected, perhaps unrealistically, challenging managerial or professional careers and rapid promotion had to be content with jobs as assistants, draftsmen, and blueprint copyists, or content with long waiting periods. This fate broke many an optimistic spirit. As one author put it, "the free and lively lad has turned into a small and dependent employee who hardly dares to have his own opinion because he has to worry about making a living." 2 The consequences of oversupply affected technically trained personnel in most specialties and of all educational backgrounds. There is evidence of overcrowding in the chemical, electrical, shipbuilding, and construction industries. 3 The crisis appears to have been most acute, however, in mechanical engineering, especially for those mechanical engineers who had been trained at the technische Hochschulen. The hardships of this group were exacerbated by a problem of overqualification. As machine builders, mechanical engineers were at the center of nineteenth-century industrial progress, especially so in Germany, where the field had been fostered since the first half of the nineteenth century as the high road to economic modernization. The crash of the 1870s, after a brief period of soul-searching, had reinforced this view, causing machine builders to secure their survival in world markets with a strategy of superior quality and broad flexibility toward customers.4 As a consequence, the mechanical engineering divisions were easily the most popular departments at the technische Hochschulen. With the exception of the construction industry, machine building also employed the largest number of technically trained personnel of any industry. A general background in mechanical engineering therefore was considered the most versatile for career purposes. It was easily adapted to other and more specialized requirements, and one way or another it could be used in virtually all industries. During the 1890s, enrollments in the mechanical engineering departments of the technische Hochschulen had risen dramatically, jumping by more than 300 percent from 1,878 students in 1890-1 to 7,593 student in 1901-2. 5 2 DIBZ (1J9O8):379 The nickname for blueprint workers (Pauser) who walked back and forth all day with copies of drawings, was Pausanias, the ancient Greek traveler. 3 Wilhelm Mertens, "Zur Bewegung der technischen Pri vat beam ten," Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 25 (1907):passim (especially 659); for architecture and the construction industry, see DIBZ (1909):338-41, (1910):280; shipbuilding, DIBZ (1912):351; chemicals, DIBZ (1910):220; electricals, DIBZ (1905):27. 4 See Chapter 5. 5 DATSCH AB IV, Berichte aus dem Gebiete des technischen Hochschulwesens (Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1912), appendixes to report by Hermann Franke, Table 6; also see Wilhelm Lexis, Das Unter-

226

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Compared with industries such as chemicals, electricals, and metallurgy, however, the practice - as opposed to the theory - of machine building had lagged in becoming fully science-based. Though highly creative and original, mechanical engineering frequently remained semiscientific — a pragmatic and eclectic mixture that left plenty of room for operations of a strictly empirical nature. This was reflected in, among other things, the countless numbers of small and medium-sized shops, metal fabricators, and so forth, that remained eminently viable in mechanical engineering, as well as in the nature of the field's personnel requirements. As the American Wickenden report put it in the late 1920s, "the strong scientific emphasis in the training of the technical universities needs a counterpoise of more practical character. German industry would probably find it hard to manage without the more practically trained techniker as an intermediary between the diplom-ingenieur and the working forces. There are vast numbers of small industries in all central Europe into which the highly professional diplom-ingenieur scarcely fits at all and which need a more adaptable type of technical direction." 6 It was largely because of the absence of nonacademic engineering schools around 1890 that students had flocked to the technische Hochschulen to take mechanical engineering and then were able to find work. Perhaps the most striking feature of the machine-building industry was its employment of huge numbers of designers, draftsmen, and other office technicians. These armies of white-collar engineers were needed in part because of the emphasis on custom production and varied product mix that the highly competitive and technologically innovative field had inherited from the days of small and fragmented markets. Survival in the increasingly sophisticated national and international markets depended to no small extent on a plentiful supply of inexpensive engineers. It was precisely for this purpose that the VDI in 1889 had first called for nonacademic mechanical engineering schools — institutions whose students were entering the labor market in record numbers after the turn of the century. Not only did the graduates of the HMBSs and the proprietary schools compete easily with Diplom-ingenieure and other engineers from the technische Hochschulen\ frequently they were actually preferred by employers. Consider this observation, made in 1911, by Anton Rieppel, one of Germany's most respected engineers, and managing director of the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg Niirnberg (MAN) engineering works: "A large richtswesen im Deutschen Reich, vol. 4: Die technischen Hochschulen (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1904), 188, 200, 218, 235, 244, 263, 274, 289, 299. 6 Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education 1923—1929, vol. 1: A Comparative Study of Engineering Education in the United States and in Europe,

by William E. Wickenden (Pittsburgh: 1930), 981.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

227

number of Diplom-lngenieure goes to waste in subordinate positions. The enrollment at the Hochschulen is too large." At the same time, too many "draftsmen and lower technicians [were] bred," according to Rieppel, who went on to say that there was a "shortage of real designers, that is, technicians who have graduated from a good nonacademic engineering school [Technikum] (admission standard six years Realschule and two years shop-floor practice)." 7 Rieppel had frequent occasion to repeat such views, as in 1913, when he noted in a letter to the journal of the VDDI that competition between university graduates and nonacademic engineers was inevitable. Talented engineers from the MBSs, he wrote, would always do better than scientifically trained engineers from the technische Hochschulen who were clumsy or not suited for their profession in some other way. 8 Consider the comments of Carl Ziese, the autocratic proprietor and general manager of the 16,000-man Schichau naval shipyards in Elbing. The examinations at the technische Hochschulen were, in his opinion, "no indication whatsoever of the future competence of an engineer." Ziese claimed that he had "often employed Diplom-lngenieure and Doktor-Ingenieure who proved themselves so incompetent that I had to transfer them to the copy department and finally was glad to see them leave my firm. They were people for whom everything was so to speak new, having received far too little practical training and entered the technical profession only because they had once heard that it offered good career opportunities." The miserable performance of such certified engineers contrasted with that of nonacademic engineers, who "advanced rapidly thanks to their adequate practical training; they had a great knack and talent for their profession, moved ahead quickly and occupied entirely independent positions, earning for themselves in short order the social status that the above-mentioned Diplom- respectively Doktor-Ingenieure were incapable of achieving." 9 If this testimony appears biased because of its author's antiintellectual posturing and reactionary reputation, no such lack of credibility attaches to similar analyses sponsored by the VDDI. In early 1913, one of its authors noted that "on the shop floor, at the design table and especially at the drafting table, a general education is usually not a prerequisite." What was needed there was a "great deal of experience. The less educated man has the advantage of possessing the latter to a greater extent [than the Diplom-Ingenieur] when they are the same age." Given these circumstances, it was clear to the author that the "number of academically trained engineers [Techniker] is much too large at present. . . . The consequence of this glut is a spillover into inferior positions, for which nonacademic training is at the very least sufficient, generally speaking even preferable." 7 Quoted in Rudolf Berndt, Ueber die Not urn Stellen (Dresden: Adolf Urban, 1912), 11. 8 Rieppel, in VDDIZ (1913):2-3. 9 DIBZ(1913):43-4.

228

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

What awaited engineers in the end was a "double proletarization - a more harmful and degrading one than which is unimaginable." 10 When the engineers spoke of proletarization, they had in mind, above all, the devastating effects of salaries so low that engineers were unable to afford the life-style necessary to distinguish them in a meaningful way from skilled blue-collar workers. As a consequence, marriage was delayed for the overwhelmingly bourgeois and petty bourgeois engineers of the pre—World War I generation. 11 If they married, sons would not be in a position to receive the same education as their fathers. This, more than anything, instilled the fear of downward mobility. As an editorial writer for the Btib put it in 1905, "our goal is to put our profession {Stand} on that socioeconomic foundation within the framework of existing society that enables all its individual members not merely to live the middleclass life [standesgemdsse Lebensweise] that corresponds to their education and upbringing, but also to provide their children with that same upbringing, and to give them a chance to enter the same or an equivalent occupation."12 Overcrowding and overqualification played major roles, but they were not the sole causes of the engineers' troubles. In principle a temporary, cyclical phenomenon, the excess supply of the years before 1914 intensified a more fundamental development affecting the status of engineers in industry: the trend toward bureaucratization, division of labor, and job regimentation that accompanied the rise of the large industrial firm. Although machine building tended to lag behind other industries in this respect, it moved in the same general direction. The majority of engineers therefore did not escape its consequences. Employee status, instead of being a transitional stage toward independence or entrepreneurship, became permanent, and the paternalistic relationships or informal employment practices in small firms that had made it possible to interpret employee status as a variant of civil-service professionalism, or as collegiality on a social par with the employer, became strictly contractual, formal, anonymous, and hierarchical. As Jiirgen Kocka and others have pointed out, the growing size and complexity of industrial firms such as Siemens, Krupp, or Felten & Guilleaume gave rise to increased specialization, fragmentation, multiplication, and bureaucratization of what used to be the duties of the small staff comprising the entrepreneur's most trusted and intimate collabora10 VDDIZ (1913): 17-18. 11 See marriage rates in Adolf Giinther, Die deutschen Techniker (Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1912), vol. 1, 31-50; Reinhold Jaeckel, Statistik iiber die Lage der technischen Privatbeamten in Gross-Berlin (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1908), 1-33 (especially 7—15), 139— 64; and Dr. Steinitzer, "Altersaufbau und Ehefrequenz der technischen Angestellten," DIBZ (1913):558-60. 12 DIBZ(1905):58.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

229

tors. That generated a host of entirely new functions of an administrative, coordinating, clerical, and technical nature - tasks that were not necessarily derivative of entrepreneurial duties, but in some ways resembled production work: the provision of all sorts of auxiliary services, ranging from market analysis and sales to bookkeeping, from cost control to the invention, design, and testing of new products. This development necessitated increasingly large staffs of ancillary personnel, whose professional duties and employment conditions inevitably became more and more circumscribed. Like blue-collar labor, office work became regimented, routinized, impersonal, and subject to the control of managers and supervisors. In time, the vast majority of these increasingly anonymous and replaceable employees came to constitute a social category in their own right, the so-called Angestellten, the stratum of salaried whitecollar employees.13 Contemporary experts estimated that there were some 2 million salaried employees in Germany on the eve of World War I. 14 Between 350,000 and half a million of these were technicians, engineers, and other technical employees, including foremen.15 About 100,000 to 150,000 were engineers proper (i.e., technical personnel above the rank of foreman, but not necessarily occupying true engineering posts). 16 Only this last group is of interest here — specifically, how it was affected by the long-term trend toward bureaucracy, regimentation, and routine. Though it is impossible to separate the question entirely from the problem of oversupply — structural and cyclical developments overlapped and reinforced each other — certain developments stand out. To increase productivity, employers increasingly used their engineers in narrowly specialized functions, where they performed just one task over and over. This reduced the demand for academically educated engineers, who might 13 Jiirgen Kocka, Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969); idem, White Collar Workers in America 1890—1940: A Social-Political History in International Perspective (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980); Emil Lederer, Die Privatangestellten (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912); Toni Pierenkemper, "Pre-1900 Industrial White Collar Employees at the Krupp Steel Casting Works: A New Occupational Category in Germany," Business History Review 58 (1984):384-408; Giinther Schulz, "Die industriellen Angestellten: Zum Wandel einer sozialen Gruppe im Industrialisierungsprozess," in Sozialgeschichtliche Problem in der Zeit der Hochindustrialisierung (1870-1914), ed. Hans Pohl (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schonigh, 1979); 21766\ Hannes Siegrist, Vom Familienbetrieb zum Managerunternehmen: Angestellte und industrielle Organisation am Beispiel der Georg Fischer AG in Schaffhausen 1701—1930 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck

& Ruprecht, 1981); also see C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (Oxford University Press, 1951). 14 Heinz Potthoff, "Einheitliches Dienstrecht fur Angestellte," Arbeitsrecht 1 (February 19l4):31; also see DIBZ (1913):497-8. 15 Reichstag, Verhandlungen (7 March 1906): 18O5ff.; VDIZ (1909):l48; DIBZ (1913):497-8. See also Chapter 8, note 41. 16 Gunther, Diedeutschen Techniker, 10, 216; DIBZ (1911): 78-9; DIBZ(1913):497-8; Das Polytechnikum (October 1911):67-8.

230

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

conceive and design a customized project from start to finish. It increased reliance on auxiliary engineers who applied predetermined formulas and standardized patterns without having to think them through each time. The development was especially pronounced in design offices, where it meant simplification of duties to the point that, under the watchful eyes of a few supervisory, senior engineers, large numbers of ordinary engineers, almost like assembly-line workers, drafted nothing but identical machine parts or structural components with minor variations, eliminating virtually all creativity. 17 By the first decade of the twentieth century this condition had progressed so far that design engineers were known by the disparaging epithet of "line drawers" (Strichzieher). Someone had even come up with a biblical parody of the dehumanizing fate of these design "laborers": By the sweat of Your brow You shall eat Your bread. You shall lie on Your stomach And draw lines, all Your life. 18

Routinization of intellectual work was not limited to design. It also applied to the standardized calculation of strengths and sizes in the statics of steel construction, reinforced concrete, and other construction materials. Invention, too, was increasingly systematized — especially in the chemical industry — and broken down into small steps approaching mere quantitative variation. According to Bayer's Carl Duisberg, for example, the process whereby new dyes were invented went as follows: A given scientific theory is simply put to the test, either at the instigation of the laboratory's supervisor or at the initiative of the respective laboratory chemist. The theory tells us that the product must possess dyeing properties, but that matters less than finding out whether the new dye can do something new. . . . The chemist therefore simply sends every new product he has synthesized to the dye shop and awaits the verdict of the dyeing supervisor. . . . Not a trace of inventive genius: the inventor has done nothing more than routinely follow a path prescribed by the factory's method.19 17 Wilhelm Mertens, "Zur Bewegung der technischen Pri vat beam ten," Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 25 (19O7):653, 657, 674; Heinrich Lux, "Die Stellung des Ingenieurs," Sozialistiscbe Monatshefte 12 (1908):354-60; Ludwig Brinkmann, Der Ingenieur, vol. 21 of Die Geselhchaft, ed. Martin Buber (Frankfurt a.M.: Rutten & Loenig, 1908); Richard Woldt, "Probleme der industriellen Arbeitsorganisation," DIBZ (1913): 434—6. 18 Woldt, "Probleme," 435. Im Schweisse Deines Angesichts sollst Du Dein Brot essen, Du sollst auf Deinem Bauche liegen und Striche ziehen Dein Leben lang. 19 Carl Duisberg at the Stettin Kongress fur gewerblichen Rechtsschutz, 1909, quoted in Zeitschrift fur angewandte Chemie 22 (1909): 1667.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

231

For the majority of engineers, a technical career in industry thus increasingly meant a life devoid of professional satisfaction or dignity. They were becoming small cogs in a vast industrial hierarchy. The changing office organization did not merely make engineers more anonymous and less autonomous. It also brought about conflict with management over wages and benefits. A large office staff was expensive, and the employer's impulse to minimize labor costs quickly spread from the blue-collar workers on the shop floor to the salaried employees in the design office. For someone in an increasingly regimented and poorly paid engineering post, on the other hand, the desire to maximize concrete economic benefits increasingly began to weigh against the hollow advantages of nominally being the employer's esteemed colleague, social equal, or professional collaborator. Actual conditions gave the lie to this rose-colored view of the engineer's role. His socioeconomic interests still coincided with those of the employer as far as the firm's technical and commercial success was concerned, but beyond that they collided over the disposition of its earnings — over salaries, employment conditions, and benefits. 2. THE BTIB

The growing gap between expectations and reality did not fail to affect attitudes. A combination of absolute and relative deprivation, it undermined traditional loyalties and gave rise to a new combative spirit, the essence of which was captured by the Btib, the new engineering union. In 1912 the Btib summed up the engineers' position and, incidentally, its own philosophy with these words: "The employee sells the entrepreneur his labor power, not his entire person; he must always keep this in mind. " 20 This statement touches on a crucial problem. If, by no longer selling his entire person, the engineer openly abandoned a key aspect of professionalism, did he not voluntarily surrender his claim to professional rank and lower himself to the position of ordinary wage laborers? Did he not give up his badge of bourgeois "honor" and join the ranks of the despised Social Democrats? If so, as many engineers thought, would it not be the lesser of two evils to reject the Btib's advice and suffer quietly and in private the indignities of the work situation, but at least retain that essential tenet of professionalism that held that professionals dedicated their lives to the cause of a higher master, whom they served with total abandon in order to make life meaningful? Or was the Btib's message more subtle? Instead of implying wholesale surrender of the traditional professional ethos, perhaps it signaled the emergence of a new view, a crucial modification of professionalism in the German context: recog20 DIBZ(1912):265.

232

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

nition of the utility of social conflict as a means to power, acceptance of the inevitability of divided loyalties, and acknowledgment of the need to fight for one's interests in modern, industrial-capitalist society — if necessary with the weapons of blue-collar workers — even if one was a highly trained professional.21 The fact of the matter is that the engineers of the Btib, driven by a conjunction of structural changes in industrial organization and a sudden, debilitating oversupply, pioneered a new and ultimately widely adopted orientation for employed professionals.22 In doing so, they leapfrogged the intervening stages in the development of trade unions for this stratum that characterized the other organizations of salaried employees in Germany before 1914. Prior to the Btib's formation in 1904, German engineers who were not entrepreneurs or senior managers had essentially neglected to organize in socioeconomic-interest organizations.23 Their failure to do so - the result of professional training and esoteric skills that delayed and softened the impact of industrial bureaucratization — contrasted with the strategy of the much larger numbers of clerical and commercial employees. The latter, whose professional status was more dubious than that of the engineers, had begun to organize as far back as the 1850s. But almost invariably these other groups, in spite of a gradual increase in militancy, continued to cling to the illusion of harmony with their employers in the years before 1914 and rejected the Btib's frank admission of a conflict of interest.24 In contrast, the engineers overnight went from having no real socioeconomic-interest organizations at all to a radical trade union. What explains this puzzling development, and its timing, is not so much the gradual process of accumulating structural changes as the tremendous surge in the numbers of engineers after 1900. It was the flooded labor market that within the span of a few years brought the underlying transformation into plain view and compelled engineers rather than some other group of salaried employees - to face facts and make a clean break with the past. 21 For my fuller considerations of the concept of "profession," see Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30, 3(Summer 1988):548—72. Here it may suffice to mention that I am thinking of a convergence and interpenetration of the classical trade union and the profession/ bureaucracy models as characteristic of modern society. This is a theme elaborated by, among others, Kenneth Prandy, Professional Employees: A Study of Scientists and Engineers (London: Faber & Faber, 1965), and Chris Smith, "British Engineers; Unionisation Strategies in a Class Perspective: A Study of the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers" unpublished manuscript, Aston University, 1984. 22 One thinks of such American organizations as the AAUP, teachers' and professional athletes' unions, the various airline pilots' unions, air traffic controllers' unions, engineering and machinists' unions, and their numerous German counterparts. 23 The "neutralized" VDI is not taken into account. Until radicalized by the Btib, the DTV put more emphasis on sociability than on socioeconomic demands. 24 Lederer, Die Privatangestellten, 156-72.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

233

The Btib stood apart from the other associations of salaried employees not only because of its departure from the inherited notion of professionalism but also by virtue of its entire orientation. It was self-consciously and emphatically an engineering union. It broke with the custom of the older occupational organizations to accept employers, civil servants, and self-employed individuals as members. It excluded all technological, engineering, or scientific concerns from its agenda. It followed a two-pronged strategy: to seek redress indirectly by way of legislative lobbying, which had been the sole approach of its competitors, and to confront management and employers with demands directly. The Btib also rejected the traditional view that educational homogeneity and a common technical specialty should be the foundation for socioeconomic-interest representation. It ignored vertical and horizontal differences in education, basing itself instead squarely on the fact that the vast majority of engineers in industry faced identical problems. This was true regardless whether they were Diplom-Ingenieure, were graduates of the MBSs or proprietary schools, were dropouts, or were self-taught. Its membership included mechanical, electrical, civil, and chemical engineers so long as they were employees in the private sector. In that capacity the engineers were all subject to the same legal restrictions of the Industrial Code and had virtually indistinguishable salaries, career prospects, and employment conditions. They all had "coolie contracts." It followed that there was a basis for solidarity and united action.25 The Btib's innovative approach soon caught the attention of the press. One newspaper interpreted the Btib's emergence as evidence for the "disintegration of 'ancien society'. . . based on inherited customs and prejudices." As in nature's struggle for survival, so in society "estates disappear and classes appear," and now the world was "witnessing the birth of the class of salaried employees," the paper wrote. What had prompted this judgment were "large meetings of many hundreds of technical employees, in which the Dr.-Ing. and Dip/om-Ingenieur, the scar-decorated graduate of 17 regulation duels and the reserve officer stood shoulder to shoulder with the alumni of Mittweida, Ilmenau, Holzminden." The paper concluded that "with complete lucidity" the engineers "summed up their position thus: we have the same interests! We will jointly defend our threatened right to organize." 26 In spite of its ecumenical rhetoric and character, the Btib did not seek to organize all technical employees in industry. It voluntarily imposed a limit beyond which it would not recruit, even if that meant having to forgo additional members. The cutoff point was the divide that separated 25 E.g., Schriften des Btib 10-11 (1905-7)ipassim. For the expression "coolie contracts," see DIBZ (1906):303-4. 26 Diisseldorfer Neueste Nachrkbten, quoted in "Pressstimmen," DIBZ (1908):216-17.

234

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

engineers as a sociological type from another major group of technical employees: foremen (Werkmeister). On the surface it might appear inconsistent with the Btib's ideology and its quest for power not to include foremen, who were legally classified as salaried employees and occupied managerial rank. In fact, however, foremen inhabited a universe very different from that of office engineers. Foremen were recruited from the ranks of blue-collar workers. In slack times they might temporarily return to a production function on the shop floor. Being from the working class, foremen also did not hesitate to marry early; they had different consumption habits, and they did not worry about financing the education of their children in the same way as did the engineers. Moreover, the job market was considerably better for foremen than for office engineers, as a consequence of which they often were paid better than the latter. The foremen had long had their own association, the powerful Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband (DWV), which claimed some 55,000 members in 1914. The Btib would not have been able to take on the DWV without jeopardizing its own identity. Finally, foremen, on average, were a much older and more stable group than were the Btib engineers. Having reached the top of the blue-collar career ladder after many years in subordinate positions, foremen were inclined to be considerably more conservative than the young and frustrated engineers, who were embarking on their professional lives in a crisis atmosphere dominated by fears of downward mobility and proletarization. 27 In 1908, the Berliner Morgenpost summed up the differences as follows: The commercial and technical "employees — among them former Corps students and reserve officers, men who have passed several state examinations, Diplom-lngenieure and doctors of engineering - have come to realize that if they want to keep their heads above the cresting wave of capitalism they have no other choice than to go about it the same way as bricklayers or textile weavers." Foremen, by contrast, had not yet "made a front against the entrepreneurs, nor [was] their state of mind such that the mood of closed combat ranks could even be imagined." Foremen were the only ones in the "entire construct of salaried employees in industry" who were "not yet disillusioned, because in general they have risen higher 27 DIBZ (19O6):45, 68-9. On foremen, see Elaine Glovka Spencer, "Between Capital and Labor: Supervisory Personnel in Ruhr Heavy Industry Before 1914," Journal of Social History 9 (1975): 178—92. The issue of recruiting foremen resurfaced in 1912—14. Why this was so needs further investigation, but it is possible that the Btib, suffering like all salaried-employee organizations from high membership turnover, had changed composition. The high absolute and relative numbers of academically trained engineers as late as 1911 may have declined in favor of ever more nonacademic engineers and technicians in the remaining years before the war. Alternatively, the segment most inclined to stress occupational solidarity may have lost influence or shrunk because of a new priority assigned to large numbers, the union's setbacks, or its search for a new formula following the conflict with the employers described in Chapter 11.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

235

than their social origins might have led them to hope. . . . For the foremen the hour of despair has not yet arrived."28 Though the Btib had made an exception with regard to foremen, its approach was strikingly original all the same. This was especially true of the decision to ignore educational distinctions, which was probably the most interesting of all its organizational innovations. Ignoring education voluntarily surrendered what was normally one of the most powerful dimensions of group solidarity and called into question the Btib's status as an organization of professionals. No matter how much leveling had occurred or how high the fear quotient, class solidarity was a radical and one-dimensional principle. It prevented the attraction of those engineers who continued to interpret their university education as a patent of social and cultural arrival, as the basis for identification with a nonexistent brotherhood of all the academically trained engineers, in total disregard of their different occupational activities and class positions. It was precisely this fateful blindness to class and to conflict of interest that the Btib sought to overcome - not to minimize the cultural or professional value of a higher technical education but because circumstances had rendered it a pointless distinction for the problem at hand. Educational differences had to be ignored if employee-engineers were to establish a creditable bargaining position vis-a-vis the employers. The ultimate aim of such radical tactics was quite traditional: to "strengthen professional solidarity" (Standesgefuhlfestigeri) and to "raise the engineering profession [Technikerstand] to the level that its overall development merits." 29 The Btib merely intended to do so with the most effective means. "Where in the whole wide world," it asked, "have serious interest groups made a distinction on the basis of education? Do the employer associations ask about the education of their members? Does the Bund der Landwirte worry about whether its members finished their educations as graduates of the village school, the Gymnasium, or even the agricultural college?"30 That this argument carried a great deal of weight is evident from the Btib's ability to attract large numbers of engineers, soon becoming the most redoubtable of all the organizations of salaried employees in Germany. On the eve of World War I, and after barely ten years of existence, the Btib had approximately 24,000 members, or some 16 to 20 percent of all technically educated employees in industry (excluding foremen). Only the 27,000-member Deutscher Techniker-Verband (DTV) and the venerable VDI were numerically stronger. But the latter's leadership ex28 "Pressstimmen," DIBZ (1908):211. 29 DIBZ (1904-5): 1, 5, 26; see also DIBZ (1904-5):53-8, 67, 98-9; Btib to Verband Bayerischer Metallindustrieller, 10 August 1908, DIBZ (1908):281-2. 30 Schriften des Btib 12(1908):49-50.

236

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

plicitly refused to address the socioeconomic problems of its members, trying to minimize the dangers of internal strife by styling itself as concerned only with the progress of scientific technology. 31 The DTV organized only graduates from the nonacademic engineering and building trades schools. It had been founded in 1885, on the basis of educational and occupational solidarity between employers and employees in the building trades, an industry that retained its traditional, small-scale organization much longer than did the manufacturing or the science-based industries. Even so, the effects of consolidation, specialization, and an abundant supply of technicians were also becoming apparent in construction — especially in the big cities. But the presence of large numbers of employers, as well as lower civil servants and government employees, among its members had prevented the DTV from developing an active sociopolitical program. As a consequence, membership, which had grown respectably in the first decade of the twentieth century, began to stagnate in the last five years before the war. Increasingly the DTV was forced to follow in the footsteps of the younger and more dynamic Btib. By 1914, the DTV had, for all practical purposes, disfranchised the shrinking residue of employer members and adopted many of the Btib's tactics. Even so, it had retained its large contingent of civil-servant members and remained a distinctly more moderate organization. 32 Bitter rivals, the DTV and the Btib in fact appealed to somewhat different groups. The Btib did not accept civil servants, was not centered on the construction and civil engineering industries, and was not just an organization of nonacademic engineers. Nor was the Btib, contrary to a frequent misconception, an alliance of the lowest ranks and the dregs of 31 " . . . there will be no reason to fear a split and there will be no conflict in our association, which until now has occupied itself only with experience, exact science and hard and provable facts . . . if speculations and undemonstrable [ideological] conclusions" were kept out. "But if the views of the economists and the social politicians are put on the agenda, then you will surely have conflict. Unfortunately these are precisely the things our young colleagues would like to see discussed most. . . . In the end . . . the industrialists . . . and the engineers" will have different views, and the former "in their business associations will have to confront the VDI." Anton Rieppel to Professor Behrisch, director of the state Technikum in Hamburg, 31 January 1906, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg 162/11. See similar objections in the VDI's executive committee, 4 January 1906, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, 172. Thematically, see Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verbalten der technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970); Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig, eds., Technik, Ingenieure undGesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1836-1981 (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981). 32 On the DTV, see Deutsche Techniker-Zeitung: Wochenschrift fur alle technische Berufsstdnde (Berlin: 1884-1919): DTV, Der Deutsche Techniker-Verband: Sein Werden und Schaffen (Berlin: Nauck, 1902); idem, Der Deutsche Techniker-Verband und der Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Organisation der technischen Angestellten, vol. 1 of Schriften des D.T.-V. (Berlin: 1908); also see running commentary in DIBZ (1904—14); Giinther, Diedeutschen Techniker, passim (especially 73—6).

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

237

engineering office personnel, of fourth-rate technicians, failed engineers, and self-taught climbers posing as professionals. This image of a gathering of losers who in desperation had embraced Social Democracy was the result of hostile propaganda by another rival, the VDDI, and by industrialists seeking to discredit the Btib. 33 In truth, engineers from the technische Hochschulen assumed leading roles in the Btib. Its membership in 1911 included as many as 5,000 Diplom-lngenieure, or 28 percent of that year's total. 34 That number was far greater than the approximately 1,000 DiplomIngenieure in industry whom the VDDI had organized at that time. Not even the VDDFs total membership of approximately 3,500-4,000 on the eve of World War I was as large as the Btib's minority contingent of engineers with higher education. 35 In spite of the Btib's remarkable ability to convince substantial numbers of academically trained engineers to act in solidarity with their "uncultured" co-workers, there is no doubt that this policy was in fact quite problematic. This is evident from the repeated complaints in the Btib's periodical, the Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung (DIBZ), about the blindness or apathy of academically trained engineers and those with supervisory or managerial responsibilities. 36 If the Btib nonetheless managed to become successful it was because employment conditions for engineers in industry were so bad that there was little or nothing to lose from unionizing. Perhaps equally important, the engineering union sought not merely salary increases and other immediate monetary benefits but also the kind of autonomy, guarantees, and privileges typically associated with professional power. It demanded legal restrictions on the right of employers to dismiss salaried employees with seniority (i.e., job security, or something approximating civil-service tenure). It sought changes in employment laws concerning compensation for employee inventions, unfair competition, vacation time, hours of work, continued pay in case of illness, and so forth. All these were ultimately designed to bring about the "constitutional factory," reduction of the arbitrary powers of the capitalist employer, greater professional autonomy, and guarantees of the employee's individual rights. That is to say, the Btib's popularity derived at least in 33 On the VDDI, see Chapters 8 and 12. 34 DIBZ (1911): 177-8. On the leading role and membership of academically trained engineers and Diplom-lngenieure, see Schriften des Btib ll(1907):31; DIBZ (1906):203, 237; DIBZ (1910):57, 280, 329, 427-9, 434; DIBZ (1911): 177-8, 375; DIBZ (1912): 142; also see note 55 in Chapter 12. 35 VDDIZ(1914):165. 36 Btib, Der Diplom-lngenieur als Arbeitnehmer: Ein Beitrag zur Kritik des Verbandes Deutscher Diplomlngenieure (Schriften des Btib, vol. 23) (Berlin: Industriebeamten-Verlag, 1912); "Offener Brief an die Oberingenieure der deutschen Industrie!" DIBZ (1912):549; "Passive Widerstande gegen den gewerkschaftlichen Zusammenschluss," DIBZ (1913): 136-7, 149-50; "Zur WerkmeisterFrage," DIBZ (1913):444-6.

238

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

part from the fact that the objectives of professionalizes and those of unionizers converged.37 The danger of such a coalescence of goals, from the employers' perspective, is clear. It is illustrated by a remark by Anton Rieppel at a meeting of the association of machinery manufacturers in 1906. Speaking about discontent in the VDI, many of whose younger members had joined the Btib or were susceptible to its ideas, Rieppel reminded his fellow directors that they were all familiar with the "new orientation that dominates the engineering society these days." He urged corrective action, "because in truth [these tendencies] cover the exact same ground as that worked so intensively by Social Democratic agitators. And Social Democracy among the professional staff \Beamteri\ would hurt us far more yet than Social Democracy among the blue-collar workers [Arbeiter] ." 38 It is telling that the employers saw no difference between the engineers, who overwhelmingly stayed away from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the working class. To be sure, their political judgment was wrong, but they had unerringly zeroed in on a central fact: Employed professionalizers and socialists alike attacked the freedom of private enterprise, the unaccountability of capitalist power. 3.

THE BASSERMANN-POTTHOFF PROPOSALS

AND REFORM OF THE COMPETITION CLAUSE

Exactly how did the Btib go about improving the standing of engineers in industry, and how successful was it? In principle it pursued from the outset a course of militancy and confrontation with management. At one of its first meetings, in December of 1904, the Btib established an unemployment fund that was really designed as a strike fund.39 At that time, however, the new union lacked the numerical and financial strength for direct action. In practice, therefore, it started out on a somewhat different course. While aggressively seeking to organize as many engineers as possible, the Btib drew attention to itself in the public arena. Its purpose was to enlist the press, academics interested in social reform, and the political parties in supporting a strategy of legislative remedies. Initially this approach looked promising. The Btib's frequent recruitment meetings, organized by a central headquarters in Berlin with a speakers' bureau and a core of extremely active, traveling lecturers, usually had a sprinkling of local notables, sympathetic parliamentarians, academ37 Rudolf Breitscheid, "Des Angestelltenrecht," Miinchener Post (27 February 1912); Heinz Potthoff and Hugo Sinzheimer, eds., Arbeitsrecht: Jahrbuch fur das gesamte Dienstrecht der Arbeiter, Angestellten undBeamten, 1914ff. 38 VDMA, executive committee meeting 21 June 1906, NGug, 48/60b. 39 Schriften des Btib l(19O5):5, 39, 4 2 - 5 1 .

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

239

ics, or other public figures in the audience. 40 Within a few months, national politicians began to take notice, and as early as December 1904 the democratic Reichstag deputy, Heinz Potthoff (of the Freisinnige Vereinigung), addressed a gathering of some 500 engineers in Berlin regarding "Social Distress and the Organization of Technical Employees" (technische Beamten).41 Potthoff, the business manager of the DWV from 1906 to 1910, became a leading figure in the progressive wing of the white-collar movement before 1914. He fought for improvement of the legal status of technical employees and later dedicated himself to the creation of a modern, unified labor code. 42 Potthoff also played a key role in the Btib's early efforts at legislative politics. It was primarily through him that the Btib's demands for reform of the laws governing relations between industrial employers and technical employees came to the attention of a larger audience. On 6 March 1905, Potthoff addressed the Reichstag on the topic of the engineers' plight and called for enactment of laws that would have implemented most of the Btib's program. 43 The union's program centered on three key demands: (1) legal equality for all technical employees (technische Angestellten) with the so-called commercial employees (kaufmdnnische Angestellten), (2) elimination of all legal restrictions on the right of an employee to change jobs within his area of expertise, and (3) reform of the laws regulating the rights and obligations of employed inventors. 44 The Btib demanded legal equality for technical employees (engineers, architects, chemists, technicians, draftsmen) with commercial employees (bookkeepers, salesmen, secretarial staff, administrative personnel), because the contractual relations of the latter with employers, regulated by paragraph 63 of the Commercial Code {Handelsgesetzbuch), were decidedly more favorable than the terms of paragraph 133 of the Industrial Code (Gewerbe-Ordnung) that covered technical employees. The commercial employees, organized in interest groups long before the engineers, had been 40 DIBZ (1905):246; DIBZ (1906):ll, 15, 19, 29, 45, 182, 396, 415; DIBZ (1908):91; DIBZ (1909):71, 93, 145. 41 DIBZ (1905): 16-17. 42 Too liberal for the DWV's leadership, Potthoff resigned under pressure at the beginning of 1910. He lost his Reichstag mandate in the elections of 1912, and in 1914 with Hugo Sinzheimer he began publishing Arbeitsrecht. After the war, he became deeply involved in drafting the Weimar Republic's proposed General Law of Employment Contracts {allgemeines Arbeitsvertragsgesetz) of 1923, which was not adopted. The draft was published in Reichsarbeitsblatt (1923):498ff. 43 DIBZ (19O5):75-9. 44 Schriften des Btib 1(1905): 10-11. The Btib had other demands, such as the eight-hour day, prohibition of Sunday labor, representation in semipublic "chambers of labor," and a state pension for salaried employees, but these it shared with most other employee organizations, and they were peripheral to the Btib's identity as an organization of engineers. Though there was tension between the role of a more narrowly focused professional organization and tendencies to take on a wider mission as the self-appointed leader of a progressive wing of the white-collar movement, the Btib's central, professional demands in the end received priority.

240

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

able to gain a number of concessions when the new Commercial Code had been introduced in 1898. 45 Now the engineers wanted to catch up. Specifically, the Btib demanded continuation of the engineers' salaries in times of illness, when they drew compensation under the German healthbenefits program (Krankenkassen). The commercial employees currently were entitled to their entire salaries, whereas the salaries of engineers were reduced by the amount of sick pay. The engineering union also sought a legal obligation on the employer's part to pay salary at the end of each month, not quarterly or semiannually as the Industrial Code allowed. In case of participation in military exercises, technical employees could be dismissed after a "longer absence." For commercial employees there was an unambiguous eight-week grace period, which the engineers demanded also. If technical employees were fired after more than eight weeks of illness or military maneuvers, they were not entitled to any part of their salaries for time missed from work. The Btib demanded the same six weeks' severance pay to which the commercial employees were entitled. Finally, the Btib sought the right for technical employees to receive their letters of recommendation not on the last day of work but when they gave (or received) notice, which was typically some six weeks or three months earlier and would make finding other work much easier. 46 More narrowly focused, but also more fundamental, the engineering union's second demand concerned the so-called competition clause (Konkurrenzklausel). Competition clauses restricted the right of an employee to change jobs if his inside knowledge of the workings of the firm could give an unfair advantage to a new, competing employer. As was the case in the first demand, the Industrial Code and the Commercial Code had unequal provisions in this regard, the terms of the latter being substantially milder than those of the former. 47 In this instance, however, the Btib went beyond seeking equality with the commercial employees. It called for complete elimination and prohibition of the competition clause, on the grounds that it violated the principle of freedom of trade (Gewerbefreiheit) and unfairly restricted the engineer's career mobility. 48 The available evidence suggests that this was true. In theory, the competition clause was intended to prevent unfair competition by protecting an employer's trade secrets or his proprietary but nonpatented techniques; in fact, it caused a great deal of unfairness. Competition clauses were commonly abused to tie junior engineers and other employees without par45 These gains should also be viewed in the context of Miquel's 1897 Sammlungspolitik. 46 DIBZ (1906):7. 47 See particulars in Emil Guggenheimer, "Entwurf einer Eingabe an den Bundesrat. . . betr. Antrage Bassermann und Potthoff auf Abanderung einzelner Bestimmungen des HGB und den G.O.," October 1906, NGug, 48/60. 48 DIBZ(1906):8-9.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

241

ticularly relevant information to the employer, creating a situation that enabled the latter further to reduce salaries. 49 For the Btib, elimination of the competition clause was not only an economic demand but also a matter of principle. The union's main interest was in changing a law that in effect indentured engineers to their employers. To put it somewhat differently, by calling for the abolition of the competition clause, the Btib's engineers were asserting claims of professional autonomy within the modern capitalist corporate structure. The objective of combining professional power and employee status was even more important in the union's third and final demand: reform of the German Patent Law. The Patent Law of 1877, modified by the law of 1891, assigned to the industrial employer the original ownership rights for his employee's invention and hence the patent that might be issued for it. The legal basis for this practice was twofold. In the first place, there was the Patent Law's so-called registrant's right (Anmelderrecht), which issued the patent for an invention not to the first and true inventor but to the first bona fide registrant (i.e., the first registrant who had not embezzled the innovation). In conjunction with a second legal principle, the registrant's right entitled the employer to the invention of his employee. Paragraph 855 of Germany's Civil Code stipulated that the materials or powers entrusted to employees and domestic servants for the execution of certain assigned tasks, as well as the resulting products, belonged to the employer. In keeping with the traditional, bureaucratic understanding of professionalism whereby a professional dedicated his entire person to the cause he served, the courts had generally interpreted this principle to cover employee inventions as well. 50 In theory, it was not against the law for an employee-inventor to register a patent in his own name, but the employer could always go to court and successfully challenge the validity of such a patent on the grounds that it rightfully belonged to the employer. In practice, employers frequently availed themselves to the fullest of the law's opportunities, using routine clauses in engineers' employment contracts to that effect. Unless an inventor sued and could prove in court that he had been robbed of his invention, the patent automatically belonged to the first registrant. 51 49 According to Giinther, Die deutscben Techniker, 185-94, 13% of the technicians in his study had competition clauses. Jaeckel, Statistik, 134—6, mentions a figure of 5.5%. 50 In 1908, the conservative patent attorney B. Tolksdorf discussed exactly this theoretical point: "The employment relationship comprises the entire person of the employee, all his achievements in the area that interest the firm to which he dedicates his powers; this is not at all an oldfashioned authoritarian notion {veralteter Herrenstandpunki], as Schanze argues." B. Tolksdorf, "Das Recht der Angestellten an ihren Erfindungen," Zeitschrift fiir Industrierecht (1908): 193-200. 51 Fritz Weinberg, "Die rechtliche Stellung der technischen Angestellten," pt. V, DIBZ

242

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

The Btib aimed to secure the "individual rights" (Personlichkeitsrechte) of employed engineers by overthrowing the principle of the registrant's right, which, with the exception of Japan, was unique to Germany and had resulted from heavy lobbying by Werner Siemens and other industrialists in the mid-1870s. Looking to foreign law, especially Austria's recent Patent Law and the Anglo-American concept of the first and true inventor, the Btib sought to make the actual inventor the legal owner of his invention. It hoped to do so by replacing the principle of the registrant's right with that of the "inventor's right" (Erfinderrecht), based on the natural-law-derived theory of inalienable intellectual property, as enshrined in French patent legislation since 1791. Once they secured a reformed Patent Law based on this new principle, the patent would have to be issued in the employee-inventor's name. Even/though the employment contract might subsequently compel the employee to assign all material patent rights to the employer, name recognition in the patent document would still benefit his professional reputation. The principle of the inventor's right would also entitle the employee-inventor to "appropriate compensation" for transferring ownership of profitable patents to the employer. The Btib aggressively maintained that such financial compensation would normally amount to one-third of the profits resulting from the invention. 52 In his Reichstag speech of March 1905, Potthoff addressed all these issues, though deviating on certain points of detail from the Btib's demands. He did so in the hope of finding a formula acceptable not only to the engineering union but also to the other, less combative organizations of technical employees — the DTV, the DWV, and a host of smaller groups. Coordinating the different demands and tactics of the various organizations and establishing a united program that would lend political force to their demands were Potthoffs basic objectives. To this end he invited representatives of the major social organizations of engineers and technical employees to a conference in Berlin in May of 1905. Most of them, including the Btib, accepted. 53 (1905):231—2. For the history of the 1877 Patent Law, see Alfred Heggen, Erifindungsschutz und Industrialisierung in Preussen 1793—1877 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975). 52 Weinberg, "Die rechtliche Stellung"; idem, "Technische Angestellten und ihre Erfindungen," DIBZ (1905):202-3; K(arl) S(ohlich), "Die Eigentumsrechte der techischen Angestellten an ihren Erfindungen," DIBZ (1905):225-8; Btib petitions of December 1905 to the Reichstag, in DIBZ (1906): 2 6 - 7 . Also see Wolfgang Belz, Die Arbeitnehmererfindung im Wandel der patentrechtlichen

Auffassungen, Dr. oec. dissertation, Hochschule fur Wirtschafts-und Sozialwissenschaften Nuremberg, 1958, 1-21; Wolfgang Bernhardt, Lehrbuch des deutschen Patentrechts, 2nd ed. (Berlin: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1963), 1-14. 53 The Btib sent its top leaders, among them chairman Wilhelm Stiel, Karl Sohlich (social reformer, legal expert, and publisher-editor of the engineering union's periodical), and its business manager, Hermann Liidemann, known as the engineering union's "field marshal."

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

243

The conference managed to come up with a common list of demands. 54 The next step would be to enter the political arena in unison. Potthoff therefore organized a second conference on 3 December 1905, which established an umbrella group of the associations willing to commit themselves. The new organization, in which the DTV was the only major association not to participate, took the name of Social Committee of Associations of Technical Employees (Sozialer Ausschuss von Vereinen technischer Privatangestellten). 55 Under Potthoff s guidance the newly formed Social Committee met with a small group of Reichstag deputies. Representatives of the National Liberals, the Freisinnige Vereinigung, and the Center Party promised support for the technical employees and agreed to introduce into the Reichstag a resolution calling for implementation of the Social Committee's program. 56 The Btib was pleased with what appeared to be promising developments so early in its existence. "The 3rd of December," it wrote with confidence, "is undeniably a remarkable step forward in the history of the socialprofessional movement of the technical employees [soziale Standesbewegung der technischen Privatbeamteri]."51 Not only was the Btib's optimism premature; it would prove to be misplaced. Though Potthoff and other politicians such as National Liberal chairman Bassermann and the Center Party's Trimborn kept their word, nothing came of the "engineer motions" {Technikerantrdge) they introduced in the Reichstag in early 1906. This was the case in spite of firm parliamentary support for the reforms in question, and in spite of repeated efforts by the political parties to press the government on the issue. 58 Failure of the Btib's legislative strategy was the result of three conditions. First, the proposals became caught up in Germany's political system — a system that not only had its own rules, priorities, timetables, and accidents but also was geared toward resisting precisely the kind of reformist initiatives proposed by the technical employees. The government would therefore have been slow to respond to the engineers' grievances in the best of circumstances. In fact, the last decade before World War I was a period of domestic political stagnation, frustrated efforts at social reform, and stalemate in general. 59 That alone might have sufficed to doom the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals. 54 DIBZ (1905): 105-8. 55 It consisted of the DWV, Maschinenbau-Werkmeisterverein (Berlin), Bayerischer Technikerverband, Deutscher Fakorenbund, Deutscher brau-meisterbund, Verband Deutscher Musterzeichner, and the Btib; DIBZ (19O5):255. 56 DIBZ (1905):254-5. 57 Ibid. 58 On progress and status, see DIBZ (1906):6-7, 23, 55, 56, 73, 86-94. 59 Karl-Erich Born, Stoat und Sozialpolitik sett Bismarcks Sturz (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag,

244

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Second, the men in charge of Germany's great engineering firms - often the very same industrialists who dominated the VDI and the various other "scientific" engineering societies - opposed the technical employees' demands. After the "engineer proposals" had reached the Reichstag, the industrial interest groups, foremost among them the VDMA and the CDI, began to develop countermeasures. They prepared to lobby Reichstag deputies and to work on the state and federal ministries. They set forth the inevitability of disastrous consequences, and in time they converted their initial crude, imperious resistance into highly refined scholarly and legalistic arguments - views advanced for them by their own agents as well as by outside experts, some of whom were paid, others doing it for free. Thus, the industrialists mobilized to fight, even as they recognized that the primary cause of the engineers' radicalization was oversupply, and even as they privately agreed that the only permanent solution would be to reduce the number of engineering graduates. In private, the managers also acknowledged that salaries, especially for academically trained engineers, were too low and should be raised. 60 In spite of internal disagreements over tactics, the leaders of the engineering industries adopted a hard line, especially against the Btib. They managed in the end to orchestrate industry's united opposition to reform. Aided by lucky timing, this succeeded in warding off any significant change in the legal status quo before 1914. The third and final cause of failure was the inability of technical employees, in contrast to the industrialists, to maintain a united front. Dividing over such issues as the correct policy toward employers and Social Democracy, they dissipated much of their energy in internal strife. Fierce intergroup rivalry and hostility between the Btib and the DTV, for example, prevented the two organizations from establishing any kind of permanent cooperation. The DTV had dropped out of the Social Committee even before it came into being. At one time or another, most of the other groups withdrew from the organization, only to rejoin later. The Btib, for its part, relentlessly attacked the DTV and the other associations, accusing them, one after the other, or all at once, of cowardice, of pursuing reactionary policies or flawed strategies, or of going back on their promises. The same was true for the other groupings. All had their 1957); Volker Hentschel, Geschkhte der deutschen Sozialpolitik 1880-1980

(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhr-

kamp, 1983). 60 At the VDMA's meeting of 8-9 March 1907 in Berlin, the MAN's Rieppel declared that the "one justification" for the Btib's existence was that "academically trained engineers are being paid too little." Rieppel urged the adoption of minimum salaries of M. 130-150 monthly for this group, also recommending an increase for nonacademic engineers. Paul Reusch of the Gutehoffnungshiitte and Friedrich Neuhaus of Borsig agreed, recommending that the engineering supply be reduced by public warnings against higher technical education; NGug, 48/60; VDMA ZM 7 (10 April 1907):57-63.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

245

own ideas for success, and each stubbornly insisted on maintaining the particular course it had set for itself. The result was a profound fragmentation that destroyed the only chance of effective pressure politics the technical employees might have had. 61 These problems were not yet evident when Bassermann, Potthoff, and other deputies introduced the "engineer proposals" in the Reichstag on 7 March 1906, "the day of the technical employees." 62 The draft resolution, jointly sponsored by the National Liberals, the Freisinnige Vereinigung, the Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung, and the Center Party, called on the government to introduce legislation that would help the engineers. The parties demanded that the government (1) give technical employees the same protection under the Industrial Code as that awarded to clerical workers covered by the Commercial Code, (2) extend the Industrial Code thus amended to technical employees in agriculture, (3) introduce "appropriate rest periods" (Sunday rest, limitations on overtime) for technical employees, and (4) expand the jurisdiction of commercial or industrial arbitration courts to cover technical employees. 63 Bassermann spoke at length about the legal discrimination against technical employees, who were treated as "second-class industrial employees" and should not remain subject to "worse regulations" than those in effect for commercial employees.64 Potthoff concentrated on the competition clause, which he described as the worst of the various "draconian regulations that give the employment contracts of foremen, technicians, engineers, chemists, and other technical employees their flavor of coolie contracts. " 63 When deputies from the Center Party, the Conservatives, the Freisinnige Volkspartei, and the Social Democrats expressed their support, the Reichstag voted unanimously to place the resolution into the hands of a special committee. It would prepare a draft law for submission to the government. The Reichstag's "engineer committee" on several occasions watered down the demands to make them more acceptable to the government. The Reichstag reluctantly went along with the changes, but the government kept rejecting them, calling for further weakening as the price of its cooperation. This attitude appears to have been caused at least in part by employer hostility to the reforms. Shortly after the BassermannPotthoff proposals had gone to committee, the industrialists began preparing countermeasures. In June of 1906 the executive committee of the VDMA met in Nuremberg to consider an informal position paper on 61 For a good illustration of fragmentation and intergroup rivalry, see Schriften des Btib 20(1911):20— 2. These conflicts were so pervasive that it is pointless to cite specific evidence for them. 62 DIBZ(1906):86. 63 Ibid., 73. 64 Ibid., 87. 65 Ibid., 92.

246

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

relations with salaried employees, written by Ernst Zorner, managing director of the Humboldt engineering works in Cologne. Zorner had prepared a long list of scenarios and examples purporting to show that, contrary to the popular view of the salaried employee as the weaker party in need of legislative protection, in reality the employers suffered from exploitation by employees: The latter unscrupulously availed themselves of existing social legislation and took advantage of loopholes in the law. Zorner painted a gloomy picture of rampant abuse - engineers stealing drawings, engaging in industrial espionage, violating the spirit of the competition clause, and twisting the Patent Law for their own benefit. More generally, Zorner everywhere saw absenteeism, salaried employees bent on shirking and procuring phony doctors' excuses while spending their sick leave in beer halls, and so forth. In short, he conjured up images of employee behavior that have since become part of the standard right-wing repertoire regarding the moral effects of the welfare state. 66 Zorner concluded that the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals would have to be defeated. The VDMA's executive agreed and decided to begin lobbying work. At the suggestion of Anton Rieppel, chief executive of the MAN engineering works, the individual designated to prepare the employers' position paper was Emil Guggenheimer, legal counsel and subsequently himself a director of the MAN. Guggenheimer, from 1906 until his death in 1925 one of the leading figures in the industrialists' struggle against the demands of engineers and salaried employees, threw himself into the assignment with great zeal. He immediately adopted the maximalist, hard-line position for which he subsequently became known and which he never surrendered. By October of 1906, Guggenheimer had completed a detailed "draft of a petition to the Bundesrat, the individual Reichstag deputies, and the associations of industrialists, concerning the Bassermann-Potthoff motions." 67 Though never sent out to its intended audience, this document became the cornerstone of industry's successful defense against the attack on the competition clause and the other efforts to reform the Industrial Code and Commercial Code. It spelled out the basic arguments industrialists would advance time and again: Labor costs would go up, and though seemingly a minor burden, the cumulative effect of many small changes would eventually kill German industry, "the goose that lays the golden egg.fy The reformers were prisoners of a "theoretical idealism" without any grasp of the "conditions of practical reality." Employers were intelligent enough to take care of their good employees, and the bad ones had sufficient protection under the existing laws.68 Such generalities became specific when Guggenheimer addressed the 66 NGug, 48/60. 61 Ibid. "Entwurf einer Eingabe an den Bundesrat," VDMA ZM 5 (10 April 1907):57-63. 68 "Entwurf Eingabe," 1-3-

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

247

substance of the proposals. With respect to the question of health benefits, for example, he contended that awarding employees both their salaries and sick pay during times of illness would only encourage feigning, and though saying so in public might be interpreted as an "insult" to salaried professionals, the law should not be designed to invite abuse. Moreover, once a precedent was set for white-collar workers, it would be impossible to deny blue-collar workers similar benefits, which everyone agreed would ruin any industry immediately. Efforts to standardize health benefits in accordance with the rules in effect for commercial employees were courting economic disaster and should therefore be rejected. If there was to be any standardization, the rules for commercial employees should be made to conform to the regulations for engineers: either salary or sick pay up to the amount of the salary, but not both. Nor was it necessary in Guggenheimer's view to cave in to political arguments that urged favoring the salaried employees as a means of preventing them from joining the Social Democrats. If, indeed, the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals were the only thing that still could tip the balance between political loyalty and hostility from the salaried employees, he countered, the price to "industry, commerce, agriculture and the entire Mittelstand" would not be worth it.69 Guggenheimer was equally adamant about the competition clause. Not only was it a crucial instrument in the struggle to stay ahead of foreign competition, but contrary to what Potthoff had stated in the Reichstag, many technical innovations were not or could not be protected by patents. Industrial secrets remained essential to the survival of all those firms with capital investments in research and development and the marketing of technological innovations. As Guggenheimer put it, "the ones who possess this valuable knowledge are those technical employees to whom it cannot and may not be permitted simply to take this information to other firms!"70 Therefore, and because the inside information of commercial employees was generally less valuable and more transient than that of engineers, it would be wrong to standardize the law for the two categories of salaried employees in accordance with the relatively mild rules in effect for commercial employees. If, nonetheless, that were to happen, or if the competition clause were to be repealed altogether, employers would have to tighten internal security, keep the bulk of young engineers uninitiated or compartmentalized, and employ them in simple routine tasks while developing innovations with a small core of reliable employees. The result would be harm to the entire firm, though the ones hurt most would be the engineers themselves. It was essential to keep the law as it was. 71 It is difficult to judge the sincerity of the engineering industrialists' 69 Ibid., 7, see also 3 - 8 . 70 Ibid., 13. 71 Ibid., 11-17.

248

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

opposition to reform of the competition clause. On the one hand, it was true that they would be affected by reform to a greater extent than would other industries. The engineering industry operated in an environment that depended on large numbers of technically trained personnel, on a constant flow of minor, unpatented improvements and innovations that spelled the difference between success and failure, and on an accumulated stock of invaluable personal experience, small profit margins, and extreme competitiveness. In that context, the existence of competition clauses made more sense than for industries such as mining or steel making, which were technologically far more stable, had the advantage of extreme concentration, and required relatively much smaller numbers of engineers, sales technicians, and associated personnel. Even in the chemical industry the competition clause was less of an issue than in mechanical engineering. In both machine building and chemicals, a steady stream of new inventions was the key to business success. But chemical inventions and developments in the first decade of the twentieth century differed from innovation in mechanical engineering in that they were more controlled and amenable to rational planning. To a larger extent than in machine building, innovation in the chemical industry was a function of the firm's capital outlays for laboratory facilities, division of labor, organized task assignment, and routine problem solving. Professional employees in the chemical industry therefore recognized the legitimacy of agreements to protect trade secrets. Because profit margins were much larger for the few chemical giants, such as Hoechst and Bayer, than in mechanical engineering, the chemical employers, for their part, had soon adopted the practice of adequately compensating engineers and scientists affected by competition clauses. 72 On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the VDMA engaged in a great deal of posturing. Despite all the claims of employee abuse, for example, management had great difficulty in collecting enough evidence to illustrate the various arguments in Guggenheimer's "draft petition" of 1906. (This, incidentally, was one of the reasons for canceling its distribution. 73 ) Guggenheimer's own firm, the MAN, did have a competition clause in its contracts, but only with few employees, and its 72 On the competition clause in the chemical industry, see, e.g., the draft of a "Normalanstellungsvertrag" prepared by the Social Committee of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker, in Zeitschrift fiir angewandte Chemie 25, 52( 1912):2817ff., and correspondence between Kloeppel and Guggenheimer, 22 and 23 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a. Also see VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 July 1909, Frankfurt a.M., 3, NGug, 48/ 72. 73 Meeting of Guggenheimer, Ernst Zorner, and others in Cologne on 23 December 1906; correspondence of Emil Schrodter and Guggenheimer of 8 August and 27 September 1907, NGug, 48/60. "It is extremely difficult to collect factual documentation for the necessity of the competition clause," Guggenheimer to CDI, 23 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

249

terms were considerably milder than those the VDMA demanded publicly for legislative enactment. 74 Moreover, this same firm's directors were split on the question of its importance. Guggenheimer, a lawyer, interpreted employee attacks on the competition clause as much more serious than did Rieppel, an engineer, and therefore possibly somewhat more sympathetic to the fate of his younger colleagues. If nevertheless the VDMA pressed ahead, it was undoubtedly for political reasons: to fight the battle over industrial democracy and managerial power as far forward as possible. Hard-liners such as Guggenheimer, MAN general director Heinrich Buz, Deutz's Rhazen and Humboldt's Zorner, and even the more moderate Friedrich Frolich, the VDMA's business manager, were deeply worried about the Btib. To them the engineering union's aspirations were no different from the goals of Social Democracy.75 The engineering industrialists were not the only ones concerned about the Reichstag initiatives. In November of 1906, the executive committee of the CDI passed a resolution condemning the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals.76 In addition, numerous other organizations, such as local and regional chambers of commerce, objected to the reforms.77 The same was true for retailers and small businessmen, who also went on record against the plans, particularly against the recommendation to prohibit contractual abrogation of the provision entitling commercial employees to their salaries and their sick pay. 78 In short, employers large and small were concerned about the rise in labor costs that new legislation would bring, about power, and about how such a precedent with regard to salaried employees would affect the demands of blue-collar workers. The consequences were government hesitance and inactivity in the face of Reichstag pressure for reform. Such delaying tactics were facilitated by Chancellor Biilow's dissolution of the Reichstag in December of 1906. Elections and the subsequent political realignment temporarily set back 74 The Nuremberg works had competition clauses with 20% (25 of 125 engineers). The clauses had a maximum duration of one year; affected employees were compensated with one-half their salaries. Rieppel to Guggenheimer, 13 October 1911, NGug, 48/60a; also see Rieppel to CDI, 28 January 1913, in which the competition clause at the MAN is described as affecting only a very few employees (overseas technical sales managers) entrusted with especially sensitive information, NGug, 48/60a. 75 "Two years ago I already warned about the dangers [of the Btib, which} in three years has gained 12,000 members. It emphasizes in its publications that mental and manual workers have to defend the same interests vis-a-vis the employers, and that the mental workers should embark on the same path that the [blue-collar] workers have entered with such joy. . . . If we recognize the danger of the Bund [i.e., the Btib} then it follows that we must take practical measures." Guggenheimer at the executive meeting of the Association of Bavarian Metal Industrialists of 21 May 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg 162/1. 76 CDI Ausschuss meeting of 17 November 1906 in Berlin, NGug, 48/60. 77 E.g., the protocols of the Handels-und Gewerbekammer Schwaben und Neuburg of 16 February 1906, NGug, 48/60. 78 NGug, 48/60.

250

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

the "engineer proposals," which had to be reintroduced into the new Reichstag. Even so, the formation of the Biilow bloc (the liberal-conservative coalition in effect from 1907 until Billow's fall in the summer of 1909) appears not to have been entirely inimical to the cause of the engineers. In April of 1907, Interior Secretary Posadowsky announced that the government would introduce an amendment to the Industrial Code.79 Though he was forced to resign shortly afterward, Posadowsky's dismissal did not achieve what the employers expected: an end to reformist social policy. Bethmann Hollweg, the new secretary of the interior, continued with a policy of cautious and piecemeal social reform. In December of 1907 he introduced minor proposals to help the engineers by changing certain aspects of the Industrial Code. 80 Those recommendations fell far short of the already watered-down proposals of the Reichstag, which criticized them as entirely inadequate and demanded adoption of its own version. 81 Still, the government attempted to do something. Its limited initiative was part of an informal agreement with the big-business community that underlay the Biilow bloc. In the hope of inducing the government to steer a pro-industrial course and to take a hard line against the Social Democrats, the CDI leadership had offered to drop its opposition to social policy for salaried employees, specifically to the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals. This bargain, sprung by the CDFs leaders as a fait accompli on a reluctant following among the engineering and Ruhr industrialists, was announced at a meeting in Berlin in late October of 1907. To seal the pact and celebrate the occasion, four government ministers, including Bethmann Hollweg and Delbriick, and some six undersecretaries of state had been invited to the CDI convention and a subsequent gala dinner. Guggenheimer, who was there, has left a vivid description of the event, a "very black day," and a "day of disaster of the first magnitude for German industry." As Guggenheimer saw it, the CDI had voluntarily surrendered valuable positions by openly acknowledging that industry could afford additional social burdens if only the government were to resume its "struggle against Social Democracy." But when the time came for the government to announce its part of the compromise, the two ministers made no promises whatsoever. On the contrary, Delbriick rejected the CDI's demands in his dinner address, every polite sentence of which "came as a lash of the whip." Worse, the government and the social reformers could claim "that industry has designated all this as possible — if only the struggle against Social Democracy is kept up! It follows that the same 79 DIBZ(1913):69. 80 Ibid., 70; Deutsche Arbeitgeber-Zeitung (14 February 1909); NGug, 48/60. 81 DIB2(1913):69-70.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

251

concessions are possible without 'struggle.'. . . What has been designated as possible will surely be demanded and undoubtedly become law." 82 Fortunately for Guggenheimer, his prediction failed to come true before 1914. This was in spite of industry's temporary softening in the matter of the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals and the VDMA's decision to delay submission of Guggenheimer's study. The reason, Anton Rieppel explained to an impatient Guggenheimer in October of 1907, was that "in light of the present parliamentary situation there is no ground for haste." Nor did Rieppel at that time think that the movement of the salaried employees and the engineers was as threatening as Guggenheimer made it out to be. The Bassermann-Potthoff proposals were not that unreasonable, he felt, and it would even be possible to live with certain restrictions on the competition clause.83 That was the context in which the government in December of 1907 introduced modest proposals for adjustments in the competition clause and in health benefits.84 The plans for health-care reform were rejected as too little by the Btib, by other organizations of salaried employees, and by a majority of the parties in the Reichstag, including the SPD. They all insisted on payment of both sick pay and salary. Unable to find any common ground between the two fronts, the government refused to give in. It proved impossible to bridge the gap, and both the government's bill and the Reichstag's version went down to defeat in May of 1908. 85 Reform of the competition clause died a slower death. Owing to continuing differences and negotiations with the Reichstag, the government's proposals had not yet come to a vote when Biilow fell in the summer of 1909. The mounting discontent of engineers and other salaried employees, however, caused the issue to be revived in the fall of 1909. In early 1910, the political parties, including the Conservatives, again called on the government to finally do something about the competition clause. In February, Clemens von Delbriick, Bethmann Hollweg's successor as secretary of the interior, went on record in the Reichstag to express his personal opinion that the problem of the competition clause "must under all circumstances be solved, and soon too." 8 6 Very little came of this promise. When the government finally did introduce a new proposal in December of 1912, it was as a relatively minor change in the Commercial Code that would benefit clerical employees only. Taking its cue from the industrialists, who had come to regret their earlier moderation as soon 82 Guggenheimer's confidential travel notes of 30 October 1907, NGug, 48/60. 83 Correspondence among Guggenheimer, Rieppel, Schrodter, Beumer, Zorner, and Reusch, 23 December 1906 and 15 October 1907, in NGug, 48/60. 84 Particulars in Kolnische Zeitung (26 August 1908) and Deutsche Arbeitgeber-Zeitung (14 February 1909), in NGug, 48/60. 85 Germany, Reichstag, Verhandlungen (5 May 1908):5147. 86 DIBZ(1913):71.

252

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

as the spring of 1908, the government contended that conditions for engineers and technical employees were such that they required separate legislation. 87 The government said it would introduce this second bill later, but it never did, having more than enough trouble enacting the essentially harmless reforms of the competition clause for commercial employees. On one side, the Btib criticized the government's proposals and their acceptance by the less radical organizations of salaried employees as "complete surrender of the interests of the employees." 88 The DeutschNationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband (DHV), a militant right-wing organization of clerical employees, likewise insisted on total elimination of the competition clause. 89 The Center Party and especially the Progressives also demanded far greater changes than the government was willing to contemplate. The SPD demanded outright abolition of the competition clause. 90 On the other side, the industrialists were becoming increasingly worried that unless they mounted a counteroffensive, the government might cave in to pressures from the Reichstag and the salaried-employee organizations. 91 This was especially true for the most militant lobbyists of the mechanical engineering industry: Guggenheimer, Zorner, and Rhazen (who spoke of the "social hyenas" inside and outside the Reichstag wanting to ruin the entrepreneurs). 92 They feared that restriction or prohibition of the competition clause for commercial employees would set a precedent for the engineers. That prospect succeeded not only in making the VDMA the most determined of all the industrial organizations opposing reform of the competition clause but also in influencing the policies of heavy industry's dominant organization, the CDI. 93 Though it proved difficult to find common ground, in the end the industrialists were able to agree on a strategy that kept their unity intact. Instead of attacking the principle, they concentrated their fire on individual aspects of the competition 87 DIBZ (1913):70-l; DIBZ (1912):273-4. See newspaper clippings on the competition clause, 1908-10, especially Kblnische Zeitung (26 August 1908), NGug, 48/60. On reform of paragraphs 74—6 of the Handelsgesetzbuch, see DIBZ (1912): 500—1. The major innovation was the introduction of obligatory financial compensation for enforced no-compete agreements (bezahlte Karenz). 88 DIBZ(1912):557-8. 89 DHV petition to the Reichstag, 5 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a. 90 Munchener Neueste Nachrichten (12 January 1913), NGug, 48/60a. 91 Schweighoffer to CDI executive committee, 14 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a. 92 Correspondence of Guggenheimer and Deutz of 31 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a. 93 On the greater moderation of the chemical industry, and efforts to counter it, see correspondence of Guggenheimer, VDMA headquarters in Diisseldorf, representatives of the CDI, and the Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands (VWICID), in NGug, 48/ 60a. When the government's proposals were again debated in 1910—12, the chemical industry had already adopted compensation for employed chemists affected by competition clauses. Versammlung des CDI und des VWICID (I February 1913 in Berlin) (Berlin: CDI, 1913), 6, in NGug, 48/60.

Career prospects and the Btib's reform

253

clause and claimed that the government's draft was the utmost that industry could tolerate. 94 In February of 1913, the CDI and the leading interest group of the chemical industry staged a major event in Berlin to dramatize industry's unalterable opposition to anything more than the government's draft, which introduced the principle of financial compensation for commercial employees affected by the competition clause. The principal speaker was Adolf Haeuser, a lawyer and director of the Hoechst chemical works. Though more tactful than Guggenheimer, Haeuser reiterated the latter's views with regard to industry's absolute need for competition clauses with teeth. To prove his point, he and subsequent speakers recited a litany of cases, some going into great detail, in which their firms had been hurt by the betrayal of priceless trade secrets. These examples showed that the employers occupied the moral high ground and that their position was fully justified. Haeuser acknowledged that abuses existed, but that was no reason to get rid of a law that was good in principle and without which industry could not live. The meeting concluded by unanimously adopting a resolution to that effect.95 To further strengthen its case, the CDI followed up with a widely distributed pamphlet, "The Legitimacy and Necessity of the Competition Clause," containing twenty-five documented examples of incriminating actions by employed engineers and sales representatives. 96 That and the massive show of industrial unity succeeded in temporarily stiffening the government's back. The industrialists, however, had not changed the Reichstag's determination to insist on more favorable terms. Riding a wave of popular indignation over the competition clause, the legislature advanced new, more radical proposals in March of 1913. The government finally relented. In the summer of 1913 the two sides were still some distance apart, but the gap was narrowing. A final compromise was reached in early 1914, and an amendment of the Commercial Code finally became law in June of that year.97 That was all that resulted from the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals before 1914. Compared with the initial reform agenda, it was a belated and meager harvest. For engineers, the change did nothing at all, and the

94 Rhazen to CDI, 25 January 1913, NGug, 48/60a. 95 See note 93. 96 Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller, Die Berechtigung und Notwendigkeit der Konkurrenzklausel (Berlin: 1913), NGug, 48/60. 97 Minimum compensation of commercial employees affected by a competition clause was set at one-half of one's last salary (in contrast to no compensation earlier). The maximum duration of a no-compete agreement was two years (as opposed to three years under the old law), and the annual salary below which all such contracts were invalid was M. 1,800 (no limit in the old law); miscellaneous clippings, NGug, 48/60a.

254

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Btib rejected the final agreement as "extremely disturbing," as contemptible "horse trading" and "patchwork," with a "ridiculously low salary limit" and "insufficient financial compensation." 98 In vain the engineering union urged the Reichstag to reject this pitiful compromise. 98 DIBZ (1914):51, 284; DIBZ (1913):288-91.

10 The unified employment code and the Patent Law

Long before the competition clause was modified in 1914, salaried engineers and the social reformers associated with them had become frustrated with the lack of legislative progress. Heinz Potthoff articulated this sentiment when in June of 1913 he surveyed the string of failures since 1906. "In all those years," Potthoff noted, "nothing has happened, absolutely nothing." 1 That nothing happened was in part the result of big-business obstructionism. Probably just as important was the internal divisiveness of the salaried-employee organizations. This is illustrated by the fate of another of the Btib's causes: the struggle for a unified employment code for salaried employees {einheitItches Angestelltenrecht). 1. THE MOVEMENT FOR A UNIFIED EMPLOYMENT CODE

Like the "engineer proposals" of 1906, the idea of a unified code for salaried employees was the brainchild of Potthoff and received strong support from the Btib. The project evolved from their earlier attempts to establish parity between the Industrial Code and the Commercial Code. Those proposals came to be incorporated into more ambitious plans for standardization and improvement of the employment laws covering all salaried employees. The most advantageous terms of any existing special law were to be extended to all salaried employees. In addition, the reformers made specific recommendations for limitations on hours of work, collective bargaining, employee councils, paid vacation, job protection, and expansion of the jurisdiction of the industrial and commercial arbitration courts, as well as other rights. 2 These plans received a boost in 1910 when Austria introduced precisely such a unified code, and the issue appeared on the agenda of the Thirtieth 1 DIBZ(1913):258. 2 Particulars are given in VDMA meeting of 7 August 1912 in Cologne, NGug, 48/60b.

255

256

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Congress of German Jurists in Danzig. The assembled jurists were presented with the following question: "Is it advisable to introduce regulations such as exist for the protection of commercial employees for all salaried employees?" Affirmative answers came in the form of two papers, one by University of Erlangen law professor Oertmann, and one by Potthoff. The official commentators were Professor Franz Klein, former Austrian justice minister and the spiritual author of that country's new employment code, and Dr. Johannes Junck, the National Liberal Reichstag deputy, both of whom also favored a unified code. Heated debates followed, in which a certain Dr. Clemens Heiss of the Btib became so agitated that he had to be reprimanded for insulting a delegate of the DHV. The radical right-wing DHV, one of the leading organizations of the commercial employees, fervently opposed a unified code. It feared for the legal advantages of its constituency and the privileged status of accountants, bookkeepers, sales clerks, and all the other salaried employees covered by the Commercial Code. In the end, however, a large majority of the congress voted to adopt a resolution recommending introduction of a unified code. The details would be discussed at the Vienna convention in September of 1912. 3 The outcome of the 1910 convention alerted the engineering industrialists, who interpreted it as pressure on the government to upgrade the legal status of the engineers. The VDMA took the lead in mobilizing industrial opposition to a unified code and managed to gain the support of the CDI. 4 In August of 1912 it organized a meeting in Cologne of engineering industrialists with the CDI's business manager, Ferdinand Schweighoffer, to analyze the various employee demands and to coordinate a counterattack. 5 It turned out that this latter task received insufficient attention, though on the surface there appeared to be unity. Schweighoffer himself was eager to do the engineering industrialists' bidding. In consultation with the VDMA's Friedrich Frolich, he developed the arguments with which a unified code would be opposed. The plan for such a code, the industrialists realized, was in reality an effort to increase the rights of salaried personnel, who through novel institutions such as employee councils and arbitration courts would demand all sorts of limitations on the employers' powers. Fundamental capitalist rights would be abrogated if their quest for the constitutional factory succeeded. 6 To prevent this, Schweighoffer would portray the unified code as a 3 Bartels to VDMA, 19 September 1910, NGug, 73/IV, 74/V; also see Verhandlungen des 30. Juristentages, vol. 1 (Berlin: Verlag von J. Guttentag, GmbH, 1910), passim. 4 VDMA to firms of executive committee, 20 June 1912, NGug, 48/60b. 5 VDMA to Guggenheimer, 13 August 1912, and minutes of Cologne meeting, NGug, 48/60b. 6 "Der Wiener Juristentag und die Industrie," Deutsche lndustrie-Zeitung 37(14 September 1912); Schweighoffer to Guggenheimer, 5 December 1912, NGug, 48/60b; comments by Guggenheimer in CDI executive meeting, 5 March 1914, NGug, 48/60b.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

257

Social Democratic plot. He and other hard-liners convinced themselves that the employees' reform effort, spearheaded by radical organizations like the Btib, was not an end in itself but a first step on the road to a single, unified labor code for all workers — blue-collar and white-collar alike — einheitliches Arbeitsrecht.7 The latter they could oppose far more effectively than a unified code for salaried employees. The leveling that a comprehensive labor code would entail would destroy the separate legal and social identity of the salaried employees, a stratum "that by its education and economic-technical function has to be a link between the entrepreneurs and the blue-collar workers" and that therefore should not be "put on exactly the same social and economic level as the latter." 8 By raising the specter of a unified labor code for all workers, the industrialists could claim that they opposed the changes not only because a contractual and adversarial relationship with "even the highest employees" would replace the inherited paternalistic, arbitrary system but also out of concern for the well-being of their salaried employees, who would experience downward mobility and become proletarized in attitude. To some extent this concern was real. The industrialists did fear that by leveling all legal differences, a unified labor law would remove a major prop of the salaried employees' distinct outlook — the "professional" mentality that prevented solidarity with blue-collar workers and provided the employers with unearned loyalty. The irony and the treachery of their protestations lay in the fact that the industrialists' own employment practices undermined the professional mentality far more effectively, which was precisely why organizations such as the Btib had come into being and now sought to change the law, but also why the industrialists fought so hard to retain the legal status quo. To prepare industry's defense at the Vienna congress, Schweighoffer began soliciting material that would document the "Social Democratic tendency in the movement of the salaried employees." 9 He and Frolich also recommended that as many company lawyers as possible attend the jurists' congress to present industry's views and to help influence the voting. 10 Guggenheimer, whom both Schweighoffer and Frolich wanted to participate in this scheme, counseled against trying to defend industry before such a hostile forum. Not only had the plans for stacking the convention been leaked to the Frankfurter Zeitung and therefore become worthless, Guggenheimer pointed out, but also the jurists' congress had 7 Frolich, in the meeting of 13 August 1912, NGug, 48/60b; Frolich to Guggenheimer, 16 November 1912, NGug, 48/60b; 1914 position paper Stojentin, NGug, 48/supplement; Guggenheimer at CDI executive committee meeting of 5 March 1914, NGug, 48/60b. 8 Schweighoffer at the 1912 jurists' congress in Vienna, NGug, 48/60b. 9 VDMA to executive committee firms, 20 June 1912, NGug, 48/60b. 10 VDMA circulars of 18 July and 14 August 1912, NGug, 48/60b.

258

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

become the domain of agitators like Potthoff and other Btib activists. Regardless of what the industrialists might say, the congress would be dominated by "entire hordes of young lawyers who all move in the wake of Brentano's direction" and whose votes would determine the outcome. 11 Frolich disagreed, arguing that the jurists' congress had a good scholarly reputation and carried weight with the government. The industrialists should fight back by raising the intellectual level of their own arguments and earning similar credibility. Frolich even proposed the establishment of a pro-business "literary bureau," or think tank, to that end. 12 Guggenheimer's advice and other signs of inadequate preparation were ignored, and the CDI's Schweighoffer proceeded to Vienna. According to most press reports, his arguments had little impact. 13 The meeting overwhelmingly supported a single code for salaried employees, although its final resolution adopted language closer to the cautious and moderate recommendations of Professor Oertmann than to Klein's proposals, which tended somewhat more toward a unified labor law for all workers.14 Schweighoffer chose to interpret the outcome as a partial success for industry, though he conceded that his effectiveness had been limited. For this he largely blamed another spokesman of industry, Dr. Richard Fellinger of Siemens, who in his remarks in Vienna had taken a rather more relaxed view of the whole matter than had the business manager of the CDI. 15 Fellinger, a participant in the VDMA's coordinating meeting the month before, was legal counsel to the Association for the Protection of the Common Interests of German Electro-Technology, the electrical industry's major economic interest group. He had been favorably impressed with the moderation of the principal speakers in Vienna, including Klein, whose proposals stopped well short of the maximalist demands the industrialists had discussed earlier. Fellinger had gone on record to express his "great admiration" for Klein's theses, stating that it was inconceivable that industry would oppose them with a "decided no!" 16 Schweighoffer 11 Correspondence among Guggenheimer, Schweighoffer, and Frolich, 19, 24 July, 14, 19, 22, 27 August 1912, NGug, 48/60b. 12 Frolich at meeting of 13 August 1912, cited in note 5. Frolich did in fact move in this direction. He contacted Professor Oertmann, one of the major speakers in Vienna, and less sanguine than most of the other advocates of a unified code. Subsequently, Oertmann in fact became a conduit between industry and the reform movement; VDMA to Guggenheimer, 17 August 1912, NGug, R48/60b. 13 Reports in Neue Freie Presse (Vienna) (3-6 September 1912), Frankfurter Zeitung (10 September 1912), Leipziger Volkszeitung (26 September 1912), Berliner PolitischeNachrichten (2 October 1912), NGug, 48/60b; also see DIBZ (20 September 1912): 411-12. 14 Verhandlungen des einunddreissigsten Juristentages (Berlin: Verlag von J. Guttentag, G m b H , 1912), passim; DIBZ (1912):403-4, 411-12; Schweighoffer to Guggenheimer, 12 September 1912, NGug, 48/60b. 15 Schweighoffer to Guggenheimer, 12 September 1912, and subsequent correspondence with Frolich, NGug, 48/60b. 16 Correspondence between Fellinger and Schweighoffer, 19 and 23 September 1912, NGug,

Unified employment code and Patent Law

259

had maintained precisely the opposite, and he accused Klein of "radical bourgeois socialism," of making demands on behalf of an "allegedly economically weaker party" that in truth had become "a coercive power and a brute force knowing no bounds and without any regard whatsoever for the interests of the entrepreneurs." 17 The Fellinger episode signaled disunity among the industrialists, whose political influence depended on the ability to speak with one voice. Their united front had broken down, in part as a result of inadequate preparation and coordination, but to a large extent also because the industrialists had different ideas about how to deal with the salaried employees' demands. Only the fear of extremism had earlier created unity, and the relative moderation of the jurists' congress allowed their differences to surface. The industrialists tended to divide into hard-line obstructionists and more conciliatory elements. The former (largely in heavy industry and machine building) sought to prevent the slightest concession to the salaried employees for fear that more demands would follow. The latter (predominantly in the chemical and electrical branches) believed it was better to be somewhat flexible and thereby avoid a situation in which industry would be forced to make truly important concessions to a radicalized mass of salaried employees. Their basic idea, as Fellinger put it in 1912, was "to accept what is acceptable, to reject what is unacceptable." 18 The industrialists' disagreements in the wake of the Vienna congress did not go unnoticed in the press, and their disarray gave the advocates of a unified code an unexpected opportunity. They were unable to capitalize on the situation for two reasons. First, the industrialists managed to regroup. The CDI tried hard to isolate Fellinger and to bring the electrical industry back into the fold. When it proved impossible to unite all of large-scale industry behind the rigid obstructionism of Schweighoffer and Guggenheimer, the CDI switched course and adopted a public posture of conciliation in principle, of discussion and negotiation with selected groups of pro-managerial employees like the VDD1, with legal scholars, and in joint committees of corporate lawyers, professors, and other outside experts, while objecting to certain details and particulars. 19 The new approach succeeded in gaining time and in obfuscating intraindustry disagreements about tactics. It did not change the basic objective shared by all big industrial employers: to defeat any serious threat to their power. Second, the opportunity for political action was lost because the various 48/60b; also see Richard Fellinger, Der Deutsche Juristentag und das Privatangestelltenrecht (Berlin:

Georg Stilke, 1912), supplement of the Preussische Jahrbucher 150, 3. 17 Deutsche Industrie-Zeitung (14 September 1912). 18 Fellinger to Schweighoffer, 19 September 1912, NGug, 48/60b. 19 Correspondence among Guggenheimer, Schweighoffer, Frolich, CDI, VDMA, and related materials, autumn 1912 to August 1914, NGug, 48/60b.

260

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

organizations of salaried employees were too deeply divided to create the momentum needed for change. A majority of the associations of salaried employees remained opposed, the most determined opposition coming from the radical-right DHV, the largest and most militant of the organizations of commercial employees. It was no accident that an organization of commercial employees fought the engineer-inspired plans for legal reform. Though there were some notable exceptions, Germany's salariedemployee organizations tended to divide into a politically progressive, reformist camp, made up predominantly of engineers and technicians, and a reactionary wing of "commercial employees." The latter, about four times as numerous as the former, consisted of bookkeepers, bank tellers and clerks, brokerage employees, insurance-office personnel, general nontechnical office personnel employed by private industry, stores clerks, warehousing clerks, and so forth, and above all sales workers: traveling salesmen, wholesale employees, sales managers, and, most numerous, an army of retail clerks of every imaginable type. The most striking and immediate difference between the two groups was their inequality of legal standing, causing the commercial employees to resist all those attempts at changing the status quo that might endanger their own privileges anchored in the Commercial Code. Employed engineers and certain other categories of salaried employees, on the other hand, had little to lose by embracing a program of general reform and by adopting a strategy modeled on blue-collar trade unions. Beyond this formal distinction there were structural differences as well. The social and economic well-being of the commercial employees, especially the most reactionary sales clerks, was largely a function of preindustrial and early industrial conditions, whereas the fate of technical employees ultimately hinged on the success of industrialization and on the breakthrough of an industrial social structure. This tended to make the latter group forward-looking (contractual, Gesellschaft-like, confrontational, and willing to recognize the inevitability of class conflict) in their relations with large-scale employers. The former, frequently employed in premodern or nonindustrial settings, remained backward in orientation (occupational solidarity across class lines oriented toward inherited status, Gemeinschaft-like, and, at least nominally, "harmonious" in their relations with employers). As social losers in the industrialization process, the majority of commercial employees shunned political egalitarianism, left liberalism, and democratic protest movements, whereas for the bulk of technical employees in industry these were precisely the vehicles for emancipation and upward mobility. 20 20 See debates among Potthoff, Emil Lederer, and the Btib along these lines in DIBZ (1913): 1 4 5 6, 169-71, 2 6 5 - 8 , 4 5 4 - 7 . Also, from the vast literature on the German white-collar workers, see Emil Lederer, Die Privatangestellten in der modernen Wirtschaftsentwicklung [Tubingen: Verlag

Unified employment code and Patent Law

261

These differences were mirrored in two loose coalitions of salariedemployee organizations that first crystallized around the issue of a state pension for salaried employees (Angestelltenversicherungsgesetz, AVG), a demand dating from the turn of the century. The two camps, which worked at cross purposes and feuded bitterly, were spearheaded by the DHV and the Btib. The smaller faction consisted of a group of union-like organizations, in which technical employees eventually became the preponderant force. The larger faction, claiming to be "harmonious," was made up primarily of commercial employees, though initially both the two older organizations of foremen and of technicians, the DWV and the DTV, participated as well. The more conservative associations organized themselves into the Top Committee for Government Pension Insurance for Salaried Employees (Hauptausschuss fur die staatliche Persionsversicherung der Privatangestellten). They demanded a totally separate and independent insurance fund, unconnected to already existing social legislation and pension schemes for the blue-collar workers. The newer, unionized organizations formed the smaller Free Union for the Social Insurance of Salaried Employees (Freie Vereinigung fur die soziale Versicherung der Privatangestellten). This group sought a simple extension of the existing insurance schemes by raising the maximum salary limits that determined their cutoff point. Technically and financially this solution was preferable, promising larger benefits as well. Politically, the much larger numbers of salaried employees associated with the Top Committee and their insistence on codifying in law the social differences between themselves and the proletarian, blue-collar working class dictated a choice in favor of a separate fund. The government, hoping to stem the rising tide of Social Democracy, finally decided in favor of a separate fund. In December of 1911, after a decade-long controversy, and with new elections imminent, the Reichstag accepted the government's latest proposal. A separate, disappointingly modest state pension for salaried employees became law. The scheme was financed jointly by employers and employees. 21 The conflict between the two camps over the pension fund carried over into their feuding about the unified code. In late 1909, the DHV's Deutsche von J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1912}, and Jiirgen Kocka, White Collar Workers in America 1890-1940: A Social-Political History in International Perspective (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980). 21 Emil Lederer, "Die Pensionsversicherung der Privatangestellten," Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 33 (1911):780-84l; Alfons Ennesch, Zur Frage der Reichsgesetzlicben Regelung der Pensions-und Hinterbliebenen-Versicherung der Privatbeamten, Schriften des Btib, vol. 9 (Berlin: Verlag von Karl Sohlich, 1906); Ludwig Greil, Das Versicherungsgesetz fiir Angestellte, Schriften des Btib, vol. 26 (Berlin: Industriebeamten-Verlag, 1912); numerous entries and articles in DIBZ (1910— 12); also see Jiirgen Kocka, Untemehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847— 1914: Zum Verhdltnis von Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1969), 516-44; idem, White Collar Workers in America, 2 6 - 8 .

262

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Handelswacht opposed code unification by arguing that the existing employment laws had "organically evolved" in accordance with the needs for protection of each individual occupational group. The Btib responded with a counterattack on the DHV's "narrow-minded and shortsighted occupational egotism" (Standesegoismus) and its "untenable, shortsighted conceit and social prejudices," manifesting themselves not just in opposition to a unified code but equally in the demand for a separate insurance scheme and unwillingness to cooperate with the Btib in reform of the competition clause. The result of such particularistic policies and of the DHV's exclusive concern with "conditions in the retail trade" made it impossible to achieve the "combination of all salaried-employee organizations into a united, well-organized collective force."22 This was undoubtedly true. Given their small numbers in relation to the blue-collar workers, and their lack of political clout as compared with the employers, the salaried employees would have needed total unity to succeed. Of course, the Btib's call for unity did not mean that it was willing to surrender its own position. On the contrary, the engineering union's hostility toward the DHV only increased with the passage of time. Above all, the Btib resented the DHV's rigid vision of occupational solidarity across class lines and its denial of conflict of interest between employers and employees. This was a "completely wrong view of the social structure of our society," according to Max Granzin, one of the Btib's senior officials. Granzin spoke of the "reactionary policies" of the DHV, calling it "the armed guard of the employers." He concluded that the "struggle against the DHV is the struggle against reaction in the movement of the salaried employees. It is therefore necessarily also our struggle." 23 Again, this was true enough, but it also perpetuated the salaried employees' paralyzing divisiveness. With the exception of the two most dynamic organizations, the Btib and the DHV, the coalitions of salaried-employee associations occasioned by the pension-fund struggle had not clearly followed occupational lines. In the last few years before the war, that began to change. The Top Committee and the Free Union survived intact to fight a 1912 election campaign over the composition of local advisory boards that were part of the new pension-fund law.24 Thereafter, the Top Committee began to disintegrate. Its largest setback was the defection of the DTV, which slowly and in spite of itself moved closer to the Btib. The realignment was caused by the preponderance of shared, occupation-related concerns. The fundamental political issue confronting all engineers and technicians 22 Clemens Heiss, "Partikularistische Standespolitik," DIBZ (191O):3O-l. 23 Max Granzin, "Die Deutschnationalen," DIBZ (1912):92. 24 DIBZ (1912):389, 400, 433, 445, 457, 475, 485, 497-8, 505, 508, 518, 530, 541, 553; DIBZ (1913): 105.

Unified employment code and Patent haw

263

in industry remained the question of their legal discrimination. The problems created by oversupply and intransigent industrial employers continued to affect them in identical ways as well. 25 The new constellation showed its first signs of life in November of 1911. In October of that year, the Btib proposed changing the formula that determined the number of delegates each member organization sent to the Social Committee of Societies of Salaried Technical Employees. The DWV and the DTV torpedoed the Btib's plan, which would have benefited its own standing most. The controversy threatened to break up the Social Committee, as the DWV and the DTV prepared to form a new cartel without the Btib. But in November the DTV reconsidered. Breaking instead with the more conservative foremen, who then dropped out, the technicians decided to accept the Btib's terms and remain with the Social Committee. The latter, with its new representation formula, and newly chaired by Hermann Liidemann, the business manager and uncrowned king of the Btib, now came under the engineering union's control. It also became the basis for a closer partnership between the two leading organizations of technical employees above the foreman level, foreshadowing their eventual merger into the Bund der technischen Angestellten and Beam ten (Butab) at the end of World War I. The DTV's decision to remain with the Social Committee in 1911 did not mean the end of tension with the Btib. Fierce competition for members and mutual recriminations remained. The underlying situation, however, increasingly demanded collaboration. This became obvious in connection with the unified employment code. Following the passage of the pension law, the right-wing Top Committee had made a brief effort to co-opt this demand, but owing to resistance by the three large organizations of commercial employees, did practically nothing about it. 26 As a consequence, the DTV broke with its former allies and joined with the Btib and several other smaller trade unions of salaried employees to form the Working Group of Unionized Salaried-Employee Associations (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der gewerkschaftlichen Angestellten-Verbande), dedicated to the cause of a unified code. 27 The Btib hailed the new coalition as a major step forward in the evolution of the salaried-employee movement. Though the manifest goal of the Working Group was a single issue, in reality it "exposed the inner lack of truthfulness of the old cartel conditions." The issue of a unified 25 The engineering industrialists were reluctant to distinguish between the Btib and the DTV, repeatedly seeking to fire employees who were members of either organization. 26 DIBZ (19B):403. 27 The "Working Group" consisted of the Btib, DTV, Verband der Kunstgewerbezeichner, Verein der Deutschen Kaufleute (which soon changed its mind), Zentralverband der Handlungsgehilfen, Allgemeiner Vereinigung Deutscher Buchhandlungsgehilfen, Allgemeiner Verband der Deutschen Bankbeamten, and Verband der Buroangestellten; DIBZ (1913):437-8.

264

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

code made it possible for a logical and internally consistent bifurcation of salaried-employee organizations to emerge: on one side a socially and politically progressive camp of unionized groups (predominantly technical), "which look upon the salaried employees as a part of the large working class [Arbeitnehmerklasse]," and on the other side a reactionary camp of the large commercial-employee associations, which "cling to the ideal of a closed occupational group and deny the solidarity of all employees." 28 Such clarity was ultimately even more important for the Btib than passage of a unified code. Cooperation of all the unionized organizations, it contended, was the beginning of a "crystallization of the German associations of salaried employees according to their fundamental orientation." A clear-cut division between progress and reaction facilitated the "work of enlightenment" needed to "prepare the ground for the great struggle of liberation of the salaried employees from economic and social oppression." The associations allied in the Working Group therefore willingly surrendered a "policy of gathering together" (Sammelpolitik) all those organizations that might somehow or other be united behind a unified code. "What is ultimately the use of the great mass," wrote the Btib's Otto Schweitzer, "if all it does is to dilute more and more the platform and at the same time prevent the fundamental division of minds [Scheidung der Geister}\" Regardless whether or not that was true, it was precisely such ideological rigidity and contempt for "compromiscuity" (Kompromisselei) that prevented political success.29 In the end, therefore, nothing came of the plans to unify the contract laws of salaried employees, let alone the hopes for a unified labor code for all workers. 2. REFORM OF THE PATENT LAW

In August of 1914, none of the engineers' projects for legislative remedy had as yet produced results, and World War I brought all of them to a halt. But not all efforts had been as unlikely to succeed as had the unified code or the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals. There was one area where progress had been considerable and victory appeared imminent — had not the outbreak of war intervened. In July of 1913, the government published a draft of a new Patent Law that incorporated fundamental changes and met many of the engineers' demands. The proposed law would abandon the principle of the registrant's right in favor of the inventor's right. It provided for mention of the individual inventor's name in the patent document and contained a clause making compensation to employee-inventors mandatory and abrogating 28 Otto Schweitzer, "Neue Gruppierungen in der deutschen Angestelltenbewegung," DIBZ (1913):477-9; DIBZ (1913):437-8. 29 Ibid.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

265

the principle of unlimited contractual freedom between employers and employees.30 Fierce opposition by the industrialists, especially in the mechanical engineering industry, held up the reform between 1909 and 1914. The evidence suggests, however, that in the summer of 1914 the government was determined to submit the draft to the 1915 Reichstag session and that only the war prevented it from doing so. 31 Ever since the Patent Law had first been enacted in 1877, there had been isolated discontent with the registrant's right. Its principal theoretical justification was the industrial lobby's collectivist argument that modern inventions resulted not primarily from the individual inventor's genius but from the entrepreneur's capital investment in plant, laboratory, equipment, employees, and facilities and from his assignments — in short, the overall environment in which the inventing process could thrive. Hence the concept of an invention by the research establishment or the firm (Etablissementserfindung or Betriebserfindung). It was only natural that such inventions, in which the contributions of the individual engineer or employee often could not be determined by retrospective examination, belonged to the owner of the business. 32 30 Rekhsanzeiger (11 July 1913); see also Voriaufige Entwiirfe eines Patentgesetzes eines Gebrauchsmustergesetzes und eines Warenzeichengesetzes nebst Erlduterungen, special edition of Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (Berlin: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1913). 31 After the war, the Weimar Republic's altered political and economic climate further delayed enactment of the new legal principles. On the one hand, opposition by big business was even more determined than before 1914, when the economic climate had been considerably more congenial than it was in the interwar period. On the other hand, the new political constellation of 1918—19 appeared to offer an alternative to the predominantly legislative approach in management—employee relations of the prewar years. For a long time, both employers and employees sought to resolve the crucial issue of employee compensation for inventions exclusively through collective-bargaining agreements (e.g., the "chemists' contract" of 1920 and the Berlin metal industry's collective contract of 1919). Successive Weimar governments, meanwhile, put more emphasis on trying to solve the problem through labor law, rather than by reform of the Patent Law. This, too, proved to be a failure. Ironically, it was only under the Nazi regime that the individualistic, pro-employee principles of the 1913 draft became law - in the Patent Law of 1936, and in the employee-compensation regulations of 1942 and 1943. With relatively minor modifications, both were subsequently adopted by the Federal Republic. Wolfgang Belz, Die Arbeitnehmererfindung im Wandel der patentrechtlichen Auffassungen, dissertation, Hochschule fur Wirtschafts und Sozialwissenschaften Niirnberg, 1958 (Munich: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 1958); Eduard Reimer, Hans Schade, and Helmut Schippel, Das Recht der Arbeitnehmererfindung: Kommentar zu dm Gesetz iiber Arbeitnehmererfindungen vom 25. Juli 1957, 4th ed. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1964). 32 Alfred Heggen, Erfindungsschutz und Industrialisierung in Preussen, 1793-1887 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975); Voriaufige Entwiirfe, 7-17; Wilhelm Mertens, "Zur Bewegung der technischen Privatbeamten," Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 25, 3( 1907):681-96; W. Garttner, "Der Kampf um die Patentgesetzreform in seinen einzelnen Etappen," DIBZ (1913):488—90; Arved Jiirgensohn, "Patentkommunismus und technisches Gesinderecht," DIBZ (1909):47-50; "Das Recht der Angestellten an ihrer Erfindung vom Standpunkt des angestellten Chemikers," DIBZ (1909): 137-9, 165-7; Herman Isay, "Das Recht der Angestellten auf ihre Erfindungen," VDDIZ (1911): 185-93; Hermann Kandler, "Ueber die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Patentrechts," VDDIZ (1913):5-11, 26-33; Emil Guggenheimer, "Soil das Recht auf das Patent dem Erfinder anstelle des Anmelders zustehen?" text of speech for VDMA of 8 October

266

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

As early as 1879, Professor Karl Gareis of the University of Giessen had taken issue with this theory. In the 1890s and early 1900s, other legal scholars began to do the same, stimulated in part by the passage in 1897 of Austria's new Patent Law, which adopted the inventor's right and made provision for employee compensation. In 1901, the Chemnitz engineer Friedrich Ruppert proposed in the VDI's Zeitschrift that the registrant's right be replaced with the inventor's right and that the (employed) inventor's name be recorded in the patent document. Ruppert also pleaded his cause at the 1901 congress of the influential "German Society for the Legal Protection of Industrial Property" (Deutscher Verein fiir den Schutz des gewerblichen Eigentums, DVSGE), which put the matter on the agenda of its 1902 Hamburg congress. Governed by an elite of top business executives, leading teachers and practitioners of business law, successful patent attorneys, and corporate lawyers, the DVSGE carried enormous weight with the government. Its Hamburg congress decided that even the harmless question of individual name recognition was premature, but the issue would no longer go away. The few lonely voices of the years before 1900 grew into a chorus calling for reform of the Patent Law. The well-known electrical engineer and inventor Friedrich Hefner-Alteneck, formerly Siemens's top technical executive, came out in favor of reform, as did influential legal scholars such as Joseph Kohler, Erich von Bohner, Oskar Schanze, Richard Alexander-Katz, Arved Jiirgenson, Albert Osterrieth, and numerous others. 33 In spite of growing criticism of the registrant's principle, it was unlikely that the government would have taken action had it not been for three converging developments. The first concerned problems in the organization of the Patent Office as set down in the Patent Law. Since the late 1870s the number of patent applications had skyrocketed, from approximately 4,000 per year to about 40,000-50,000 on the eve of World War I. To keep up, the Patent Office had expanded, but around 1905 it had reached a size beyond which the government was not willing to let it expand, for budgetary reasons. (With more than a thousand civil servants in 1908, the Patent Office had become the largest and most expensive of all civilian federal agencies.) The result was a growing backlog of unprocessed patent applications. The delays caused controversy, sloppiness, demoralization, and mounting criticism of the Patent Office. To increase efficiency, the Ministry of the Interior in 1905-6 proposed a streamlined registration process. The president of the Patent Office, Carl Hauss, opposed the change, as did the engineering industrialists, who 1909, NGug, 73/11; VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 July 1909 in Frankfurt a.M., NGug, 72/1. 33 Karl Gareis, Ueber das Erfinderrecht von Beamten, Angestellten und Arbeitern (Berlin: Carl Heymanns

Verlag, 1879); also see Garttner, "Die Kampf um die Patentgesetzreform," passim.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

267

feared that reforming any aspect of the Patent Law, even if it benefited them, might lead to those reforms they dreaded: introduction of the principle of the inventor's right and obligatory compensation for employee-inventors.34 The government, however, was determined to proceed with its reorganization plan. 35 A second impulse for reform was the gradual accumulation of legal decisions that clouded the judicial situation in the area of patent ownership. Regardless of what the Patent Law said, a modern contractual view of the limited obligations of professional employees had in fact been gaining acceptance in German jurisprudence. In patent litigation, the courts did not invariably or unanimously rule in favor of the inventing engineer's employer. Judges sometimes interpreted the law in such a way that the patent did not belong to the employer, but to the employeeinventor (e.g., when an employment contract said nothing about inventions and the invention was not directly related to the employee's specific task assignment, position, or job description). There were contrary rulings as well, holding that an implicit agreement always existed that inventions belonged to the employer. In short, in practice the law was becoming vague: With growing division of labor, industrial bureaucratization, rapid but frequently uncontrolled technical innovation, and changing notions of the employee's professional obligations, it became more difficult to predict whether the patent for a specific invention would belong to the employer or to the actual inventor. The result was a great deal of patent litigation, as well as a gradual bifurcation between the express intent of the Patent Law's registrant's right and a growing body of cases and precedents, some affirmed by the supreme court (Reichsgericht), in favor of the inventor's right. This situation increasingly demanded resolution. 36 34 "If we can show that a change in the organization of the Patent Office is not necessary, Patent Law reform will be postponed indefinitely, and with it all the disagreeable consequences we would be exposed to through the 'inventor's right' etc." Guggenheimer to Ingrisch, 27 October 1909, NGug, 73/H. 35 Though there were the inevitable delays, Hauss was dismissed in 1911, while industrial objections were ignored: The 1913 draft envisaged a single-examiner system. In these efforts the government had the support of the influential DVSGE. The DVSGE's 1907 Diisseldorf congress was devoted to the organization of the Patent Office and recommended adoption of the single-examiner system. See "Die Organisation des Kaiserlichen Patentamtes und die Vorbildung und Stellung der technischen hauptamlichen Mitglieder," GA 62, 739(1908), and "Die Organisation des kaiserlichen Patentamtes," GA 64, 768(1909); Vorlaufige Entwiirfe, 4-6, 7-9, 17-19, 22-6. 36 " . . . it should not be forgotten that the decisions of the supreme court of the German Empire in the last years have not been unfavorable to the salaried employees, and that [legal] scholarship has developed welcome principles - being a promising beginning for a new interpretation of the right of the salaried employee to his inventions," Privy Councillor Robolski of the Ministry of the Interior (president of the Patent Office since 1911) in Reichstag, 17 May 1906, quoted in DIBZ (1906):223-4; also see Karl Sohlich, "Der Erfinderschutz der technischen Angestellten," Schriften der Gesellschaft fur soziale Reform 27(1908):49-90; see summary of Reichstag discussions of 17 February 1906 in DIBZ (19O6):95; see DIBZ (1906):242 for an example of a Reichsgericht

268

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

The third and principal reason for the government's decision to embark on Patent Law reform was political: a desire to appease engineers in private industry by improving their legal status. Two of the four reasons given for the new Patent Law in the official commentary on the 1913 draft concerned the rights of employed engineers: "recognition of the right of the inventor to his invention, both as regards patent protection and association of his name with the patented creation, [and] protection of salaried employees . . . against the employer's exclusive acquisition of the economic gain from inventions they made while in his service." The remaining reasons related to a lowering of annual patent fees (also to promote fairness) and reorganization of the Patent Office.37 Driving this official progressiveness was a whole configuration of causes: a desire to do something for an occupational group whose other demands were continuously thwarted, a large majority of public and legal opinion, pressure from the Reichstag, the economic plight of salaried engineers, aggressive lobbying by the Btib, and the absence of opposition from other salariedemployee organizations. Together with the organizational and legal aspects of the problem, this was a combination against which a partially divided big-business community could not win. Formation of the Btib in 1904 proved to be the turning point. In August of 1905, the Patent Law and "protection of the inventor" were the subjects of a lead article in the DIBZ by the engineering union's secretary and publisher, Karl Sohlich. In November of the same year, the Btib organized a mass meeting in Berlin to protest the existing law. Attended by some 2,000 engineers, the rally featured an address by engineer Julius West, a well-known author on the topic of Patent Law reform. The Btib adopted West's American-law-inspired platform, making it the basis for a petition to the Reichstag in December. Its purpose was "to secure in law the technical employee's ownership right to the inventions that originate with him." 38 The Reichstag soon picked up the demand. On 17 February 1906, representative Wilhelm Lattmann of the small Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung, an anti-Semitic splinter party, referred to the Btib's November meeting and urged the government to introduce obligatory compensation, as well as the inventor's-right principle. Count Posadowsky, the secretary of the interior, agreed that the engineering union's proposals merited close scrutiny, but objected to the engineers' demand for legal restrictions on contractual freedom, which was the one thing that would give teeth to reform. In May the question came up in the Reichstag again. The govdecision in favor of an employed engineer-inventor. Also see Reichstag debates of 21 April 1909, in Reichstag, Verhandlungen (1909):8080ff. 37 Vorldufige Entwiirfe, 8. 38 DIBZ (1905): 161-2, 225-8; DIBZ (1906):26-7.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

269

ernment's spokesman again discussed the Btib's demands, conceding that reform was urgently needed.39 In April of 1907, the new Reichstag also raised the issue, when speakers from the Fortschrittliche Vereinigung, the Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung, the Center Party, and the National Liberals spoke on behalf of employed engineers and inventors.40 When Bethmann Hollweg announced in the Reichstag in February of 1909 that Patent Law reform was imminent, Johannes Junck, the National Liberal representative, again demanded name recognition and regulations outlawing employment contracts that deprived engineers of compensation for their inventions.41 Debating the issue in April of 1909, the Reichstag heard representatives Lattmann, Dove (Progressives), Junck, Nacken (Center), and Frank (SPD) argue that social values and legal views had shifted since the 1870s. The patriarchal argument that everything the employee created belonged automatically to the employer was no longer acceptable, Lattmann contended: "This view is no longer valid today; it no longer corresponds to a rational socialism." According to Lattmann, "the basis for the relationship between employers on the one hand and white-collar and blue-collar workers on the other hand should rather be that no one is obligated to do more than he promised when his obligations were set down." His motion demanding "intellectual and material" protection of employed inventors in a Patent Law based on the principle of the inventor's right passed unanimously.42 Meanwhile, other groups and organizations had also begun to focus on the issue. In June of 1906, the DTV issued guidelines regarding employed inventors' rights approximating those of the Btib. 43 In 1908, the General Inventors' Union submitted a petition to the Reichstag demanding name recognition and material compensation.44 The 1906 jurists' congress in Kiel had put the question on its agenda, partly in response to a request from the Btib. It heard and discussed two papers on the topic, one by Professor Albert Osterrieth, the editor of the DVSGE's Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht, and the other by Richard Alexander-Katz, an influential Berlin attorney and an expert on industrial property rights. Delegates from the big-business community argued that the status quo had not caused problems, but the congress passed a resolution stating that in principle the invention belonged to the employee rather than the employer. Meeting in Karlsruhe in 1908, the next jurists' congress again 39 40 41 42 43 44

DIBZ(1906):95, 223-4. DIBZ(1913):488-90. Ibid. Germany, Reichstag, Verhandlungen (21 April 1909):8080ff.; also see DIBZ (1909):207-8. DIBZ (1909): 207-8. DIBZ(1913):488-90.

270

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

debated the matter. It adopted yet another resolution in favor of the inventor's right, though in accordance With the views of spokesmen for the chemical industry it also allowed complete freedom to settle the question of material patent rights and compensation in the employment contract.45 The DVSGE concerned itself with the question as well. Its 1907 congress in Diisseldorf concentrated on reorganization of the Patent Office and also discussed the inventor's right at length. In 1908 it addressed less controversial aspects of the Patent Law. All that interest culminated in a 1909 DVSGE announcement that its Stettin congress would be entirely devoted to the inventor's right and employee inventions, in the expectation of issuing definitive guidelines for legal reform. Prior to the congress, the DVSGE distributed preliminary theses and papers, prepared in ten sessions by a special commission made up of representatives from all concerned parties, including the Btib. The most important of these proposals, subsequently adopted by the Stettin congress, was to replace the registrant's right with the inventor principle as the basis of a new Patent Law.46 Once the inventor's right replaced the registrant's principle, however, a fundamental problem arose. It was a basic tenet of all employment law that the fruit of an employee's labor belonged to the employer. The new Patent Law, in contrast, would assign the right to patent the invention and the material benefits therefrom to the inventor, who in the majority of cases was an employee. The legal problem, and the conflict of interest between employers and employee-inventors, centered on how this contradiction would be resolved. The Btib demanded obligatory compensation: statutory prohibition of employment contracts that automatically and without special compensation transferred ownership of the employee's intellectual products to the employer. Its basic position was that regardless of the employee's job description or function, the employer would have to purchase the invention from the inventing engineer. Invention, it argued, was always a unique, specifically individual, creative achievement that in a flash of genius transcended the ordinary performance contractually exchanged for salary.47 The industrial employers held a very different view. The idea of statutory compensation for each and every patented employee invention was preposterous to them. Engineers and scientists hired to invent things received 45 DIBZ (1906):297-300, 323-4; DIBZ (1908):354; DIBZ (1909):43-4; DIBZ (1913):488-90. 46 DIBZ (1909):264-5, 297-8; Schrodter to Guggenheimer, 18 June 1909, "Beschlusse der Kongresses fur gewerblichen Rechtsschutz," NGug, 73/1. For the Stettin congress, see DVSGE, Kongress fur Gewerblkhen Rechtsschutz, Stettin, 17-20. Mai 1909, Verhandlungsberichte (Berlin: Julius

Sittenfeld, 1909). 47 Sohlich, "Erfinderschutz," passim; "Das Recht der Angestellten an ihrer Erfindung vom Standpunkt des angestellten Chemikers," passim.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

271

compensation for such work through their salary or through bonuses given at the employer's discretion. Moreover, inventions typically were the products of the employment context. The greatest credit for inventions belonged to the employer, who made available the relevant material and institutional arrangements. 48 If, in spite of all this, the principle of the inventor's right had to be conceded, the protection of the employer's property rights must be ironclad. The authors of the Stettin congress resolutions clearly understood this requirement. They dealt with the compensation issue by recommending that the right to the invention, as well as to the patent, could be assigned in principle and that it would be wrong to introduce legal restrictions on the contractual freedom to do so. A clause in the law that "granted a schematic right to 'profit sharing' for every employee who makes an invention" was "impracticable and in general harmful to German industry — to both the entrepreneurs and the employees themselves." Inventions created by an employee hired to invent or innovate and related, however remotely, to his general duties would automatically belong to the employer, even if there was no explicit agreement to that effect.49 In short, the resolutions of the congress would safeguard employer interests by taking back with one hand what they had given with the other. Apart from granting the principle of the inventor's right and the inventor's name recognition, the Stettin resolutions therefore would change very little in practice. The industrial employers realized this and hence were not too concerned about the potential changes in the law. As the CDI's Dr. Tanzler pointed out at a VDMA Patent Commission meeting in Diisseldorf in May of 1909, the DVSGE's protective clauses "undid" the potentially "harmful effects" of the inventor's right. He also believed that the "position of the firm remained fully protected, since the expression 'inventor' would undoubtedly apply not just to human beings but also to legal persons." In other words, Tanzler was under the impression, as was VDMA business manager Frolich, that the inventor principle would not be interpreted so narrowly as to preclude the possibility of collective inventions, which would continue to belong directly to the employer. 30 At the same time, the employers' willingness to abandon the registrant's right in favor of the inventor's right appeared as a humane and enlightened step on their part. It showed goodwill and professional courtesy to em48 E.g., the resolution of the Bayerischer Industriellen Verband of July 1908, quoted in DIBZ (1909): 137—9, the decisions of the Verein Deutscher Chemiker of September 1909, quoted in DIBZ (1909):404, or Carl Duisberg's comments at the Stettin congress, in Zeitschriftfur angewandte Chemie 22 (1909): 1665-71, and in DVSGE, Kongress Stettin Verhandlungsberichte. 49 DIBZ (1909):264-5, 297-8; Schrodter to Guggenheimer, 18 June 1909, "Beschliisse des Kongresses fur gewerblichen Rechtsschutz," NGug, 73/1. 50 VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fiir gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 May 1909, Dusseldorf, 6-8, NGug, 73/1.

272

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

ployee-inventors, whose morale and therefore productivity would be boosted as a consequence of their emancipation — theoretical though it was. It was precisely for that reason that the industrialists agreed to the change, especially so Carl Duisberg, the top executive of the Bayer chemical company. As industry's dominant spokesman at Stettin, Duisberg played an active role in formulating the DVSGE's position. The other business executives at Stettin went along with the leadership of the famous chemist and industrialist. 51 Because the advocates of the inventor's right had captured the moral and legal high ground, there was nothing to be gained by opposing the principle of it. On the contrary, doing so would only result in accusations of greed and would jeopardize the effort to defeat with more mundane arguments such as "impracticability" the professional employees' truly dangerous demands for profit sharing and compensation.32 The Btib was disappointed by the outcome of the Stettin congress, which had ignored all the objections and recommendations of the engineering union. It saw Stettin as an unequivocal victory for the employers. As the DIBZ put it in June of 1909, "All in all, the decisions of the Stettin congress . . . show no progress toward recognizing the social character of the problem of the employee invention." 53 The Soziale Praxis was more outspoken. In its view, Stettin showed that "in principle the interests of intellectual property must take a back seat to the interests of industrial property; the intellectual worker — inclusive of all the exceptional achievements of his talent and his inventor's luck - who signs on with a firm shall be subject and obliged to pay tribute to the lord of the firm."54 In spite of such criticisms, the Stettin congress was something of a milestone. For a conservative, business-dominated association to advocate the principle of the inventor's right and to largely do away with the theory of the firm collectively producing inventions was a remarkable step. The primary motivation for the change, after all, was sociopolitical: to improve the legal status of professional employees, and to create a legal basis for 51 Frolich to Justus Flohr, chairman of the Vulcan shipyard in Stettin and Hamburg, 3 April 1911, NGug, 74/V. 52 "It is now up to us to test the practical value of the solutions proposed by the other side, and, insofar as they sound just and right in principle, to demonstrate that they all must fail when applied in practice," in "Zur Frage des Erfinderrechtes der Angestellten," 4, MAN internal position paper, 6 May 1909, prepared for the Stettin congress by Guggenheimer's assistant, Heinrich Krantz. According to senior engineer H. Neumann of Deutz at the VDMA's Patent Committee meeting of 8 July 1909 in Frankfurt a.M., the VDMA had decided to concede the inventor's right "in order to counter all the more effectively the impossible demands of the salaried employees in other areas, specifically with regard to the obligation to compensate employee inventions," VDMA "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 July 1909 in Frankfurt a.M., 2, NGug, 73/1. 53 DIBZ (1909):264-5. 54 Quoted in DIBZ (1909): 297-8.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

273

voluntary employee compensation. The Stettin congress did so and in the process severely weakened the theoretical underpinnings of the employer's right to his employees' inventions. This was a problem that would haunt the industrialists in the remaining years before World War I. Moreover, though the Stettin guidelines placed severe restrictions on statutory compensation and on the inventor's rights in practice, they did not completely ignore them. One of the congress's resolutions was that if an invention fell outside the employer's sphere, but could be used in his business, the employer should be entitled to a free license (which left intact the property rights of the inventor). If the employer desired exclusive ownership, "appropriate compensation" of the employee-inventor would be obligatory. Thus the DVSGE distinguished, however tentatively, between employee inventions that were part of the employer's "sphere" and those that were not. At the periphery of the employer's interests, the possibility of statutory employee compensation was conceded. 55 Stettin was a milestone in another respect as well. It became the point of departure for the government's efforts during the next five years to design a new Patent Law acceptable to all parties. Outright adoption of the Stettin principles was politically impossible, because they still gave too much to the employers and not enough to the employees. Without some sort of statutory compensation, any government proposal was bound to fail in the Reichstag. The government therefore had to find a different solution, one that would come closer to the Btib's position without alienating the industrialists. To achieve this contradictory objective, it embarked on a precarious balancing act. On the one hand, the government proposed to recognize the employee's right of compensation and to introduce some statutory restrictions on contractual freedom between employer and employee. On the other hand, to compensate the industrialists for this loss, it envisaged weakening the principle of the inventor's right by leaving intact a residual category of inventions made not by any one individual employee but by the firm, the proprietor of which would then count as the inventor. 56 The legal concepts that emerged as a consequence of these maneuverings ultimately found their way to the 1913 Patent Law draft. They centered on a threefold distinction among "free inventions," "establishment inventions" (or "firm inventions"), and "individual employee inventions." The employee's "free invention" was unrelated to the employer's business and therefore was the unrestricted property of the actual inventor. The "establishment invention" or "firm invention" was a holdover from the days of the registrant's right. It was the product of a collective and 55 See note 46. 56 Guggenheimer travel note, 29 June 1909, NGug, 73/1; correspondence between Guggenheimer and Frolich, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24 June 1909, NGug, 73/1.

274

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

collaborative effort to such an extent that an individual inventor did not exist or could not be singled out. In this case the employer counted as inventor and a priori owner, and there would be no compensation. Between these two categories stood the "individual employee invention" (Diensterfindung or Einzelerfindung). This was an invention within the purview of the firm, made by an individual employee hired to invent, innovate, or work in the area in which the invention occurred. The ownership rights to this type of invention originally belonged to the inventor, but would transfer to the employer, who was legally obligated to compensate the employee once a patent was received. If the employment contract did not specify the compensation, it would be up to the employer to do so. 57 This was an imperfect solution in more ways than one. In terms of legal theory, it was a partial and awkward retreat from the Stettin congress's clear break with the past; on a more practical level, the question whether an invention was of the establishment or individual type would inevitably become a source of conflict, and allowing the employer to specify the form and content of statutory compensation would render the employee's rights almost meaningless. Such defects were results of the highly political nature of the 1913 draft law, which reflected the imperial government's desperate efforts to mediate between the industrialists and the engineering employees. In addition, the draft law cast an interesting light on the balance of power among government, industry, and the salaried employees on the eve of World War I. A glance at the subsequent history of Patent Law reform illustrates this point. When the Nazis completed the reforms initiated during the empire, they adopted the employees' view that an institution as such could not invent, and the 1936 Patent Law eliminated the possibility of an "establishment invention." 58 For the business community this was a major defeat, as the new law discarded a concept the employers had considered one of the few redeeming features of the 1913 draft: They had counted on the broadest possible interpretation of the concept "establishment invention" to limit the inventor's right and prevent employee compensation. 59 3.

THE INDUSTRIALISTS FIGHT BACK

When the government's draft law was finally revealed in the summer of 1913, it satisfied neither the industrialists nor the employed engineers, though the latter acknowledged the proposal's progressive features and 57 Vorldufige Enttvurfe, 1-2, 7-17. Also see Reimer, Schade, and Schippel, Das Recht der Arbeitnehmererfindung, 457—465. 58 Belz, Arbeitnehmererfindung, 2 6 - 3 1 , 4 9 - 6 1 . 59 The intent of the 1913 draft was to recognize only a residual possibility of collective inventions, Vorlaufige Entwurfe, 10-14.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

275

immediately took credit for having inspired them. In a lead article for the DIBZ, the Btib's Max Granzin, in July of 1913, criticized many aspects of the government's plan as inadequate. Nonetheless, Granzin called the new draft a "great success for the Bund" and a "significant step toward the g o a l . . . of the unconditional recognition of the salaried employees' property rights to their inventions." 60 The employers were considerably less charitable. They mounted a feverish resistance campaign, which culminated in a massive protest meeting in the Architects' House in Berlin in January of 1914. On this occasion the frequently divided industrial interest groups showed complete unity. The machine-building industry, the chemical industry, and the electrical industry, as well as the Bund der Industriellen and the CDI, all condemned the government's draft.61 The industrialists attacked the watered-down provisions for special compensation to employee-inventors as "unwarranted and impracticable." 62 They also objected in principle to the fact that such compensation, which ought to be a matter of labor law, was regulated by the Patent Law. 63 In an about-face from 1909, the industrialists rejected the transition from registrant's right to inventor's right as "unnecessary, fundamentally flawed, and dangerous for the German economy." 64 This last resolution was especially significant, because it disavowed their more conciliatory and enlightened position of 1909 on this particular question. What had happened since 1909 to account for this change of heart? Big business had looked on the Stettin resolutions as an indivisible package. The inventor's right was to be accepted — even advocated — but on the condition that any practical consequences of the new principle be limited to name recognition. Contractual freedom between employer and employee was to be preserved, and statutory compensation would be

60 Max Granzin, "Ein Erfolg des Bundes," DIBZ (1913):320—1; see additional Btib discussion and criticism of the 1913 draft in DIBZ (1913):332-6, 388-92, 479-80; see also Erfinderschutz der technischen Privatangestellten (Schriften des Btib, vol. 32) (Berlin: Industriebeamten-Verlag, 1913). 61 Denkschrift u'ber den Verlauf der von dem Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten dem Verein zur Wahrung der Interessen der chemischen Industrie Deutschlands, dem Verein zur Wahrung gemeinsamer Wirtschaftsinteressen der Deutschen Elektrotechnik, dem Bund der Industriellen und dem Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller zur Beratung des vorldufigen Entwurfs eines Patentgesetzes veranstalteten Versa-

mmlung am 16. Januar 1914 (Berlin: Julius Sittenfeld, 1914), passim. 62 Ibid., 47. 63 This objection was subsequently accepted. The 1936 Patent Law made no mention of employee compensation, leaving the matter to be settled, first, by the 1942-3 "Goring-Speer ordinances" and subsequently by the 1957 "Law on Employee Inventions." The latter not only acknowledges the right to compensation but also carefully regulates the amount and circumstances under which employed inventors receive compensation; Belz, Arbeitnehmererfindung; Reimer, Schade, and Schippel, Das Recht der Arbeitnehmererfindung. 64 Denkschrift. . . Patentgesetzes, 47; grudging toleration of name recognition for the employed inventor was industry's one concession.

276

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

avoided.65 Subsequent to the Stettin congress it became evident that the government in fact did envisage employee compensation and restrictions on the freedom of contract. The 1913 draft law also denned the residual category of "establishment inventions" more narrowly than the industrialists had anticipated. That particular combination made the inventor's right all of a sudden extremely dangerous. Having once advocated the new principle, however, the employers could not reverse course and oppose it without more or less admitting in public that they did so only to deprive their engineers of compensation - precisely the accusation they had originally wanted to avoid. Still, that was the route they took, even though the negative publicity it generated increased the risk of a major setback should they fail to halt the reforms. Such failure appeared imminent in the summer of 1914. In retrospect, it seems surprising that the industrialists did not foresee the potential consequences of the Stettin resolutions. What if the government broke up the package — as indeed it would — by accepting the inventor's right but rejecting or modifying the other parts to appease the salaried engineers? One man who recognized this danger right away was the former appeals court judge Bolze, a staunch conservative and selfprofessed friend of German industry. "The attitude of the industrialists in Stettin had caused me deep grief," Bolze wrote to Frolich in February of 1910. "'Are they blind?' I exclaimed as I read the proceedings." 66 Bolze's reaction notwithstanding, it appears that until well after the Stettin conference the vast majority of industrialists remained confident that they would be able to control the situation. The only ones who almost immediately recognized the dangers were the mechanical engineering industrialists. Shortly before the Stettin congress, executives from the machinery industry had begun to voice their concern that the DVSGE's theses failed to do justice to collective inventions, which played a large role in their industry. In the words of A. Biittner, the owner of a firm making tubed steam boilers in the Rhineland, "the vast majority of industrially usable inventions are a product of the cooperation of numerous persons and, not in the least degree, of the influence and participation of the conditions and installations of the factory." Typically, the suggestions of a nontechnical manager, consisting in "defining the task or the goal, [were] the essence of the invention. The possibility of the firm invention must therefore be preserved under all

65 "Introduction of the inventor's right in accordance with the decisions of the Stettin congress becomes unacceptable to the VDMA as soon as contractual freedom is restricted to even the slightest degree." Senior engineer Johannes Ingrisch of the Benrath-Duisburg-Stuckenholz machine shop at the VDMA's Patent Commission meeting of 8 July 1909, 2, NGug, 73/1. 66 Bolze to Frolich, 16 February 1910, NGug, 73/111.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

277

circumstances." 67 To ensure that this view would be heard in Stettin, the VDMA decided to insist on the possibility of a "legal person" being an inventor as well. 68 The DVSGE's decisions, however, had ignored the VDMA's plea to include such language, thereby in effect adopting a narrow interpretation of the inventor's right. The engineering industrialists were also worried about a second problem. A steady stream of new constructions, designs, innovations, and improvements was at the center of economic survival and technical progress in the industry. The normal responsibilities of design engineers were therefore no different from inventing, which had become an institutionalized part of the firm's operations. As Biittner put it, "designing and inventing are identical." 69 The employers routinely patented these innovations, sometimes to make difficulties for the competition, sometimes to test whether or not other firms were developing similar ideas, and sometimes merely in anticipation of the possibility that a particular construction might prove valuable in the future.70 Under the inventor's right, all such patents — Frolich estimated that up to one-quarter of all German patents were for mechanical designs - would initially belong to the employee.71 Though the vast majority would transfer to the employer, some would not. The latter event was especially likely when such improvements originated with shop-floor technicians or assembly engineers, whose normal duties did not include inventing, but who in practice often made patentable contributions. The Stettin resolutions were not precise enough on this point. The DVSGE's decisions might address the concerns of the chemical industry, but they put the machine-building employer at risk.72 The VDMA's Patent Commission met in July 1909 in Frankfurt a.M. 67 VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 May 1909, Dusseldorf, 4, NGug, 73/1. 68 Ibid., 7-8. 69 Ibid., 10-12. 70 Alois Riedler, "Erfinderarbeit," typescript paper (n.d., 1913?) on the changing nature of inventing and patenting in the large industrial corporation, 6 April 1913, NGug, 74/VII. Riedler also argued that from the individual's point of view, institutionalized inventing was increasingly unsatisfactory, and the resulting exploding numbers of patents became increasingly insignificant. One managerial reviewer recommended publication of Riedler's essay because it directed the reading public's attention to the irony of the engineers' struggle for the "inventor's right" occurring precisely when individualistic and heroic notions of inventing were superseded by collective and incremental technological progress. This would serve to undermine the moral authority and support of their cause. But Guggenheimer recommended against publication. Riedler's arguments on behalf of the "registrant's right" only repeated views discredited in the public's mind, and they cast the industrialists' motives and practices in a sinister light; memoranda of 23 and 25 April 1913, NGug, 74/VII. 71 See Frolich's estimate in VDMA, Verhandlungen der Sachversta'ndigen-Sitzung iiber Fragen zur Reform des Patentgesetzes am 7. und 8. Dezember 1909 in Berlin (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1910), 7. 72 VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 May 1909, Dusseldorf, 10-12, and idem, 8 July 1909, Frankfurt, 3 - 5 , NGug, 73/1, 48/72; also see VDMA, Verhandlungen der Sachverstandigen-Sitzung, 6—9-

278

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

to consider these problems. That meeting and many others on the same subject that followed were intellectually dominated by the MAN's Guggenheimer, who together with Frolich provided the driving force behind the VDMA's efforts to block Patent Law reform. In late June, Guggenheimer had attended a confidential meeting in Berlin involving a select group of government officials, industrialists, Btib representatives, scholars, and patent attorneys to discuss reform of the Patent Law. The evidence suggests that Guggenheimer first became alerted to the dangers of the Stettin resolutions at that gathering. The government's contemplation of some statutory employee compensation surprised him less than its use of a very restrictive definition of the collective or "establishment invention," an interpretation the Stettin resolutions appeared to sanction. That combination spelled trouble for the machine-building industry, threatening to result in an overwhelming majority of what the employers considered collective inventions being classified as "individual inventions" that would qualify for employee compensation. 73 Thus, it became necessary to "withdraw" the VDMA's "conditional approval" of the DVSGE's adoption of the inventor's right. The problem was to find morally defensible reasons for doing so at a time when there was widespread agreement — even in management circles — that keeping the registrant's right was more or less akin to advocating slavery. Guggenheimer's contribution was that he found the answer to this particular problem: If the inventor's right became law, he pointed out, the mechanical engineering industry, with its system of collective inventing, would be ruined by "endless litigation." Lawsuits would occur not so much between the firm and the employees as between the firm's engineers themselves, who would fight each other over a particular invention's authorship. Because such questions could be settled only in court on the basis of sworn public testimony by the relevant witnesses concerning the entire research and development process, the firm's competition would gain free access to its latest technology, innovations, and plans, simply by attending these proceedings. Moreover, explained Guggenheimer, the competition could easily provoke such destructive litigation, as for example, by planting an employee in a competing firm or by bribing one of its engineers to initiate legal action. 74 The record does not indicate whether the other members of the VDMA's Patent Commission considered this a real or a fictitious danger, but they saw its tactical advantage. The Guggenheimer scenario made it possible 73 Guggenheimer travel notes, 5 and 13 July 1909, and copy of Reichsamt des Innern, "Leitsatze zu AIb der Aufzeichnung IIIA 3405 (Erfindungen der Angestellten)," correspondence between Guggenheimer and the VDMA, June 1909, NGug, 73/1. 74 VDMA, "Bericht iiber die Sitzung des Ausschusses fur gewerblichen Rechtschutz," 8 July 1909, 1-3; Guggenheimer travel note, 13 July 1909, 2-3, NGug, 48/72.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

279

to oppose the inventor's right without having to wear the stigma of an unpopular public crusade against professional employees who collectively constituted the intellectual capital of German industry. Instead, such opposition now could be defended as a legitimate economic concern having nothing to do with the engineers. The assembled managers jumped at this opportunity, stating that they never would have voted for the Stettin resolutions had they been alerted to these dangers sooner. Guggenheimer, who privately thought it "curious that a commission of engineers had not thought of that," was satisfied that the Frankfurt meeting unanimously agreed that there would be "severe damage to the German machinery industry in the introduction of an inventor's right" and that it was prepared to withdraw its earlier support of the Stettin resolutions. 73 The engineering industry's fundamental objective was not to repudiate Stettin but to prevent the enactment of a Patent Law harmful to its interests. To that end, the VDMA spent a vast amount of energy during the next five years. Its first step was to make preparations for a kind of anti-Stettin conference in Berlin in December of 1909, where the machinery industry's position would be presented in public to the government, to selected members of the Reichstag, and to officials from other industrial and technical organizations. 76 Adopted by the VDMA's executive in October of 1909, these plans proceeded apace. The patent experts of the VDMA's leading firms received assignments to develop papers and formal arguments on the different aspects of the question. 77 Guggenheimer himself took responsibility for the most important question of all: "Should the Right to the Patent Belong to the Inventor Instead of the Registrant?" Answering in the negative, this paper became the core, first, of the VDMA's position, and then of all industry's opposition to the inventor's right. Its basic argument was to point out the errors and dangers of the view that the inventor's right was a prerequisite for solving the problem of employee inventions and employee compensation. The two had nothing to do with each other, and employee compensation could be achieved within the framework of the existing law. The inventor's right, on the other hand, was harmful to industry for reasons unrelated to the demands of the salaried engineers and should be dropped. 78 75 NGug, 48/72. 76 Guggenheimer travel note, 13 July 1909, Frolich to VDMA executive committee, 2 August 1909, and Guggenheimer to Frolich, 10 August 1909, NGug, 73/1. 77 VDMA ZM 9 (November 1911):293-5; also see Guggenheimer travel note, 15 October 1909, correspondence between Frolich and Guggenheimer of August—November 1909, and protocols of Patent Commission meetings of September and October 1909, NGug, 73/11. 78 "Soil das Recht auf das Patent dem Erfinder an Stelle des Anmelders zustehen?" VDMA, Verhandlungen der Sachverstdndigen-Sitzung, 9—17; also available in manuscript form, 8 October 1909, NGug, 48/72, 73/IL

280

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

A report summarizing the VDMA's position was distributed to most Reichstag members, relevant government officials, other industrial organizations, and the press in November of 1909. 79 In early December the conference of VDMA patent experts took place in Berlin. Chaired by the MAN's Rieppel and Deutz's Rhazen, the meeting was attended by senior executives from the engineering industry and by several high government officials, among them Privy Councillor Robolski, one of the principal authors of the 1913 Patent Law draft and the future president of the Patent Office. The only Reichstag member present was Johannes Junck of the National Liberals, but there were numerous delegates from other industrial groups and technical societies, including Hoechst's Haeuser, Bayer's Duisberg, and Siemens's Budde, as well as representatives of the CDI, the VDI, the Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker, the Verein Deutscher Chemiker, the DVSGE, the Hansa-Bund, and others. 80 Before this audience Guggenheimer and engineers Frolich, Ingrisch, and Neumann (Deutz) presented their papers. The performance, in the words of an interested observer, was a "brilliant retreat" from Stettin, "if only it does not come too late to help" against the wiles of the liberals, who were "as treacherous" though not as smart "as the serpent" (Center Party). 81 The VDMA's arguments appear to have given the government no more than brief pause. Guggenheimer, Frolich, and other executives were able to convince themselves of this in person in a meeting with Interior Secretary Delbriick and with Robolski in February of 1910. The government was proceeding with its plans to make concessions to the salaried engineers. 82 Frightened by this, as well as by continuing Reichstag clamoring, the electrical industry in April of 1910 established contact with the machine builders to join the opposition. 83 By May it was clear to Guggenheimer that "a drastic deterioration in the fortunes of industry [had] taken place" and that the proposals the government entertained "spelled the ruin of every mechanical engineering firm."84 Efforts to establish a united front of all the major industrial interest groups then got under way in earnest. In the summer of 1910 the CDI was won over. In September its Patent Commission and top leaders met with the experts of the mechanical and 79 VDMA ZM 9 (November 1909):299-310. 80 VDMA, Verhandlungen der Sacbverstdndigen-Sitzung, passim. 81 Copy of Bolze to Frolich, 16 February 1910, in Frolich to Guggenheimer, 19 February 1910, NGug, 73/IH. 82 Guggenheimer travel note, 8 February 1910, NGug, 73/111. 83 Germany, Reichstag, Verhandlungen (4 March 1910); Emil Budde to Guggenheimer, 8 April 1910, Guggenheimer travel note, 12 April 1910, correspondence between Friedrich Fasolt and Frolich, 20 and 21 May 1910, Guggenheimer travel note, 26 May 1910 and correspondence between Guggenheimer and Budde, 27 and 31 May, 7, 9, 10 June 1910, NGug, 73/111, 73/IV. 84 Guggenheimer to VDMA, 23 May 1910, and travel note, 26 May 1910, NGug, 73/111.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

281

electrical industries to discuss the situation. The assembled executives came close to panicking at this meeting. They were in complete agreement about the "great danger" of the government's draft, rumored to exceed their worst expectations and, according to the CDI's Henri Bueck, ready for publication. The only chance of delay was to contact Delbriick in person, because his staff was totally on the side of the engineers. Undersecretary Jonquieres, in particular, was "a special friend of the salaried employees," Guggenheimer remarked. The electrical industry's Friedrich Fasolt concurred, reporting that he had heard Jonquieres "express himself more or less the same way as it happens in the agitation of the Btib." 85 Because no one at the meeting knew exactly what the government planned to do, Guggenheimer went to Berlin in early November to find out by speaking to Delbriick. He was received instead by Jonquieres and Robolski, who refused to give him a copy of the government's draft. Doing so, they said, would be unfair to the Btib and the DTV, which resented the industrialists' easy access to the government and had already accused Robolski of having a "weak social ear." It turned out, however, that the industrialists' fears about imminent release of a Patent Law draft were unfounded. New delays had come up, concerning the reorganization of the Patent Office and the position of government-employed salaried engineers in the new law. Even though "extreme hurry" was therefore "no longer necessary," Guggenheimer had plenty to worry about when Robolski showed and discussed the government's plans with him. Besides the "inventor's right," there would be some form of statutory employee compensation. Freedom of contract would be restricted as well. 86 To counter these plans, it would be necessary to build an even larger coalition and bring the chemical industry into the VDMA's camp. The chemical industrialists, for their part, had also become concerned about the government's tendencies, which went considerably beyond the Stettin resolutions. The result was coordination between the three potentially most affected industries — mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemicals — acting together under the auspices and with the support of theCDI. 8 7 In January of 1911, representatives of this group met with Robolski and Delbriick to impress on the government yet again the grave concerns of the newly united industrial front. To all appearances their foray was effective. A compromise between the two sides seemed possible. The 85 Guggenheimer travel notes, 28 June and 23 September 1910, correspondence among Guggenheimer, Krupp's Dr. Wandel, Frolich, Schweighoffer, and Henri Axel Bueck, July-September 1910, and VDMA report of CDI Patent Commission meeting of 23 September, NGug, 73/IH, 73/IV. 86 Guggenheimer travel note, 7 November 1910, NGug, 73/IV. 87 Correspondence between Frolich and Guggenheimer of 29 October, 4 and 8 November 1910, NGug, 73/IV, 74/V.

282

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

inventor's right would remain, but there would be a broadly defined category of collective, establishment inventions, and the provisions for statutory compensation favored the employer side so heavily as to be virtually meaningless. Even Guggenheimer was satisfied.88 If the agreement stuck, he wrote to Frolich, the main objective would have been achieved: "on the basis of the accepted proposals industry is in a position to nullify from the outset — through cleverly drafted and morally unassailable contracts — any consequence of this inventor's right as far as compensation is concerned." It was inevitable that there be something in the draft for the salaried inventors, Guggenheimer continued, because without any concessions the Reichstag would draft a law that "would damage industry most severely." "If nothing worse comes," he concluded, "industry c a n . . . be very contented." 89 The industrialists had indeed achieved a victory, albeit a merely temporary one. Confident in the government's newly found "friendly orientation toward industry," they turned their attention to other problems. 90 Meanwhile, the government's men went back to work, seeking to address the objections and problems that had surfaced in 1910. This took until July of 1913, when the draft law finally appeared. 91 Its contents gave the employers, who believed that they had removed the sting from Patent Law reform in the 1911 understanding, an unpleasant shock. As anticipated, the draft introduced the inventor's right. It also contained a paragraph on employee compensation and restrictions on contractual freedom that MAN executives judged to be "relatively favorable to us." 9 2 The employers' principal objection centered on the "establishment invention," which the draft defined so narrowly as to make it practically nonexistent. Only if an invention could "not be traced to specific individuals" would the firm or the employer count as the inventor. 93 This meant that the overwhelming majority of industrial inventions — as opposed to the very small number the industrialists had expected — would be considered individual-employee inventions {Diensterfindungeri). According to the draft, all these qualified for compensation. To prevent this from becoming a reality, and to achieve the "exemption of collegial inventions from compensation," was, in Guggenheimer's words, the "crucial point." 94 The industrialists wasted little time in returning to the battle. The 88 89 90 91 92

"Bericht iiber die Besprechung im Reichsamt des Innern," 23 January 1911, NGug, 74/V. Guggenheimer to Frolich, 31 January 1911, NGug, 73/IV. Guggenheimer travel note, 5 April 1911, NGug, 74/V. The bill was published in the Reichsanzeiger (11 July 1913). Protocol of discussion between Guggenheimer and MAN patent experts Jansen, Krantz, and Offenbacher, 29 July 1913, NGug, 74/VII. 93 Vorlaufige Entiviirfe, 3 (paragraph 3 of the draft). 94 Guggenheimer to Offenbacher, 30 August 1913, NGug, 74/VII.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

283

VDMA's alert of July 1913 stated that the draft "paid virtually no attention to the wishes and concerns of industry. To express this once again, in the most impressive demonstrations possible," was the task at hand. 95 Planning for a massive demonstration got under way immediately. Industry's basic position was to adopt a totally obstructionist and rigid stance, to return to its opposition to the inventor's right, and to embrace any and all possible objections - even minor technical ones - to try to delay the law or sink it before it went to the Reichstag. Should that fail, the hard-line policy at least would serve the purpose of creating negotiating space. That this was necessary was evident, according to Guggenheimer, from the attitude of the Btib and other reformers, who merely considered the draft a point of departure for bringing into being a law far more advantageous for salaried inventors. 96 The problem was considered so serious that the industrialists decided to bring the Bund der Industriellen (Bdl) into their ranks as well. Ordinarily that organization was jealous of its independence and refused to be railroaded into supporting large-scale industry, but delicate negotiations succeeded in convincing it of the urgency of the situation. 97 By early December of 1913, all five industrial interest groups had agreed on a common platform, based primarily on the VDMA's 1909 arguments. The product of these preparations was the large demonstration meeting of January 1914 in the Architects' House in Berlin. 98 The cream of Germany's managerial elite attended: directors, executives, manufacturers, lobbyists, and experts on industrial property rights from most industries and industrial organizations, as well as government officials and a smattering of Reichstag members — some 450 participants in all. The effect of this frontal attack on the government was a replay of the events following the VDMA's much smaller demonstration of December 1909. At first, the industrialists thought they had achieved their goal. Guggenheimer believed the protest meeting, which had been "very well attended," was a "complete success." Having spoken with Privy Councillor von Specht directly after the meeting, Guggenheimer recorded in his private travel notes that Specht, one of the Interior Ministry's leading authors of the Patent Law draft, "was to all appearances rather depressed about the success of the protest meeting, and thought that the government would undoubtedly decide upon another review with the experts." 99 95 VDMA to members of Patent Commission, 18 July 1913, NGug, 74/VII. 96 Guggenheimer note, 29 July 1913, VDMA Patent Commission meeting, 15 and 16 August 1913 in Berlin, correspondence between Guggenheimer and Frolich/VDMA, 25 September and 3 October 1913, and Guggenheimer to CDI, 4 October 1913, NGug, 74/VII. 97 Correspondence among Frolich, Guggenheimer, the Bdl, and the CDI, November and December 1913, NGug, 74/VIII, 74/IX. 98 Cf. note 61. 99 Guggenheimer travel note, 16 January 1914, NGug, 74/IX.

284

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Though such a review would indeed take place in June of 1914, the government did not cave in, and the tide turned almost immediately against the industrialists. When the Reichstag debated the issue on 11 February, it became clear that there was substantial support for the draft law. The National Liberals, the Center Party, and the Progressives defended it as a good compromise between the salaried employees and the industrial employers. According to newspaper accounts, Undersecretary Jonquieres was heartened by the Reichstag's willingness to play a mediating role. From this and other evidence it is apparent that the government's hopes for passage of the existing draft, perhaps with some minor modifications, had revived. 100 The draft law received an additional boost four days after the Reichstag discussions. In mid-February, the DWV, the DTV, and the Btib assembled a demonstration in Berlin of their own, a "Congress of German Technicians," aimed at countering the industrialists' performance of the month before. With a combined membership of 120,000, the three hosting organizations sent 120 delegates to the technicians' congress. In addition, there were representatives from other, smaller technical-employee organizations and an official from the Free Trade Unions. Other participants included Privy Councillor von Specht, Councillor Lotholz, a high official from the Patent Office, a Progressive Reichstag deputy, a Social Democratic Reichstag deputy, two delegates from the Society for Social Reform, and professor Albert Osterrieth of the DVSGE. According to the Frankische Tagespost, the "professionalism" (Sachlichkeit) of the meeting contrasted sharply with the "polemics of the entrepreneurs." 101 The Btib's Karl Sohlich and Dipl.-lng. Emil Kortenbach presented papers, and other Btib officials were among the most active participants in the discussion. Though the congress criticized the Patent Law draft for being "Janusfaced" and for not giving enough to the engineers, its basic aim was to express support for the government against the attacks of the industrialists. A unanimous resolution emphatically "welcome[d] the publication of the draft [as a] step forward."102 These developments worried the industrialists, especially the machinery producers, who immediately began to prepare a second line of defense. Because the "Reichstag deliberations. . . and the declarations given {in answer] by the government's representative [had] shown that the government [would] ignore the wishes of industry, giving greater weight to the wishes of the salaried-employee organizations instead, . . . the only ave100 Germany, Reichstag, Verhandlungen (11 February 1914), cited in Munchener-Augsburger Abendzeitung 43(12 February 1914). 101 Frankische Tagespost (17 February 1914), NGug, 74/IX. 102 DIBZ (1914) :81-3 • Also see reports of the congress in the Berliner Tageblatt (16 February 1914).

Unified employment code and Patent Law

285

nue" that remained open was to defeat the bill in the Bundesrat.103 Frolich urged the industrialists to start lobbying the relevant officials of the various state governments in person. Ernst von Borsig, for example, was to work on Undersecretary Jacob Neuhaus of the Prussian Ministry of Trade. 104 It is not known what the eventual outcome of such efforts would have been, but apparently they were not too promising. Guggenheimer's private negotiations with the Bavarian government during the entire first half of 1914, at any rate, had little effect.105 Meanwhile, industry's fragile unity, which had reached its climax in the protest meeting of January, began to fall apart. Faced with the government's apparent firmness and threat to ignore their objections, many industrialists began to reassess the wisdom of sticking with an obstructionist policy. As Guggenheimer wrote in May of 1914 to Carl Hauss, the former president of the Patent Office, "industry's tendency to strike a deal with the government so as to avoid worse has become very large." 106 Earlier that month, a meeting had taken place between a group of moderates in the DVSGE, among them General Director Walther Waldschmidt of the Ludwig Loewe machinery company in Berlin, Bayer's Carl Duisberg, senior engineer Preussing of Krupp, Dr. Max Hamburger of the AEG, and several well-known patent attorneys and academics, including Osterrieth, to discuss the details of a possible fall-back position for a compromise with the government. 107 At the DVSGE's Augsburg congress in late May, differences between unyielding engineering industrialists of the VDMA and more moderate leaders of the chemical industry resulted in the failure of a variety of compromise proposals. In a mood of general frustration, and partly as a result of efforts to introduce conceptual refinements into the debate, the DVSGE rejected the basic principles of the government's draft. 108 Industrial unity further unraveled when in early June the annual convention of the Association of German Chemists adopted new resolutions, the so-called Bonn decisions. Largely the work of Carl Duisberg, the new chairman of the DVSGE, the Bonn decisions 103 Frolich to Ernst Borsig, 26 February 1914, NGug, 74/IX. 104 Ibid. 105 Guggenheimer began lobbying Undersecretary Ritter von Meinel of the Bavarian Foreign Ministry as early as February 1914. These efforts continued through June of 1914. Guggenheimer travel note, 18 February 1914, correspondence between Guggenheimer and Kuhlo, March and April, Guggenheimer to Meinel, 10 June 1914, Guggenheimer travel note, 13 June 1914, and Guggenheimer to Meinel, 13 June 1914, NGug, 74/IX, 74/X. 106 Guggenheimer to Hauss, 27 May 1914, NGug, 60/IV. 107 Protocol of DVSGE Patent Commission meeting, 13 May 1914, correspondence among Guggenheimer, Frolich, and Wandel, 15-18 May 1914, and Guggenheimer travel note, 19 May 1914, NGug, 74/X. 108 Deutscher Verein fur den Schutz des gewerblichen Eigentums (Augsburger Kongress, 24—29 May 1914), Vorschldge zu der Reform des Patentrechts: Denkscbrift der Patentkommission und der Warenzeichenkommission (Berlin: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1914), 1—18; idem, Beschliisse des Augsburger Kongress (Berlin: Julius Sittenfeld, 1914), 1-6, NGug, 74/X.

286

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

did not accept the government's draft. But they were considerably more conciliatory than industry's January position and approximated the terms of the informal understanding between industry and government of January 1911. 109 To avoid complete isolation, the VDMA's patent group in June began to consider compromises as well. Having advocated the hardest possible line all along, Guggenheimer suddenly advised Frolich that unless the machinery industrialists were willing to be ignored as irrelevant obstructionists, compromise was imperative. He knew from a reliable source that the government was determined to "introduce the bill in its present form if it does not reach some sort of understanding with industry allowing partial modification of its draft." That the draft would not go to the Bundesrat was "out of the question." Guggenheimer continued by outlining his own specific recommendation for changing the VDMA's stance.110 In these circumstances the government in June of 1914 convened a final conference of patent experts from industry, the relevant salaried-employee organizations, and the legal profession. The Bonn decisions formed the basis of the discussions. The meeting was about equally divided on the inventor's right. The government's men and a majority of the academic and private experts sided with the Btib, whereas most representatives of industry opposed it. There was inconclusive debate on a compromise formulation that would have acknowledged the inventor's principle without conceding the patent right to the inventor - only an abstract right to the invention and hence name recognition as well as the possibility of compensation. In spite of strenuous objections by the Btib's Karl Sohlich, the proposals for a broader interpretation of the "firm invention" than that contained in the 1913 draft also appear to have received majority support. On the other hand, an effort by Wilhelm Siemens to get rid of compensation altogether failed over the firm stance of Undersecretary 109 The Bonn decisions were (1) recognition of the existence of the "company invention," denned as the product of collaborative efforts, as well as the experiences, auxiliary facilities, and the exhortations of the firm; such inventions would belong to the owner of the firm without any compensation duty; name recognition for the inventing employee group was conceded; (2) recognition of the "individual employee invention" (Dienstlkhe Einzelerfindung), denned as an individual invention by an employee made in the course of his duties; name recognition was conceded, as well as employee compensation as provided for in the 1913 draft; (3) limited recognition of the "inventor's right"; the "right to the invention," rather than to the patent, belonged to the inventor; the employment contract should contain a written clause conveying the invention to the employer, which would be valid only if the invention fell within the orbit of the firm's business and if it was the employee's responsibility to work on innovations and improvements; inventions about which no prior valid agreement had been made became the property of the owner of thefirmonly if he agreed to pay the employee appropriate compensation. See "Beschliisse des Vereins Deutscher Chemiker" for government conference on 15 and 16 June 1914, NGug, 74/X. 110 Guggenheimer to Frolich, 12 June 1914, NGug, 74/X.

Unified employment code and Patent Law

287

Jonquieres, who pointed out that the "right of the employees [to compensation] is the basis for the entire Patent Law." The draft had "to bring something," law professor Josef Kohler of the University of Berlin added, "that is a matter of politics." 111 Precisely what the June conference meant was not clear, nor how the government, which decided not to issue a protocol, intended to proceed. CDI officials at first thought that the results were "quite satisfactory."112 Frolich, however, was concerned that the courts would soon restrict the broad interpretation of "firm inventions" in favor of the employed engineers, and even the reformulated and more limited inventor's right of the discussions would have to be fought at all costs. Both he and Guggenheimer were unhappy with what they saw as a victory for Duisberg and his followers in the chemical industry. 113 According to Professor Felix Damme, one of the foremost authorities on patent law, the government viewed the June conference as a "complete victory for those who favored the draft, and a retreat by industry." 114 In a letter to Frolich, Guggenheimer described the government's willingness to modify the 1913 bill as a "far-ranging success" for industry, but considering his long-standing and fanatical defense of the status quo, this does not ring true. More telling was his recommendation that the engineering industry, the electrical industry, and parts of the chemical industry "again launch an allout attack on the draft" if it contained the inventor's right. 115 On 16 July 1914, two weeks before the outbreak of war, an article in the Berliner Tageblatt by Bruno Alexander-Katz, a leading patent attorney and academically trained engineer, reported that the June conference had been the end of the road. The government would present a Patent Law to the Reichstag during the next legislative session. Though the bill would contain a somewhat broader definition of the "firm invention" than had the 1913 draft, it would be based on the principle of the inventor's right, and it would have statutory compensation.116 If that was correct — and there is little reason to doubt it — the only reason nothing came of Patent Law reform at that time was that the engineering industrialists were saved, so to speak, by "the guns of August." 111 Guggenheimer travel notes, 13-16 June 1914, and Frolich to CDI, 22 June 1914, NGug, 74/X. 112 CDI to Frolich, 23 June 1914, NGug, 74/X. 113 Frolich to CDI, 24 June 1914, and Frolich to Guggenheimer, 12 July 1914, NGug, 74/X. 114 Frolich to Guggenheimer, 12 July 1914, NGug, 74/X. 115 Guggenheimer to Frolich, 13 July 1914, NGug, 74/X. 116 Berliner Tageblatt 856 (16 July 1914), NGug, 74/X.

11 Direct action

In spite of numerous efforts, the legislative approach to the engineers' career crisis was producing no visible results. This lack of progress was one of two reasons that the Btib became increasingly interested in exploring the possibilities of direct action. The other was its exceptionally rapid growth. From a mere 1,600 members at the end of 1904, the engineering union had grown to about 11,000 by the end of 1907, and to some 24,000 on the eve of World War I. 1 This was a mean annual increase of over 37 percent for the ten-year period. The most remarkable growth — averaging 65 percent annually — occurred between 1904 and 1909. Thereafter the rate of increase slowed to an average of 10 percent each year. Despite the slowdown during the second half, this was still the most rapid growth of any of the salaried-employee organizations during the prewar period, a development striking enough to be singled out for attention by Emil Lederer in his 1911 study of the salaried employees.2 Lederer attributed the Btib's growth to its "modernity," by which he meant its social progressiveness and its trade-union principle. This was undoubtedly true, but the rapid membership growth in turn encouraged the Btib's leaders to start thinking about translating their tough words into deeds. 1.

THE AFFAIR OF THE BAVARIAN METAL INDUSTRIALISTS

Early in 1908 the Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung first raised the possibility of a strike or a work slowdown. Trying to do no more than influence legislation, Karl Sohlich wrote, was not enough. "As an organization based on the union principle it is our duty also to use the means of direct 1 Emil Lederer, Die Privatangestellten in der modernen Wirtschaftsentwicklung (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912), 148; DIBZ (1912):77; DIBZ (19B):65; DIBZ (1914): 155. 2 Emil Lederer, Die Privatangestellten, 148.

288

Direct action

289 3

action, whenever and wherever it is possible." Words like these, backed by membership dues significantly higher than those of other salariedemployee organizations and designed to build a strike fund, inevitably frightened the employers. The Btib's constant reminders of the conflict of interest between employers and salaried employees about disposition of profits, its talk of a guaranteed minimum wage, of the constitutional factory, and of a prohibition of unilateral layoffs, and its various forays into legislative politics did not help put the employers' concerns to rest. Already in 1906, when the Bassermann-Potthoff proposals first went to the Reichstag, the machinery industrialists had singled out the Btib as the most dangerous of the salaried-employee organizations and discussed the possibility of countermeasures, such as creating blacklists of engineers who were members. In the VDMA's executive meeting of March 1907, Guggenheimer had spoken of the political, Social Democratic nature of the Btib's agitation, and Borsig's Max Krause had mentioned how the engineering union was busy "creating dissatisfaction and distrust of the employers" among the younger members of the VDI's Berlin chapter. Once the Btib had at its "disposal a large number of discontented, agitated young fellows," he feared, it would "proceed from there." 4 The tensions that had been building beneath the surface broke into the open in June of 1908, when a secret directive of the Association of Bavarian Metal Industrialists (Verband Bayerischer Metalindustrieller, VBM) to its member firms was leaked to the press. On 7 June the Frankfurter Zeitung carried a story and published the text of secret instructions for dismissing Btib members from their jobs. Though the directive mentioned other employee organizations such as the DTV, the DHV, and the Leipzig Association of German Sales Clerks as well, its basic goal was to crush the engineering union. 5 The attack, whose revelation caused a storm of protest and controversy all over Germany, was almost singlehandedly the work of Emil Guggenheimer. 6 Increasingly impatient with what he considered the dangerous complacency on the part of most other industrialists, Guggenheimer in February of 1908 had contacted Anton Rieppel, his Nuremberg-based superior, about the need to take action against unionized employees, "if 3 Karl Sohlich, "Zum Jahreswechsel," DIBZ (1908): 1. 4 VDMA ZM 7 (April 19O7):57-63. 5 The targeted organizations: Btib, DHV, Association of Sales Clerks of 1858, Leipzig Association of German Salesmen, and the Berlin-based Society of German Merchants. The DTV was mentioned in an accompanying statement. 6 Guggenheimer also served as proxy for Heinrich von Buz (1833—1918), the authoritarian and semiretired chief of the MAN's Augsburg works. Buz was Guggenheimer's mentor and protector in the latter's differences with Anton Rieppel, chief executive at the Nuremberg works.

290

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

not the strikes from the work shops are to be transplanted to our offices."7 Rieppel, one of the MAN's two chief executives (the other was Heinrich Buz in Augsburg), had urged caution, advising Guggenheimer not to undertake anything without his knowledge. But a few weeks later, engineer Gollwitzer of the Augsburg plant was given an ultimatum to quit the Btib or be fired by July, when his contract came up for renewal. At a directors' meeting on 8 April in Augsburg, apparently without Rieppel being present, the issue of taking steps against the engineering union had surfaced again. The Btib's "tone. . . was becoming ever more hostile toward the employers and [was] conducted in language indistinguishable from the malicious agitation of Social Democratic organizations." To deal with the situation it was decided that the MAN would urge the VBM and the United Association of German Metal Industrialists (Gesamtverband Deutscher Metalindustrieller, GDM) to take action "aimed to the greatest possible extent at not employing organized salaried employees." 8 The VBM's directorate discussed the MAN request at its Nuremberg meeting of 21 May. Rieppel, the association's first chairman, was ill and did not attend. In his absence, Guggenheimer explained how dangerous the Btib, especially, had become in the past few years, quoting selected passages from the DIBZ to prove his point. He urged the meeting to take action immediately: to start "weeding out" employees who were Btib members and to pressure those who belonged to the other organizations he had identified as potentially dangerous into resigning. In the subsequent discussion, a number of objections and fears about such "radical . . . proposals" surfaced. Would not the firings violate the right to organize (Koalitionsfreiheit)? Would one "be forced to dismiss a useful employee because he belonged to the Bund?" Guggenheimer managed to overcome all such hesitations and doubts. He contended that the directive would not be an order to dismiss, but would merely inform the member firms, which would then draw the correct conclusions. If action was taken "today," said Guggenheimer, "one might still keep the Bund under control, later no more." 9 The meeting unanimously voted to issue the directive, which was, however, not mailed to the VBM's members until 3 June. 10 While these initiatives were being pursued, other developments unfolded at the MAN's Augsburg plant. On 16 or 17 May, engineer Gollwitzer, having refused to resign from the Btib, was fired per 1 July, even 7 Guggenheimer to Rieppel, 18 February 1908, NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande). 8 Memorandum, 22 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908/11, 162/1. 9 VBM Spezialprotokoll of Vorstandssitzung, 21 May 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 162/1. 10 See note 8.

Direct action

291

though he had been working for the company "to the complete satisfaction" of his supervisor for six years. Some twenty other engineers who belonged to the Btib (out of a total of 130 engineers at the MAN's Augsburg facility) were threatened with dismissal unless they quit the Btib. The next day, after Gollwitzer resigned his membership and his dismissal was canceled, the Btib's local leader, Diplom-Ingenieur Scheib, went to discuss the matter with management. Scheib denied that either he or the other engineers supported the kind of radicalism the union was being accused of, and he arranged for a meeting between the company's directors and a top official from the union's Berlin headquarters to elucidate the Btib's real standpoint. Having received promises of financial support from the Btib's Berlin office on the one hand, but on the other hand having disavowed some of the most pointed formulations of its demands, Scheib and his twenty colleagues refused to resign from the engineering union. The company, which probably had expected resignations from the Btib without losing a whole group of experienced engineers, for its part suspended the dismissals until the negotiations with the Btib's leadership had "corrected] erroneous views of the Bund." It even allowed engineer Gollwitzer, perhaps in an effort to sow discord, to rejoin the union. 11 This was on 19 May, two days before Guggenheimer pushed through the decision to start "weeding out" all Btib members in the VBM meeting. Six days after that event, on 27 May, the encounter between representatives of the Btib and the MAN took place in Augsburg. According to the engineering union, it was the first formal negotiation between a large industrial firm and a union of salaried employees. Representing the Btib were MAN engineers Gollwitzer and Scheib and the union's business manager from Berlin, engineer Hermann Liidemann, the future Prussian finance minister (1920—1) and SPD politician. In 1908, Liidemann was still a left-wing Democrat. 12 On the other side was the MAN's entire Augsburg directorate, including Heinrich von Buz and Guggenheimer. It is unclear what exactly transpired, though at one point, when Liidemann 11 Retrospective memorandum, 22 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908/11, 162/1. 12 After attending the proprietary engineering school Zwickau and the technische Hochschule in Berlin, Liidemann worked as a mechanical engineer from 1899 to 1905. One of the founders of the Btib, he initially served as business manager and on its executive committee. He remained with the Btib until forced out in 1913. An unsuccessful Reichstag candidate for the Demokratische Vereinigung in 1912, Liidemann was the Btib's dominant figure, extremely capable and aggressive, and many deeply regretted his departure. From 1915 to 1918 he worked for the Zentraleinkaufsgesellschaft, and from March 1919 until March 1920 he was Referent in the Reich Labor Ministry. From March 1920 to April 1921 he was Prussian Finance Minister. Liidemann was a Social Democratic member of the Prussian Landtag from 1919 to 1928, when he became governor of Lower Silesia. In 1948—9 he was prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein. Reichshandbuch der deutschen Geselhchaft (Berlin: Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag AG, 1930), 116; Schriften des Btib 31 (1913):34; 35 (1914); DIBZ (19H):4l8.

292

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

mentioned Catholic and liberal trade unions to counter accusations that the Btib's union principle made it Social Democratic, Buz apparently remarked that he did "not care what sorts of unions there are, whether Christian or Hirsch-Duncker. The way we see it, all unions are Social Democratic!" According to Liidemann's account, the Btib would study and respond to management's complaints, while the company agreed in the meantime not to punish any employees who belonged to the engineering union. 13 In Guggenheimer's version of the meeting, Liidemann disavowed certain of the union's outdated writings and promised it would correct others; the company demanded printed retractions and could not guarantee delaying action against union members until such time as the Btib might change its orientation. 14 Whatever the facts of the meeting, one thing is clear: Some six days after Guggenheimer had pressured the VBM into voting for an all-out attack on the Btib, the MAN's management was still maintaining a facade of compromise and negotiation with the engineering union. Even if the Augsburg managers ever really contemplated giving the Btib an opportunity to modify its position, the time it allowed was far too short. The meeting with the union took place on 27 May, and the VBM's secret directive was mailed six days later, on 3 June. Liidemann's subsequent characterization of the meeting as a "charade" from start to finish appears not unjustified.15 The publication of the VBM's secret directive in the Frankfurter Zeitung of 7 June not only revealed the industrialists' duplicity but also outraged the public all over Germany. With the exception of a few conservative papers, virtually the entire German press condemned the VBM's unprovoked attack. l6 A wide variety of opinion came to the defense of the Btib and the other employee organizations, which were suddenly thrust into the limelight as the "pioneers of German social reform." 17 What inflamed these passions and caused such widespread condemnation was the employers' assault on bourgeois, nonproletarian, and professional elements - in short, on "good Germans." "One cannot speak here of a struggle about socialism," the Plutus wrote. "To a considerable degree, the Btib's ranks are made up of people who as Young Liberals still support the National Liberal Party." The employers' attack was therefore a declaration of war "against salaried-employee organizations as such," which was what gave the "Nuremberg war trumpets" their "extraordinary significance." 13 14 15 16

Liidemann, "Die Geschichte eines Kampfes," DIBZ (1908):249-53. See note 11. Liidemann, "Die Geschichte eines Kampfes," 249-53. "Pressstimmen zum Vorgehen der bayerischen Metallindustriellen," DIBZ (1908): 198-200, 211— 17; Karl Sohlich, "Unser Bild im Zerrspiegel der Unternehmerpresse," DIBZ 1908:230-1. 17 "Pressstimmen," 212.

Direct action

293

The Soziale Praxis spoke of the "caesarist madness" (Cdsarenwahnsin) of the Bavarian metal industrialists, and the Berliner Borsen Courier hoped that few would follow the example set by the VBM directorate's "unbelievable lack of justice and social consciousness." 18 Writing for the weekly Das Blaubuch, Rudolf Breitscheid compared the Bavarian "agitators" to the bygone days of Saar King Stumm. It was the "duty" of the "citizenry" (Burgertum) to help counter this "act of violence, for which not even the threadbare pretext can be mobilized that it opposes Social Democratic subversiveness."19 The Frankfurter Zeitung prophesied the dismal failure of the initiative, because the salaried-employee organizations would only get stronger as more pressure was put on them. The VBM still had not realized that the "times of patriarchalism are over"; its action was like a "fairy tale from ancient times." To the Nationalliberale Korrespondenz the affair demonstrated that the "right to organize" (the Koalitionsrecht, defined in paragraphs 152 and 153 of the Industrial Code) still was not secure in Germany. Moreover, the Korrespondenz continued, actions such as those of the Bavarian industrialists were ill-considered from a political point of view. They would merely cause the salaried employees, who constituted a numerically "relatively significant force," to express their protest by voting for the Social Democrats. 20 As subsequent developments have shown, the newspaper was mostly wrong in its predictions regarding those for whom the disaffected salaried employees would vote. It is true that a revisionist SPD had some appeal to non-working-class voters as a protest party, the most relevant illustration in this context being the political career of the Btib's Hermann Liidemann. Having started out in left-liberal politics, Liidemann joined the SPD sometime after his resignation from the union's leadership in 1913. 21 But until its revival after 1945, the SPD's potential growth in this direction was strictly limited — by its unvanquished dogmatism, by its Marxist ideology, and by its overwhelmingly proletarian social identity. 22 Even so, the Nationalliberale Korrespondenz author was all too correct in recognizing the likelihood that sooner or later the actions of the industrialists would cause the salaried strata to cast their votes for a political protest party - though one that was then unborn. 23 18 "Pressstimmen," 198-200. Cdsarenwahnsinn was almost certainly a reference to Ludwig Quidde's Caligula: Eine Studie von Cdsarenwahnsinn (1894), a parody of William II (courtesy of James Albisetti). 19 "Pressstimmen," 213. 20 "Pressstimmen," 198-200. 21 See note 12. 22 W. L. Guttsman, The German Social Democratic Party, 1875-1933: From Ghetto to Government (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 100-12. 23 Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel

294

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

The uproar over the VBM affair was not limited to editorial comments in the newspapers. The Btib staged a number of protest rallies, and the other salaried-employee organizations also expressed their indignation. Some, such as the DTV and the DWV, as well as the smaller, left-oriented associations of commercial employees, made ringing declarations of solidarity with the engineering union. The large organizations of commercial employees were more cautious. Though it was on the VBM's blacklist, the DHV in public treated the matter as a minor nuisance. Privately, it sent a note reminding the VBM of the DHV's nationalistic standpoint, of its respect for management's authority, of its contributions to economic growth, and of the directive's "degradation of the employees' professional dignity," which it "decidedly rejected." The DHV's note concluded with the observation that the "majority of German employers" were unlikely to "approve of your standpoint. " 24 The business manager of the Association of Salesmen of 1858, Dr. Tissen, was ambivalent, acknowledging that the VBM's policy was inexcusable, but blaming the Btib's exaggerated adversarialism and radicalism for provoking the employers. By disturbing otherwise good relations with the employers, wrote Tissen, the Btib had done the salaried employees more harm than good. 25 Behind the scenes, fence-sitting was also the policy of the DTV. In a meeting with Anton Rieppel in September, its chairman, engineer Julius Kracker, emphasized the DTV's moderation and differences with the Btib. He valued good relations with the employers, but the Augsburg attack on the right to organize made his position impossible. If the employers wanted to go after the Btib, they should do it in a way that would not simultaneously radicalize the DTV's membership. Kracker reminded Rieppel of the engineers' dismal pay situation, illustrating his point with a reference to the naval shipyards at Wilhelmshaven, where school-trained engineers were "in the same salary bracket as lamp shiners and street sweepers." Rieppel conceded nothing, putting all the blame for the engineers' condition on oversupply and on their desire for office jobs. He was not responsible for what had happened in Augsburg. The meeting got nowhere, as Kracker kept bringing up issues such as the industrialists'

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Stanley Suvall, Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Jiirgen Kocka, White Collar Workers in America 1890-1940:

A Social-Political History in International Perspective (Beverly Hills:

Sage Publications, 1980); Geoff Eley, "What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist State?" Politics and Society 12, l(1983):53-82. 24 DHV to VBM, 15 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908-11, 162/1. 25 DIBZ (1908):200-2, 209-11, 222-3; also see "Die Antworten der Verbande an den V.B.M.," D1BZ(19O8):288.

Direct action

295

stand on employee inventions, the competition clause, and a minimum wage, whereas Rieppel, for his part, became increasingly reticent. 26 The VBM directive triggered still other negative reactions. Political parties ranging from the National Liberals to the SPD, as well as a variety of other groups, condemned its secret policy. The most noteworthy were statements from National Liberal politicians Gustav Stresemann in Dresden and Professor Paul Moldenhauer in Cologne, and the Bund der Industriellen regretted the initiative as "tactically and substantively wrong." 27 The Center Party and the National Liberal Party geared up for Reichstag interpellations on the matter in the fall.28 The sharpest criticism occurred in the Bavarian Landtag. In the session of 22 June 1908, the Social Democrat Siissheim demanded to know "what the state government [proposed] to do to secure the right to organize of the salaried technicians and administrative employees employed by the firms of the VBM." Siissheim attacked not only the MAN but also the entire elite of Bavarian industry for their "brutal method of fighting." He demanded that companies involved in the affair be excluded from bidding on future government contracts. Liberal and Center politicians joined Siissheim's attack, calling for changes in the law to ensure better protection for the right to organize and sprinkling their comments with personal, barely veiled antiSemitic remarks about Guggenheimer. Bavarian Prime Minister Podewils had the unpleasant task of countering the accusations and calming the deputies' anger. Having privately chastised Guggenheimer and Rieppel, Podewils pointed out to the chamber that from the "socio-political point of view" he, too, wished to "express his regrets over the secret directive." 29 But there was little the government could do. Although paragraph 152 of the Industrial Code granted the freedom to organize, paragraph 153 restricted it by penalizing forcible efforts to make someone join or stay in an organization. But paragraph 153 did not prohibit activities designed to discourage one from joining or remaining in an organization. That was what the industrialists had done, and, strictly speaking, they had not violated the law. Even so, Podewils was confident that the uproar had caused the industrialists to 26 Minutes of meeting, 1 September 1908, in Nuremberg, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908-11, 162/1. 27 DIBZ(1908):221-7, 234-5. 28 Correspondence among Stresemann, Buz, Guggenheimer, and Rieppel, of 5, 7, 10, 21, 25 November 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11; NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande). 29 Podewils to Rieppel, 19 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 162/1; Guggenheimer travel note, 20 June 1908, NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande); "Die Koalitionsfreiheit der Angestellten im bayerischen Landtage," DIBZ (1908):219.

296

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

recognize their mistake and that the whole affair would be resolved in a "satisfactory manner." 30 The matter was indeed resolved, though it depended on one's point of view whether or not the solution could be called satisfactory. For the VBM and the MAN, the uproar caused by the revelations was a major setback: A hard line against employee unions had become politically impossible. Initial embarrassment had turned into complete disarray when, several days after the initial story in the Frankfurter Zeitung, additional newspaper reports mentioned that Rieppel, the VBM's chairman, had openly disavowed the secret directive. Suspicions immediately focused on Rieppel as the likely source of the press leak. In a secret meeting, Rieppel denied the accusations, though he admitted that the published accounts of his position were true. When the matter had come to light, he had openly vented his disagreement and said he did not care whether or not the press was informed of it. He still regretted having dropped his initial plan to "publish his different opinion [which] he owed . . . to the circles who knew his real view and socio-political stand." 31 Guggenheimer was beside himself with anger. Not only was the "cause itself. . . now undoubtedly lost," but also the VBM had utterly discredited itself. When Rieppel and others suggested a public retraction of the secret directive, Guggenheimer refused - on behalf of himself as well as Heinrich Buz. Instead, he proposed a temporary suspension of the VBM's earlier decision; the industrialists would say that new information had come to their attention and that they wanted to give the employee organizations a chance to correct erroneous views about them. The meeting accepted this recommendation as the best way to save face. Without retracting anything, the Guggenheimer resolution still signaled a truce. 32 The industrialists' partial retreat did not put the matter to rest. After the VBM's new statement appeared, the Btib's Liidemann requested another interview with MAN officials. Meeting with Guggenheimer in late June, he demanded to know if the VBM would recognize the salaried employees' right to organize, and what would happen to the MAN's unionized engineers. Having received noncommittal answers, Liidemann on his return to Berlin sought to keep the affair alive by a steady flow of articles in the DIBZ. That his efforts succeeded was due in large part to the clumsy maneuverings of the MAN's Augsburg managers. In early 30 "Die Koalitionsfreiheit der Angestellten im bayerischen Landtage," 217-21. 31 A member of the VDI's executive committee in 1897 and 1898, Rieppel was chairman in 191517. Acknowledging that the "Btib pursues tendencies that absolutely have to be fought," he was more sympathetic to the plight of the engineers than Guggenheimer or Buz; Guggenheimer travel note, 19 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 162/1. 32 Guggenheimer travel note, 19 June 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 162/1.

Direct action

297

July they offered to reimburse, with a maximum of M. 500, any salaried employee who resigned from his organization, allegedly to compensate him for forfeited contributions. Once again, numerous newspapers carried the story, widely seen as a renewed attempt to subvert the right to organize - this time through bribery. 33 Despite all the negative publicity, the MAN's Augsburg division continued its efforts to break the engineering union. Threatening to withhold pay raises, in August the management pressured employees who belonged to the DTV into signing a statement that they would not join the Btib. Reports of this episode once again reached the papers in Augsburg and Munich, where the city council had recently voted to sign contracts only with companies that did not restrict their salaried employees' right to organize. It appears that the danger of losing an important order for Munich's public gas works then caused the MAN to demand from its employees a public denial of the earlier events. When the Btib's DiplomIngenieur Scheib revealed all this in an article for the Augsburger Abendzeitung, he and another member of the engineering union were fired the next day. Locked out of the plant, the mild-mannered Scheib, who had been with the company for eight years and had occupied a position of considerable responsibility, was further humiliated when he was subsequently informed through an unsigned note from the company to come by to pick up his final paycheck.34 What finally defeated the Augsburg managers was a combination of economic and political pressures. A number of municipalities moved to exclude the MAN from the lucrative market for public works projects. 33 The actions of the VBM and the MAN also threatened to become the subject of Reichstag interpellations by the Center Party. When Stresemann requested background information to define the National Liberal Party's position, the isolated Augsburg industrialists caved in. Guggenheimer 33 "Urn schnoden Judaslohn," DIBZ (1908):229; Sohlich, "Selbstdemaskierung," DBIZ (1908):253-5; "Stimmen der Presse iiber die Bestechungsgelder der Maschinenfabrik Augsburg," DIBZ (1908): 255; also see newspaper clippings, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Koalitionsfreiheit der Angestellten, 162/1; NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande). 34 "Die Koalitionsfreiheit wird doch beschrankt!" DIBZ (19O8):332-4; VBM executive meeting, 27 November 1909, NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande); Scheib subsequently won the suit he filed against the MAN for this insulting treatment. The court's reasoning centered on the deliberate humiliation of a "man with the cultivation and position of the plaintiff," who would have been watched over by a company guard if he had actually gone to the plant in person; "Die Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Niirnberg vor Gericht," DIBZ (1910):68. 35 Wilhelm Walz, MAN sales manager for Baden, Alsace, and the Palatinate, to senior engineer Schlesinger, 11 November 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11; plant Gustavsburg to plant Nuremberg, 24 December 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908—13, 162/11; correspondence among Buz, Rieppel, and Brautigam, chairman of the Nuremberg city council, 1 and 11 October 1909, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908-11, 162/1.

298

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

was told to inform Stresemann that the VBM's May directive would be withdrawn. To leave no doubt about this, and to head off a further deterioration of the situation, the metal industrialists voted on 27 November to publicly revoke their directive of 21 May. Recent analyses, the decision explained, showed that the three large organizations of commercial employees were not hostile to the employers; the Btib, in contrast, was riddled with Social Democrats and did pose a real menace. If nonetheless the engineering union was now also exempted from the May directive, it was because the employers had "in many instances been misunderstood by the public." 36 2.

THE DISMISSALS AT GRIESCHES ERBEN

The VBM's parting shot at the engineering union could not hide the Btib's victory in this first round. The union had "passed the acid test," wrote Karl Sohlich in the DIBZ's New Year's message for 1909. Unlike most other salaried-employee organizations that merely flirted with the trade-union idea, the Btib had not succumbed to the pressures to become more conciliatory, nor had it lost members. On the contrary, its firmness and all the publicity resulted in the signing up of some 2,200 additional members during 1908, an increase of almost 21 percent since the end of 1907. There are indications that the influx was partly a result of defections from the DTV, with which the Btib held unsuccessful merger talks in December of 1908. Despite their failure, these discussions gave a clear sign of the Btib's growing stature, whereas the DTV faced the choice of emulating the engineering union or declining. 37 Even so, the outcome of the events in Bavaria was by no means an unqualified success for the Btib. The press reaction was one indication of the limited nature of its gains. Disturbed by the idea of conflict between salaried employees and the employers, the editorial writers of most bourgeois papers were relieved that the affair was over. They slipped back into the comforting myth of preordained harmony between the two groups a belief that reflected their keen sense of the precariousness of the existing political constellation as much as it was ideological canon. The Brunswick Landeszeitung, for example, greeted the engineering industrialists' pullback "with great joy," because their actions had threatened to "open up a gap between industry and its salaried employees." In light of the "hostile 36 Correspondence among Stresemann, Guggenheimer, Buz, and Rieppel, 5, 7, 10, 21, 25 November 1908, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11; NGug, 52/Kaufm. u. techn. Angestellte (Koalitionsrecht, Verbande). 37 DIBZ (1909): 1, 58, 9 7 - 8 ; DTV, Der Deutsche Techniker-Verband und der Bund der technischindustriellen Beatnten (Berlin: 1908); Btib, Am Scheidewege: Kritische Betrachtung der organisatorischen Bestrebungen der technischen Privatangestellten, Bericht iiber die Einigungsverhandlungen zwischen dem Btib und dem D.T.-V. (Schriften des Btib, vol. 12) (Berlin: Verlag von Karl Sohlich, 1908).

Direct action

299

worlds" inhabited by the entrepreneurs and the blue-collar workers, "industry's unity with its commercial and technical co-workers must be unconditionally maintained." Likewise, the Kblnische Zeitung was pleased that the industrialists had come to their senses and avoided a rift with the salaried employees.38 Such comments illustrate the pressures on both sides to conform to preconceived notions of bourgeois propriety and to obey the political dictates of harmony. Unfortunately, this burden always weighed more heavily on the salaried employees than on the industrialists, who escaped from it when they could. The editorial remarks therefore were not just criticisms of industry, but also signaled the lack of sympathy that a nonproletarian but militant organization such as the Btib was likely to encounter if it overplayed its hand. Besides the engineering union's leadership, only a handful of progressive papers recognized that the language with which the VBM revoked its secret directive was designed to create precisely this impression and that it was a de facto continuation of hostilities. 39 Singling out the Btib, while giving the other organizations their stamp of approval, was evidence of the employers' new policy, described by Karl Sohlich, among others, as an effort "to divide and conquer" the salaried-employee movement. This concentration of fire on the Btib also meant that the engineering union, far from being able to relax, would have to brace itself for new battles. 40 Battle came soon enough. On 9 December 1908, the mining firm Georg von Griesches Erben in Schoppinitz, Upper Silesia, fired pit foreman Appelt, a Btib member who had dared to criticize expansion of the mining school in Tarnowitz. The engineering union's local unsuccessfully tried to discuss the matter with management. The union then wrote the city council of Breslau, again without receiving an answer. Finally, in midJanuary, the Btib local organized a protest meeting in Konigshiitte and passed a resolution that its approximately seventeen members, all employees of Griesches Erben, signed. The next day, the company's general director, Bergrat Uthemann, called in one of the culprits, whom he confronted with the choice between his union and his job. When the man chose the latter, he was assigned to inform the other union members of their alternative: either Griesches Erben or the Btib. The local's remaining members responded with a declaration that they were willing, as always, to devote their "entire energy to the well-being and success of the firm," but they "refused to surrender [their] individual liberties." Thereupon they were summoned to appear before Uthemann. What took place next was nonetheless astonishing for being stereo38 "Zeitungsstimmen," DIBZ (1909): 10-13. 39 Ibid. 40 Karl Sohlich, "Im neuen Jahr," DIBZ (1909): 1-3, "Zeitungsstimmen" and "Zur Steuer der Wahrheit," DIBZ (1909): 10-14; Ludemann, "Unsere Bewegung," DIBZ (1909):97-8.

300

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

typical. Uthemann began by saying that he well knew that before him stood the core of his best and most competent employees. Pit foreman Appelt had been fired not because he belonged to the Btib but because he had criticized Uthemann's project for enlargement of the school. Because the union had attacked the company without reason, there now was "war between the Bund and Griesches Erben." The director then confronted each man in turn about his choice, beginning with the most senior employee. Insisting on his right to organize and on his individual liberties, the engineer in question, who had been with the company eight years, received the following lecture from Uthemann: Who cares! The right to organize and individual liberties are [empty] phrases! What does the Bund give you? The Bunds capital is at most 1 percent of the capital of Griesches Erben. What is more important to you, the interests of the firm that employs you or the interests of the Bund that fights the company? Again the engineer insisted that he would not be deprived of his individual liberties, leading Uthemann to exclaim, "Who cares about liberties! The union or the company!" When he again refused to be intimidated, the engineer was fired on the spot, being told to leave the firm's property at once. So it went, down the line, with the enraged director at one point shouting, "Get out, get out! You are fired!"41 The events in Schoppinitz and the comments of Bergrat Uthemann, appearing verbatim in the DIBZ's edition of 12 February 1909, triggered a number of protests, though nothing like the wholesale condemnation of the earlier VBM directive. A protest meeting the Btib organized in Berlin was attended by some 1,000 to 1,500 participants. The rally heard speeches by Hermann Liidemann, Friedrich Naumann, and Rudolf Breitscheid and supporting remarks from other politicians of the Center, the Progressives, and the SPD. In early February, two additional demonstrations took place in Konighiitte and Breslau, attended by 700 and 800 salaried employees, respectively. Btib officials, politicians, and Reichstag deputies from the parties later known as the Weimar Coalition again gave defiant speeches. On 8 February, the matter came up in the Reichstag. Friedrich Naumann sharply criticized loopholes in the law that guaranteed the right to organize, quoting as evidence the remarks by Director Uthemann cited earlier. He then proceeded to castigate the mining executives for having developed uncontrolled, "territorial jurisdictions with the medieval customs of private punishments, about which the state knows nothing." The "new industrial aristocracy," according to Naumann, had the deliberate aim "to create a new type of bondage, a new type of 41 "Die Massregelungen auf den Giesche-Gruben," DIBZ (1909):65-7.

Direct action

301

hereditary serfdom." It treated humans "just like matter, . . . like a piece of coal: sorted, warehoused, subsequently given a price tag." 42 In an earlier article for the weekly Die Hilfe, entitled "Human Rights," Naumann had examined in some detail the meaning of Director Uthemann's remarks, that the right to organize and individual liberties were nothing but empty phrases. What the comments of this "nice superman" illustrated, according to Naumann, was the typical attitude of "many other gentlemen in large-scale industry," namely, that freedom and the right to organize existed only for them, not for salaried employees and workers. Human rights, argued Naumann, were not natural rights with which the individual was born - such rights did not exist - but the product of emancipatory struggles. In Germany as a whole, they had not yet reached the level attained in Britain, but especially "in Upper Silesia, there where Russia and Galicia begin, human rights are only now beginning to develop" and were indeed as yet no more than phrases. To make them real would take hard struggles — struggles that might at least have a chance of succeeding now that it was "the turn of the engineers {Teehniker]" to make the acquaintance of the employers' practices. Because engineers came from bourgeois families, their degradation would have a much larger impact on the higher classes than would dismissal of a bluecollar worker. Thus, the struggle for individual liberty would gain new brothers in arms, Naumann concluded optimistically. 43 None of this stopped the Silesian coal magnates. In early February, General Director Egard Hilger of the Vereinigte Konigs-und Laurahiitte, another large Silesian mining concern, fired engineer Karo, the Btib's regional coordinator. At about the same time, Uthemann pressured the AEG into withdrawing from Griesches Erben one of its purchasing engineers because the man belonged to the engineering union. 44 In the Reichstag, Count von Carmer-Osten, a Conservative deputy and part owner of Griesches Erben, responded to Naumann's accusations, disputing his facts and contending that the fired engineers had been "inferior people." Nobody else came to the engineering union's defense, and sometime in March about half of the technicians and engineers fired in January — their skills geared to the particular conditions of Silesian mining — quietly resigned from the Btib. Seeing that they had "repented," Director Uthemann pardoned the men in question and rehired them, with the understanding that they would be dismissed immediately if they rejoined the union. 45 42 43 44 45

DIBZ(1909):71-2, 90-7. Friedrich Naumann, "Menschenrechte," reprinted in DIBZ (1909):68-9. Max Granzin, "Der Herr auf Zalenze," DIBZ (1909):89-90. Max Granzin, "Griesches Erben," DIBZ (1909): 115-16.

302

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power 3. THE BERLIN STRIKE

Though it had lost the second round, the Btib was not discouraged. Its membership kept growing, its tone became more defiant, and it fought fierce propaganda battles on all fronts - with the DTV, with the DHV and other commercial-employee organizations, with the newly founded VDDI, and naturally with the industrial employers — all the while proclaiming its formula of political neutrality paired with socioeconomic engagement. The culmination of all this activity came in the summer of 1911, when the engineering union decided to take on a group of small engineering firms on its home turf in Berlin. Through mass resignations, it would force the Association of Berlin Iron-Construction Firms (Verband Berliner Eisenbau-Anstalten) to accept a collective agreement on minimum salaries, overtime, and other employment conditions. The employer association in question consisted of a collection of small and medium-sized structural engineering firms that did the bulk of design and supervisory work, as well as assembly, for the countless steel constructions that went into the explosive growth of Berlin: work on bridges, public transportation facilities, warehouses, factories, railway stations, gas works, electrical installations, and so forth. Together, the approximately twenty firms employed some 345 salaried technicians and engineers, of whom the Btib had organized about three-quarters. Their functions ranged from supervisory manager to designer to draftsman. An overwhelming majority of 80 percent were structural designers who also did routine drafting. Almost 67 percent were under thirty years of age, 35 percent (or 99 individuals) being between twenty-six and twenty-nine. Only 3 percent were over forty. Nineteen percent had been educated at a technische Hochschule, 64 percent were graduates of nonacademic engineering schools such as the HMBSs, and almost 18 percent were self-taught.46 The group's youthfulness was largely a function of the mental and physical hardships as well as the exploitative nature of the work, in which one normally did not last for a lifetime career; the already low salaries started declining from age thirty-five on. Owing to the sharp fluctuations and the competitiveness of the construction industry, the firms' employers preferred to operate with relatively small office staffs, which they then pushed to their limits at busy times. The result was frequent periods of intense labor, long overtime and night work, to finish a project on time and avoid the penalties for late delivery. Because they were salaried employees, considered "managerial" when it suited the employers, the engineers and technicians usually did not receive compensation for overtime, at any rate not for the first 50 hours exceeding the usual 200-hour month 46 "Gehaltsstatistik der Berliner Eisenkonstrukteure," DIBZ (1911):21—3, 33-6.

Direct action

303

(i.e., an average work week of six 8-hour days, but because Saturday hours often were shorter, an 8.5-hour day was common). A substantial proportion of the men in these jobs seem to have been young engineers from the provinces, who may have considered the employment a kind of internship. They were worked very intensively for a number of years while gathering experience, after which they quit to find less hectic or betterpaying positions elsewhere - not necessarily an easy proposition in the buyer's market for engineers. 47 The group's salary conditions did not make up for the long hours and the pressures of the work. The average monthly pay was M. 196, admittedly above the Btib's guideline for a minimum salary of M. 150 per month (M. 165 in Berlin). It was also a little higher than the M. 186 average pay of mechanical and electrical engineers in Berlin. 48 Even so, it was not very good. M. 196 was below the national average for all salaried employees (M. 203 per month in 1907), which, considering the high cost of a specialized technical education that lasted anywhere from three to five years and that most other office workers lacked, was discouraging. The highest-paid group included in a 1907 census study of "less well-off families" (incomes to about M. 3,000) were teachers, who earned an average of M. 275 in 1907. 49 In 1906, when only 4.5 percent of Prussian incomes were above M. 250 per month, 70 percent of Berlin physicians earned more than this figure, over half of them (53 percent) taking in more than M. 417, and still this profession found it necessary to go on strike against the SPD-controlled health insurance funds to raise its income. 50 The starting salary for academically trained civil servants in Prussia in 1910 was M. 350 plus M. 60 housing subsidy, and full professors at the technische Hochschule in Berlin earned over M. 540 per month. 51 In contrast, a quarter of the structural designers were below the minimum wage guideline of M. 150, and the top categories above M. 250 per month were underrepresented when compared with the corresponding group of mechanical and electrical engineers (13 percent vs. 18 percent). As a group they were just barely above the income level for skilled blue-collar workers such as furniture makers, mechanics, tailors, and foremen, the latter on average earning slightly more than M. 180. 52 47 "Gehaltsstatistik," DIBZ (1911):21-3, 33-6, 233-4. 48 Monthly salary differentials for the structural designers: academically trained, M. 225; nonacademic, M. 200; self-taught, M. 150; "Gehaltsstatistik," DIBZ (19H):21-3, 33-6. 49 G. Hohorst, J. Kocka, and G. A. Ritter, Sozialgeschkhtliches Arbeitsbuch: Materialien zur Statistik des Kaiserreiches 1870-1914 (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1975), 112. 50 Claudia Huerkamp, Der Aufstieg der Aerzte im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 214; also see DIBZ (1913):154. 51 Hohorst, Kocka, and Ritter, Arbeitsbuch, 110; VDDIZ (19l4):13352 DIBZ (1909): 375. See additional comparative income data in Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), 42.

304

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

As far as the Btib was concerned, these statistics needed "no further comment." It then made the following observations: Too low to permit unmarried engineers to accumulate any savings, the salaries were "totally inadequate for fathers of families." The only choice for the married engineer with children was to "adopt the life-style of the skilled blue-collar workers with regard to housing, clothes, food and education for the children" or to ruin his health by taking a second job at night in order "with great difficulty to keep [his] middle-class household intact." Especially the salary decline after age thirty-five, "in the prime of a man's life," was "clear evidence of the fact that our employment conditions are untenable." 33 From the Btib's perspective, conditions seemed propitious for forcing an improvement in salaries, a reduction of overtime, and the implementation of several other demands. The vast majority of the engineers and technicians in question belonged to the union, whereas the opposition was divided into a large number of relatively small firms. The Btib also enjoyed considerable support in Berlin, where it counted over a quarter of its total membership, and where the political climate favored it. Unlike a remote conflict with Silesian coal barons or a fight with giant enterprises like Borsig, Siemens, or the AEG, here was a situation in which it had the potential of winning. In early March 1911, the firm of Steffens and Nolle, the largest of the structural engineering companies, became interested in standardizing the employment conditions of its technical employees. The Btib submitted a list of demands it wanted incorporated into a standard employment contract. Besides the minimum wage, the union sought an eight-hour day, with a maximum of six hours on Saturdays. Overtime was to be reduced to a minimum and should be paid from the first hour, at 130 percent of the normal salary. It demanded uninterrupted pay during compulsory military exercises up to eight weeks, during which the employee could not be dismissed. The Btib also sought paid vacation often days after the first six months of employment, two weeks after the first year, and two additional days for each additional year of employment up to a maximum of three weeks. Inventions were to be the property of the employee, and salaried-employee councils would institutionalize grievance procedures and should be heard in dismissal cases.54 The employers considered those demands at a meeting in mid-May. They appear to have underestimated the danger and decided to temporize rather than negotiate. A committee was established to study the Btib's points and prepare a counterproposal. When the engineering union made 53 DIBZ(1911):21-3, 33-6. 54 Ibid., 233-4.

Direct action

305

several inquiries in the course of the next few months, it was informed that the matter was still under investigation. In July the Btib formally presented its own draft of a standard contract, incorporating all the demands mentioned earlier. It gave the employers until 10 August to come up with a final answer, meanwhile advising its members not to take jobs at the firms in question. In late July the Btib was unofficially apprised of a tentative counteroffer, which it found unacceptable, being "such a deterioration of existing employment conditions . . . that an energetic defense [was] necessary."55 On 8 August the union received notice that the matter was still under study and would be discussed at the next meeting of the employer association.56 On the evening of Sunday, 10 August, the structural designers met with the union's leadership to decide on their next step. There was general anger about the employers' delaying tactics. Engineer Karo, the former organizer in Silesia, spoke of the "need for an offensive by the Bund," because the employers' draft contract would lead to actions anyway. All speakers agreed that only the "union struggle's sharpest weapon, the solidary resignations by all colleagues," would lend the necessary force to the presentation of the Btib's standard employment contract. A secret ballot showed that 156 of the 163 members entitled to vote favored action, a result the union's paper termed "glowing." Herman Liidemann congratulated the designers on behalf of the Btib's leadership with the "evening's fantastic progress." The next day, the designers submitted 266 resignations, to be effective 1 October. From that date the Btib would start picketing to prevent the hiring of new engineers. 57 A subsequently published profile of the strikers revealed that besides ordinary designers, they included four office supervisors and assistant supervisors, a "whole number of first designers, structural engineers, group leaders, and calculation engineers with over M. 3,000 annual salary," and nine Diplom-Ingenieure.58

In contrast with their prior foot-dragging, the employers reacted immediately, meeting twice on 14 and 16 August to consider their options. The second meeting was attended by a representative from the Association of Berlin Metal Industrialists (Verband Berliner Metalindustrieller, VBEM), a larger and more powerful employer association that decided to come to the aid of the structural engineering firms. It concluded that the 55 Ibid. 56 Meeting of Gesamtverband Deutscher Metallindustrieller, 30 October 1911, in Berlin, MAN Werksarchiv Niimberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908—11, 162/1. 57 DIBZ, special edition of 18 August 1911, passim; Ernst Borsig to Rieppel, 24 October 1911, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11; protocol of meeting of 30 October 1911, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908-11, 162/1. 58 DIBZ(1912):349.

306

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Btib's draft contract "exceeds by far what one might concede to salaried employees."59 The VBEM prepared a counteroffer that the engineering companies accepted as their own. Five delegates of the engineering firms would try to meet with five representatives of the strikers and negotiate on the basis of this draft. When the Btib's leadership demanded to represent the strikers, rather than let them bargain on their own, the employers demurred, and the prospective meetings were off. Nor did they revive when the Btib relented and allowed the designers to form their own commission after all, because the employers declined its new condition of an impartial chairman to preside over the negotiations. Meanwhile, the conflict began to escalate, soon reaching the proportions of a major crisis. At the end of August, the VBEM drew up and distributed a blacklist of the strikers to all German associations of machinery and metals producers. In late September the Association of German BridgeBuilding and Iron-Construction Factories went on record to express its solidarity and sympathy with the Berlin engineering firms. Neither step had much impact. In early October, after the Btib's pickets had gone up and the engineering companies started falling behind schedule, two of the firms in question caved in and accepted the Btib's contract. The Berlin metal industrialists countered with a public declaration of solidarity with the remaining firms, trying to stiffen their backs with a financial arrangement that paid their penalties for late deliveries. But this was still insufficient, because it appeared to Ernst Borsig, the VBEM's chairman, that the Btib would be "able to continue its boycott... for a long time." Most of the struck firms were "becoming impatient and believe they will be able to resolve the matter through direct negotiations with the Bund, even if it means sacrifices."60 The Berlin industrialists needed help, and in late October Borsig, coowner of the famous locomotive and machinery firm that bore his name, urgently requested assistance from all the major industrial and employer organizations. In a letter of 24 October to Anton Rieppel, the chairman of the United Association of German Metal Industrialists, Borsig considered the matter "extremely important" and virtually begged for support. It was imperative to mobilize all of German industry and all top employer organizations in order to "contain the affair." As Borsig saw it, the Btib's "radical tendency" made it absolutely necessary to avoid a negotiated settlement between the union and the Berlin engineering firms. The consequences of "such a recognition of the Bund" for German industry would be "incalculable." He was convinced that a Btib victory would 59 Borsig to Rieppel, 24 October 1911, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11. 60 Ibid.

Direct action

307

result in attacks on other special technical branches and that, "if we do not arm ourselves in time, we will be helpless to deal with the matter." 61 Even as he outlined his plans for confrontation, Borsig recognized that the financial situation of employed engineers was indeed desperate and that they had many valid complaints. The employers would have to address these problems if they were to bring the situation permanently under control. "At a great many firms," the Berlin industrialist wrote to Rieppel, "much would have to be changed to meet the legitimate demands of the [professional] staff [Beamten]." It was his "standpoint that the more powerful" the managers of large corporations and the employer organizations became, "the greater their sense of responsibility" would have to be, "because we may not employ [this] power to maintain intolerable conditions at individual firms. We must take steps to correct mistakes and shortcomings [not only in our own firms but] also in the firms associated with us." 6 2 Other top executives of the German engineering industries agreed. At a meeting of leading officials from Germany's most powerful industrial and employer associations, convening at the end of October to deal with the crisis, there was general agreement "that at certain firms the employment conditions, especially those of academically trained professionals [akademisch gebildete Beamten], no longer correspond to the realities of modern times." In consequence, continued Rieppel's notes of the meeting, "the industrialists or the individual [employer] associations ought to pay closer attention than before to the employment conditions of these employees." 63 Similarly, at a Berlin conference on trade unions of salaried employees, held in March of 1912 by the Center of German Employer Associations, Fritz Tanzler, the hosting organization's business manager, thought it "desirable to eliminate certain abuses." Dr. Hoff, a senior official of the powerful Employer Association of the North-West Group of the Association of German Iron and Steel Industrialists, believed it was "necessary that something be done to that effect, in order to take account of altered circumstances." As Hoff continued, "certain [minimum] living standards would have to be created. A salary of M. 75 per month for an academically trained individual could not be considered appropriate." To a certain extent, argued the same official, both on this occasion and in the preceding October meeting, "many employers were also responsible for the proletarization of the salaried employees, and therefore positive 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Protocol of meeting of 30 October 1911; in attendance: Rieppel, Borsig, Grabenstedt, Boelcke (GDM), Rottger and Tanzler (Center of German Employer Associations), Garvens (Society of German Employer Associations), Reusch and Hoff (Employer Association of the North-West Group of the German Iron and Steel Industrialists); MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Organisationen der technischen Angestellten, 1908-11, 162/1.

308

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

recommendations in this area would have to be made." One possibility was for the employer associations to approach "backward employers" directly. Most of the other top managers strongly agreed with Hoffs views, in particular Paul Reusch and Anton Rieppel, who had made the same observation a few years earlier in a meeting of the VDMA. The same was true for Woltmann of the Gutehoffnungshutte (GHH), the CDI's Dr. Rotger, and Hanomag's Garvens. 64 Nor was this mere talk. In 1912, Borsig donated M. 10,000 to the VDI's Aid Fund to "demonstrate" that the company "placed a high value on peaceful cooperation between the engineers and management." When Borsig's Max Krause asked Paul Reusch for a similar donation in June of 1913, he appealed not to the GHH director's charitable instincts but to his calculation that such "friendly generosity" would "not fail to have a positive influence on the members of the engineering society." Working on the VDI engineers' attitude was "especially important in light of the tendencies that have found a disturbing expression in other associations, especially in the Bund of technical industrial employees" (i.e., the Btib). One week later, Reusch deposited M. 10,000 into the VDI's Aid Fund. 65 In December of 1911, the Siemens group gave all salaried employees with annual incomes under M. 4,000 a monthly cost-of-living increase of M. 20. The company made sure that the press was notified. 66 The same year, the MAN's Augsburg plant raised the pay of 70 percent of its salaried employees an average of 10 percent. 67 The employers' recognition of the salary problem and their belated, sporadic attempts to address it did not stop them from crushing the engineers' strike with all their might. Profoundly alarmed at the prospect of a Btib victory, they responded promptly to Borsig's requests for help. Already in September, after learning of the Berlin strike from a variety of sources, Paul Reusch of the Rhineland-based GHH in Oberhausen had begun to collect information on Btib and DTV membership at his firm's plants. In October the company issued an ultimatum to its approximately fifty organized engineers and technicians to resign from their organizations or be fired. At the industrialists' emergency meeting in Berlin that same month, Reusch, an engineer by training, informed the others that all but six of the men in question had resigned from their union. With one exception the remaining offenders had been dismissed. The GHH, said Reusch, had turned down negotiations with the Btib and would not hire 64 HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/la, 11-19; also see HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/lb, 266-9. 65 Krause to Reusch, 24 June 1913, and Reusch to Krause, 30 June 1913, HA/GHH, Nr. 30019326/30. 66 Berliner to Rieppel, 14 December 1911, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11. 61 Buz to Rieppel, 17 December 1911, MAN Werksarchiv Niirnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11.

Direct action

309

organized engineers again. He urged the Berlin firms to do the same. The employers should spare no effort or expense to force the strikers into unconditional surrender. 68 Reusch's extreme toughness unnerved the other industrialists. Not hiring organized engineers was impossible in Berlin, as well as in Bavaria, where, as Rieppel pointed out, it would be widely interpreted as a "breach of the right to organize." Borsig and Garvens had similar reservations, especially in view of the impending Reichstag elections, which made it "necessary to avoid sharp measures just now." Still, all agreed on the need to achieve victory and force an unconditional return to work. Financial support for the affected firms and an ample supply of strikebreakers were judged to be the best weapons. On the latter front, substantial progress was already being made. Borsig reported that it had been possible to replace about half of the Berlin strikers with new engineers. Though he did not mention where they had been found, it appears that the VDDI, the association of academically educated and certified DiplomIngenieure that the Btib viewed as its archenemy, had supplied a number of them. 69 Dr. Tanzler of the Center of German Employer Associations mentioned that other engineers had been attracted from abroad. Providing money and bringing in strikebreakers, he said, were the most effective tactics — more so, at any rate, than trying to influence public opinion and the press, which "generally were rather inclined to support the technicians." 70 These steps soon brought the Btib to its knees. The union's inability to prevent the hiring of replacements was a devastating blow, though one that perhaps was not too surprising, considering the glut of engineers and the VDDI's hostility. The Berlin press, accustomed to covering more sensational events than a small strike by some 250 design engineers, also did not play the affair to its fullest possible extent. 71 When the Btib made some conciliatory overtures to the employers in the later stages of the strike, it was turned down. 72 The union finally gave up in early December, when the strikers voted 95 to 41 to end their action, effective immediately. Besides the initial two engineering companies, only one other firm had accepted the Btib's contract; all the others had held out. Trying to put the best face on this "spectacular defeat," as one industrialist subsequently called the Btib's capitulation, the DIBZ concluded with a renewed call 68 See note 63; on Reusch, see Gerald D. Feldman, "Paul Reusch and the Politics of German Heavy Industry 1908—1933," in People and Communities in the Western World, ed. Gene Brucker (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1979), 293-331. 69 DIBZ (1911):348, 359, 375, 381, 397, 409ff., 427, 43Iff. 70 See note 63; also see Hoffs notes of same, HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/lb. 71 Rudolf Breitscheid, "Die Berliner Eisenkonstrukteure als Erzieher," DIBZ (1911):330-l. 72 See note 63.

310

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

to arms: 'This battle has been lost, but the great struggle for the liberation of our profession goes on." 73 The failure of the 1911 strike was a major setback for the Btib, and it may well have given career-minded engineers pause about the wisdom of membership. Though the union continued to grow and maintained its aggressive rhetoric, it soon became apparent that the earlier momentum had at least temporarily been broken. It recovered only slowly, becoming absorbed in internal conflicts and reassessments of its approach, as well as turning its attention to rivals such as the DTV and the VDDI, which in the aftermath of its defeat appeared more formidable than before.74 Still, all was not lost. The Berlin structural engineering firms in 1912 introduced a standard contract that fell short of the Btib's demands, but was significantly better than earlier offers.75 Another consequence of the strike concerned the GHH's retaliatory dismissal of several organized and unrepentant technicians. Four of the seven men in question - two steamboiler machinists, two mechanical engineers, and three structural designers — belonged to the Btib, the other three being DTV members. 76 The company's failure to discriminate between the two rival organizations had the inevitable effect of drawing them closer together and radicalizing the DTV, thereby paving the way for their postwar merger. The one positive consequence of "the action by Director Reusch and his retainers," wrote the DIBZ, was to "have silenced even the last apostle of harmony" in the DTV. 77 Though this was an exaggeration, there is no doubt that the dismissals made the DTV more militant. In May of 1912 it adopted 73 "Der Ausstand der Berliner Eisenkonstrukteure abgebrochen!" DIBZ (1911):425—6; the last quotation from GDM, Hanover chapter, to Rieppel, 11 October 1912, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11. 74 Der Diplom-lngenieur ah Arbeitnehmer (Schriften des Btib, vol. 23), passim; Schriften des Btib, vols. 24, 25, 3 0 - 1 , 34, 35; DIBZ (1913):108, 133-5, 147-9, 156, 171-3, 252, 425, 436-7, 444-6, 450, 465-6, 485-6, 550, 555; see also Chapter 9, note 27. 75 Unpaid overtime, the strike's key issue, was ended. Overtime in the future was compensated at 120 percent after the 208th monthly hour, i.e., after one day's additional work per month. Most employers still preferred such compensation to take the form of bonuses or extra vacation, not pay, "for otherwise the salaried employees would be pushed down to the level of [blue-collar] wage workers." In other words, in its climb up the socioeconomic ladder and into the realm of private relations, contractualism had made some progress, though still failing to conquer inherited notions of the salaried employee's professional, fiduciary, and managerial responsibilities. The contract also stipulated an eight-hour day, travel reimbursement, six days paid vacation after one year and twelve days after the third year, two weeks of full salary and up to eight weeks of half pay in case of compulsory military exercises; inventions belonged to the employer. Finally, engineering incomes in Berlin — though not in the country as a whole - did improve in the aftermath of the strike. Grabenstedt to Rieppel, 10 January 1912, MAN Werksarchiv Nurnberg, Kaufm. u. techn. Ang. Verb., 1908-13, 162/11; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/lb, vol. 2; "Die finanziellen Wirkungen der Berliner Eisenstreit," DIBZ (1912):76, 178-9; Dr. Steinmarder, "Das Einkommen der technischen Angestellten," DIBZ (1913): 189-92. 76 Alfred Thimm, "Der Tag von Sterkrade," DIBZ (19H):351-2, 356. 77 "Nach Sterkrade," DIBZ (1911):36l-3.

Direct action

311

a centralized organization, excluded the remaining employers in its ranks from all influence, and openly embraced the strike as an appropriate means of furthering the interests of its members. 78 In the aftermath of the firings, the DTV and the Btib also collaborated in arranging protest rallies and in capitalizing on the regional publicity generated by the affair. In early November of 1911 the two associations held large, combined demonstrations in Duisburg, Essen, and Diisseldorf. Attended by some 1,000 salaried employees each, the protest gatherings heard fiery speeches by the Btib's chief regional agitator, Alfred Thimm, an academically trained engineer and VDI member, and by Democratic architect E. Richard Schubert, the DTV's new director and editor of its periodical. 79 The meetings passed resolutions condemning the GHH and requesting municipalities in the area to boycott the firm - as it turned out, with some success.80 In addition, speakers from the Center Party, the Progressives, and the SPD addressed the crowds, hoping to exploit the salaried employees' agitation for the impending Reichstag elections. At the Diisseldorf rally, for example, Reichstag deputy Haberland, a locally popular SPD politician, tried to win votes for his party by driving home to the audience what kind of men the big industrialists were that they would treat salaried employees and middle-class professionals as they had. 81 Campaigners seeking an election victory were not the only ones to recognize the political implications of the G H H affair. The employers quickly sought to limit damage to their image by planting in the regional newspapers several articles that justified the dismissals with a portrayal of the DTV, and especially the Btib, as a socialist menace. In spite of being subsidized by the industrialists, however, the papers politely refused to take the articles in question. The reason, explained Gottfried Stoffers, chairman of the Rhenish-Westphalian Press Association and editor in chief of the Rheinisch-Westfdlische Korrespondenz, was that the employers' tactic would backfire. "The affair of the GHH contra Btib," wrote Stoffers to the employers, "has seriously disturbed public opinion, as last week's large gathering here [in Diisseldorf} has clearly shown." By virtue of 78 DIBZ(1912):21, 141-2, 175, 253-4. 79 On Thimm, a former Regierungsbaufiihrer, see DIBZ (1911): 346; VDl-Mitgliederverzeichnis (Berlin:

Julius Springer, 1912), 373; on Schubert, see DIBZ (1912):390, 566; Wer ht's (1912): 1451. 80 When the Btib and the DTV petitioned the Cologne city council on 4 December 1911 not to award the new Rhine bridge contract to the GHH, Cologne mayor Max Wallraf on 12 December wrote Reusch demanding an explanation of the firings. Reusch's answer of 19 December and his company's subsequent justifications apparently were unsatisfactory, as the city's order went, ironically, to the GHH's Bavarian competitor, the MAN; "Nach Sterkrade," DIBZ (191 l):36l— 2; DIBZ (1913): 183; "Stenographic report. . . Dusseldorf," 22, HA/GHH, Nr. 300, 1038/lb; HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/la. 81 Stenographic report of the protest meeting of the Btib and the DTV of Friday, 3 November 1911, in the Tonhalle, Dusseldorf, HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/lb.

312

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

deputy Haberland's address, he noted, the Social Democrats had declared their unconditional solidarity with the technicians. Impartial observers had determined that "among those who heartily approved Herr Haberland were not just minor technicians, but also large numbers of highly respected engineers and operations managers [sehr angesehene Ingenieure und Betriebsfuhrer]." If at this time of inflamed passions the National Liberal and the Conservative papers were to "come out against the Btib and against the right of technicians and engineers to organize," the editor continued, "the direct consequence would be that in the upcoming elections these important elements of the Mittelstand, which until now have given their vote to the national parties, will be carried in droves by the Social Democrats." 82 In the event, those fears did not quite come true, though Stoffers was certainly correct in his assessment of the establishment parties' tenuous grip on the loyalties of the middle-class groups in question. It was also true that nationwide in the 1912 elections, the SPD polled a larger number of voters than ever before. But the outcome of the vote suggests that at least regionally it was the Center Party that benefited most from the Rhine and Ruhr protest vote. In Cologne's municipal elections in November, the National Liberal candidate, Ernst Zorner, general manager of the Humboldt Machinery Works, and no friend of the engineers, lost to a candidate of the Center. The same party made a clean sweep of all the other council seats up for reelection. 83 In the January Reichstag elections, the Center far outdistanced all other parties, gaining 34 percent of the vote in Westphalia (vs. 29 percent for the second-place SPD) and 49 percent in the Rhineland (vs. 24 percent for the Social Democrats). 84 Of course, the Center Party was ill-suited to hold on to such temporary gains in the long run, and the SPD's inability to attract middle-class voters, even in conditions of extreme agitation and frustration, had already been demonstrated. 85 82 83 84 85

Gottfried Stoffers to E. Hoff, 8 November 1911, HA/GHH, Nr. 3001038/lb. DIBZ (19H):393; on Zorner, see Chapter 10. Hohorst, Kocka, and Ritter, Arbeitsbuch, 177-8. On the Center's parochialism and long-term nationwide decline starting in 1912, see Suvall, Electoral Politics, 63-78, 209-26, 242-57.

12 v^(r*to^<^^

The reaction of the VDDI

Considering the eagerness with which the industrialists warred with organized professionals and white-collar workers, one might have expected the bulk of salaried engineers to realize sooner or later how transparent were all pretenses of occupational solidarity with a top management that often was itself technically trained. The employers' lack of discrimination between graduates of the technische Hochschulen and engineers without such certification should have been revealing. Their policies should have opened the eyes of those who believed that their academic credentials were evidence of possessing what amounted to a secular version of salvation or election and therefore a meaningful basis for solidarity. The expectation that this realization would dawn on more and more engineers was, of course, fundamental to the Btib's existence. The principle of solidarity of all engineers on the basis of their employee status and regardless of educational differences was a point the union emphasized over and over again — for example, when it blamed the VDDI for having helped break the strike of the Berlin structural designers. With the exception of professions like physicians and lawyers, whose legal privileges were based on unique circumstances, the Btib argued, "the private sector leaves no room for estate-like stratification based on educational differences [auf Bildungsunterschieden beruhende stdndische Gliederung}." Especially in the industrial occupations, the Btib continued, "social boundaries cannot be drawn according to educational differences, but only according to the position in the production process that one occupies on the basis of performance." For that reason, it concluded, "the economic and social situation of technical employees is fundamentally the same, regardless of whether they have an academic or a nonacademic education." 1

DIBZ(1912):10.

313

314

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power 1. THE VDDI

The mere fact that the Btib kept hammering away at this point testifies to the remarkable tenacity of the faith in occupational solidarity across class lines and in the special, superior status higher education and academic certification bestowed. What the Btib was contending with here was not simply an attitude common to all professionalizers bent on separating themselves from "inferior elements." It also battled a state of mind intensified by the heritage of Germany's educational ideology, according to which the "cultivated" and university-trained individual was lifted far above the station of ordinary mortals. As mutated in the minds of a whole group of academically trained engineers concentrated in the VDDI, this tradition made the "true" engineer into a man above politics, above class conflict in particular, and immune to the temptations of selfish interest representation at the expense of the community as a whole. 2 In the words of Diplom-Ingenieur Alexander Lang, founder and guiding spirit of the VDDI, Diplom-Ingenieure were members of "an academic profession [positioned} between the capitalist entrepreneurs on the one hand and bluecollar workers and technical employees on the other hand," whose responsibility it was to "preserve the strictest neutrality" and mediate social conflict between the two groups. The engineer's rejection of class conflict, said Lang, was based on the "altruism with which academics view their profession" and on the fact that the "work of academically trained professionals is in principle not governed by the desire to make money, but by the consciousness of fulfilling obligations toward science and society as a whole." 3 In short, the academically trained and certified engineer was the reincarnation and modern equivalent of the proverbial Hegelian state bureaucracy - a new, impartial and objective technical elite whose "natural social position" was a "leadership position." 4 It followed that associating with nonacademicians, joining trade unions, and confronting management, let alone participating in strikes, were the very denial of professionalism. In fact, such espousals of lofty ideals were at least in part intended to mask the deep resentment the VDDI harbored toward industrial em2 Fritz Stern, "The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German," in his The Failure of llliberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 1971), 3— 25; M. C. Brands, Historisme Als Ideologie (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1965); Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), 20-2, 43, 81-9, 155-9, 345-53, 403-7. 3 Alexander Lang, Die Diplom-lngenieure in der deutschen Volkswirtschaft (Berlin M. Krayn, 1912), 1 1 12, 22. 4 Lang, Die Diplom-lngenieure, 11. For the Utopian visions of engineers see Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik undIngenieure in Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1974), 15-102. Less satisfactory: Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984).

Reaction of the VDDI

315

ployers, toward other established professions such as lawyers and the state corps of engineers, and toward unionized engineers. Whereas its contempt for the latter was freely vented, outright hostility toward the industrialists typically was suppressed, surfacing only sporadically. When it did appear, it came with striking ferocity. One such occasion was the publication in 1909 of Surgite! Comments on the Status Interests of the German Academic

Engineers {Techniker], an anonymous booklet almost certainly written by Alexander Lang.5 Some of the worst torments of the Diplom-Ingenieur, the author pointed out, occurred at the hands of the businessman, who "governs the engineer and derives pleasure from letting him know that he is only a 'technical' assistant, just like a better office employee." The businessman cared nothing for the "objective science of the engineer," but was interested only in personal advantage and the "desire to push down the academically trained engineer by arbitrarily placing him on a level with nonacademic engineers." The one and only purpose of such treatment: to make sure that an "awakened status consciousness" on the part of the Diplom-Ingenieur would not expose the employer to the "risk of having to take into account social position and salary differentiation." 6 The author of Surgite railed against the "great lords [grosse Herren], who have achieved their goal and from behind their giant incomes look down on the engineer who is busily engaged in his day-to-day affairs." To grant the Diplom-Ingenieur his legitimate demand for differentiation from "gas fitters and draftsmen of elevations" was " 'impossible' because of the many 'empirics.' " The professional solidarity of industrialists (who were themselves engineers) with their nonmanagerial colleagues was dead, as "the engineer retreats behind the 'factory owner,' the 'director,' the 'Kommerzienrat.'" Instead of solidarity, cold egotistical worship of success, too much of a commonsensical nose for business. . . that is the kind of treatment we can all too often expect in our engineering practice from older colleagues.7 Lest such antiestablishment resentment be understood as sympathy for the Btib's position, the author of Surgite hastened to add that "the Bund of technical-industrial employees, which would unite engineers, architects, and chemists with pattern cutters, lithographers, etc. for purposes of'common interests,' is not the place for academics to become involved." The Btib's talk of common interests was nothing but "bait," the true 5 According to Stiel's review in DIBZ (19O9):453; also see the extensive review in Mitteilungen des VDDI 1 (1909): 14-16. 6 Anonymous, Surgite! Worte von den Standesinteressen der deutschen akademischen Techniker (Dresden: Wilhelm Baensch, 1909), 30. 7 Ibid., 39-

316

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

purpose of the union being to "blur the differences between academics and technicians." 8 It is not surprising that such attitudes, blending small but powerful doses of resentment of the employers with frequent protestations of "altruism," idealism, and contempt for the social inferiority of Btib types, had a certain appeal for Diplom-Ingenieure in industry. This was all the more true to the extent that the Btib's organizational principle was indeed flawed by overlooking educational differences. Education has always been one of the most powerful stratifiers (if nothing else, subjectively), and the union's decision to ignore it when trying to forge class solidarity for an occupational group in the German context was, of course, an especially dangerous gamble. As one professionalizing Diplom-Ingenieur put it, "if the preponderance of engineers believe . . . that in Germany they can pitch themselves and succeed as a group of 'American'-minded fellows who care only about money and know-how, they are sadly mistaken." 9 There was much truth in that observation. Only with the greatest difficulty, if at all, could the Btib attract those salaried engineers who were determined to reject an adversary relationship with management for reasons such as family background, private contacts, political orientation, anticipation of rapid career advancement, excessive pride in academic achievement, social prejudice, or definition of professionalism. That was the case regardless of the resentment such engineers may have felt for their employers. On the other hand, the Btib did not have much choice. Formation of an organization of salaried engineers who were all academically trained and certified, for example, would not have been a more viable choice than the organizational formula it did adopt. Not merely was there strength only in numbers, but the industrialists themselves had been instrumental in creating a system of engineering careers and a definition of the engineer that threw together academically trained engineers and engineers from the nonacademic engineering schools. It was precisely that policy, together with the devastating oversupply of engineering personnel, that had given rise to the Btib and lent it strength. Even so, the same constellation of factors that in 1904 had produced the Btib had within five years also triggered the formation of the rival VDDI. The VDDI, an association exclusively of Diplom-Ingenieure, sprang from a "cry of distress of an entire profession," from an "expression of the feelings of the young generation," wrote professor Georg Schlesinger about Surgite, the pamphlet that signaled the VDDI's birth in 1909. 10 Like unionizing and confronting management, the decision to stress academic certification and to seek the elimination of competition from 8 Ibid., 40. 9 "Die gesellschaftliche Stellung des Ingenieurs," VDDIZ (1910):372-3. 10 Mitteilungen des VDDI 1 (1909): 15. Schlesinger was the foremost apostle of Taylorism in Germany.

Reaction of the VDDI

317

nonacademic engineers was aimed at improving socioeconomic conditions. At the same time, the VDDI's founding was also a reaction to the existence of the Btib, in particular to the spectacle of unionized engineers fielding political demands and locked in mortal combat with management without regard for educational distinctions. If anything could be expected to disturb the wishful thinking of would-be mandarins, this was it. Instead of prompting the kind of ideological reorientation the Btib hoped for, the Btib's confrontational pattern caused the academically educated engineers in question to recoil. The conflicts of industrial, class society were so painful for these self-appointed guardians of professionalism, and their desire for a different, more harmonious social order with another kind of hierarchy was so strong, that their ability to see things as they were was overwhelmed, causing them to escape into a realm of illusion. Their illusions centered on the place of academically trained engineers in German society. The VDDI's vision in this regard was an almost perfect antithesis and dialectical reversal of the Btib's program, without which it would be difficult to understand. Where the engineering union had developed an aggressively contractual and practical orientation, the VDDI embraced an organic and communal ideology that went in precisely the opposite direction. Taking an approach whose romanticism was matched only by its absence of realism, the leaders of the new association of DiplomIngenieure portrayed the engineer as modern hero, as the natural conciliator and leader of a harmonious society that was at once industrial and organic, at once modern and traditional. Whereas the Btib emphasized the class solidarity of all engineers who were salaried, ignoring educational cleavages and titles, the VDDI did the opposite. It sought to foster professional cohesion based on shared education, while ignoring class and functional differences. In its one-dimensionality, this formula mirrored the Btib's inability to bring education and occupation together. In terms of practical results it was considerably less effective. In fact, the VDDI, which never organized more than 12—13 percent of the approximately 30,000 DiplomIngenieure in 1914, was so fanatical about academic titles that it became widely and derisively known as the "title association." Whereas the Btib concentrated virtually all its attention on the engineers' position in industry, the VDDI studiously ignored this entire arena, focusing instead on the discrimination encountered by academically trained engineers in state employment and in society at large. As suggested earlier, such attitudes can to a large extent be explained as a direct reaction to the Btib's "Western," contractual orientation. It summoned all sorts of residues of "Germanic" values and concentrated them in the VDDI, which thereby became the engineering union's moral, ideological, and organizational antipode. The VDDI's orientation also reflected the typical allergic reaction that professionals, who were focused

318

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

on individual achievement and vertical mobility, experienced when confronted with the "horizontal" loyalties and collectivism of trade unions. At the same time, however, there was a practical dimension to the VDDI's peculiar mixture of resentment and technocratic romanticism. Against the industrial employers' determination to treat Diplom-lngenieure no better than they treated nonacademic engineers (and against the Btib's corresponding popularity), its calls for differentiation and special privileges in industry were powerless. In the unequivocal words of Anton Rieppel, "it would be the worst possible mistake if German industry decided to start making its appointments to the decisive engineering positions strictly on the basis of school certificates." 11 The VDI, too, had refused to revamp its membership policy, and therefore its definition of the engineer, when challenged to do so in the aftermath of the Riedler affair.12 Given these obstacles, what could the VDDI do to ameliorate the career crisis of academically trained engineers? Its answer was as ingenious as it was unlikely to succeed. The association would open up new frontiers outside of industry and develop alternative careers for Diplom-lngenieure in an area where nonacademic engineers could not follow: in the civil service, in municipal administration, in law, politics, and society at large. Meeting with little success, these efforts ended up creating a great deal of resentment against the old order and, after World War I, easily escalated into more Utopian schemes. Hopes of improving the lot of academically trained engineers by breaking out of their self-imposed restriction to technical careers in industry were central to the VDDI's program. As VDDI founder Alexander Lang, a Berlin patent attorney and Ph.D. in public administration, put it in 1910, "if the Diplom-lngenieure wish to improve their material circumstances, they must use other means" (i.e., other than those of the Btib). One solution, argued Lang, was to "reduce pressures on the labor market" and simultaneously improve the level of performance of academically trained engineers. The other, more promising approach was to strive for a "widening of the field in which the technical intelligentsia can be successfully employed." A particularly effective means in this regard, thought Lang, was the "opening up of new areas of employment in which competition from nonacademically educated elements is impossible." 13 What Lang had in mind was developed in considerable detail in the writings of Berlin engineering professor Wilhelm Franz, a cofounder and executive committee member of the VDDI. 14 Franz sought to make the 11 12 13 14

Quoted by Alfred Berlowitz, "Der Diplom-Ingenieur in der Privatindustrie," VDDIZ (1913):4. See Chapter 9. Alexander Lang, "Ein Jahr Verband Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure," VDDIZ (191O):333-49. Wilhelm Franz, Ingenieurstudium und Werwaltungsreform (Schriften des Verbandes Deutscher Diplomlngenieure, vol. 1) (Berlin: M. Krayn, 1909); idem, Das Technikerproblem: Grundsdtzlicbes zurFrage

Reaction of the VDDI

319

academically certified engineer into Germany's new administrative and governing elite. As he explained in the first issue of the VDDI's Bulletin in 1909, the engineers' greatest problem - one that was unique to Germany — was the "lack of understanding that the leading strata of our nation display toward the intellectual activities of the engineer." This was partly the fault of the engineers themselves, who looked on technical training almost exclusively as leading to an engineering career and nothing else. But the technische Hochschulen, argued Franz, "should not merely train architects, civil engineers, chemists, etc." Their highest mission was "exactly the same as that of the universities, to serve as schools [Bildungsstdtten] for the entire nation." One of the most important functions of the VDDI would be to strengthen the representation of the "technical element in public administration" - in the parliaments, in the "leading offices of government, in self-governing bodies, and in the private sector." The only way the problem of the German engineering profession, the question of the "academically trained versus the nonacademically trained," could still be solved was if the former could readily enter on careers in public service the way university graduates did. But because the higher civil service was trained at the university rather than the technische Hochschule, "technical knowledge and with it all engineers have been pushed into a secondary role." From this it followed, Franz concluded, that "the problem of the German engineer is basically a question of the training of the higher civil service." In other words, engineers should become public administrators, and vice versa. To make this insight more widely known and thereby contribute to the good of the nation and of the engineers was what the VDDI wanted to do. 15 Not surprisingly, this program appealed most to academically trained engineers who did not work in industry or who, if they did, had already made certain career advances in their firms - engineering educators, nontenured engineers in government service, engineers in subaltern civilservice ranks, consulting engineers, middle managers, senior designers not on a management track, and so forth. This fact was clearly reflected in the VDDI's membership structure. In 1911, when the Btib claimed to have some 5,000 Diplom-lngenieure in its ranks, the VDDI had a total of approximately 2,400 members. Table 12.1 disaggregates this membership by employment situation. 16 Although the single largest segment consisted of nonmanagerial engineers in private industry, some two-thirds kunftiger Auslesefur den hoberen Verwaltungsdienst (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1929); idem, Der Verwaltungsingenieur: Eine Sammlung von Aufsdtzen (Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1908). 15 "Die Aufgaben des Verbandes," Mitteilungen des VDDI 1 (1909): 19. 16 Table 12.1, based on VDDI, Verzeichnis der Forderer und Mitglieder, October 1911. The division between nonmanagerial and managerial personnel in industry was made at the designation "senior engineer" (Oberingenieur), by including the latter with management.

320

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power Table 12.1. Employment situations of the VDDI membership, 1911 Function

Nonmanagerial personnel in industry Managerial and higher personnel in industry (including owners) Teachers (academic and nonacademic, including Assistenten and laboratory engineers) Patent attorneys Architects and consulting engineers (self-employed) Government service (including municipal, railroad, and safety engineers, naval designers, building inspectors) Total

Percentage 33 15 10 2.5 11 29 100.5

of the VDDI's membership faced problems different from those motivating the Btib. It was this majority that set the tone in the association and provided its leadership: mostly patent attorneys, professors, and non-civilservice government engineers. The VDDI's executive committee included no ordinary salaried engineers, who for all practical purposes constituted a disfranchised minority in the association. If the plans of the VDDI's leadership were to succeed, one of the first things to do was convince outsiders that the Diplom-lngenieur was more than a narrow technical specialist, that he was a true professional and cultivated academic, qualified to assume the mantle of responsibility for public administration. Only then would it be possible to remove the various career barriers to engineers, such as the lawyers' monopoly in the higher civil service or the lack of tenure for Diplom-lngenieure in municipal administrations. The VDDI conceded that this would require some restructuring of the technische Hochschule's curriculum, but it would be even more important, in Franz's words, "to take issue with and counter. . . prejudices [against the engineers] wherever they manifest themselves." An information campaign "about the significance of technical education" had to be launched, and the "Diplom-lngenieure must make sure that the circles and individuals who are particularly important with regard to an accurate evaluation of technical knowledge [technische Intelligent become thoroughly familiar with the concept Diplom-lngenieur. "l7 Likewise, a 1910 note from the VDDI's executive committee to the membership called "raising the prestige and the status of the Diplom-lngenieur in the eyes of the national community [its] highest mission." 18 17 "Die Aufgaben des Verbandes," 18. 18 VDDIZ(1910):l4.

Reaction of the VDDI

3 21

2. THE VDDI IN ACTION

Convincing the world of the Diplom-lngenieur's standing as a truly cultivated academic was precisely what the VDDI set out to do — with such vigor that more often than not it ended up embarrassing itself. Its first priority was to protect the academic title Diplom-lngenieur against unauthorized use and to set itself apart from nonacademic engineers, whom it derisively called " 'also'-engineers." The "thorough saturation [of the engineering disciplines] with nonacademicians" may have benefited technological progress and economic growth, the VDDI stated, but the "prestige and the status of the profession and its individual members [had] suffered" incalculably. Like other professions, academically certified engineers should separate themselves from the lower ranks. "Separation therefore — that must also become the goal of the engineers." 19 The VDDI reminded anyone who would listen that in 1899, Emperor William II had bestowed on the technische Hochschulen the privilege to confer the academic Dipl.-lng. and Dr.-Ing. degrees in appreciation of their tremendous achievements on behalf of the nation. If the highest authority in the land had recognized the engineers' high intellectual standing, others should do so as well. 20 To make sure they did, the VDDI sent numerous petitions to government agencies and universities, in order to clarify the use and significance of the Diplom-lngenieur degree and to insist on its proper usage in official correspondence. It contested the lack of practical equivalency between the Diplom-lngenieur degree and the governmental Baumeister rank. It initiated lawsuits against engineers who claimed unauthorized titles, complained to proprietary schools about the good-sounding but fake degrees they granted, and conducted long and involved discussions about whether the word Diplom-lngenieur should precede or follow one's name (the former won out). It demanded that the technische Hochschulen in Karlsruhe and Darmstadt abide by the so-called Oberhof decisions - an informal agreement by all the technische Hochschulen to standardize admissions and degree-granting procedures - to admit only students with the Abitur and not to confer degrees on those who lacked it. 21 On one occasion it went so far as to explain the correct form of address for a Diplom-lngenieur who had made his Dr. promotion and was a professor as well as a high civil servant. It should be "Wirkl. Geh. Ober-Baurat Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dipl.-lng." X.22 Commented the Btib, "the 19 Mitteilungen des VDDI (1909):2; see also Surgite, 6-10. 20 Mitteilungen des VDDI (1909): 1-3; VDDIZ (1910):291-5; VDDIZ (19l4):265-73, 286-93, 303-10. 21 Alexander Lang, "Ein Jahr VDDI," VDDIZ (191O):333-49; VDDIZ (1911):2O9-19; VDDIZ (1912):147, 172-8, 417-22; VDDIZ (1914): 115-18, 165-78, 241-50. 22 VDDIZ (1910):281.

322

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

kind of narrow-minded status conceit and petty addiction to titles achieved here cannot be trumped even in the land of titles and ribbons." 23 In practice, not too much came of the VDDI's title mania. As the association itself acknowledged some twenty-five years later, "the designation 'Diplom-Ingenieur was suppressed in industry; whoever used it on the job was ridiculed." 24 As early as 1911, Alexander Lang had to concede that "contrary to our expectations all this activity has not made a good impression even on circles favorably disposed to us." In fact, Lang acknowledged, it had evoked "considerable regrets," and continuation of the VDDI's aggressive title propaganda might t(give the association a flavor that could induce many gentlemen to distance themselves from us." 25 Despite such clear warning signals, the VDDI toned down its degree fervor only a little in the remaining years before World War I. A second major item on the VDDI's agenda was its plan for the "administrative engineer," or the dream of supplanting Germany's legally trained administrative elite with graduates from the technische Hochschulen. This is how the VDDI's executive committee put it in 1910: "The nation longs to get rid of the jurists' monopoly in the recruitment of the next generation of civil servants. Next to young lawyers [Gerichtsreferendare}, Diplom-lngenieure too must be admitted to the traineeships for the specific affairs of the higher administration." Creating avenues of mobility into the civil service would be the "real solution" to the engineers' career crisis and their social disfranchisement. "All Germany's engineers" should therefore demand that their institutions of higher education be recognized as the (
DIBZ (1912): 163VDDI, Dem Ziele entgegen . . . (Berlin: Selbstverlag, 1934), 45. VDDIZ(1911):209-19. "Bericht des Vorstandes," VDDIZ (1910):77-8; also see Theodor Koehn, "Zur Ausgestaltung des Unterrichts in den Rechts-, Staats-und Wirtschaftswissenschaften an den technischen Hochschulen," and reply by the editors, VDDIZ (191O):512-16. 27 Verband Deutscher Architekten-und Ingenieur-Vereine, Die Stellung der Architekten und Ingenieure in den offentlichen und privaten Verwaltungen (Berlin: 1909); Friedrich Ritzmann, Zur Frage der Erziehung der Architekten und Ingenieure zu Verwaltungsbeamten: Ein Beitrag zur Losung (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1908); Der Kampfum die Magistratsmitgliedschaft fur die Stadtbaurdte in Schleswig-Holstein 1900-1910 (Kiel: C. Schaidt, 1910); Die Stellung der hoheren technischen Verwaltungsbeamten in der Preussisch-Hessischen Staatseisenbahn-Verwaltung (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1906); Klagen und Wunsche der hoheren Techniker der preussischen Staatseisenbahn-Verwaltung (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1904); VDI Verhandlungen des Ausschusses betr. Ausbildung von Ingen-

ieuren fur den hoheren Verwaltungsdienst, 8 March 1909 (Berlin: H. S. Hermann, 1909), 1-4; idem, 28 April 1909, 1-23; Lower-Rhine VDI chapter, "Ausbildung von Ingenieuren im hoheren Verwaltungsdienst," 7 March 1910; "Verwaltungsreform und technische Arbeit," an address by

Reaction of the VDDI

323

like the DATSCH, mostly concerned with Germany's technical and economic competitiveness, were at best lukewarm about the plan. It would necessarily require a significant amount of restructuring of the curriculum and inevitably would take away time from engineering instruction proper, thereby lowering the efficiency and raising the cost of technical training. Others actively opposed the whole idea from the start as a Utopian scheme. The Btib, too, rejected the plan. Its position was that even if the civil service could be opened up, that would only induce more students to choose a technical education. The scheme would therefore aggravate rather than solve the problems of career crowding and oversupply. 28 Closely associated with the plans for the "administrative engineer" was the VDDI's attempt to improve the career chances of Diplom-lngenieure in the technical branches of the civil service and in the public administrations of municipalities. In both of these fields, the so-called Regierungsbaumeister, academically trained engineers who had passed the second state examination (Assessor equivalent), received preferential treatment with regard to promotions, salaries, and tenure. 29 Especially galling was the favoritism municipalities showed for former Regierungsbaumeister, whose only advantage over Diplom-lngenieure was that they had served an apprenticeship in the government's technical administration. As Alexander Lang put it in a review of the VDDI's first year, "we want to make the positions of chief city engineer and of building-office directors accessible to the Diplomlngenieure directly — without the detour via the state's civil engineering administration. " 30 The significance of these demands for administrative reform lies not so much in their specific content as in the resentment - and particularly the object of that resentment - they reveal. The VDDI's hostility here was not directed at the industrialists, nor at nonacademic engineers, nor even at the Btib. It was aimed at the world of inherited privilege: the social hierarchy and the incumbents of its administrative positions that the VDDI's Diplom-lngenieure wished to occupy. Take, for example, the angry remarks in Surgite about the "arrogance" of government engineers, in engineer Dr. Jur. et phil. Kollmann-Ems, HA/GHH, Nr. 30019326/30; also see VDI, ed., Der Ingenieur in der Verwaltung (Berlin: Julius Springer and VDI-Verlag, 1919). On the civil service in Wilhelmian Germany, see John C. G. Rohl, "Higher Civil Servants in Germany 1890-1900," Journal of Contemporary History 2, 3 (July 1967): 101-22; Lysbeth Walker Muncy, The Junker in the Prussian Administration under William U 1888-1914 (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970); Jane Caplan, Government Without Administration: State and Civil Service in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford University Press, 1988), 1-13. 28 Karl-Friedrich Steinmetz, "Der 'Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten' und der 'Verband Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure,' " VDDIZ (1910):402-15. 29 H. Horn, "Die Techniker im Kommunaldienste," VDDIZ (1910):83-8, 141-3; H. Sidow, "Wie stellen sich die Diplom-lngenieure zu den Reg.-Baufuhrern a.D.; Reg.-Baumeistern a.D.; und den technischen Vereinen?" VDDIZ (1910): 125-6; see also the literature cited in note 27. 30 Lang, "Ein Jahr VDDI," VDDIZ (1910):333-49.

324

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

particular Prussian civil-service engineers, who were "ruthless" toward Diplom-lngenieure. The state corps of engineers, contended the author, "practices systematic degradation of the engineer to the level of a technician with inferior education." This might "sound absurd, but it [was] true." It was therefore necessary to make a public "accusation against the civil-service caste, [namely] that many of its members behave in a manner that is unworthy of an academically trained profession!"31 Prussian government engineers, the author of Surgite continued, "love to look down on the engineer as someone to be treated from a position of sovereignty, as though he were a former law student who has flunked all his examinations and is working as a clerk in the courthouse." The engineer's academic training did not matter; not even his former fraternity brothers would speak to him if he had not served the corps' apprenticeship. He was nothing but a "boor with special knowledge [Fachprolet]." Only if he had gone into the state corps was "he also a human being with whom one could deal on terms of equality." 32 To be sure, Surgite concluded, it was painful to say such things in public and to let all the world know how little respect academically trained engineers in fact received; but it was necessary if things were to change. "The engineer, the architect and the chemist must and shall fight against this current." The "pretentious" members of the engineering corps had to be confronted the same way as the nonacademic engineers. "Open struggle" was better than hidden discontent, and if all the academically trained engineers united, "the obsession with degrading the level of our education as well as our social standing and position in society [would] gradually subside." 33 Despite fighting words like these, the VDDI's drive to eliminate bureaucratic prejudices and career barriers in the civil service was even less successful than its title-protection efforts. Unlikely to be effective in any case, the VDDI's complaints were robbed of whatever force they might have had by its simultaneous attempt to impose closure and monopoly with regard to all those engineers who lacked academic certification. This combination gave the lie to the association's efforts to portray the emancipation of Diplom-lngenieure as a socially progressive activity, thereby depriving the VDDI of public sympathy and moral credibility. Lack of public support and impotence also characterized the VDDI's third major initiative, which was to seek the liberation of academically certified engineers from obligatory membership in Germany's various social insurance 31 Surgite, 41-3, 46. 32 Ibid., 43-5. 33 Ibid., 50-1. In 1912 the VDDI estimated the total number of academically trained engineers with civil-service status in the various corps and offices of Prussia and the Reich at 2,314 (1,705 in the Prussian administration and 609 with the Reich), VDDIZ (1912):477; with about 3,000 members, the VDDI itself was only marginally larger.

Reaction of the VDDI

325

programs. Like the effort to protect academic degrees and the drive for government careers, this scheme was another lonely, two-front war: battling the powers of the old order that humiliated engineers by legally classifying them as industrial workers, and at the same time putting as much distance as possible between "real" professionals (i.e., themselves) and the forces of democratic-proletarian equality that threatened from below. Undaunted by the magnitude of the task, the VDDI pursued the emancipation of Diplom-lngenieure from compulsory participation in social insurance with the same vigor that the Btib exhibited in trying to upgrade and extend those very same programs. Using some of the same methods as the engineering union, it sharply criticized the existing legal situation and submitted a variety of petitions for reform to the Reichstag. 34 The VDDI claimed that because the technische Hochschulen had been given academic recognition by the imperial decree of 1899, Diplom-lngenieure were professionals and should therefore — like most other academic occupations — be exempted from the provisions of the various social insurance laws. Instead, they were under the jurisdiction of the Industrial Code. The latter, in line with the Btib's approach, disregarded questions of education and considered only income level and job function when determining who was to be insured. Paragraph 133a stated that besides industrial workers, "supervisory personnel" (Betriebsbeamte), foremen, and "technicians-engineers" {Techniker) were also covered, at least so long as they earned less than M. 2,000 annually (M. 167 per month). In other words, the law interpreted the concept Techniker broadly to include academically trained engineers. The humiliating result, the VDDI argued, was that engineering professionals in the lower income brackets were unfairly put in a category with "certain lower strata of the population," with the "vast army of [the} manually active population," while being legally segregated from the "social circles with which they belong on the basis of their scientific education." The VDDI also claimed that the academically certified engineer's career path soon lifted him beyond the M. 2,000 limit anyway (which was not necessarily true), and he should be exempted for that reason as well. 35 34 "Ausschaltung der Diplom-lngenieure aus der Invaliden-und Hinterbliebenenversicherung,' Petition des Verbandes an die 16. Kommission des Reichstages," VDDIZ (1910):425-7; see Lang's comments in VDDIZ (1910):343-7, and his "Die Diplom-lngenieure und der Begriff'Techniker' nach der Gewerbe-Ordung," VDDIZ (1910):478-93. 35 Wilhelm von Pasinski, "Bericht an den Vorstand des Verbandes Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure, betreffend die rechtliche Stellung der Diplom-lngenieure in der deutschen Arbeiterschutzgesetzgebung und in dem von der Reichsregierung am 2. April 1909 veroffentlichen Entwurf einer Reichs-Versicherungsordnung," VDDIZ (1910):39-44, 62-7. The income limit for compulsory membership in the accident insurance program was M. 3,000; for all other programs it was M. 2,000.

326

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

Besides criticizing the law for being unfair, the VDDI built the case for exemption primarily on the fact that the Industrial Code itself contained a clause stating that "ordinarily, scientific or artistic" work did not come under its jurisdiction. This was the issue that the VDDI sought to exploit to its maximum advantage. Turning a blind eye to the employment realities that made the career paths of academically trained and nonacademic engineers in industry virtually indistinguishable, it argued that the "scientific" attributes of engineering work were attested by academic certification and therefore qualified the Diplom-lngenieur for exemption. By virtue of his academic degree, the latter "had been lifted up from the heterogeneous mass of the technicians" and should receive the same special legal consideration given to other academic professions. The law's creation of a "special inferior position" (Sonderstellung nach unten) for engineers was thus "in no way justified." On the contrary, it was only a "fair demand" to revise the law and treat academically trained engineers, whose work "never had the character of the merely mechanical," like other professionals.36 In a similar vein, the VDDI opposed the 1911 social security pension law for salaried employees, contending that the government's plan, apart from being expensive in relation to its benefits, was an "artificial proletarization" of the higher categories of salaried employees. The VDDI would have to "take a decisive stance in opposition to the inclusion of academically trained engineers" in the program, argued Wilhelm von Pasinski, the association's leading social-policy expert. 37 Alexander Lang called the pension law an "assassination attempt against the interests" of salaried Diplom-lngenieure.38 None of this posturing made much difference to the decision makers, as the version of the pension law that eventually passed the Reichstag in 1911 excluded only company directors and salaried professionals earning above M. 5,000 annually. The overwhelming majority of engineers — academically certified as well as nonacademic — became obligatory members of the new pension fund. 39 The VDDI also attacked other demands for social legislation, such as the Btib's project of a unified code for salaried employees. Not surprisingly, it interpreted the unified code as an affront to the dignity of academically trained professionals and, more tellingly, as a political ploy to destroy occupational identity in favor of a proletarian and democratic class consciousness. The unified code's proponents, claimed the VDDI, wanted the "closed and united phalanx of all salaried employees - if 36 Pasinski, VDDIZ (1910):40-2. 37 VDDIZ (1910):424-7, 451-9; also see Pasinski, "Das Versicherungsgesetz fur Angestellte und die Diplom-lngenieure," VDDIZ (1911): 115-19, 158-9. 38 VDDIZ (19H):215. 39 VDDIZ (1913): 18-19.

Reaction of the VDDI

327

possible of all workers - because they know that the human being who lives with the sensation of nothing but economic dependence and who has been cut loose from the fertile soil of his occupational individuality becomes an incorrigible follower of political democracy." 40 Of course, the employers and radical-right employee organizations like the DHV espoused similar antidemocratic rhetoric, but at least they had something to lose if the unified code ever became law. For an organization of engineers, who did not benefit from the existing legal situation in the least, it was truly preposterous to pretend that the extension of social and political citizenship rights was incompatible with professional expertise.41 For the sake of professional dignity and the advantages it hoped would follow, however, the VDDI was always willing to cut off its nose to spite its face. Nothing revealed this tendency toward anticipatory socialization more clearly than the VDDI's position on reform of the Patent Law. If anything was designed to benefit the professional power and standing of engineers, it was the principle of the inventor's right and compensation for employeeinventors. But the VDDI's Zeitschrift published a number of articles opposing these reforms as being harmful to technological progress and industrial development. In the April 1911 issue, for example, Hermann Isay, a well-known Berlin lawyer and supporter of the employer position, pointed out to the VDDI's membership that the Stettin decisions, and especially the Btib's proposals, were "intolerable" and "impossible." They should be "rejected in the interest of German industry" and were evidence of a "disastrous shortsightedness" that would introduce into the "healthy and vital organism of our industrial enterprises the seed of discord, collapse and decay." 42 Hermann Kandler, another patent expert with close ties to the VDMA, wrote in the January 1913 issue that the inventor's right should be rejected because it protected the individual at the expense of the community. As Kandler put it, "the right of the public at large [Allgemeinheit] is higher than the right of the individual." It was society's obligation to demand "that the Patent Law not jeopardize the future development of the economy for the sake of the interests of individuals." The existing principle of the registrant's right was the only legal arrangement that would meet that criterion, Kandler argued. It followed that the "state, [which} can and must be an egotist in this matter," should stick with the status quo. 43 40 Lang's annual review, VDDIZ (1914): 165-78. 41 T. H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," in his Class, Citizenship & Social Development (University of Chicago Press, 1977), 71-134. 42 Hermann Isay, "Das Recht der Angestellten auf ihre Erfindungen," VDDIZ (1911): 185-93. 43 Hermann Kandler, "Ueber die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen des Patentrechts," VDDIZ (1913): 5 11, 26-33.

328

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

The VDDI did not limit itself to publishing quasi-scholarly articles such as these. It also exposed its membership to more outright partisan statements, such as the critique of the government's Patent Law draft by Walther Waldschmidt, managing director of Ludwig Loewe & Co. in Berlin and a leader of the Bund der Industriellen. 44 In contrast, there were only two papers in the VDDI's journal before the war that expressed some mild interest in the reforms. 45 The author of one of these, who had earlier stated that it was not his purpose "to choose sides one way or another," later changed his mind. In a follow-up discussion of the government's draft in 1914, Berthold Wassermann, a Berlin patent attorney, concluded that the registrant's right had proved itself, whereas the inventor's right would only result in harmful litigation. 46 Though these articles gave a good indication of the VDDI's line on Patent Law reform, the engineering association long avoided taking an official position. When it belatedly did so in September of 1914, it adopted guidelines that conceded less to employed inventors than even the employers had been willing to yield in the course of their protracted negotiations with the government. Although the VDDI was nominally in favor of the inventor's right, it accepted an unusually broad definition of the "firm invention" that negated almost all the practical advantages of the inventor's right for the individual engineer. Inventions that resulted from the "exhortations, experiences, preparatory activities, or aids of the firm [belonged] to the proprietor of the firm." This left only a vestigial and totally harmless category of "individual-employee inventions," which the VDDI agreed qualified for compensation. 47 Considering the VDDI's position on Patent Law reform, social insurance, and other similar issues, it comes as no surprise that some of its members became frustrated. Younger VDDI members who were nonmanagerial employees in industry quickly grew tired of the association's pursuit of respectability and dreams of grandeur while failing to address in a realistic manner the problems that concerned them most. As early as 1910, a certain Diplom-lngenieur Ludwig gave his opinion of "What We Really Need!" as opposed to what was on the VDDI's wish list. The association should facilitate the young engineer's transition from the technische Hochschule to industry with a rational career-planning and placement service, Ludwig argued. The association "should be in the position to provide every young Diplom-lngenieur with a starting position that took 44 VDDIZ (1914):210-11. 45 Berthold Wangemann, "Das Recht der Angestellten an ihren Erfindungen," VDDIZ (1912): 198201; Karl Wentzel, "Das Recht der Angestellten an ihren Erfindungen," VDDIZ (1912):22831, 246-50. 46 Berthold Wassermann, "Erfinderrecht und Angestelltenerfindung nach dem veroffentlichten Entwurf eines neuen Patentgesetzes," VDDIZ (19l4):273-8. 47 VDDIZ (19l4):366-7.

Reaction of the VDDI

329

advantage of what he knew." Instead of ignoring the random and arbitrary way current graduates stumbled on jobs - jobs in which the young engineers often floundered because they were "not in the right place" — the VDDI should become a "guidepost {for the road] into practice." 48 Another Diplom-Ingenieur thought that the VDDI should spend less time in emphasizing its differences with nonacademic engineers and talking about "administrative reform"; it should do more to discourage students from going into engineering. The VDDI would have to "channel this flood," primarily by high-school counseling, "in order to avoid overproduction of academically trained engineers - an unhealthy oversupply — or an academic proletariat will inevitably emerge." Improving career opportunities by opening up the civil service was unlikely to succeed, because the vast majority of engineering graduates were destined to go into industry regardless of the success or failure of the VDDI's initiatives in this regard. "Only if the supply diminishes and our colleagues are in a position to accept nothing but suitable jobs will our profession rise." 49 Though such complaints were not isolated occurrences, they were not typical either — at least not before the war. One would not expect them to be so in any case, because salaried Diplom-lngenieure who had reached the breaking point and were really concerned with practical solutions would have joined the Btib instead of the VDDI - which in fact many of them did. That the VDDI was quite conscious of its weakness in this regard is evident from its frequent denunciations of the Btib. Just as the Btib always ridiculed the VDDI, telling Diplom-lngenieure to organize strictly on the basis of a shared work experience, and portraying consciousness of educational differences as despicable conceit, so the VDDI tried to build cohesion around shared education, while attacking class consciousness as a mortal threat to professionalism - and if that did not work, as a danger to the survival of the German nation-state. In 1910, an outside observer explained to the VDDI that its organizational principle was flawed because a "professional association could only make identical education its point of departure when such education also determines the [class-situational] boundaries of the profession, as for example, with lawyers, physicians, or judges." Engineers were in a very different, essentially opposite, situation, which meant that it was more logical for them to organize on the union principle, at least as far as the salaried members of the profession were concerned.50 The VDDI's KarlFriedrich Steinmetz replied by depicting the Btib as a tool for nonacademic engineers to raise themselves, while lowering Diplom-lngenieure. Steinmetz 48 Dipl.-lng. Ludwig, "Was uns Not tut!" VDDIZ (1910): 183-6. 49 Carl Dressel, "Praktische Verbandsarbeit," VDDIZ (1912):351-3; also see Hermann Bock, "Die vermeintliche Zuriicksetzung des Ingenieurstandes," VDDIZ (1913): 17-1950 Hermann Beck, quoted in Steinmetz, "Der 'Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten'," 407.

330

The crucible: technical careers and managerial power

also drew attention to the union's failure to deal with professionalization issues such as admission standards for higher technical education, protection of academic degrees, emancipation from the humiliations of compulsory social insurance, and so forth. 51 In a series of articles for the right-wing press in 1911, the VDDI, in the guise of an anonymous Diplom-Ingenieur, referred to the Btib as a motley crew of "assistants, lower employees, draftsmen, copyists and multiplied mechanics," as "Social Democratic draftsmen and copyists," and as "apostles of radicalism," and it described Diplom-Ingenieure who belonged to the union as "derelicts" (verkommene Existenzen).32 In 1912, Diplom-Ingenieur Alfred Berlowitz, the new editor of the VDDI Zeitschrift, criticized the Btib and rejected the union model for academically certified engineers on the grounds that they were destined to climb to the highest managerial positions in industry and belonged to the higher, academic professions, which rejected the "egotistical politics of class." 53 In 1914, Alexander Lang contended that "all Diplom-Ingenieure who have a halfway decent reputation realize that operating with the notion of class conflict amounts to [professional] suicide," because it blocked the "road to the industrial leadership they are destined to follow." 54 It was the VDDI itself that exposed as deliberate misrepresentation these portrayals of the Btib as a collection of inferior technicians with whom real engineers would have nothing to do. After World War I, the pro-union tendencies of salaried VDDI members temporarily became so strong that the engineering association suffered a debilitating decline in membership, almost went bankrupt, and came close to falling apart. Reaching out to the industrial employers for help, the association cast itself as the "last bulwark" against radicalism and socialism among salaried engineers. In the final decade before the war, the VDDI wrote to the Society of German Employer Associations in 1924, vast numbers of students at the technische Hochschulen had signed up with the Btib. Likewise, "many Diplom-Ingenieure in industry [had] made themselves available to this union - the Bund of technical-industrial employees - and quickly assumed its leading positions." 55 Another VDDI publication pointed out that after the Great War, the union principle became so popular that it threatened to "boil over." The brave VDDI had not surrendered to the temptation to go the same di51 Ibid., passim. 52 Hans Mederle, "An die Kollegen im Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure," DIBZ (1911):359; also see Btib, Der Diplom-Ingenieur als Arbeitnehmer, 6, 31—5, passim. 53 Alfred Berlowitz, "Der Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure und die Gewerkschaftsfrage," VDDIZ(1912):209-l4. 54 Alexander Lang, "Jahresbericht 1913," VDDIZ (1914): 165-78. 55 VDDI to Vereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeber-Verbande, 3 October 1924, 1-2, HA/GHH, Nr. 4001213/0a.

Reaction of the VDDI

3 31

rection. "True, we do not want to deny [that the association] only rejected that new path, that 'reform' of uniting [with other organizations], after fierce debates - the problem, after all, touched its vital nerve." But the VDDI had remained "true to the principle on which it was founded, the association and unification of academically certified engineers [Techniker] without regard for their position in economic life, a professional society that ignores socioeconomic differences [paritdtischer Berufsverband],"36 The engineers of the VDDI came together in their particular association "because we are convinced that in this way alone and in no other way can we do our duty! Our theme is not to reject merging with the totality of the Volk - no, precisely because we want to be a viable part of the totality of the Volk, precisely because we do not line up with one of the groups into which the Volk is nowadays divided, do we choose the path of the professional, inclusive organization that has no fronts against one direction or the other!" Thus, it was not selfish motives and egotism that guided the VDDI's members, but "rather the wish to serve - to serve our Volk, our VW&f-state!"57 That was written in 1921. The industrialists were not unresponsive to the VDDI's pleas, but there was only so much they would and could do to address its long list of grievances.58 Nor could they overcome the antiplutocratic and anticapitalist attitudes that were deeply ingrained in many self-consciously professional engineers. In the end, therefore, the VDDI, with its increasingly messianic expectations, was likely to look for a very different savior. The passage cited earlier gives a good indication of the direction in which it would look to find him. To follow this intriguing development further is an important project, but not one that can be embarked on here. To describe the specific context from which it emerged in the decades before the war has been the purpose of this discussion. 56 Dr.-Ing. E. H. Schulz, Der Verband Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure im heutigen Stoat (Essen: Deutsche

Bergwerkszeitung, GmbH, 1922), 2-3. 57 Schulz, Der Verband Deutscher Diplom-lngenieure, 3. 58 Dr. Tanzler to Director Holz, 9 January 1925, positive assessment of VDDI and willingness to offer limited help, HA/GHH, Nr. 4001213/Oa.

Epilogue

The history of the engineering profession did not end in August of 1914, though at first it may have seemed that way. The national emergency occupied center stage, rather than the paper conflicts and political struggles with management, with other engineers, and with entrenched elites in state and society. As the war dragged on, however, old hostilities reasserted themselves. The VDDI soon established a relief agency for wounded and disabled veterans — so long as they were academically certified Diplomor Doktor-lngenieure. Provoking widespread resentment, this status-based charity was merely the prelude to a concerted attempt at closure and monopoly. In 1917, after Austria passed an ordinance restricting the designation Ingenieur to graduates of its technische Hochschulen, the VDDI launched an all-out campaign for a similar law in Germany. The effort failed, owing to determined opposition from industrial management, state authorities, and nonacademic engineers, who for various reasons all preferred a much broader definition of the profession.1 Again, during the revolution of 1918-19, the rigid fronts of the prewar period and the last years of the war temporarily broke down. This fluidity led to efforts to make a new beginning, but soon the old cleavages and differences, albeit with certain modifications, resurfaced once more. Though important work has been done on the history of engineers during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, the profession's history after 1914 remains to be written. 2 From today's vantage point it is clear, 1 Wiittembergischer Goethebund, ed., Milderung der Klassengegensdtze unddie Bestrebungen zum Schutze des Ingenieurtitels (Stuttgart: Verlag von Konrad Wittwer, 1919), 1-4, passim. 2 Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Crisis of German Professions 1918—1933," Journal of Contemporary History 20, 3(July 1985):379-98; Jarausch is currently researching the same topic; Gerd Hortleder, Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970); Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1974); see the essays by Lothar Burchardt, Wolfgang Konig, Erwin Viefhaus, Rainer Stahlschmidt, and Ludwig in Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte

333

334

Epilogue

however, that engineers eventually overcame the crises of the early twentieth century and that they have continued on their long-term trajectory of ascent, slowly dissolving the old dualisms of theory and practice, status and class, Bildung and Besitz, state and society, "cultivation" and the common man. The term Ingenieur in the Federal Republic is now a protected and unambiguous professional designation, but it includes the group referred to in this study as nonacademic engineers. Ingenieur is strictly reserved for those with formal schooling and certification: graduates of the technische Universitdten, which continue to produce the Dipt. Ing. and the Dr. -Ing., and alumni of the MBSs, which evolved into Fachhochschulen and whose products are now known as Ingenieur (grad.).5 Despite their impressive academization, these latter institutions still do not require the Abitur for admission, and students typically gain entry by way of the so-called second educational route. In the end, therefore, Germany's nonacademic engineers have succeeded in becoming an integral part of the profession that the technische Hochschule graduates, emulating other, elite professionals, strove so ardently to reserve for themselves. If the inclusion of nonacademic engineers is evidence of a certain democratization, it is also true that there are limits to this development and that it remains subject to reversals. German industry's institutional rigidification and regulatory syndrome of the last few decades, for example, have undoubtedly contributed to a revival of old divisions and to a widening of the hierarchical distance between the Dip/. -Ing. and the Ingenieur (grad.). It is impossible to tell whether this condition is permanent or temporary. What can be said is that pulses and cycles, rather than unilinear "professionalization," appear to be the norm in the history of professions. During the nineteenth century and deep into the twentieth century, engineering was characterized by the clash between two powerful forces: a professionalization drive aiming at closure and educational certification, and an opposing tendency to widen access and break down functionally unwarranted barriers. The outcome was an amalgamation of both — a combination symptomatic of the changes in the social order effected by industrial capitalism. Traditionally reserved for those with higher education and "cultivation," "professional" as applied to engineers was redefined to include the nonacademic engineers. To be sure, ideology and politics were involved, but ultimately this development rested on the bedrock of industrial and business experience, as well as on the evergrowing importance of specialized competence. Those who knew how

des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856-1981, ed. Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981). 3 H. Griinewald, ed., Die neuen Ingenieurgesetze der Lander der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Diisseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1971), 1-4, passim.

Epilogue

335

were the most valuable and best engineers, and this was not strictly a function of higher education and the trappings of classical learning. It is true that the educational system changed to accommodate these developments, but, as other inquiries have also demonstrated, it did so with great reluctance and in a manner calculated to reproduce as much as possible the preindustrial social hierarchy. In the long run, that strategy had ironic consequences. Forced to tolerate newer and different forms of education, the classically educated elites least willing to adapt actually contributed to their own displacement by leaving to others those fields most central to the maintenance and further development of industrial society. The counterpart to the relative openness of engineering has been a degree of internal fragmentation and diversity still much greater than in many other professions. Even so, most other professions also show signs of having incorporated other, competing principles of group formation and organization. For example, just as market rationality, class consciousness, and differences in employment situations have become more prominent in the traditionally bureaucratic professions of countries such as Germany, so market-based professions in countries like the United States have had to contend with growing bureaucratization.4 Similarly, evergrowing specialization and functional differentiation are corrosive of occupational solidarity everywhere, tending to produce the internal gradation, segmentation, and balkanization long associated with engineers. The picture that emerges resembles a spectrum of different admixtures of status and class: a concept of profession that in its top ranks blends with capitalist wealth and power and at the low end merges with proletarian or working-class features. None of the original types survives in its pure form. As this study has shown, the transformation into a modern profession was not easy. It took the German engineers on a long and painful detour, a cyclical countertrend of deprofessionalization, crisis, oversupply, and political mobilization. Set in its own particular historical context, this development followed a course that cannot be separated from the larger social and political history of Germany in the twentieth century. Without reconstructing the intervening history, one must, of course, remain tentative about making connections between nineteenth-century developments and the calamities of the first half of this century. But the patterns analyzed here had a great deal of momentum and would not vanish overnight. The surplus of engineering personnel, for example, lasted right 4 This theme is developed more fully in Kees Gispen, "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, 3(Summer 1988):548-72, and in the literature cited there.

336

Epilogue

up to 1933. 5 Moreover, it would be wrong — even impossible — to describe all these earlier developments without thinking about how they related to, and help explain, what came after — especially when it concerns as central an event in German history as the Nazi experience. With that proviso, it is useful to make a final observation. It is a commonplace of German historiography that industrialization and the concomitant social dislocations gave rise to right-wing radicalism among the "losers" in this revolutionary transformation. It is less well understood why "winners" such as engineers would adopt similar modes of behavior. Implicit answers were given in the preceding chapters. In the first place, one must be very careful about ascribing success to "the engineers" in the years before World War I. Subgroups such as managers and technical educators may have prospered, but most others had good reason to be discontented. Stirred by the technocratic visions of their teachers, the academically trained engineers in the VDDI's camp turned into ambivalent enemies of the established order before 1914, though leaving no doubt about their hostility toward the left and democracy. This was because the "system" did not adjust rapidly enough for their rising expectations — in spite of considerable success in becoming part of the Bildungsburgertum, at least nominally. They were susceptible to embracing a right-wing critique of the existing order because for them, just as for the Social Democratic masses on the left, the doors to true membership in their society remained mostly closed; what they considered their due remained beyond reach. At the same time, and like so many other professionals of the period, they worried deeply about the devaluation of their higher education and about the effects of mass education. In contrast, the more democratically inclined and class-oriented engineers in the Btib's camp were long immune to right-wing politics. Even before 1914, however, there were already signs that the solutions they entertained were less than effective. Therefore, for unionized engineers, too, the door was left open to contemplate experimenting with different approaches. 5 DATSCH AB 13, Der Nachwuchsmangel an Hochschul- und Fachscbul-lngenieuren des Maschinenbaues, der Elektrotechnik und des Bauwesens (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1938), 1-24, tables; DATSCH, ed., Der Ingenieur: Ratgeber fur die Berufswahl: Fuhrer in den Beruf (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1933), 1-3.

Appendix

Table 1. Enrollments at Prussian MBSs and related schools for the metals industry

Year

HMBS

LMBS

Other

Subtotal

Eve./Sunday

1887-8 1888-9 1889-90 1890-1 1891-2 1892-3

1893-4 1894-5

1895-6 1896-7 1897-8 1898-9 1899-1900 1900-1 1901-2 1902-3 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8 1908-9 1909-10 1910-11 1911-12 1912-13 1913-14

795 946 978

1,028 959 950 930 927 930

1,019 993 1,095 1,200

947 840 841 855 800 808 843

249 317 286 277 330

1,048 1,111 1,200 1,230 1,295 1,349

390 422 415 425 384 433

219

233

1,788 1,961 2,019 2,068 2,200 2,045 2,035 2,103 2,365 2,463 2,634 2,648 2,774 2,982

574 678 811

942 855 1,149 1,222 1,366 2,167 2,374 2,458 2,652 2,873 2,924

Total 197" 212" 240" 278" 332* 396* 472" 587* 731* 909* 1,132* 1,408 1,631 2,362 2,639 2,830 3,010 3,055 3,194 3,257 3,469 4,532 4,837 5,092 5,300 5,647 5,904 continued

337

338

Appendix

Notes to Table 1 {cont.) "Includes estimate for MBS Cologne enrollment at 20% of enrollment figures for five schools at Iserlohn, Remscheid, Bochum-Duisburg, Dortmund, and Magdeburg. ^Estimate based on calculating the average annual growth rate between known years. Sources: 1887-94, ZSTA II, Rep. 120, E. IV, Nr. 2, vol. 1 (Statistik der gewerblichen Fachschulen, Jan. 1877-Oct. 1902), Bl. 83-92; 1894-1901, ZSTA II, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 5, vol. 3 (Maschinenbauschulen im Allgemeinen, Jan. 1902-Ende April 1903), Bl. 17; 1901-14, ZSTA II, Rep. 120, E. IV. 1, Nr. 2, vol. 2, Bl. 70, 155, vol. 3, Bl. 182, vol. 4, Bl. 272-92, vol. 5, Bl. 5-6, 33, 59-61, 65, 153, 166. Table 2. Enrollments at proprietary schools for mechanical and electrical engineering, 1887-1911" Year Before 1887-8 1888-9 1889-90 1890-1 1891-2 1892-3 1893-4 1894-5 1895-6 1896-7 1897-8 1898-9 1899-1900 1900-1 1901-2 1902-3 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8 1908-9 1909-10 1910-11 1911-12

Number of schools

Enrollment 1

Enrollment 2b

6 6

1,248 1,248 1,456 1,664 1,664 1,664 1,872 2,080 2,708 3,120 3,744 4,160 4,160 4,368 4,368 4,368 4,368 4,784 4,784 4,992 4,992 5,408 5,616 5,824 n.a.

1,248 1,348 1,456 1,664 1,731 1,800 1,872 2,080 2,708 3,120 3,744 4,160 4,263 4,368 4,466 4,571 4,676 4,784 4,887 4,992 5,196 5,408 5,616 5,824 n.a.

7 8 8 8

9 10 13 15 18 20 20 21 21 21 21 23 23 24 24 26 27 28

n.a.

"The figures in Table 2 represent estimates only, as it was not possible to obtain accurate enrollment figures for the proprietary schools. The DATSCH estimated that in 1910 approximately 4,000 students were enrolled in 23 state schools and 6,000 in 32 proprietary schools; see DATSCH AB 2, 6-9, 129. An informed estimate of 1898 mentioned 19

Appendix

339

Notes to Table 2 (cont.) proprietary schools with about 4,000 students that year; see VERH. (1898):47, Bl. 64. A 1910 pamphlet by Martin Dosmar, Technische Mittelschulen, reprint from Jahrbuch fur die soziale Bewegung der Industriebeamten, No. 4 (Berlin: Industriebeamten-Verlag, 1910), lists 38 proprietary schools with a total enrollment of 5,824 in 1910. The founding dates for 28 of the 38 schools are also given. Dividing 28 into 5,823 yields an average enrollment per school of 208 students, which, if multiplied by the number of schools in existence at any given date, makes possible construction of the table. The graph representing proprietary school enrollments in the text, Figure 8.1, is based on "enrollment 2." * Average annual growth rate between previous change and next change in number of schools. Table 3. Enrollments at German Technische Hochschulen, 1870-1914 Year 1871-2 1872-3 1873-4 1874-5 1875-6 1876-7 1877-8 1878-9 1879-80 1880-1 1881-2 1882-3 1883-4 1884-5 1885-6 1886-7 1887-8 1888-9 1889-90 1890-1 1891-2 1892-3 1893-4 1894-5 1895-6 1896-7 1897-8 1898-9 1899-1900

Regular students

Total"

3,752 4,163 4,592 5,071 5,449 5,035 4,621 4,207 3,793 3,377 3,211 3,045 2,878 2,713 2,549 2,662 2,775 2,887 3,328 3,769 4,209 4,818 5,419 6,024 6,629 7,232 8,074 8,784 9,777

4,710 5,223 5,635 6,017 6,395 6,417 5,919 5,474 4,899 4,394 3,917 3,691 3,677 3,685 3,791 3,907 4,160 4,515 4,670 5,333 6,205 6,744 7,824 8,641 9,354 10,345 11,226 12,211 13,546

340

Appendix Table 3. (cont.) Year

1900-1 1901-2 1902-3 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8 1908-9 1909-10 1910-11 1911-12 1912-13 1913-14

Regular students

Total"

10,772 12,043 12,687 12,611 12,273 12,042 11,768 11,427 11,146 10,999 11,046 11,095 10,817 11,168

4,966 16,591 16,826 15,945 5,842 15,764 15,440 15,700 15,781 16,071 16,568 16,326 16,572 16,955

"Regular students, auditors, and guest participants. Sources: Regular students, Frank F. Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in

Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974), 176, 186. Total attendance: Das Unterrichtswesen im deutschen Reich, Vol. 4: Die technischen Hochschulen im deutschen Reich, ed.

Wilhelm Lexis (Berlin: Verlag von A. Asher & Co., 1904), 45-6; DATSCH, Abhandlungen und Berichte tiber technisches Schulwesen, Vol. 4: Berichte aus dem Gebiete des technischen Hoch-

schulwesens (Berlin: Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1912), statistical appendixes following 104; Harmut Titze, Das Hochschulstudium in Preussen und Deutschland 1820-1944

tingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 44-7.

(Got-

Bibliographical note

The literature on which this book is based can be grouped into four broad categories: interpretations of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Germany, works on the history of German education, studies in professionalization and the professions, and material on engineers. It is useful to mention in each of these areas some of the important monographs and those studies and collections of documents that have most influenced my thinking. With respect to general interpretations, my "elective affinities" are in the first place with Max Weber's approach to the problems of rationalization, capitalism, class, status, and power. Central to the transformations that Germany underwent in the nineteenth century, Weber's themes also touch on problems of bureaucracy, education, professionalization, and the role of specialized technical knowledge in society. Of the vast Weber literature, I found most helpful his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, available in English as Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); the classic collection of essays, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford University Press, 1946); and Reinhard Bendix's biography, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1962). I have also drawn on the works of other historians and sociologists influenced by Weber: Hans Rosenberg's Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660—1815 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) and Rosenberg's Grosse Depression undBismarckzeit: Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967); Ralf Dahrendorf s Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969); Robert K. Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1957); Jiirgen Kocka's voluminous writings, among the best of which remains his pioneering Unternehmensverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens 1847—1914: Zum Verbaltnis von 341

342

Bibliographical note

Kapitalismus und Burokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Klett, 1969); Hans-Ulrich Wehler's work, summed up conveniently in The German Empire, 1871-1918 (Leamington Spa/Dover: Berg, 1985); and James Sheehan's German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 1978), as well as an anthology Sheehan edited, Imperial Germany (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976). Also valuable is Helmuth Plessner's Die Verspdtete Nation (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969). My understanding of the Prussian reforms of the early nineteenth century and of the Vormdrz is largely based on Reinhart Koselleck's magisterial Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791 bis 1848 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1967). Crucial also remain Wolfgang Sauer's "Das Problem des deutschen Nationalstaates" and many of the other essays in Moderne deutsche Sozialgeschichte, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968). Explicitly or implicitly, most of these works share as an organizing principle the notion that the course of German history was marked by a peculiar divergence from "the West," a view with a long and formidable pedigree in German historiography. A variation on this theme was first articulated in English by Thorstein Veblen in his 1915 study, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968). Other classic statements in English are Fritz Stern's I960 article, "The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German," reprinted in his The Failure of llliberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 1975), and Hajo Holborn's "German Idealism in the Light of Social History," in his Germany & Europe: Historical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Book, 1971). An excellent study devoted entirely to this theme is Bernd Faulenbach's Ideologie des deutschen Weges (Munich: Beck, 1980). Having hardened into a "new orthodoxy," the uSonderweg thesis" has come under attack from Geoff Eley, David Blackbourn, Richard J. Evans, and others. Good starting points for their stimulating views are Blackbourn and Eley's The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Oxford University Press, 1984), Eley's From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), and Evans's Rethinking German History: Nineteenth Century Germany and the Origins of the Third Reich (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987). On German industrialization, I profited most from reading Alexander Gerschenkron's "Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective" and other articles in his collection of essays bearing the same title (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1966); David Landes's The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 1969); Knut Borchardt's "The Industrial Revolution in Germany 1700—1914,"

Bibliographical note

343

in the Fontana Economic History of Europe, ed. Carlo M. Cipolla, vol. 4, pt. 1 (London: Collins-Fontana, 1973), and his "Wirtschaftliches Wachstum und Wechsellagen 1800-1914," in Handbuch der deutschen Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, ed. Hermann Aubin and Wolfgang Zorn, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976); Charles P. Kindleberger's "Germany's Overtaking of England, 1806-1914," Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 3, 2-3(1975); Rolf Wagenfiihr's die Industriewirtschaft: Entwicklungstendenzen der deutschen und internationalen Industrieproduktion I860 bis 1932 (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1933); different writings of Karl Erich Born, Wolfram Fischer and Karl Hardach; Ilja Mieck's Preussische Gewerbepolitik in Berlin, 1806-1844: Staatshilfe und Privatinitiative zwischen Merkantilismus und Liberalismus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965); and, despite limited analytical value, Hans Joachim Straube's Die Gewerbefbrderung Preussens in der ersten Ha'lfte des 19. Jahrhunderts mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Regierungsmassnahmen zur Fbrderung der Industrie durch Erziehung und Fortbildung (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1933) for its rich documentation. I also learned much from three standard textbooks: Hans Mottek, Walter Becker, and Alfred Schroter, Winschaftsgeschichte Deutschlands, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Berlin: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1974-6); Gustav Stolper, Karl Hauser, and Knut Borchardt, The German Economy 1870 to the Present (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967); andj. H. Clapham, Economic Development of France and Germany 1815—1914, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1968). Valuable for an understanding of the development of the German mechanical engineering industry are Ernst Barth, Entwicklungslinien der deutschen Maschinenbauindustrie von 1870 bis 1914 (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1973), and Alfred Schroter and Walter Becker, Die deutsche Maschinenbauindustrie in der industriellen Revolution (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962). On the topics of social mobility and "modernization," the many different publications of Hartmut Kaelble and Hans-Ulrich Wehler are essential. With respect to "organized capitalism" and "corporatism," I learned most from four collections of essays: Heinrich August Winkler, ed., Organisierter Kapitalismus: Voraussetzungen und Anfdnge (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974); Hans-Jiirgen Puhle, ed., Kapitalismus, Korporatismus, Keynesianismus, in Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 2(1984); Ulrich von Alemann, ed., Neokorporatismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1981); and Suzanne Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe: Pluralism, Corporatism, and the Transformation of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1981). For the period after World War I, the studies of Charles Maier, Philippe Schmitter, and Gerhard Lehmbruch are indispensable. My knowledge of the history of German education has been shaped by an effort to understand the engineers' position in a society permeated by

344

Bibliographical note

an ideology of Bildung and classical education. I found that whereas there is an abundance of material on the universities, general secondary education — especially the Gymnasium — and the classically educated elites (Bildungsburgertum), much less has been written about vocational, technical, and scientific education. In the former area, there is much new work of high quality. On the American side should be mentioned Konrad H. Jarausch's Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany: The Rise of Academic llliberalism (Princeton University Press, 1982), James C. Albisetti's Secondary School Reform in Imperial Germany (Princeton University Press, 1983), Anthony J. La Vopa's Prussian Schoolteachers: Profession and Office (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), La Vopa's Grace, Talent, and Merit: Poor Students, Clerical Careers, and Professional Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Charles E. McClelland's State, Society, and University in Germany, 1700 to 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1980), Fritz Ringer's The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890—1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), and Ringer's Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979). An excellent new collection of essays on secondary education in comparative perspective is Detlef K. Miiller, Fritz Ringer, and Brian Simon, eds., The Rise of the Modern Educational System: Structural Change and Social Reproduction 1870-1920 (Cambridge University Press, 1987). On the German side, there now is the massive "Quakri" project, the multivolume Datenhandbuch zur deutschen Bildungsgeschichte directed by Detlef K. Miiller, Bernd Zymek, Hans-Georg Herrlitz, and Hartmut Titze (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987-). Both Titze and Miiller have done important earlier work in the history of education. Titze wrote Politisierung der Erziehung: Untersuchungen uber die soziale und politsche Funktion der Erziehung von der Aufkldrung bis zum Hochkapitalismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Athenaum Fischer, 1973) and a number of articles on enrollment cycles, now synthesized and expanded in volume one of the Datenhandbuch, Das Hochschulstudium in Preussen und Deutschland 1820-1944 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). Miiller wrote Sozialstruktur und Schulsystem: Aspekte zum Strukturwandel des Schulwesens im 19. Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977). His most recent work, written with Bernd Zymek, is Sozialgeschichte und Statistik des Schulsystems in den Staaten des Deutschen Reiches, 1800-1945, vol. 2, pt. 1, of the Datenhandbuch (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). Unfortunately, some of this work has appeared only recently, long after I had embarked on my own study. It also deals very imperfectly with technical education. I have nevertheless tried to incorporate its findings. A somewhat different perspective on the history of education can be found in Werner Conze and Jiirgen Kocka, eds., Bildungsburgertum im 19.

Bibliographical note

345

Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985-8), whose vol. 1, Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen (1985), is a collection of important essays in English and German centering on the linkages between the history of education, the theme of professionalization, and the rise of the educated middle class in the nineteenth century. I also profited from the excellent chapters in Jiirgen Kocka, ed., Burger und Burgerlichkeit in 19- Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987); Klaus Vondung's Das Wilhelminische Bildungsburgertum (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976); Lenore O'Boyle's "Klassische Bildung und soziale Struktur in Deutschland zwischen 1800 und 1848," Historische Zeitschrift 207, 3(1968):584-608; and Peter Lundgreen's Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Schule im Ueberblick, Teil 1: 1770-1918 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980). Numerous monographs more narrowly focused on specific educational institutions and some older studies also proved to be valuable: Ursula Aumiiller et al., Schule und Staat im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Zur Sozialgeschichte der Schule in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1974); J. Derbolav, ed., Wesen und Werden der Realschule: Beitrage zur Theorie und Geschichte unseres Bildungswesens (Bonn: Bouvier, I960); Karl-Ernst Jeismann, Das preussische Gymnasium in Staat und Gesellschaft: Die Entstehung des Gymnasiums als Schule des Staates und der Gebildeten, 1787—1817 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1974); Margret Kraul, Das deutsche Gymnasium, 1780-1980 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1984), Wilhelm Lexis, ed., Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, 4 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1904); Friedrich Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universitdten vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart, 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Veit, 1896—7); Hans Heinrich Plickat, Die Schule als Instrument des sozialen Aufstiegs (Weinheim/Bergstrasse: Belz, 1959); Wilhelm Roessler, Die Entstehung des modernen Erziehungswesen in Deutschland(Stuttgart: Klett, 1961); Helmut Schelsky, Einsamkeit und Freiheit: Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universitdt undihre Reformen (Reinbeck: Rohwohlt, 1963); Schelsky's Schule undErziehung in der industriellen Gesellschaft (Wiirzburg: Werkbund Verlag, 1957); Eduard Spranger, Hochschule und Gesellschaft (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1973); and Hans Weil, Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsprinzips (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1930). In contrast to the large body of recent scholarship on humanistic education, comparable work on German technical education is rather sparse, and a large research agenda remains open. The new history of the Technische Universitat Berlin, Reinhard Riirup, ed., Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Beitrage zur Geschichte der Technischen Universitdt Berlin 1797—1979, 2 vols. (Berlin: Springer, 1979), is a major achievement in this regard. There are several other recent, commissioned histories of the technical universities that contain valuable information. Also of considerable im-

346

Bibliographical note

portance are Karl-Heinz Manegold's Universitdt, Technische Hochschule und Industrie: Ein Beitrag zur Emanzipation der Technik im 19. Jahrhundert unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Bestrebungen Felix Kleins (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970), Peter Lundgreen's Techniker in Preussen wdhrendderfrtihen Industrialisierung: Ausbildung und Berufsfeld einer entstehenden sozialen Gruppe (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1975), and Lundgreen's Bildung und Wirtschaftswachstum im Industrialisierungsprozess des 19. ]ahrhunderts (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1973), even though the manifest focus of Lundgreen's two studies is on topics other than technical education. The same is true for Robert Locke's The End of Practical Man: Entrepreneurship and Higher Education in Germany, France and Great Britain, 1880-1940 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1984), and Wolfdietrich Jost's Gewerbliche Schulen und politische Macht: Zur Entwicklung des gewerblichen Schulwesens in Preussen in der Zett von 1850-1880 (Weinheim/Basel: Belz, 1982). Of Wilhelm Treue's many writings, the best on technical education is "Die Geschichte des technischen Unterrichts," in Festschrift zur 125. Jahrfeier der Technischen Hochschule Hannover (Hanover: Technische Hochschule, 1956), pp. 9-69. Franz Schnabel's Die Anfdnge des technischen Hochschulwesens (Karlsruhe: Muller, 1925) is still valuable. Ambitious in principle, but not particularly successful, is Frank Pfetsch, Zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftspolitik in Deutschland, 1750-1914 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974). Better is Lothar Burchardt's Wissenschaftspolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland: Vorgeschichte, Grundung undAufbau der Kaisser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975). Useful for factual information are Gustav Griiner's Die Entwicklung der hbheren technischen Fachschulen im deutschen Sprachgebiet (Brunswick: Westermann, 1967), and Georg Volkenandt, Die deutschen "hb'heren technischen Lehranstalten" unter besonderer Berucksichtigung ihrer geschichtlicher Entwicklung und der Probleme des Mittelschulingenieurs vom Standpunkt der Wirtschaft (Jena: Neuenhahn, 1936). Other authors who address the subject of German technical education in the context of entrepreneurship, social structure, economic growth, or the engineering profession include Goran Ahlstrom, "Higher Technical Education and the Engineering Profession in France and Germany during the Nineteenth Century," Economy and History 2 1 , 2(1978):51-88; HansJoachim Braun, "Methodenprobleme der Ingenieurwissenschaft, 1850 bis 1900," Technikgeschichte 44, 1(1977): 1-18; Wolfgang Konig, "Stand und Aufgaben der Forschung zur Geschichte der deutschen Polytechnischen Schulen und Technischen Hochschulen im 19. Jahrhundert," Technikgeschichte 48, l(1981):47-67; and Konig's "Wissenschaft und Praxis: Schliisselkategorien fur die Entwicklung des deutschen technischen Ausbildungssysterns," Mitteilungen der Technischen Universitdt CaroloWilhelmina zu Braunschweig 20(1985):30-6. Also valuable is Jiirgen

Bibliographical note

347

Kocka's "Bildung, soziale Schichtung und soziale Mobilitat im Deutschen Kaiserreich: Am Beispiel der gewerblich-technischen Ausbildung," in Industrielle Gesellschaft und politisches System: Beitrage zur politischen Sozialgeschichte, ed. Dirk Stegman, Bernd-Jiirgen Wendt, and Peter-Christian Witt (Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, 1978), pp. 297-313. In contrast to the lack of research by scholars on this side of the Atlantic about German technical education, there are now several good studies of French technical training. Charles P. Kindleberger, John Hubbel Weiss, Terry Shinn, C. Rod Day, Harry W. Paul, Robert Fox, George Weisz, James M. Edmonson, and Robert R. Locke have all done important work in this area. To fill some of the gaps, I have used the numerous but often fragmented writings about technical and "modern" (realistisch) education that date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as reports, studies, memoirs, autobiographies, and white papers by government agencies and private associations. Articles in technical periodicals and studies by the VDI, the DATSCH, and the Prussian government (many of the latter in the Merseburg archives) were most helpful in this regard. Of the older literature I also found useful Rudolf Hoffmann's "Geschichte des Realschulwesens in Deutschland," edited by K. A. Schmid, and Gustav Holzmiiller's "Das technische Schulwesen," both in Geschichte der Erziehung vom Anfang an bis auf unsere Zeit, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1901); Oskar Simon's Die Fachbildung des preussischen Gewerbe- und Handelsstandes im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Mittier, 1903); Das technische Hochschulwesen (vol. 4 of Wilhelm Lexis's Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, cited earlier); Abhandlungen und Berichte iiber technisches Schulwesen, published by the Deutscher Ausschuss fur technisches Schulwesen between 1910 and 1939; William E. Wickenden, A Comparative Study of Engineering Education in the United States and Europe (Lancaster, Pa.: Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, 1929); and the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education's Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education, 1923-1929, 2 vols. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1930). The sociological literature on the professions is huge, much of it not very satisfactory. I have developed my own ideas on the topic both in the introduction to this study and in "German Engineers and American Social Theory: Historical Perspectives on Professionalization," Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 30, 3( July 1988):550-74.1 learned most from Magali Sarfatti Larson's The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); A. L. Mok's Beroepen in Actie: Bijdrage tot een Beroepen-sociologie (Meppel: Boom, 1973); Graeme Salaman's Community and Occupation: An Exploration of WorklLeisure Relationships (Cambridge University Press, 1974); Hansjiirgen Daheim's Der Beruf in der modernen Gesellschaft (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970); Terence J. Johnson's Professions and Power (London: Macmillan, 1972); Dietrich

348

Bibliographical note

Rueschemeyer's "Professionalisierung: Theoretische Probleme fur die vergleichende Geschichtsforschung," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 6, 3(1980):311—25; and Rueschemeyer's "Rekrutierung, Ausbildung und Berufsstruktur: Zur Soziologie der Anwaltschaft in den Vereinigten Staaten und Deutschland," Kblner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 5(1961): 122-44; Randall Collins's The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (New York: Academic Press, 1979); Kenneth Prandy's Professional Employees: A Study of Scientists and Engineers (London: Faber & Faber, 1965); Geoffrey Millerson's The Qualifying Associations: A Study in Professionalization (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964); William J. Goode's "Community within a Community: The Professions," American Sociological Review 22(April 1957): 194—200; Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss's "Professions in Process," American Journal of Sociology 66( January 196l):325—34; and Thomas L. Haskell, ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). Some excellent case studies and theoretical work on the professions are contained in Conze and Kocka, eds., Bildungssystem und Professionalisierung in internationalen Vergleichen, vol. 1 of Bildungsburgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. There are few monographs on German engineers as a historical problem, and with the exception of this study, none in English. Jeffrey Herfs interesting Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984) is tangentially related but primarily concerned with other matters; its single chapter on engineers is both derivative and misleading. Works in German include Gerd Hortleder's Das Gesellschaftsbild des Ingenieurs: Zum politischen Verhalten der Technischen Intelligenz in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970); Hortleder's Ingenieure in der Industriegesellschaft: Zur Soziologie der Technik und der naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Intelligenz im offentlichen Dienst und in der Industrie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973); Wolfgang Jonas's Die Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure: Erster Abschnitt 1856 bis 1880 (Habilitationsschrift der Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultat der Humboldt-Universitat Berlin; 1962); Hans Schimank's Der Ingenieur: Entwicklungsweg eines Berufes bis Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: BundVerlag, 1961); Karl-Heinz Ludwig's Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Diisseldorf: Droste, 1974); Karl-Heinz Ludwig and Wolfgang Konig, eds., Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure 1856-1981 (Dusseldorf: VDI-Verlag, 1981); Peter Lundgreen's two studies cited with the literature on technical education; and Lars U. Scholl's Ingenieure in der Fruhindustrialisierung: Staatliche und private Techniker im Konigreich Hannover und an der Ruhr (1815—1873) (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978). In terms of periodical literature, the journal Technikgeschichte probably remains the single most important source of

Bibliographical note

349

information, but there is a growing body of excellent work in different journals and as chapters in books. Authors in this category include HansPaul Bahrdt, Hans-Joachim Braun, Hans Ebert, Karin Hausen, Volker Hunecke, Helmut Klages and Gerd Hortleder, Rene Konig, Wolfgang Konig, Peter Lundgreen, Karl-Heinz Manegold, Kurt Mauel, Lars Scholl, Rainer Stahlschmidt, Wigand Siebel, Manfred Spath, Rolf Thorstendahl, Wilhelm Treue, and Erwin Viefhaus. The small number of books on German engineers contrasts with the rich monographic literature on engineers in countries such as France, the United States, and Britain. In the United States, especially, there are several good studies. I benefited from Daniel Calhoun's The American Civil Engineer: Origins and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, I960); Monte Calvert's The Mechanical Engineer in America: 1830—1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Edwin T. Layton Jr.'s The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1971); Robert Perrucci and Joel E. Gerstl's Profession Without Community: Engineers in American Society (New York: Random House, 1969); The Engineers and the Social System, Perrucci and Gerstl, eds. (New York: Wiley, 1969); Bruce Sinclair's A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1880—1980 (University of Toronto Press, 1980); Thorstein Veblen's The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking, 1933); Robert Zussman's Mechanics of the Middle Class: Work and Politics Among American Engineers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and articles by Peter Meiksins and Louis Orzack. For France, there are the works mentioned in connection with French technical education, as well as Maurice Levy-Leboyer's essay in Science, Technology and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel, ed. C. G. Bernhard et al. (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982), and now Stephen Crawford's Technical Workers in an Advanced Society: The Work, Careers and Politics of French Engineers (Cambridge University Press, 1989). British engineers are the subject of studies by, among others, Lord Hinton of Bankside, Kenneth Prandy, L. T. C. Rolt, and Chris Smith. Harry Lintsen has written a good book about Dutch engineers in the nineteenth century. The source material on German engineers is abundant, although widely scattered. Technical periodicals contain a wealth of information on engineers, who ever since the middle of the nineteenth century have been eager to write about their profession, especially about its social standing in relation to other occupations. The mining of these sources is a slow but highly rewarding process. Similarly fruitful is the perusal of an enormous pamphlet literature on engineers' socioeconomic problems and educational ambitions. The voluminous writings of Conrad Matschoss, the VDI-sponsored historian who was active from the turn of the century

350

Bibliographical note

to the 1930s — writing on engineers, the engineering association, the machine-building industry, the history of technology, and technical education — are in a category of their own. Finally, I found much that was valuable, especially for Part III of this study, in industrial archives and in the periodicals of engineers' socioeconomic and professional-interest organizations.

v^
Index

Bassermann, Ernst, 243, 255 Bau-Akademie, 30, 32, 73, 77-9, 83, 86, 87-95, 96, 99, 101 Bavaria, Landtag, 295 Bayer chemical firm, 230, 248, 272, 285 Berlepsch, Hans Hermann von, 164, 166, 168-71 Berlin Industrial Institute (Gewerbe-Institut, Gewerbe-Akademie), 28, 31-2, 34-5, 49, 51, 70-1, 73-6, 78, 83, 86, 89-90, 93, 96, 99, 101, 115; see also Bau-Akademie; Technische Hochschule Berlin

Abitur, 98, 145, 174; for engineers, 56-7, 79, 84, 88, 96, 100, 160, 321, 334 academics, overcrowding of, 167, 169; see also proletariat, academic Achenbach, Heinrich von, 95-9, 101 AEG electrical firm, 285, 301, 304 Alexander-Katz, Bruno, 287 Alexander-Katz, Richard, 266, 269 Altenstein, Karl Freiherr vom Stein zum, 25 American engineers and engineering, 9, 54, 62-3, 118-23, 152, 154-5, 165, 178 Angestellte(n), see employees, salaried; engineering employees

Angestelltenversicherungsgesetz, see pension law for Berufsstand, berufsstdndische Gesellscbaft, 22, 36,

salaried employees anticapitalism, 48, 131-4, 136-9, 142-3, 208, 331 architects, architecture, 90-1, 103—4, 106; see also civil engineers Architekten-Verein (Berlin), 91, 93, 95, 99, 102, 104, 106 artisans, artisanal classes, 16, 18—20, 22—3, 25, 27-8, 30-3, 36-7, 39, 42, 44, 64-5, 76-7, 85, 146, 161, 163, 167-8, 176, 186 Association of Bavarian Metal Industrialists (Verband Bayerischer Metalindustrieller, VBM), 289-96, 299 Association of Berlin Metal Industrialists (Verband Berliner Metalindustrieller, VBEM), 305-6 Association of German Iron and Steel Industrialists (Verein Deutscher Eisen- und StahlIndustrieller, VDESI), 137, 307 Association of German Metallurgical Engineers (Verein Deutscher Eisenhiittenleute, VDEh), 138, 140, 211 Bach, Carl von, 142, 148, 155 backwardness, economic and technological, 16, 18, 46-7, 118, 121

65, 313-14, 329-30; see also Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, 250-1 Beuth, Peter Christian Wilhelm, 27-33, 35-6, 41, 101 Bildung, 16, 19, 22-6, 37-8, 41-2, 53, 66, 70, 73, 79-82, 86, 88, 94, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107-8, 122, 126, 129, 145, 179, 223-4, 314, 334-5 Bildungsburgertum, 53, 57, 187, 224, 336 Bismarck, Otto von, 5, 148, 167-9 Blum, Emil, 119-22 Bockmann, architect, 103-4 Bonn decisions, 285—6 Borsig, August, 37, 127 Borsig engineering works, 193, 194, 206, 289, 304, 308 Borsig, Ernst von, 285, 306-7, 308, 309 bourgeois society, 45, 49, 81 Brefeld, Ludwig, 183, 185 Breitscheid, Rudolf, 293, 300 Bueck, Henri Axel, 281 Biilow bloc, 250 Biilow, Bernhard von, 249-51 building trades schools, 29, 198

351

352

Index

Bund der Industriellen (Bdl), 275, 283, 295, 328 Bund der technisch-industriellen Beamten (Btib), 201-2, 211, 223, 228, 231-8, 243-4, 251, 254, 255, 262, 263, 288, 298, 308, 310, 313, 316, 321-2, 323; and Berlin strike, 302—12; and conflict with Bavarian metal industrialists, 288-94, 296-8; and Griesches Erben, 298-301; and patent law reform, 241-2, 268—70, 272-3, 278, 281, 283-4, 286; as viewed by VDDI, 315-17, 327, 329-30; legislative demands, 239-42, 252, 255-6, 269, 273, 304-5; membership, 201, 235, 298, 302, 310, 319, 330 Bund der technischen Angestellten und Beamten (Butab), 263 Bund Deutscher Architekten, 106 Bureau of Industrial Education (BIE), 101, 164, 168, 169-70, 176, 178, 180, 1824, 186 bureaucratization, 128, 159-60, 228, 232, 267, 335 Buz, Heinrich Ritter von, 249, 290, 291, 296 calculus, 74, 153-4 Calvert, Monte, 55 Cameralism, 24 Camphausen, Otto, 98 capitalism, organized, see organized capitalism career tracking, see tracking Center of German Employer Associations, 307, 309 Center Party, 243, 245, 252, 269, 280, 284, 295, 297, 300, 311-12 Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller (CDI), 135, 168, 244, 249-50, 252-3, 256, 258-9, 271, 275, 280, 287, 308 certification, see engineers, social assimilation and social standing chemical industry, 248, 259, 270, 275, 287 "chemists' contract," 265 Chicago World's Fair, 152 civil engineers, 37, 73, 87-95, 104, 138; see also Corps of engineers and architects civil society, 19, 37, 334 closure, 61, 194-5, 318, 324, 333-4 Commercial Code (Handelsgesetzbuch), 239-40, 245-6, 251, 253, 255-6, 260 company invention or firm invention (Etablissementserfindung or Betriebserfindung), 265, 273-4, 276, 282, 286-7, 328; see also employee-invention; inventor's right; inventors, salaried; patent law; registrant's right competition clause (no-compete agreement, Konkurrenzklausel), 240-1, 247-9, 251-4, 295

conservative thought, 48 constitutional factory, 237, 256 corporatism, 212, 218-19 Corps of engineers and architects (Prussia), 83— 4, 86-95, 100, 101, 146-7, 315, 323-4 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 56 Delbruck, Clemens von, 193, 250-1, 280-1 Deutsch-Nationaler HandlungsgehilfenVerband (DHV), 252, 256, 260-2, 289, 294, 302, 327 Deutsche Bauzeitung (DBZ), 91, 93, 95, 97-8, 106 Deutsche Industriebeamten-Zeitung (DIBZ), 237, 268, 272, 275, 288, 290, 296, 298, 300, 309-10 Deutscher Ausschuss fur technisches Schulwesen (DATSCH), 210-19, 323 Deutscher Techniker-Verband (DTV), 211, 235-6, 242-3, 261, 262, 269, 281, 284, 289, 294, 297, 298, 302, 308, 310-11 Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband (DWV), 176, 211, 234, 239, 242, 262, 284, 294 Deutz engineering works, 249, 280 Diplom-lngenieur, see engineers, academically trained Driickenmiiller, Nikolaus August, 70, 74 Duisberg, Carl, 230, 272, 280, 285-7 Durkheim, Emile, 7, 9 Ecole centrale des arts et des manufactures, 35 Ecole poly technique, 37-9, 74, 92 economic growth, 31, 50, 62, 115, 116, 1645, 198, 224 education, classical secondary, 22, 29, 38, 85, 127, 144, 147-8; see also Gymnasium education, higher technical, see Bau-Akademie; Berlin Industrial Institute; Hanover Polytechnic; Karlsruhe Polytechnic; technische Hochschulen education, lower technical, see education; nonacademic engineering education, nonacademic engineering, 11, 79, 85, 101, 125, 157-9, 160-73, 175, 17980, 190-1, 194-5, 207-8, 216-17, 226; see also engineering schools, proprietary; (Higher and Lower) Machine Building Schools; Schools for Foremen; Technical Middle Schools education, nonclassical secondary, 19, 39—40, 75-7, 80-2, 99-109, 144, 147-50; see also hb'here Burgerschule; Kunth Gottlob; Oberrealschule; Provincial Trade Schools education, primary, see Volksschule education, specialized occupational (Fachbil22, 25, 27-8, 32, 37, 66, 76-7,

Index 79-80, 84, 91, 100, 145-6, 157-9, 163, 169, 214; see also Fachhochschulen

educational tracking, see tracking eight-hour day, 303—4 employee-invention, 241-2, 248, 273-4, 282, 295, 304; see also company invention; inventor's right; inventors, salaried; patent law; registrant's right employees, clerical, 232, 239-40, 245, 247, 251, 260, 294; see also Deutsch-Nationaler Handlungsgehilfen-Verband employees, salaried, 229-31, 233-4, 244, 255, 257, 260-2, 264, 274, 288, 289, 292-3, 298-9, 306, 326-7 employment code, unified (einheitliches Angestelltenrecht), 239, 255-64, 326-7 Engels, Friedrich, 117 engineer, definition, 3-4, 9, 36, 44-6, 59, 61-3, 64, 143, 195, 198-9, 202-5, 215, 316, 318, 325, 333-4 engineering culture, 63, 67, 115-18, 120-6, 128, 130-5, 137, 139-40, 142, 156, 211, 226-31, 248 engineering education, see Bau-Akademie; Berlin Industrial Institute; education, nonacademic engineering; engineering schools, proprietary; (Higher and Lower) Machine Building Schools; Provincial Trade Schools; Schools for Foremen; technische Hochschulen

engineering educators, 15—16, 35, 38, 42—3, 52, 57, 65-72, 75, 82-3, 86, 124-6, 128, 133, 142, 151, 319-20, 336 engineering employees, 8, 45, 54, 57, 59, 65-6, 68, 83, 127-8, 165, 201-2, 212, 224-31, 233-5, 244, 260, 268, 276, 313, 320, 329, 330; legal status of, 233, 238-42, 245-7, 255-64, 267, 272, 325-8 engineering employers, see engineering managers engineering managers, 10—11, 36-7, 57, 61, 67-8, 81-2, 108-9, 114-15, 124-6, 127, 131, 133, 135, 140-1, 158, 173, 179, 203-6, 211, 213, 238, 244, 247-54, 256-9, 266-7, 274-5, 276, 279, 283, 289, 299-301, 307-9, 319, 331, 333, 336 engineering "scholasticism," 37—8, 66, 71—2, 74, 79, 122-6, 130-1, 141, 143, 150-1 engineering schools, proprietary, 162, 173, 192, 200, 207, 212, 216-18, 321; admission standards, 162, 173; enrollments, 173, 187-9, 191 engineers, academically trained, 150-1, 15760, 165, 179, 194-5, 201-2, 204, 2069, 215, 218, 224, 227, 302, 313, 315, 318, 320-2, 326, 329-30, 333-4; Ameri-

353

can (see American engineers and engineering); career prospects, 157-9, 161-2, 173, 177, 195-6, 200-2, 204-5, 213-14, 217, 224-31, 318-20, 323, 326, 328-9; civil (see civil engineers); fragmentation and internal conflict, 1, 4, 7, 9-11, 50-1, 59-61, 64-5, 67, 94, 132, 139, 157-60, 195207, 218, 223-4, 227, 231, 235, 244, 314-15, 317, 321, 323-4, 329, 331, 333-5; ideology, 46, 51-6, 114, 126-9, 194-5, 205-6, 314, 317, 319-20, 323, 327, 330 (see also Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure; Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, ideology); metallurgical (see Association of German Metallurgical Engineers; Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, metallurgical branch chapter); nonacademic, 79, 157-60, 173, 179, 194, 2034, 224, 226-7, 302, 313, 315, 318, 329, 333, 334; number, 198, 229, 235, 237; oversupply, 1, 11, 192, 196-202, 204, 207, 217-18, 224-32, 244, 263, 303, 309, 316, 323, 329, 335; professional consciousness, 45, 61, 78, 84, 100, 105, 109, 114, 122, 128-9, 130-1, 135-7, 139-41, 143, 146-8, 194-5, 201-6, 208-9, 315-19, 322, 325-7, 331 (see also Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure); salaries, 200-1, 224, 228, 244, 294, 3024, 307-8, 325-6; social assimilation and social standing, 2-3, 31-2, 61, 64, 72-3, 77-8, 80, 83-6, 88, 96-7, 99-100, 101, 103-4, 107, 109, 114-15, 126-9, 144, 146-7, 150, 157-9, 174, 187, 194-5, 202-6, 208-9, 228, 231, 235, 315-20, 321-8, 333-5; social background, 31-2, 38—9, 76—7, 301 (see also artisans, artisanal classes); solidarity, 9-11, 44-6, 56, 60-3, 130, 132, 139, 233, 235, 262-3, 31317, 329; specialization, 10, 74, 80, 85, 88, 90, 92, 99, 104, 114, 116, 118-19, 122, 128, 130, 136, 157, 175, 225, 22831, 236, 267, 334-5 Euler, Friedrich, 51-2, 54, 69, 148 Facbhochschulen, 171, 334

Fachklassen, 161, 167-8, 171 Falk, Adalbert, 98, 100 Fellinger, Richard, 258-9 foreman schools, 168, 177-8 foremen, 233-5, 303, 325 Fortbildungsschule, gewerbliche, 216

Fortschrittliche Vereinigung, 269, 284, 300, 311 Franz, Wilhelm, 318-20 Frederick William III, 28 free invention, 273—4

354

Index

Free Union for the Social Insurance of Salaried Employees, 261—2 Freisinnige Vereinigung, 239, 243, 245, 252 French Revolution, 17 Fritsch, Karl Emil Otto, 92-6, 104 Frolich, Friedrich, 214, 249, 256-8, 271, 276-8, 280, 285-7

dards, 183, 186, 193, 213; curriculum, 192, 212-13; enrollments, 190, 1 9 3 ; ^ also Lower Machine Building Schools; Machine Building Schools; Technical Middle Schools Hobrecht, James, 99, 102, 104, 105 Hoechst chemical company, 248, 253, 280 hbhere Burgerschule, 20, 40, 56, 150

Gartner, Carl, 88, 132 Gareis, Karl, 266 German Committee on Technical Education, see Deutscher Ausschuss fur Technisches Schulwesen German Society for the Protection of Industrial Property (Deutscher Verein fur den Schutz des gewerblichen Eigentums, DVSGE), 266, 269-71, 280, 284-5; Stettin Congress of 1909, 270-3, 275-9, 281, 327 Glaser's Annalen fiir Gewerbe und Bauwesen

(GA), 131, 135-6 Goring-Speer ordinances, 265, 275 Gotte, Alfons, 184-5, 190, 206-8 Gossler, Gustav von, 148—9 Granzin, Max, 262, 275 graphic methods, 153—4 Grashof, Franz, 51-3, 68-72, 74, 78-86, 107, 109, 114, 125, 126, 133, 135, 13940, 144, 148, 152 Great Depression (1873-1896), 62, 109, 11315, 225; see also recession of 1874-9 Griesches Erben mining concern, 299—301 Gruson, Hermann, 122, 148 Guggenheimer, Emil, 246-54, 257-9, 27883, 285-7, 289-92, 295-7 Gutehoffnungshiitte (GHH) engineering and mining works, 138, 308, 310-11 Gymnasium, 20, 25-6, 29, 56-7, 70, 73, 76, 79, 82, 84, 86, 88, 92, 98, 100, 102, 105, 106, 107, 109, 114, 144-6, 14950, 169, 181 Haeuser, Adolf, 253, 280 Hanover Polytechnic, 39-40 Hansa-Bund, 280 Hardenberg, Karl August von, 21 Harkort, Friedrich, 55 Hauss, Carl, 266, 285 Hefner-Alteneck, Friedrich, 266 Heine, H., 118, 122-3 Herf, Jeffrey, 208 Heydt, August von der, 32, 34 hierarchy, social, 16-22, 64-5, 72, 78, 94-5, 113-14, 126-9, 144-7, 150, 157, 160, 163-4, 174-5, 178, 181, 195, 206, 21718, 228, 233, 313, 323-4, 334-6 Higher Machine Building School (HMBS), 171-2, 182, 186, 191; admission stan-

Hoesch, Leopold, 114 Hoeter, Ministerialdirektor, 181-2, 183 Hortleder, Gerd, 48 Hutte, 49 Humboldt engineering works, 246, 249, 312 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 23, 145 Industrial Code {Gewerbe-Ordung), 233, 23940, 245-6, 250, 255-6, 293, 295, 325-6 Industrial Institute, see Berlin Industrial Institute industrialists, see engineering managers industrialization, 5, 21, 44, 47, 50, 53, 56, 62, 66, 87, 94, 127-9, 157, 159-60, 163, 206, 260, 336 inventions, see company invention; employeeinvention; free invention; inventor's right; inventors, salaried; patent law; registrant's right inventor's right (Erfinderrecht), 242, 264, 2667, 270-2, 274-9, 281-2, 286-7, 327-8; see also employee-invention; inventors, salaried; patent law; registrant's right inventors, salaried, 239, 241-2, 264, 271-2, 283, 328; see also company invention; employee-invention; inventor's right; patent law; registrant's right Isay, Hermann, 327 Jackel, Reinhold, 200-1 Jonquieres, undersecretary of state, 281, 284, 287 Junck, Johannes, 256, 269, 280 Jurists' Congress {Deutscher Juristentag), 256, 259, 269 Karlsruhe Polytechnic, 35, 41, 68 Karmarsch, Karl, 38-41 Karo, engineer, 301, 305 Klein, Franz, 256, 258-9 Kleinstaaterei, 46, 121 Koalitionsrecht, Koalitionsfreiheit, 290, 293, 295,

299-301, 308-9 Kocka, Jurgen, 54, 228 Koselleck, Reinhart, 17, 21-2 Kracker, Julius, 294 Krause, Max, 193, 203-5, 214, 289, 308 Krupp, Alfred, 37, 69, 127, 148

355

Index Krupp engineering and steel works, 228, 285 Kunth, Gottlob, 18-19, 27, 33, 41, 46, 101

Miquel, Johannes von, 100-1, 105, 166, 168-71 Mittelstand, 168, 174, 247, 312 Mittweida, Technikum, 162, 189, 233 laboratories, 79, 152-6, 230, 265 mobility, social, 23, 65, 72, 77-80, 87, 104, Landes, David, 121 115, 126-9, 144-7, 150, 157-9, 163-4, Landesgewerbeamt (LGA), 192, 193, 196, 203, 176, 177, 191, 195, 205-6, 213, 217207, 212-13 18, 224-5, 228, 257, 260, 316, 322, Lang, Alexander, 315, 318, 322, 326, 330 330, 336 Lasker, Eduard, 98 modernization, 16-17, 20-1, 31, 49, 66, Lattmann, Wilhelm, 268-9 Law on Employee Inventions, 275 163, 225 Lederer, Emil, 288 Moller, Theodor, 185 legal profession, 37, 87-8, 91-2, 97, 105, 126, 138, 145, 209, 313, 315, 320, National Liberals, 243, 245, 269, 284, 292, 322, 329 295, 297, 312 liberalism, 5, 16-21, 27, 46, 80, 101, 103, National Socialism, 1-2; see also Nazi regime 127, 167, 260, 280, 295 nationalism, 46-50, 53, 60, 64, 117, 178 List, Friedrich, 47-8 Naumann, Friedrich, 300-1 locomotives, 47, 62-3 Nazi regime, 265, 274, 333, 336; see also NaLower Machine Building Schools (LMBS), 182, tional Socialism 183, 186, 187, 189, 214; enrollments, Nebenius, Carl Friedrich, 28-9 190; see also Higher Machine Building neohumanism, 23-5, 27, 30-1 Schools; Machine Building Schools; Schools Neuhaus, Jakob, 185, 285 for Foremen Ludewig, Hermann, 68, 125, 151 Oberrealschule, 100-9, 114, 144-50, 167; curLudwig Lowe Machine Works, 285, 328 riculum, 100; enrollments, 102, 150 Liidemann, Hermann, 263, 291-3, 296, one-year volunteer exemption, 26, 70, 73, 300, 305 145, 174, 176, 178, 179-80, 182, Liiders, Karl, 164, 168, 169, 176, 181, 182, 183, 193 183, 185 organized capitalism, 6, 212, 217-19 Osterrieth, Albert, 266, 269, 284, 285 Machine Building Schools (MBS), 166, 172-3, 184, 187, 189, 190-1, 193, 203, 210, 212, 214-16, 218, 334; curriculum, 173; enrollments, 172-3, 187-93, 206; see also (Higher and Lower) Machine Building Schools Maier, Charles, 212 mandarins, 22, 317 Manegold, Karl-Heinz, 152 marginality, 45 Marx, Karl, 65 Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Niirnberg (MAN), 226, 246, 248, 249, 278, 280, 282, 2902, 295-8, 308 mass production, 116, 224-31; see also bureaucractization; engineers, specialization; technological process Matschoss, Conrad, 15-6, 47, 114, 122 Maybach, Albert von, 99, 146, 148 medical profession, 7, 37, 126, 303, 313, 329 mercantilism, 20—1 middle class, educated, see Bildungsbiirgertum Mills, C. Wright, 129 Ministry of Interior (Reichsamt des Innern), 266, 268

"paradigm shift," 74 patent law, 121, 151, 241-2, 246, 264-70, 273-6, 278-80, 282-7, 327-8; see also company invention; employee-invention; inventor's right; registrant's right; salaried inventors patent litigation, 267, 278 Patent Office (Patentamt), 266, 268, 270, 281, 285 pension law for salaried employees (Angestelltenverskherungsgesetz), 261—3,

326

Peters, Richard, 52, 107 Peters, Theodor, 107, 137, 140-3, 145, 148, 177-8, 180, 182, 185, 193, 203, 205, 214 Philadelphia Exhibition, 115-18, 154-5 Posadowsky-Wehner, Arthur von, 250, 268 Potthoff, Heinz, 239, 242-3, 245, 247, 255-7 professions, theory and practice of, 4—8, 22, 36, 41, 50, 61, 65-6, 79, 88-9, 93-5, 115, 126-9, 194-5, 203-9, 217-19, 223-4, 231-2, 235, 237-8, 241, 257, 267, 313-17, 320, 325, 329, 334-5

356

Index

progress, 46, 50, 80; technological, 62, 96, 115-16, 118, 120, 157, 164, 178, 195, 267, 327 proletariat, academic, 147, 149; of technicians, 128-9, 177-8, 181, 195, 228, 257, 307, 326 proletarization, see proletariat, of technicians Provincial Trade Schools (Provinzialgewerbeschu-

len\ 28, 30-1, 75-7, 79-82, 85, 98, 101, 106, 158, 161, 166-7; admission standards, 31; curriculum, 31—2, 34, 76— 7, 100; enrollments, 75 Prussia, budget for technical education, 162, 165-6, 169-72; Landtag, 92, 97, 105-6, 107, 147-8, 163, 166, 168, 180, 192; Ministry of Culture, 25-6, 28, 100; Ministry of Finance, 166, 182-3, 193; Ministry of Trade, 25-8, 33, 76, 90, 91-3, 100, 101, 104, 106, 162, 166, 180, 185, 192-3, 210, 215, 285; reform period, 17, 20 Puttkamer, Robert von, 106 railroads, 47, 73, 91, 95 reactionary modernism, 203, 205, 208, 318 Realgymnasium, 114, 144-6, 149-50, 181 Realschule, 26, 56, 81, 103, 161 Realschule I. Ordnung, 56, 73, 79, 82, 84, 86,

88, 92, 96, 98, 100, 102, 105, 107, 109, 114 recession of 1874-9, 10, 85-6, 101, 109, 113-15, 132, 154, 196, 225; see also Great Depression Recbtsstaat, 88

Redtenbacher, Ferdinand, 35, 38-9, 41-3, 53, 124 reference group, 52, 59 Regierungsbaumeister, 88, 96, 126, 3 2 3 - 4

Robolski, Privy Councillor, 280-1 Romberg, Friedrich, 175, 180-2 salaries, see engineers, salaries Sammlungspolitik, 170

Schlesinger, Georg, 316 Schlink, Joseph, 123-9, 131, 135, 137-8 Schmoller, Gustav, 76 Schnabel, Franz, 36, 48, 55 Scholz, Adolf von, 167 School Conferences of 1890 and 1900, 144, 149 "school culture," 9, 37, 59, 61-2, 64-5, 158-9 Schools for Foremen, 171-2, 175, 176, 17982; admission standards, 175; curriculum, 176, 181-2 Schweighoffer, Ferdinand, 256-9 science, applied, 32-6, 64, 66y 133, 141, 143, 152, 155, 160, 226 "shop culture," 9-10, 37, 62, 64-5, 109, 114, 123, 130, 151-2 Siemens company, 228, 258, 266, 304, 308 Siemens, Werner, 69, 127, 155 Siemens, Wilhelm, 286 Slaby, Adolf, 138, 155 Smith, Adam, 17-18 Social Committee of Associations of Technical Employees, 243, 244 Social Democrats, Social Democracy, 163, 177-8, 203, 231, 237-8, 244, 245, 247, 249, 250, 251, 252, 257, 261, 284, 289, 290, 292, 293, 298, 300, 311-12, 330, 336 Society for School Reform (Verein fur Schulreform), 148-9 Society for the Promotion of Industry (Verein zur Befbrderung des Gewerbfleisses, VBG), 33-4 Society of German Employer Associations (Vereinigung Deutscher Arbeitgeber-Verbande), 330 Society of German Mechanical Engineers (Verein Deutscher Maschineningenieure, VDMI), 138 Sohlich, Karl, 268, 284, 286, 288, 298-9 Sombart, C. M., 178, 180 Sonderwegy 1—2, 333—6; see also engineering employees, legal status Spilleke, August, 20 Springer, Julius, 142

registrant's right (Anmelderrecbt), 241, 264-7, 270, 271, 275; see also employeeinventions, inventor's right; patent law; salaried inventors Reichstag, 239, 242-5, 247, 249-4, 261, 265, 268-9, 273, 280, 282-4, 287, 301, 309; elections of 1912, 309, 312 Restoration, 21-2 Reuleaux, Franz, 69, 74, 115-18, 119, 121, 123, 152 Reusch, Paul, 308-10 "revolution from above," 19 Revolution of 1848, 71 Rhazen, director, 249, 252, 280 Riedler, Alois, 152-4, 156, 194-6, 198, 201, Stahl und Eisen, 138 203-9, 213, 223, 277, 318 standardization, 119, 141 Rieppel, Anton, 226-7, 238, 246, 249, 251, status inconsistencies, 129 280, 289-90, 294-6, 306, 308-9, 318

Index

357

Stein, Karl Heinrich Friedrich vom, 18-20, 33 stigma, vocational, see engineers, social assimilation and social status Stresemann, Gustav, 295, 297-8, Sydow, Reinhold, 163

Verein Deutscher Chemiker (VDC), 271, 280, 285 Verein Deutscher Eisenhiittenleute (VDEh), see Association of German Metallurgical Engineers Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), 9-11, 4 5 6, 125-6, 130-1, 160, 168, 195, 203, Taaks, Otto, 211, 215 209, 223, 266, 280, 289, 322; business Tanzler, Fritz, 271, 307, 309 manager, 140; educational policy, 65—6, Technical Deputation for Industry and Com78-85, 95, 107, 109, 124, 143-50, 150merce, 20, 33 2, 165, 173-86, 202, 208, 210, 214-15; Technical Institute, see Berlin Industrial ideology, 45-6, 48-56, 60-1, 66, 130-2, Institute 135-6, 138-41, 143; leadership and orgaTechnical Middle Schools, 172, 174-5, 176, nization, 66-70, 82, 130, 133-5, 136178-80, 204, 215; see also (Higher and 43, 173, 194, 202-6, 207, 217, 223; Lower) Machine Building Schools membership, 54, 56-61, 215, 288, 318; Technische Bau-Deputation, 90, 97, 106 metallurgical branch chapter, 82, 114, Technische Hochschule Berlin, 93, 95, 97-9, 117, 132-3, 135-8; neutrality, 60, 130, 114, 125, 152, 153-4, 158; see also B&u143, 223; publishing policy, 130-43; statAkademie; Berlin Industrial Institute utes, 51, 54, 143, 215, 318 technische Hochschulen, 10, 7 8 - 8 0 , 114, 122, Verein Deutscher Maschinenbau-Anstalten 150-7, 216, 319, 325; admission stan(VDMA), 204, 211, 213-14, 223, 244, dards, 79-80, 99, 106, 152, 173, 321; 245-6, 248, 251, 252, 256, 258, 277, curriculum, 121, 122, 125, 151-6, 165, 279-81, 283, 285, 289, 308, 327; Patent 319-20, 323; enrollments, 156, 161-2, Commission, 271, 277-8, 286 167, 172, 196-8, 225-7 Verein zur Befbrderung des Gewerbfleisses technocracy, 10, 42-3, 62, 137, 336 (VBG), see Society for the Promotion of Technologies 24 Industry Tirpitz, Alfred von, 170 Vienna Polytechnic, 38-9 Top Committee for Government Pension InVirchow, Rudolf, 98 surance for Salaried Employees, 261—2 Volksschule, 31, 168, 175, 177, 180, 195, 216 tracking, 23-2, 36-8, 75, 78-80, 143-50, Vormdrz, 17, 21, 46 212-17, 318, 322-3 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 97 Waldschmidt, Walther, 285, 328 unification, German, 46—8, 71 United Association of German Metal Industrialists (Gesamtverband Deutscher Metalindustrieller, GDM), 290, 306 universities, 40, 74, 78-80, 86, 93-4, 125, 157 "unpolitical," 48, 50, 55-6, 314 urbanization, 87, 91, 94, 302 Verband Deutscher Architekten- und Ingenieur-Vereine, 95, 105, 322 Verband Deutscher Diplom-Ingenieure (VDDI), 202, 209, 211, 223, 227, 237, 259, 302, 309, 310, 313-31, 333, 336; and patent law reform, 327—8; and protection of Diplom-Ingenieur designation, 318— 19, 321-2, 330; membership, 317, 31920, 330 Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE), 280

Weber, Max, 4, 65 Weber, Max Maria von, 45 Wehrenpfennig, Wilhelm, 97-8, 100-2, 105, 106, 168 Weimar coalition, 300 Weimar Republic, 1, 265, 333 welfare state, 246 Weltpolitik, 164, 217 Wickenden Report, 226 William II, 149, 157, 164 Windhorst, Ludwig, 147 Wirtschaftliche Vereinigung, 245, 268-9 Working Group of Unionized SalariedEmployee Associations, 263—4 workshops, 34, 74, 79, 123, 125, 151-3 World War I, 333 Ziebarth, Rudolf, 69, 107-8, 134 Zorner, Ernst, 246, 249, 252, 312 Zurich polytechnic, 41, 68