In early July 1846, the young Prussian lieutenant Werner Siemens visited the Berlin residence of Hofrat C. H. Soltmann, the father of one of his brigade comrades, to attend the trials that clockmaker Ferdinand Leonhardt was conducting there with a modified telegraph apparatus originally designed by Professor Charles Wheatstone of King's College London and imported from England.Footnote 1 As Werner later wrote to his younger brother Wilhelm, he “found Leonhardt … in great difficulty because his newly constructed telegraph was making errors that he could not comprehend. As their cause was immediately clear to me, I showed him how he might avoid them.”Footnote 2 In a brief moment of inspiration, then, Werner Siemens seems to have made his first contribution to the world of telegraphy.
A short while later, Siemens continued, “frustration at my stupidity, or at least my lack of intelligence, occasioned me to think a little more about telegraphy, whereby it was helpful to me to have been working on a history of electrical telegraphy for the annual report of the Physikalische Gesellschaft. And lo and behold, I arrived at truly brilliant results, which gave me a determined vision of recasting the whole system.”Footnote 3 By mid-July, Siemens's first telegraph apparatus was ready for testing. As his mind turned to the improvement of existing techniques of telegraphy, he asked that Wilhelm, who was based in London, inquire about existing English patents in this domain, and, in particular, about those that Professor Wheatstone might already possess.Footnote 4 With this brief exploration of the English market, he had sown the seeds of the global Siemens enterprise whose renown endures to this day.
It is tempting in medias res to view these events of July 1846 from one of numerous familiar perspectives on the Vormärz period in Germany, each of which might suitably contextualize the moment. The trials taking place at Hofrat Soltmann's house, for instance, were part and parcel of the Prussian state's efforts to stimulate technological progress, often through the importation of foreign, usually English, models.Footnote 5 In this particular case, the state institution that brought together the actors in question was the military establishment. Not only was Werner a brigade comrade of Soltmann's son, but he had also contributed to the work of the clockmaker Leonhardt for the Artillerie Prüfungs-Kommission (Artillery Testing Commission).Footnote 6
Siemens's moment of inspiration nevertheless appears to provide a brief insight into the mindset of a restless innovator. He can be, and indeed has been, inscribed in the list of quasi-autodidactic entrepreneurs, alongside such figures as Alfred Krupp and August Borsig, who helped lay the foundations of Germany's industrialization.Footnote 7 Siemens's mention of the Physikalische Gesellschaft, meanwhile, points to the context of middle-class sociability in the early nineteenth century, as well as to the role of scientific knowledge in the process of industrialization—particularly at a time when the landscape of scientific communication was changing and new technical professions emerged.Footnote 8
Looking backward and forward through Siemens's biography as an exemplar of German industrial success, other historical perspectives might focus more specifically on various aspects of his life trajectory. Rather than allow Siemens's later influence to orient our historical viewpoint and select just one of these narratives, this article instead explores their entanglement. It spotlights the social contacts, like those between Siemens, Leonhardt, Soltmann, and the Physikalische Gesellschaft, which connected the worlds of technological innovation, science, enterprise, and state administration in Vormärz Prussia.
Indeed, Siemens's richly documented and multifaceted life affords a valuable opportunity to explore the forces behind the early phase of industrialization in Prussia. A long tradition of scholarship, from William O. Henderson, Ulrich Peter Ritter, and Wolfram Fischer to, somewhat more recently, Wilhelm Treue, has emphasized the central role that the state necessarily played in this process of industrialization, as it sought to close the gap between Germany and its Western neighbors, Britain in particular.Footnote 9 Fischer identified four principal means through which the government fostered economic development: legislation, administration, enterprise, and consumption. These included, respectively, the Stein and Hardenberg reforms of 1808–1817; the establishment of the Technische Deputation für Handel und Gewerbe (Technical Deputation for Trade and Industry) and of Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth's Verein zur Förderung des Gewerbfleiβes (Association for the Promotion of Industry) in 1819/1821; the promotion of diverse local manufactories and businesses by the Seehandlung—the state's organ for developing and investing in industries; and, finally, the demand for goods from the court and the army.Footnote 10 Werner Siemens benefitted in some way from a number of these initiatives, but was by no means a product of them.
The “statist” historiographical tradition places considerable emphasis on the achievements of a reforming bureaucracy—men such as Beuth and Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth, who headed the Technische Deputation—but leaves little room for the agency of entrepreneurs. Qualifying the state's interventionism, Ilja Mieck instead described the Prussian government's policy as oscillating between liberalism and mercantilism, concluding that, by the 1840s, it increasingly trusted the private sector to take its own initiatives.Footnote 11 Hans-Ulrich Wehler later asserted that the state established a “framework” that did no more than “not lastingly hinder” development.Footnote 12 Treue himself admitted that there were some domains in which Beuth's education reforms had been limited: in the agricultural and natural sciences, in particular. But, as Werner Siemens had trained at the Vereinigte Artillerie- und Ingenieur-Schule, he had “found a second or third educational path to technology and science.”Footnote 13
Tracing Siemens's footsteps along this path, this article highlights the opportunities that existed for entrepreneurs to wind their way through state and society in Prussia during the 1840s. It builds on the efforts of historians such as Jürgen Kocka, who emphasized the agency of entrepreneurs in the economy, thus rescuing them from the anonymity to which they had been relegated by the autonomous economic forces of Marxist theory. Searching for patterns in the socioeconomic and professional background of Prussia's early entrepreneurs, Kocka concluded that they often had origins in the trades or in the merchant classes.Footnote 14 In the context of Berlin, in particular, Hartmut Kaelble argued against the notion that economic liberalization had facilitated social mobility, noting that most entrepreneurs migrating to the city were themselves descended from entrepreneurs, be it merchants, bankers, or manufacturers.Footnote 15 Studies of the Techniker, who were directly trained in state-funded institutions such as Beuth's Gewerbe-Institut (Institute of Trades), have reached similar conclusions.Footnote 16 Such prosopographical research has enriched our understanding of Germany's emerging Wirtschaftsbürgertum (commercial middle-class), to which Siemens undeniably came to belong, but whose social roots and career paths he did not share.Footnote 17 His parents were closely associated with the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle-class), and he himself aspired to an academic, rather than a professional or technical, education.Footnote 18
The earliest biographies of Werner Siemens, which were published in 1916 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of his birth, therefore attributed his success not to the institutional or socioeconomic environment, but rather to his exceptional personal qualities. In line with contemporary celebration of history's “great men,” Artur Fürst and Conrad Matschoβ spotlighted his patriotism and his gifts in the scientific and technical domains, and depicted him as a self-made man.Footnote 19 Almost a century later, Wilfrid Feldenkirchen similarly emphasized Siemens's talents, but, in a reflection of changing historiographical trends, focused on his entrepreneurial flair, arguing that he was a modern, “forward-looking,” internationally oriented businessman.Footnote 20 Jürgen Kocka, by contrast, recognized the influence of Werner's military training on his managerial style. Kocka's magisterial account nevertheless focuses on the putative “bureaucratization” of the Siemens firm as it ascended to a dominant position in the German electrical industry in the decades following its establishment in 1847.Footnote 21
In light of his later success, Werner Siemens appears as the epitome of the entrepreneurial class at the heart of Prussian industrialization—yet, he consistently defies categorization. At one end of the analytical spectrum stand the socioeconomic structures and state institutions that provided the groundwork for industrialization, but to which Siemens was often only indirectly connected. At the other end are Siemens's undeniable, yet also intangible, qualities, which enabled him to pursue inventions as diverse as “galvanic” gilding and the production of artificial stones—and to hunt down opportunities to market them. Between the structures and the individual lay the social networks that Siemens used to connect to institutions, entrepreneurial groups, and scientific circles. His correspondence from the late 1830s and early 1840s affords a glimpse of the people and places that brought together the many different actors at the heart of Prussian industrialization.
In order to explore these connections, this article draws upon the insights that can be gained from the increasing attention given to networks in various subfields of historiographical inquiry.Footnote 22 In particular, it focuses on social networks as bases of interaction that not only strengthen the bonds among individuals in the same group, but also serve as bridges between them. Indeed, since the publication in 1973 of Mark Granovetter's article on the “strength of weak ties,” sociologists have developed “small world” theories which suggest that seemingly marginal connections between individuals belonging to separate groups are, in fact, the crucial links that weave them together to form the fabric of society.Footnote 23
Siemens's experience in 1840s Berlin illustrates the importance of social networks in enhancing connections within as well as between groups, and his ability to exploit both strong and weak ties. The military institution, the Physikalische Gesellschaft, the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, and, to a great extent, his own family all constituted “clusters” of individuals with whom Siemens shared common interests, affiliations, and ambitions, and to whom he could turn for resources of various kinds. Given that he and his acquaintances simultaneously belonged to these different groups, their connections and interactions highlighted the zones of porousness in the boundaries of social circles and state institutions.
Taking this approach shifts our perspective on some of the central questions in the historiography of early Prussian industrialization. As Eric Brose has shown, behind the monolithic façade of state institutions and policies during the Vormärz lay the factions and coalitions within the Prussian state departments engaged in technological development, and the “linking personalities” between them.Footnote 24 Without denying the power of the state as an abstract force, Brose's work also suggests that the state might usefully be understood as a cluster of individuals engaging in social interactions with other actors in the process of industrialization. As James Brophy has shown, for instance, the construction of Prussia's railway network involved active negotiation between businessmen and state representatives.Footnote 25
Acknowledging the social role of military or bureaucratic actors enables us to account for exchanges between the state and “civil society.” It was as a lieutenant in the Prussian artillery regiment that Werner Siemens joined the Physikalische Gesellschaft; in this way, a seemingly foreign element was introduced into a characteristically bourgeois learned society. The same networks of correspondence and sociability that have long been recognized as central to intellectual exchange and to the formation of an independent public sphere also created opportunities for new connections to be made.Footnote 26 As Brian Vick's description of salon culture in Congress Vienna suggests in a different context, these networks allowed for both the “congregation of the like-minded and the mingling of the unlike.”Footnote 27
Social networks similarly served as a source of innovation, as well as of stability, among entrepreneurs more specifically. They have been understood as a means of securing access to capital, information, and markets throughout history, and kinship ties are perhaps most prominent among the social structures that support the development and expansion of businesses.Footnote 28 Indeed, the two most recent biographies of Werner Siemens and his brother Carl have placed the close relationship between all the Siemens siblings (Werner was the second eldest) at the heart of the family firm's success.Footnote 29 In the early 1840s, Werner's younger brother Wilhelm was a crucial ally with whom he could discuss his innovations, and whose emigration to England provided him with a connection to an important foreign market. Carl later joined the firm as well, helping to expand its activities into Russia in the 1850s. But other social networks could also support business in different ways, facilitating access to materials and providing feedback on entrepreneurial initiatives.Footnote 30 In this regard, as this article will demonstrate, Siemens also benefitted from, besides his family connections, the semiformal Polytechnische Gesellschaft in Berlin, where he found support, creative input, and constructive criticism of his ideas.
The networked nature of society is undoubtedly universal, but it is particularly salient in the context of Berlin during the 1840s. By then, the market economy unleashed during the Reform Era had begun to bear fruit, creating both opportunities and difficulties for state and society, and social networks became a means for both to negotiate those consequences. In particular, they provided those groups that emerged outside the traditional organizational structures of society with a means of accessing wider resources—while simultaneously protecting common interests.
By engaging in exchanges with different clusters of individuals, Werner Siemens was able to plug into the thickening administrative, professional, and financial “networks of means” that Jerrold Seigel has identified as the key to the power of the modern European bourgeoisie.Footnote 31 As an officer, entrepreneur, aspiring academic, and family man, Siemens demonstrated that these networks could themselves be connected. It was the interaction of these diverse forces that underpinned industrialization as one facet of the “great transition” to a modern economic order.Footnote 32 Inevitably, some of the ties in question were indeed “weak,” and their importance should not overshadow the strength of bonds within social circles and institutions. But it was also through the chance meetings, face-to-face interactions, and spontaneous encounters that have left only ephemeral traces in the historical sources that some of the most important connections could be made.
Social change during this period was supplemented, of course, by growing political agitation. Siemens found himself at the heart of a city bustling with political activity, yet his correspondence leaves no indication that he was preoccupied with political or social questions.Footnote 33 Only in 1848 would Siemens begin to comment explicitly on current affairs, hinting at his liberal views and pointing toward his later role as cofounder of the Fortschrittspartei (Progress Party) in 1861. It is quite possible, however, that the same social circles and institutions to which he belonged provided opportunities for political discussion. The social networks between them underpinned the changing state–society nexus at a transitional moment in the industrialization of Prussia during the Vormärz period.
The Complex of Military Innovation
The Prussian military establishment formed the most institutionalized network connecting the individuals at Hofrat Soltmann's home in July 1846. The clockmaker Ferdinand Leonhardt had been conducting his trials of Wheatstone's modified telegraph apparatus on behalf of a technological commission established in 1844 to investigate developments in the realm of electrical telegraphy. An optical telegraph line had been constructed in Prussia in 1832, under the direction of Major Franz August O'Etzel, and the Ministry of War was consequently overseeing new developments in the field.Footnote 34 Having previously collaborated with the clockmaker on the army's Artillerie Prüfungs-Kommission, and having met Soltmann's son in his capacity as an officer, Werner found himself at the Hofrat's home within the context of military connections.
Viewed differently, however, Soltmann and Leonhardt both represented contacts between the military establishment and business—more specifically, between the professions and entrepreneurs. Soltmann was an apothecary who was also involved in the production of artificial mineral water, and Leonhardt was one of the most prominent clock manufacturers (Fabrikanten) to have established a business in Berlin since the law introducing freedom of trade (Gewerbefreiheit) in 1810.Footnote 35 Both belonged to groups of innovators and experts on specific technical issues who lay outside the military institution, but to whom the army and its technological commissions turned for assistance. By interacting with individuals such as these, Siemens and his fellow officers trained in the Prussian artillery regiment gained access to broader networks of knowledge circulation.
When Siemens had left his family's modest estate in Mecklenburg at the age of eighteen to join the Prussian army, he had done so for primarily strategic reasons. By his own account, he had always shown an interest in science and had long hoped for an education at the Prussian Bauakademie, the traditional seat of applied science. His parents' inability to cover the costs involved led him, however, to seek his scientific and technical training elsewhere. Initially turned down by the Ingenieurkorps, he eventually received a place at the Vereinigte Artillerie- und Ingenieurschule (VAIS) in Berlin, where he became a second lieutenant between 1835 and 1838.Footnote 36 The education he received at the VAIS allowed him to meet key figures in science and enterprise, as well as to discover the social dynamism of the burgeoning city of Berlin.
As a lieutenant trained in the artillery corps, Siemens differed from the majority of his fellow entrepreneurs and engineers. Research on the role of Techniker during the industrial revolution has spotlighted either the autodidacts or those educated in one of the state's institutions—the provincial Gewerbe-Schulen (trade schools) and the Gewerbe-Institut (Institute of Trades) in Berlin, in particular.Footnote 37 Hartmut Kaelble recorded only one entrepreneur in Berlin whose background had been as an officer, and this was presumably Siemens himself.Footnote 38 Little attention has consequently been paid to the influence of military education, particularly in the engineering and artillery corps, on the process of industrialization. According to a traditional interpretation, “military standards and patterns … were clearly distinguished from the standards and behavior of the capitalist entrepreneur,” though Jürgen Kocka has argued that the military habits drilled into Werner as an officer carried over into his managerial style.Footnote 39 Clearly, however, the knowledge imparted by certain army regiments, and also their wide-reaching networks of contacts, could provide technical, logistical, and perhaps even financial support for the future entrepreneurial pursuits of their recruits. As we shall see, Siemens was not the only officer harboring such ambitions.
Although Werner later claimed to have consciously neglected the military aspects of his training, he had, of course, been influenced by the culture it fostered. As he gladly admitted in his recollections, for instance, he and his friend Wilhelm Meyer regularly took part—if only as seconds (Sekundanten)—in the honor duels that characterized both military and middle-class culture in mid-nineteenth-century Germany.Footnote 40 Along similar lines, he disapproved of his younger brother Wilhelm's desire to work in trade, as he “shared the Prussian officers' dislike of the merchant class”—an outlook that also conformed to that of his parents.Footnote 41 “It is better to create than to haggle [Schaffen ist besser als Schacher],” his father had once admonished him.Footnote 42
It is significant that Siemens joined the VAIS and the artillery regiments during a time of recently renewed interest in and respect for this branch of the army on the part of the broader military establishment. Until the 1830s, the bourgeois composition of the artillery regiment, as well as its interest in what was considered to be “crude” technology, had been viewed with disdain by the traditionally aristocratic officer corps, which was still very much attached to quasi-feudal visions of honor and medieval warfare. Of the great reformers, only Gerhard von Scharnhorst had placed considerable value in this “stepchild” of the Prussian army, but the Greek crisis of the late 1820s had focused the government's attention on its preparedness for war, while highlighting the need to develop new technologies.Footnote 43 It was within this context of revived interest that commissions had been set up, such as the one overseen by O'Etzel to research the introduction of telegraphy.Footnote 44
In the mid-1830s, Siemens thus joined a corps with a leader, Prince August, who encouraged an atmosphere of innovation and nonconformity vis-à-vis superiors, particularly within the Artillerie Prüfungs-Kommission.Footnote 45 His training was largely conducted alongside bourgeois officers, whose liberal political views he noted and to which he adhered, and in whose company he would at least once fall afoul of the law.Footnote 46 The expectations that the authorities now placed in the artillery corps had opened their channels of communication with a middling, entrepreneurial, and liberal stratum that had previously been shunned, thus creating new opportunities for its officers.
Werner also met acquaintances and developed friendships at the VAIS that would carry over into his civilian life. His batman in Berlin, Daniel Hemp, would later accompany him on a number of telegraph-laying expeditions, for example.Footnote 47 In addition to the one he had with Carl Soltmann, however, the friendship of greatest lasting significance was the one with Wilhelm Meyer, who rose to the rank of Oberstleutnant; they stayed in close contact throughout Siemens's life. The two men shared living quarters when stationed in Magdeburg in the early 1840s, and both left the army at the same time in 1849 to take on complementary positions in the private and public spheres of telegraphy.Footnote 48 Meyer eventually left the civil service for a managerial position in Siemens's business.
The curriculum followed at the VAIS was especially diverse and covered not only the subjects of artillery, the art of fortification, and military history, but also French, geography, mathematics, physics, and chemistry, among other subjects.Footnote 49 This variety of disciplines must have inspired Siemens's future experiments, but it also introduced him to teachers such as the mathematician Martin Ohm and the physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus. Ohm, the younger brother of the famous physicist Georg, became a professor at the University of Berlin in 1839, and Magnus, already an adjunct professor (auβerordentlicher Professor) at the University of Berlin, eventually became rector of the institution.
Because of a competitive job market at the time, particularly among physicists, many academics were required to teach in Germany's different Gymnasien, polytechnical schools, and other educational institutions as they waited for a university appointment. Georg Ohm, for instance, had taught at the VAIS before moving to the Nuremberg Polytechnische Schule in 1833, and such peregrinations helped diffuse knowledge beyond the confines of the university, thus blurring the boundaries between the academic and “lay” worlds.Footnote 50 During their time at the VAIS, Siemens's instructors created a link between academic and military networks, and Gustav Magnus in particular would later provide him with access to a crucial cluster of young scientists.
In a similar way, the technological commissions established by the army sought talent beyond the establishment. The telegraph commission's collaboration with Leonhardt and Soltmann was symptomatic, in fact, of a growing dependency on private contractors during the 1840s. It was within this context that the Ministry of War, struggling financially and unable to rely either on its own manufacturers or the trained gunsmiths who had traditionally worked for it, placed its first order with Krupp in 1846.Footnote 51 Meanwhile, the military mining corps, having long refused to adopt new methods of vertical mining and coke puddling, faced direct competition from the likes of Franz Haniel.Footnote 52 These examples suggest that the state's ability to promote industrialization had reached its limit, and that the military authorities—since they were no longer able to rely on the traditional corporate structures of production—had reached out to a network of independent entrepreneurs to secure a position within the market economy.
A crucial link between the state and entrepreneurs was the Technische Deputation, which regularly received and assessed patent requests from a variety of applicants. When O'Etzel's commission began to investigate electrical telegraphy in the early 1840s, for instance, the Deputation was sifting through a variety of proposals for related innovations. The applicants ranged from merchants to foreign agents requesting permission to import a telegraph apparatus, and even to high school teachers such as August Kramer in Nordhausen, who later became one of Siemens's principal competitors.Footnote 53 Under Beuth, the Technische Deputation became a crucial nexus through which innovators seeking approval for their projects connected with the state.
By the 1840s, then, a constellation was forming between the Technische Deputation, entrepreneurs, and military commissions. Indeed, it was the apothecary Soltmann himself who, in 1841, applied for and obtained an Einführungspatent (patent of importation) from the Technische Deputation to import Charles Wheatstone's telegraph apparatus from England.Footnote 54 The apparatus then made its way into the hands of clockmaker Ferdinand Leonhardt (perhaps at Soltmann's suggestion), who was conducting research on behalf of O'Etzel's telegraph commission. Acquainted with both Leonhardt and Soltmann through the army (as well as other contexts), Siemens found himself contributing to the clockmaker's work on Wheatstone's apparatus in July 1846. It was then as independent businessmen that both men turned once again to the Deputation to patent their inventions. The military establishment thus certainly shaped Siemens's mind and cultural outlook, but it also contained the first dense cluster of individuals to whom he was introduced in Berlin—and through which he was immediately tied into other scientific and entrepreneurial networks.
The Berlin Nexus
Many of the connections that Siemens was able to make during his time at the VAIS were a result of the proximity of those involved in Berlin. Upon completing his training, he was obliged to leave the city—stationed first in Magdeburg and then in Wittenberg—but it was in Berlin that he saw his future. There lay not only the core of the military establishment and the organs of government, but also the seat of academic learning, as well as growing communities of young scientists and industrial innovators. In the early 1840s, therefore, when Siemens began to seek out opportunities to profit from his various experiments, Berlin came to occupy an increasingly prominent role for him as a market for knowledge, business, and acquaintances.
Upon leaving the VAIS in 1838, Siemens began a frenetic search for lucrative inventions or innovations, spurred on by the death of both his parents in 1839–1840, which left him responsible, to a great extent, for his eight younger siblings. Because he was stationed at a distance from the people and institutions he had discovered in Berlin, it was now his family relations that tied him to developments in science, technology, and enterprise. The example of his cousin Adolf Siemens, an artillery officer who had helped develop firing mechanisms for rifles and pistols, encouraged Werner to experiment with explosives.Footnote 55 And relying on the advice of his brother-in-law August Himly, a Privatdozent in physics at Göttingen, Siemens began to experiment with new methods of electrolysis.Footnote 56 In the future, Werner's family would repeatedly be his means of access to information and markets beyond his immediate reach.
After a brief spell in Wittenberg, Siemens once again moved to Magdeburg to serve a short jail sentence for participating in a duel. It was at this time that he began to feel frustration about being relegated to a provincial location. This was not merely the expression of a youthful desire for the vibrancy of a capital city, however: his attempts to keep abreast of scientific developments and to obtain the necessary equipment for his experiments were being affected. As he complained to his brother, “Magdeburg really is a depressing backwater …. One cannot obtain anything here; it is mostly all expensive and of poor quality.”Footnote 57 In 1842, however, he was finally transferred to Spandau, on the outskirts of Berlin, where his talents as a technician were applied to the manufacture of fireworks. Edging closer to the capital, Siemens could potentially reconnect with his erstwhile acquaintances. “No doubt you are still in Spandau and often come to Berlin and so also to see my parents,” Carl Soltmann wrote to him.Footnote 58
It was when his younger brother Wilhelm entered the world of industry that Werner was drawn more firmly into entrepreneurial networks. Wilhelm had studied at a trade school in Magdeburg, then briefly at the university in Göttingen, before returning to the former city for an apprenticeship. For his part, Werner continued with his own experiments in electrolysis, particularly the elaboration of new gilding methods, for which he applied and obtained a patent.Footnote 59 But he was now also engaged in helping Wilhelm develop a “chronometric governor” (Differenz-Regulator), a mechanism intended to help regulate the running of steam engines.Footnote 60 Werner's army comrade Meyer recommended that they turn to Beuth in Berlin for advice in the matter, luring Siemens once again to Berlin and its key personalities.Footnote 61 His relief was therefore palpable when he received news of his assignment to the Prussian capital in September 1842. Writing to his brother, he admitted that “the posting to Berlin is very agreeable to me, particularly when compared with the awful stay in Wittenberg that I was anticipating. For our various efforts, too, it is very good that I should stay close to the source.”Footnote 62 In Siemens's mind, then, Berlin was the fount of future opportunities.
The city witnessed a flurry of activity in the 1840s, as the incipient railway industry stimulated the establishment of machine construction factories there. Its significance in the industrialization of Germany is widely accepted by scholars: it was here, for instance, that Franz-Anton Egells—and later his two former apprentices, August Borsig and Johann Friedrich Wöhlert—established their businesses. As Jürgen Kocka has posited, it was in Berlin that one could perhaps most directly experience the puncturing of the old estate-based society, which produced, in turn, the conditions for individuals to establish new contacts and networks.Footnote 63 It was there, Ilja Mieck has argued, that private industry flourished in the 1820s and 1830s—both because the power of the guilds had been broken, and “because of the narrow economic, as well as locally induced, contact of tradesmen with each other, and the presence in one place of the state's trade-stimulating institutions [Organe der Gewerbeförderung],” such as the Seehandlung or the Technische Deputation.Footnote 64 In short, the dismantling of the preexisting socioeconomic framework left more space for the creation of new social relationships.
Indeed, the city experienced between 1837 and 1846 its first period of rapid population growth during the nineteenth century, from 280,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. It was to be Central Europe's fastest growing city, following in the footsteps of London and Paris in attracting a constant influx of workers and entrepreneurs.Footnote 65 Hartmut Kaelble has argued that once they had settled in Berlin, entrepreneurs met with considerable resistance from local corporations, and consequently cultivated social, often familial, relations primarily among themselves.Footnote 66 Certainly, as the example of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft suggests (discussed later), the social and economic insecurity that entrepreneurs experienced in the expanding city made them particularly reliant on social networks as a source of stability. Yet, as Nadja Stulz-Herrnstadt has shown, the elite members of the representative body for Berlin's merchants, the Ältesten der Korporation der Kaufmannschaft (Elders of the Merchants' Corporation), owed their success to the remarkable flexibility and extent of their social circles.Footnote 67 Like its Western neighbors, Berlin had begun to display the characteristics of the modern city as a “network of networks,” which served both to strengthen and to diversify social ties.Footnote 68
The geography of the city itself encouraged contact between state institutions, scientific circles, and entrepreneurial groups, enabling Siemens almost literally to navigate between the administrative, professional, and business networks concentrated there.Footnote 69 As a second lieutenant, he worked and was housed in the center of Berlin, thanks to the military's domination of the city's central quarters. The VAIS itself was situated at the western end of the city's main thoroughfare, Unter den Linden, near the Brandenburg Gate. Upon his return in 1842, he was assigned to the Artillerie-Werkstatt, which was located in the Dorotheenstrasse, practically opposite the school. Over the next few years, he was registered first at the artillery workshop at Am Kupfergraben, at the eastern end of Unter den Linden, and later, a little further north of the city center at Louisenplatz (now Robert-Koch-Platz).Footnote 70
As Berlin grew around this military core, moving from one of the artillery's urban nodes to another placed Siemens at the heart of a cultural, economic, and political hub. Leaving the VAIS to amble down Unter den Linden, he passed by the gates of the relatively new University of Berlin, where he attended lectures in the early 1840s. Reaching the armory at the avenue's eastern end, he would spot Karl Friedrich Schinkel's recent masterpiece, the Bauakademie, which he had once hoped to attend. As we shall see, it was also here that his contacts at the Physikalische Gesellschaft gathered for their discussions. At Louisenplatz, by contrast, he brushed the edges of the industrial district around Chausseestrasse, where Borsig had established his machine factory. And en route to the meetings of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft in the south of the city, he would cross the Gendarmenmarkt, where Bruno Bauer and the Young Hegelians deliberated at Hippels Weinstube.Footnote 71
In 1845, “on a stroll through the Tiergarten with all the officers of the artillery workshop after work,” he came to hear a speech by Johannes Ronge, an excommunicated priest who was one of the driving forces behind the emerging German Catholic movement. Ronge's opposition to the dogmatism of the Roman church had expanded to include support for democratic revolution, and he was causing political agitation in the city. The experience, Siemens explained, was unusual for, “until then, one was not used to public speaking in Prussia.” This prompted him and his fellow officers to sign a petition being circulated (its content is unknown), and for which he was later reprimanded.Footnote 72 The incident is the only direct evidence from this period of Siemens's interest in the movement of opposition to the government. Yet, it demonstrated that political discussions and ideas could transcend particular social circles and, quite literally, be carried through the city by the movement of people tied to different networks.
In a reflection of these changing times, Franz Krüger revised his painting Parade Unter den Linden in 1839 by expanding the space occupied by the bourgeois public sphere, whose members look on as a neatly structured army marches by—two separate worlds coexisting in Berlin.Footnote 73 Siemens had indeed settled in a city that was witnessing a reconfiguration of the state–society nexus, but his experience revealed that avenues of communication existed between and within these groups. The thickening administrative, professional, and financial networks through which resources were mobilized passed through social hubs anchored in particular sites. Walking through the city as an officer, Siemens moved between these hubs, enacting his own social journeys across the flourishing industrial, academic, and military networks that he utilized. It is no wonder, then, that once his business outlook improved in 1846, he asserted: “I do not want to leave Berlin at all, nor can I.”Footnote 74
Networks of Enterprise
Within weeks of arriving in the Prussian capital, Werner Siemens joined the Polytechnische Gesellschaft. Formed by a group of local artisans, Techniker, and even scientists, the society had been founded in 1839 upon the initiative of a lesser-known son of Moses Mendelssohn, Nathan Mendelssohn, who became an engineer, chief inspector of the Royal Mint, and stamp duty auditor.Footnote 75 Its earliest members represented a broad spectrum of trades and included the renowned Berlin clockmaker C. F. Tiede, as well as J. C. Freund, one of the earliest machine constructors in the city. The Polytechnische Gesellschaft was the first truly independent association of diverse private entrepreneurs and remained so even after it had obtained group membership in the state-sponsored Association for the Promotion of Industry in 1840.Footnote 76 As such, it helped its members navigate the choppy waters of a liberal market, which had been set free from the restrictions, but also the protection, of the guilds.
When Siemens joined the society in 1842, it counted around 250 primarily local members and held meetings twice a month on Thursdays, when its members were invited to present and listen to lectures on each other's technical interests and investigations.Footnote 77 The society also acquired a growing collection of journals, which its members could consult at any time and from which extracts were presented at their meetings. By all accounts, the Polytechnische Gesellschaft was more than merely a nominal, loose grouping of individuals. Already in 1840, enough members were interested in meeting regularly for an informal secondary session to be held every other Thursday, and, by 1842, the meetings were so well attended that tobacco and refreshments were banned, as they tended to cause too much disruption.Footnote 78 The meetings were not held in a fixed location, but, between 1842 and 1845, they most often took place on Krausenstrasse or on Kommandantenstrasse, both located on the southern edge of the inner city.
From the time Siemens joined the Gesellschaft in 1842, he and his younger brother Wilhelm exchanged extensive correspondence regarding the innovations they were both pursuing. Between 1842 and 1846, their projects revolved around four main fields: Wilhelm's Differenz-Regulator, printing, the production of “artificial stones,” and gold or nickel plating (the latter based on Werner's experiments in electrolysis). Once Wilhelm settled in London in 1843, the two brothers became one another's points of contact with the distant clusters of individuals to which each belonged. Just as Wilhelm channeled technical and market information from England to Berlin, Werner used his contacts in the Prussian capital to help guide his brother's decisions across the Channel. Whereas Wilhelm patented and then sold Werner's “galvanic” gilding process in London, for instance, Werner turned to his colleague Ferdinand Leonhardt for help in producing the pendulum for his brother's Regulator.
As Werner's web of contacts in Berlin widened from 1843 onward, he became a particularly active member of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft: between that year and 1846, he gave at least eight lectures at the society's meetings.Footnote 79 The records show that, in 1844, a certain “Himly from Göttingen” came to speak at the society; this was arranged, no doubt, by Werner, who wrote around the same time of his brother-in-law's visit.Footnote 80 The proceedings of the society also confirm that Werner began to devote a great deal of energy to answering the questions of individual members. The Polytechnische Gesellschaft had instituted a system whereby members could place questions for their colleagues in a “questions box,” and all were free to respond if they felt qualified to do so. Siemens intervened, for instance, on questions about electrolysis and gilding, as well as ones about daguerreotypes.
As an arena for the exchange of knowledge, the society struck a tense balance between constituting a “closed circle” and an “open network,” particularly when it came to business.Footnote 81 On the one hand, the members' presentations and questions were a means of introducing their ideas to a potential market and to other experts. Some of the questions could also be of a practical nature—for instance, whether the Grundriβ der mechanischen Technologi (sic) by C. Karmarsch could be recommended for self-teaching, or whether “steel from the Krupp factory could also be bought in Berlin.”Footnote 82 Moreover, the society occasionally sponsored young apprentices to attend its meetings, demonstrating its desire to reach out to local future tradesmen.Footnote 83 Then, when preparing for the Industrial Exhibition of 1844, the society decided that its members should present their work as individuals, rather than as representatives of the group.Footnote 84 The Polytechnische Gesellschaft thus represented a modern, liberal conception of enterprise as independent of the state and encouraging the circulation of expertise. On the other hand, the society also mitigated the negative consequences of a free market economy. In 1842, for example, it underscored the sanctity of intellectual property when an argument arose because one member had published another's work without first obtaining permission.Footnote 85 Further measures were taken that somewhat restricted the openness of the network: in 1843, the rules for inviting guests were tightened, and, until 1845, the assembly repeatedly voted against publishing its proceedings.Footnote 86 The society thus sought to ensure that ideas and innovations did not reach the market without proper attribution and compensation.
The establishment of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft as a means of defending the interests of entrepreneurs paralleled the growing opposition within business circles to the state's liberal economic policies, which had surfaced in the 1840s. While the combination of a traditionalist defense of the guilds and criticism of state interventionism by some businessmen led to the somewhat inconclusive compromise of the Gewerbeordnung of 1845, the members of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft used the association as a means of negotiating a position between appreciating the benefits of unrestricted enterprise and avoiding the dangers of open competition.Footnote 87 From this perspective, the invitation extended by the society to young apprentices seems to have also been a means of providing them with the knowledge, recognition, protection, and contacts they might no longer find in the guilds—particularly as a glut of craftsmen (Handwerker) saturated the market. These advantages benefitted other entrepreneurs, too. In particular, unlike in Britain, the patenting process introduced in 1815 (as part of Karl August von Hardenberg's reforms) afforded entrepreneurs little protection for their intellectual property, on the grounds that innovations so crucial to industrial progress should be shared for the benefit of all.Footnote 88 In 1847, Marcellin-Ambroise Jobard, the Franco-Belgian inventor and campaigner against economic liberalism, presented the society with a draft bill that proposed extending the length of a patent to ninety-nine years. The matter was not discussed any further on that occasion, but, given Siemens's later agitation for patent reform and the fact that patent legislation featured in the Gesellschaft's debates in 1850, it is likely that such issues made their way into the society's continuing conversations.Footnote 89
Siemens, for his part, certainly took advantage of the forum that the Gesellschaft provided to encounter, borrow, and test fresh ideas. “I could tell you about a number of new, truly charming things that I have discovered, in part, from others, and, in part, invented myself,” he wrote to Wilhelm in 1845.Footnote 90 When Werner brought up his interest in the Scotsman Robert Stirling's “air engine,” his colleagues told him that there was nothing new about the idea.Footnote 91 By contrast, the rubber bands that Wilhelm sent, and that he presented to the assembly in 1846, were a “sensation” (grosses Aufsehen) and resulted in one manufacturer showing interest.Footnote 92 That same year, just as Wilhelm presented his Regulator to the Institution of Civil Engineers in London for similar purposes, Werner found “a few enthusiasts with money and courage” in the Polytechnische Gesellschaft to back his interest in artificial stones.Footnote 93 And when one of Siemens's many competitors in this field presented his subpar work to the assembly, he seized the opportunity: “to entice others, I showed some samples that I had in my bag and that met with great approval” (largely, he admitted, because they could not be thoroughly examined).Footnote 94 His principal competitor, the apothecary March, then approached him. “I want to be in contact with Herr March,” he wrote to his brother, “whose manufactory is currently on the upswing, as he has to turn away most orders.”Footnote 95 In this case, as in others, Werner realized the utility of his connection to the British market. Avoiding direct competition, he wondered whether “perhaps in these circumstances we could do better business as an intermediary” between March and F. Ransome, their partner in England, “than alone.”Footnote 96
Such opportunities were a crucial function of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, particularly in an environment no longer regulated by employment quotas but by the demands of the market. The principal alternative organizations were the Gewerbeverein, whose ties to the state likely made it suspect with regard to patent protection, and the Korporation der Kaufmannschaft. A guild-like exclusivity characterized the latter, however, which had been established in 1820 as an organ for the representation of the “merchant class.” Even such prominent figures as Egells, among other machine manufacturers, remained outside the group.Footnote 97 The Gesellschaft therefore provided a support network for entrepreneurs seeking both access to wider opportunities and the protection of their common interests, and thus foreshadowed the role of the specialized professional associations that would emerge in the 1850s.
In the absence of former and formal structures of expertise, the association was part of a broader entrepreneurial network in which social connections secured a necessary degree of trust in an individual and his ideas. Werner Siemens was acutely aware of this fact. When trying to market and improve his brother's Regulator, for example, he had sought out a number of well-known machine constructors who could test the apparatus. Among those he contacted and who later used Wilhelm's invention at various times were Egells, Wöhlert, and even the Oppenheim cotton-goods manufactory. It was not self-evident, however, that the efficacy of a product would speak for itself. “In order to do something with your Regulator here,” Werner explained to his brother, “you must send attestations from reputable technicians and manufacturers; because otherwise the fools here won't consider anything to be serious or good.”Footnote 98 It is no surprise, then, that just a few months later, Werner believed that “the Regulator will soon do better here because I have won Borsig over to the idea.”Footnote 99 Connections and acquaintances were crucial, as Werner explained to Wilhelm: “It is too difficult to convince people here of the necessity of producing things precisely, and they tend too much to condemn everything new, especially when it is of German origin and, moreover, not from a recognized master of the clique!”Footnote 100 These surrogate networks of trust stepped into the breach when no formal regulating authorities existed, particularly in the new machine construction industry. Arguably signaling an imminent industrial “takeoff,” these social networks helped to establish credit structures, as they had in late eighteenth-century Britain.Footnote 101
Just as Werner sought out the contacts that would enable him to break into the relevant “cliques,” as his reputation grew, he too came to function as a node—often as a weak tie connecting his acquaintances to broader networks. In the case of the apothecary March and others, business was to be made by mediating between Prussian and English markets. “We have already achieved a Rennomée (sic) here,” Werner wrote. “There is constantly somebody turning to me, either directly or indirectly, who wants to propose an invention to be developed in England. One could do very nice business this way!”Footnote 102 Baron von Schomberg, a Prussian publicist, even hoped that Wilhelm might gain a position for him writing for The Times in London—a favor, Werner suggested, that might well be repaid in the future.Footnote 103 In 1846, when searching for a position for his younger brother Ferdinand, who was to become an estate owner and manager, Werner was even in contact with a certain Savigny, “the son of our noted minister,” Friedrich Carl von Savigny. The connection, which showed that he was, at the very least, in indirect contact with political circles, prompted one of his few neutral remarks on political developments, namely, the soon disappointed belief that “we will actually have a constitution now.”Footnote 104
Through a number of key individuals, the state itself also tapped into these entrepreneurial networks. Eventually, for instance, the Prussian Royal Mint expressed an interest in testing the Siemens brothers' Regulator on its coining presses. Although there is no direct evidence of the specific arrangement reached, it is not unlikely that the opportunity arose through the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, whose founding father, Nathan Mendelssohn, was chief inspector of the Royal Mint. Such opportunities were of crucial importance, both in terms of the credit they brought the entrepreneur in question, as well as the possibility of testing their invention. Siemens rightly believed that the offer to work with the Royal Mint “would be an important step for us,” and he understood the practical utility of the state's help, “because no private individual here will hand over their machine for trials.”Footnote 105
The 1840s also saw the Seehandlung wind up its activities, as the investment strategy pursued by its leader, Christian Rother, in an effort to stimulate industrialization, began to falter. Facing criticism over its interventionism, which had led it into direct competition with local businesses, and which ran counter to the wishes of Beuth, the Seehandlung turned to these networks in the hope of finding redress. Werner understood the implications of this situation, and wanted “to try and enter into closer contact with the Seehandlung [because] in order to be in the public's good graces once more, [it] must change its entire system and truly protect and promote what is novel. … What could we not achieve with the financial resources of the institution …!” he exclaimed.Footnote 106
Werner's enthusiasm was sparked in 1845, when the Maschinenbau-Anstalt in Moabit (run by a graduate of the state's Gewerbe-Institut) faced financial ruin and an offer was extended to Wilhelm to take over its management. The latter's education at a trade school and his apprenticeship in the Stollberg'sche factory undoubtedly qualified him for the position, but it was through an “advocate” (Fürsprecher)—the commercial director of the machine factory—that Werner had been contacted about the opportunity for his brother.Footnote 107 In this way, the state was utilizing the available channels of communication and recommendation to reach independent entrepreneurs, thereby also opening up opportunities for them. By 1850, the Seehandlung had lost its operational freedom and had handed over control of its undertakings to individuals such as Borsig, who bought the machine factory and the state foundry.Footnote 108
Throughout this period, the state's patenting process was a crucial bridge between public and private enterprise. The Technische Deputation, which managed these decisions, was often represented by specific individuals in the eyes of entrepreneurs. In the same way that one gained access to the entrepreneurial “cliques” through renowned technicians, it was very clear to Werner Siemens that particular decision-makers within the state had to be won over to his inventions. This was why his correspondence frequently mentioned Beuth and Kommissions-Rat Adolf Brix. The latter was also a founding member and regular participant in the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, and thus no doubt well known to Siemens. In order to obtain a long-lasting patent, it was essential, he explained to his brother, “to arouse the interest of Beuth and other chief figures [Hauptsöhne] and to present the matter in a very important light … therefore I want to show him samples and try to win him and [Alexander von] Humbold (sic) over to the idea.”Footnote 109 The latter, it seems, was the ideal sponsor for a new invention: as Werner explained in June 1845 with regard to their patent for the production of artificial stones, “since Humboldt is here right now …, it would now be the time to do something in the matter.”Footnote 110
Living in Berlin during the early to mid-1840s, Siemens's connection to particular clusters of individuals thus embedded him in both military and entrepreneurial networks (as we have seen, the state positioned itself in both of these networks as well), and, as a result, he occasionally struggled to reconcile his allegiances. “In Berlin,” he later wrote, “my efforts to earn money through my inventions were soon successful, although they were rendered more difficult by the fact that, as an officer, my choice of means to establish businesses was very limited.”Footnote 111 When he sought to set up a business to produce artificial stones, he therefore called for the involvement of a “businessman … because I alone, especially as long as I wear the colors [den bunten Rock trage], simply cannot do anything with it.”Footnote 112
Siemens nevertheless clearly profited from the merging of his military and entrepreneurial connections, not least through his acquaintance with Hofrat Soltmann and Ferdinand Leonhardt (the latter, it seems, was also a member of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft). And he was by no means the only officer involved in business. The long-standing steward of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft was the lieutenant-colonel and professor Turte, for instance, and one of Siemens's principal contacts in the printing business was a certain “Leutnant Baldamus,” based in Hamburg. Turning to one of its own, the Prussian General Staff contacted Baldamus regarding the printing of maps and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Siemens was soon planning to present his own printing samples to the military authorities.Footnote 113 When he subsequently reconsidered his involvement in this sector, he offered his business to a certain Delius—again, “a former bombardier of the Third Artillery Brigade.”Footnote 114 Though the evidence is anecdotal, Siemens's experience and contacts suggest that social networks rendered the boundaries of military institutions—particularly the artillery corps—and entrepreneurial circles more porous than scholars usually assume, thus allowing for transfers of ideas and individuals between the two.
Science Beyond the Academy
Siemens's letter of July 1846 points to a final, crucial, Berlin-centered cluster through which he could connect to scientific and entrepreneurial networks—the Physikalische Gesellschaft.Footnote 115 The society—for which, he explains, he had been writing a history of electrical telegraphy—was established in 1845, and although Siemens almost immediately became a member, its role in shaping his career has rarely been acknowledged.Footnote 116 This is all the more surprising, given that the list of its founding and participating members reads like a Who's Who of the German scientific academy as it was to develop by the end of the nineteenth century. Among its later, most prominent personalities were Emil Du Bois-Reymond (b. 1818), Ernst Wilhelm Brücke (b. 1819), Hermann Helmholtz (b. 1821), Rudolf Clausius (b. 1822), Carl Ludwig (b. 1816), and Hermann Knoblauch (b. 1820). Siemens specifically singled out these young academics, all in their twenties at the time of the Gesellschaft's foundation, and thus roughly of his generation.Footnote 117 Together they formed a group of university-trained scientists through which Siemens gained limited access to the academy.
The Physikalische Gesellschaft grew out of a circle of some ten students whom Gustav Magnus, a professor at the University of Berlin, had invited to regular meetings at his house. Beginning in 1843, they assembled every week at Magnus's “private laboratory” at Am Kupfergraben 7, located in the center of town and within a few minutes' walk of the university, to listen to a presentation and engage in discussion.Footnote 118 Magnus, who had taught Siemens at the VAIS, was the crucial link to the Gesellschaft. Around this time, Siemens had chosen to attend a series of lectures at the university by Carl Jacobi, in an attempt to improve his grounding in science. His regular presence there must have brought him once again to the attention of his former teacher, as well as to that of other academics. In this way Magnus came to invite him to join the “inspiring social circle” of young, budding scientists who established the Physikalische Gesellschaft.Footnote 119
Looking back on this period in his memoirs, Siemens believed that “contact and collaboration with these young men … strengthened [his] preference for scientific studies and work, and awoke in [him] the decision later to serve only the cause of true science.”Footnote 120 Yet, the list of the Gesellschaft's members makes it clear that Siemens derived not only scientific, but also personal, professional, and business connections from the group: though nominally devoted to the “progress of physics,” the society represented a broad range of interests, and its membership was wide-ranging. Among its fifty-three members in 1845, for instance, were six mecanici (mechanic engineers) and six lieutenants—once again highlighting the connection of Prussian officers to broader social networks.Footnote 121 In 1844, in fact, Siemens was listed as residing in the Artillerie-Werkstatt, located at Am Kupfergraben 3–4, literally next to Magnus's home, where the young students regularly assembled. By 1845, he had moved to the barracks located on Luisenstraβe, still no more than a short walk from the house. This enabled Werner to take part in the Gesellschaft's meetings as often as possible.Footnote 122
The Physikalische Gesellschaft was characteristic of the specialized, local scientific associations that flourished in Germany during the second third of the nineteenth century. Although it was dedicated to the specific discipline of physics, from the outset its members welcomed talks and papers on a wider array of medical, scientific, and technical subjects, not unlike the Polytechnische Gesellschaft discussed earlier. The diversity of interests of its initiating members confirms that they were open to individuals with related concerns. Clearly, these men felt a need for a wider-ranging discussion of scientific subjects and themes, and the Physikalische Gesellschaft thus distinguished itself from a university-orientated, academic colloquium.Footnote 123 As noted in the first edition of its publication Fortschritte der Physik, “the intimate connection of the different branches of the natural sciences clearly demonstrates that disciplines that appear to be very distant from one another are, in fact, united in one.”Footnote 124 The Physikalische Gesellschaft was a learned society, then, but the sociability within the group contributed to the emergence of a self-conscious, educated middle-class.Footnote 125 The importance of the social connections it facilitated, especially in a small, yet rapidly transforming city such as Berlin, cannot be underestimated. Indeed, its members included “Mechanicus Leonhard” and “Dr. Soltmann,” through whom Siemens was able to expand further his connection to entrepreneurial, military, and scientific networks.Footnote 126
Werner's educational background and entrepreneurial pursuits suggest that a genuine, active interest in science had motivated him to join the Physikalische Gesellschaft, but this ostensibly learned society clearly served socioeconomic functions as well. Timothy Lenoir has even argued that the Physikalische Gesellschaft played a strategic role within the scientific academy itself. Focusing on one of its leading members, Emil Du Bois-Reymond (a close friend of Werner Siemens), Lenoir suggests that the establishment of the society in the 1840s was part of a broader strategy of a group of young, university-trained scientists to establish the credentials of a new discipline, namely, organic physics. Driven by their “social interests,” he argues, Helmholtz, Ludwig, Brücke, and Du Bois-Reymond sought to exert pressure on the academy from without by allying themselves with other “outsiders”—in particular with the first generation of Berlin's entrepreneurs.Footnote 127
Like the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, the society thus trod the line between a closed circle and an open network, serving both to strengthen bonds and forge new connections. It was not only devoted to furthering a particular scientific discipline and defending common interests, but was also comprised of members who depended on their connections with other clusters of individuals to negotiate their positions in the scientific network. For example, just as entrepreneurs and Handwerker were adjusting to the vagaries of the market, among the society's fifty-four earliest members were twenty-two Privatdozenten, or lecturers, who were facing a scarcity of tenured academic posts in the 1840s, resulting from the rise in university enrollment stimulated by the Reform Era.Footnote 128 By associating with one another, they sought contacts and security in a competitive market, and, as a generation, their alliance foreshadowed the greater interaction between science and enterprise that would characterize Germany's later industrialization.
The possibility that the Physikalische Gesellschaft also took on “crypto-political” functions should also be noted in this context. No direct connection can be established, but it is likely no coincidence that, among the founding members of the Fortschrittspartei in 1861, Siemens, Theodor Mommsen, and Rudolf Virchow were all friends of Du Bois-Reymond, whose plan for a sweeping reform of the Academy of Sciences was applauded by liberals as a model for societal change.Footnote 129 Here, too, politics cut across the social networks to which Siemens belonged, and was part and parcel of the environment in which he operated.
As a social-strategic “alliance,” then, the Physikalische Gesellschaft certainly served Siemens's interests. After reviewing the observations he had made at Hofrat Soltmann's home in July 1846, he developed the “pointer telegraph with automatic interruption” (Zeigertelegraph mit Selbstunterbrechung), which would make his name in the then germinating telegraph industry. Siemens initially entrusted the construction of the apparatus to his colleague Ferdinand Leonhardt, but the partnership soon dissolved when the clockmaker obtained a patent and contracts of his own, thus becoming one of Siemens's principal competitors.Footnote 130 After first approaching Johann August Oertling, a renowned Berlin mechanic who had worked with Alexander von Humboldt and was also a member of the Polytechnische Gesellschaft, it was then in the Physikalische Gesellschaft that he found a long-term collaborator.Footnote 131 One of Oertling's apprentices, Johann Georg Halske, as well as his business partner, Friedrich M. Bötticher, were also members of the society. As Du Bois-Reymond later remarked, Halske “possessed, to an unusual extent, the constructive talent [das constructive Talent] and had a flair for understanding scientific tasks, even without a learned education, and for finding the easiest and best way of carrying them out.”Footnote 132 According to Du Bois-Reymond, Halske and Siemens had, no doubt, already crossed paths at the society's meetings, but he formally introduced them on December 31, 1846.Footnote 133 Siemens eventually drew Halske away from his existing business and the two men established the firm of Siemens & Halske on October 12, 1847.
Conclusion
Werner Siemens's life after the establishment of the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske is well documented, and social networks such as those discussed in this article continued to support his efforts in the realms of business, science, and even politics.Footnote 134 In the earliest years of the business, he experienced both the constraining and the liberating powers of these connections. As an officer, he was acquainted with key members of the state's telegraph commission, which he was invited to advise. By the same token, however, he and his partner decided that their business should be publicly presented under Halske's leadership in order to avoid bringing attention to any preferential treatment Siemens might receive from the state.Footnote 135 Siemens already intended at this point to resign his position in service of the state, but chose to wait until the official confirmation of the commission's projects for Prussia's future telegraph network. The government's decision-making process was interrupted by political circumstances, however: Siemens welcomed the outbreak of revolution in France in 1848, but, once it reached Prussia, he also insisted on fulfilling his duties as an officer and served in Kiel against the Danish forces. The disturbances encouraged the Prussian state to build one of its first telegraph lines from Berlin to Frankfurt am Main, and Siemens was entrusted with its construction. He finally left both the army and the civil service by June 1849, having established a reputation and firm financial basis for his business.Footnote 136
Throughout his life, Siemens maintained connections to crucial clusters of individuals—by way of his position on the telegraph commission, his authorship in technical and scientific journals, his role in founding the Fortschrittspartei in 1861, his collaboration with Helmholtz in establishing the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (Imperial Physical Technical Institute) in 1887, and, last but not least, his ennoblement in 1888. His family continued to provide access to technical, logistical, and financial resources at an ever greater distance, as his firm expanded its activities across Europe and beyond. His cousin Johann Georg Siemens, a judicial official (Justizrat), provided an initial injection of 6,842 Thalers to fund the establishment of Siemens & Halske.Footnote 137 His brother Wilhelm remained in London, where the increasingly global Siemens Brothers was established in 1858, and Carl was sent to Saint Petersburg to ensure that the siblings dominated the development of telegraphy in the Russian Empire.
As time wore on and his professional status grew, Siemens, like Beuth and Humboldt before him, became a connecting personality between key groups in science, technology, business, and even politics. The particular course his own life had taken was, however, a product of the constellations that his connections had formed in Berlin during the 1840s. The growth, dynamism, and layout of the city during this period facilitated the multiplication of overlapping relationships between individuals and their institutions, social circles, and families. The renewed vigor of Siemens's artillery regiment and its technological investigations, the state's growing reliance on the private sector, and the support and protection that scientists and entrepreneurs needed in a market that still distinguished them as “outsiders” made social networks all the more important as a means of reinforcing—but, crucially, also diversifying—connections across state and society. These networks enabled individuals to negotiate the uncertain socioeconomic and political circumstances that characterized what would later be understood as the end of “early industrialization” and of the Vormärz in Prussia.
