List, Friedrich b.August 6, 1789; Reutlingen, Wurttemberg d. November 30, 1846; Kufstein,Austria
German American entrepreneur who introduced the American technology of railway construction to the German states. List attended the Latin school in Reutligen and later trained in his father’s tannery workshop.
After completing his apprenticeship, he entered the civil service at the age of fifteen and began a career as a copyist (Schreiber) in Blaubeuren. Three years later he passed his “Substitute” examination and worked as a civil servant in Schelklingen, Wiblingen, and Ulm. Between 1811 and 1814 he became an Ober- amtsaktuar. This position involved public financial studies at the University of Tubingen. While he was fulfilling his duties as a Oberamtsaktuar he was engaged in several governmental commissions. In 1816 he was promoted to the position of Rechnungsrat and became a tenured civil servant. He then received a professorship in Tubingen.It was in his official capacity as Rech- nungsrat that List first came into contact with the New World. The state of Wurttemberg had been hemorrhaging several hundred of its inhabitants to emigration with every passing day. More than 20,000 people in total had moved to North America in 1816 and 1817. At the age of twenty-seven List was given the task of questioning emigrants between April 30 and May 6, 1817, to uncover the reasons for this large-scale emigration. Taking full advantage of his opportunity to question emigrants, he wrote a critical report about the political situation in the kingdom.
His account is a result of his interviews with several hundreds emigrants. Their answers included numerous strong complaints about the political system and royal government. Predominant reasons he recorded were the prohibitively high taxes, exorbitant administration fees, the slow process of justice, and the suppression by mayors, civil servants, forest wards, and landlords. The list continues with further reasons such as crop failure, unemployment, the increase in prices, or religious reasons.
All in all many emigrants argued,“One should give them work that they could earn the money for their own bread. They do not need support of food because they are men who can work. They are full of hope to earn the bare essentials in America that they miss at home” (Moltmann 1979, 134).
The complaints List gathered during his questioning and that he documented in his account strengthened his liberal views. The contact with the disappointed and embittered emigrants left a deep impression with List and influenced his further political development. He became a leading liberal and demanded political representation of the people on the communal level and less taxation. List left the civil service, gave up his professorship at the University of Tubingen, and became a leading figure in the liberal association for trade and industry. The government observed his political activities and opinions with growing mistrust. Eventually it initiated a criminal investigation that resulted in a ten-month imprisonment from 1821 to 1822. At first he refused to go to prison and escaped via Straβburg into Switzerland. But in the end he returned and went to the Asperg Prison. After five months he was given a reprieve on the condition that he leave the state. List decided to emigrate to North America.
In the United States he first worked as a farmer in Pennsylvania, then as a journalist for a German American newspaper. After List discovered coal fields in Pennsylvania, he became a wealthy entrepreneur. In the course of developing the coal fields, List built one of the first American railway lines in 1829. It was the 22 kilometer (14 miles) rail line from Tamaqua to Port Clinton at the Schuylkill Canal. This project changed List’s life tremendously. In 1832 he decided to return to Germany.
At this point the construction of railways was hotly discussed in Germany. After waves of enthusiastic accounts of the first successful railway line in England, German railway enthusiasts were taken aback when they learned how expensive (£800,000) the construction of the Liverpool-Manchester line had been. American railway projects were much less costly and therefore favored among German investors.
List was to play a key role in the introduction of railway technology to the German states. In 1827 he contacted the railway enthusiast Joseph von Baader, who introduced him to the German railway debate. Afterward, List suggested the construction of a railway line from Dresden to Leipzig in a brochure that he wrote for the government of Saxony. In this pamphlet, List argued energetically against the expensive English method of constructing railways and favored a more speedy construction method to be modeled on the American example. His calculation became a persuasive argument for building railways the American way, both pragmatically and cheaply.His detailed reasons and extensive argumentation for a transfer of American technological innovations was speedily taken over by other railway pioneers. In close cooperation with List, Baader had also directed the attention of the people in the public debate toward the railways in North America. As an example he described the railways in the Ohio valley.
Friedrich Harkort admired the progress of railways in America and listed for the state of New York alone no less than twenty-four projects in 1833. Friedrich Glunder who was engaged in railway planning in Hamburg, Bremen, and Hanover was of the opinion that construction costs would decrease by one-third if Germans would build as the Americans did. Harkort declared in the end it would not be wealthy England that would be the model but rather the “poor American.”
The Nuremberg railway committee was proof of how important the American example was for Germany. One reason why the committee engaged the railway engineer Paul Camille Denis for the construction work was his experience with the American railways. Because of his enthusiastic interest in the American system of railway construction from its very beginnings, the great railway pioneer Franz Anton von Gerstner wrote a detailed documentation on North America’s railways that became very popular.
Thanks to List, America became the great model for the German railway system.
It was especially the American method of building as cheaply and simply as possible that became a major consideration during a critical period in the introduction of the whole system. Although List’s proposal for the Dresden-Leipzig line failed, he continued to employ his American experience in developing plans for railroad construction. He tried to employ them for the development of German and European communication networks. In 1846, shortly before he died, he drew a sketch of a worldwide network of railways and steamships that included all the main lines in North America and Europe that later actually were built. List’s visionary potential is also documented in his brochure Politics of the Future (1841). In this booklet he envisaged the construction of a telegraph line to India, the Baghdad railway, and above all the rise of the United States and Russia to the status of superpowers that would eventually direct economic and political developments in the twentieth century.RalfRoth
References and Further Reading
Gehring, Paul. Friedrich List, Jugend- und Reifejahre, 1789—1825. Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1964.
Krause, Robert. Friedrich List und die groβe Eisenbahn Deutschlands. Ein Beitrag zur Eisenbahngeschichte. Leipzig: Verlag von Eduard Strauch, 1887.
Moltmann, Gunter, ed. Aufbruch nach Amerika. Friedrich List und die Auswanderung aus Baden und Wurttemberg 1816/17. Dokumentation einer Bewegung. Tubingen: Wunderlich, 1979.
Wendler, Eugen. Friedrich List, der geniale und vielverkannte Eisenbahnpionier. Reutlingen: Verlag Harwalik, 1989.