Who were the Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan of 1880s/90s Germany?

by sbd_marauder

As a student of American history, I have a wealth of information regarding the modern industrialization in the U.S. I realize that Germany also underwent rapid industrialization at approximately the same time. Were there also stand out industrialists that pushed Germany forward?

Thanks.

kieslowskifan

Gerson von Bleichröder was the chief banker for the Imperial state and handled Bismarck's own personal finances. Although not nearly as powerful a banker as Morgan, von Bleichröder was able to use his connections within the Imperial state to expand his financial interests.

Albert Ballin was a shipping magnate and head of the lucrative Hamburg-America Line, which was one of the world's largest shipping lines in the late nineteenth century. Ballin also operated as a diplomatic go-between for Imperial Germany and the British.

Walther Rathenau, like von Bleichröder, was a German-Jewish businessman who founded Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), an electrical concern. He played a crucial role in organizing Germany's economy during the First World War and became a controversial figure in the early Weimar Republic as he became Foreign Minister. The antisemitic right saw his process of diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union as a part of a Jewish conspiracy to further destroy Germany, leading to his assassination in 1922.

The Ruhr coal industry created a number of major industrial magnates as coal was the most accessible fossil fuel available for Germany. Louis Baare was the director of the Bochumer Verein and highly respected in Imperial Germany and was a representative to the Reichstag and a prominent supporter of the anti-socialist legislation. Emil Kirdorf was another Ruhr coal magnate and lived all the way through the Third Reich, passing in 1938. Kridorf's Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) was a massive coal concern and Kirdorf was an avid supporter of reactionary politics, supporting the NSDAP in their lean times between the Beer Hall Putsch and the Depression. When he died in 1938, Hitler himself attended Kirdorf's state funeral. Carl Lueg was the head of Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH), a mining and engineering company that grew tremendously after unification. Like his fellow coal magnates, Lueg was a prominent advocate for trade protectionism and also employed industrial paternalism for his workers providing care for his employees (provided they did not strike or have the temerity to vote for the SPD).

One of the major differences between German industrialists and their American counterparts was that in the former case they played a much more formalized role in national politics. Although Rockefeller and Morgan were important players in the national scene, they never formally entered into the federal government, unlike figures like Rathenau or Baare. American industrialists actually prided themselves in their relative autonomy from the stat; the idea that the American entrepreneur succeeded without government interference or aid was a powerful myth that surrounded this charter generation of American entrepreneurs. The Germans never really maintained this position and German industrial magnates argued that business and politics were intertwined. This played into long-standing German cultural mores about the social role of economic superiors, called "Bread-Lords," or Arbeitsgeber in which employers were accepted to have a leading role over their employees' lives and politics in exchange for fair wages and a measure of social welfare.

davratta

Albert Ballin worked his way up through the ranks of the Hamburg American Steamship Line (HAPAG) and was so successful at increasing the number of passengers carried by that company on the North Atlantic route, he became the president of the company. Ballin also turned HAPAG into the largest steamship company in the world from 1906 to 1914. Despite being Jewish, he became a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser let his great love of anything nautical and the very large ocean liners built by HAPAG overcome what ever anti-Semitism he may have had. In fact, some apologists of Kaiser Wilhelm point to his friendship with Ballin to prove he had no hatred against the Jews. Source: "Lost Liners" by Robert Ballard

TruthSeeker1995

As a side question, what would be the best way to learn about who non-American industrialists were? I only know about Krupp and Rhodes.

NCA_Andrict

No one can match Jp Morgan. He is the man