Description

With Germany’s entry into the era of Industrial Revolution during the early 19th century, there was going along a profound transition of its society. After 1835, when the first German steam-powered railway between Nuremberg and Fürth was opened, everywhere in Germany stirred creator spirit and entrepreneurship. In Saxony there were excellent conditions for railway construction: a bourgeoisie gaining strength, a powerful system of manufactures, interested state-officials, and active personages with visions. Therefore, it took little more than four years before the first long-distance railway of Germany between Leipzig and Dresden became reality on April 7, 1839. She was the initial impetus for the construction of railways throughout Germany, and the 175th anniversary of this event is a special occasion to bring facts and background information of that development home to today’s reader.

The book focuses the work of outstanding persons. Names such as Friedrich List, Johann Andreas Schubert, Gustav Harkort, and Carl Theodor Kunz crucially shaped the early years of the new and highly innovative means of transport. Thanks to them Saxony became a pioneer within the German railway-system. By the use of steam-power in this field not only the mobility-behavior of practically all people changed virtually – the railway also revolutionized the existing economic and social structures in those countries that went through the process of industrialization.

2014, 160 pages, hardcover, many mostly coloured illustrations, 15 x 24 cm;
ISBN: 978-3-938533-56-7