A German Eighteenth-Century Iron Works During its First Hundred Years: Notes Contributing to the Unwritten History of European Aristocratic Business Leadership—III

Abstract

The profits of and the amount of capital sunk in the Lauchhammer Iron Works are not revealed in the Festschrift, the history of that firm which has served as the main source of this article. (The omission is hardly surprising, since this company was owned by noblemen, one of whom was the most powerful official in the Kingdom of Saxony, and since its history was written by the general manager of the Works and was published in 1825.) But profits must have been considerable. Otherwise the Works' continuous improvement and expansion, described earlier in this article, would have been impossible. In 1818, the Lauchhammer Iron Works was even able to lend to the Gröditz plant the funds it needed to expand into an integrated iron enterprise. Whether the Works had any bank connection prior to 1825 is not known; none is mentioned in the history, but that fact is not conclusive. Cash holdings were probably rather large; this, however, was not the case in 1776 (see the inventory on page 233). It seems certain that both expansion and improvement in the eras of both Einsiedels were financed by ploughing back profits.