Frankreich und Deutschland: Forschung, Technologie und industrielle Entwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert ed. by Yves Cohen, Klaus Manfrass

Abstract

430 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE are to be found not only in the cited 1875 brochure, but also in Peter Borscheid’s 1978 book on the Wiirttemberg textile industry in the 19th century.) In 1867, Staub was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exposition for his social accomplishments, a prize for which he had lobbied intensely. The study is well researched: the authors drew heavily on local and business archives; there are detailed statistics on the workers in the Staub era, their reasons for leaving the firm, and their gender and origins; and there is a rich bibliography. The marvelous illustrations deserve special mention, but it is hard to understand why the editors could not have included a map to help readers locate Kuchen. Stephan Lindner Dr. Lindner is a research fellow at the Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques in Paris. He is currently working on the development of the French and German textile industries since 1929. Frankreich und Deutschland: Forschung, Technologie und industrielle Entwicklungim 19. und 20.Jahrhundert. Edited by Yves Cohen and Klaus Manfrass. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1990. Pp. xl+491; tables, notes, bibliography. DM 88.00. This volume presents the results of a remarkable four-day confer­ ence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, convened in 1987 at the invitation of the German Historical Institute and the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, both in Paris. Topics include national styles, indus­ trial supremacy and backwardness, technological transfer, competi­ tion and cooperation, technoscientific elites, and the interplay be­ tween industry and politics. Besides the two national perspectives, there are those of three subcultures: most of the papers were presented by historians of technology and science, while the sessions were chaired by general historians and the commentaries were presented by influential practitioners of technological transfer be­ tween France and Germany such as Adolf Weber, Jean Michel, Jean Delmas, Hubertus Rolshoven, Volker Knoerich, Stephane Thouvenot , and Heinz Maier-Leibnitz. This book includes the 45 papers (twenty-five in German, eighteen in French, and two in English) and the comments, but not the discussion. A brilliant introductory over­ view is provided by the medievalist Karl Ferdinand Werner, while François Caron and Emmanuel Chadeau consider the economic and cultural determinants of German and French technology in the past two centuries. When historians of technology address national styles, they are easily trapped by cliches: Cartesian purity in the French way of thinking, German thoroughness (or irrationality), the English incli­ nation toward pragmatism. We hear that French industry has been TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 431 more interested in the market, German industry in product develop­ ment. Fortunately, most of the papers at this conference aimed to counter such facile generalizations. Germany often appears as the more rationalistic and centralized country. According to André Grêlon, the French system of engineering education was more heterogeneous. Aimée Moutet, Peter Hinrichs, and Ingo Kolboom suggest that the French Taylorist movement of the 1920s was lacking the drive toward central management of its German counterpart. Germany was more effective than France in the organization of electrification and telecommunications under governmental control, according to Patrice Carré. Such assessments of German industrial might, it should be noted, have a tradition in France dating at least from the Franco-Prussian War. As Robert Fox points out here, the French have been looking across the Rhine both in admiration and scorn of rigid German models, while devaluing their own attainments. This attitude, which has been extensively documented in the writings of Allen Mitchell, is still evident in some of the French contributions to this volume. The papers on technoscientific elites address only the school culture, not the shop floor, though professionalization of the engineer by academization was not totally successful in Germany and even less so in France. Peter Lundgreen, André Grêlon, and Albert Broder note the larger education budgets in Germany. Regarding the vaunted “international community of scientists,” Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus and Herbert Mehrtens describe the nationalistic bias and indifference to mutual exchange before 1945. Only after World War II, according to Dominique Pestre, has there been intensive exchange, the result not only of political détente...