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Technology and Culture 44.3 (2003) 626-627



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Bier, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft in Deutschland, 1800-1914: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Industrialisierungsgeschichte. By Mikulás Teich. Vienna; Böhlau, 2000. Pp. 353. €39.80.

In Germany beer is not a luxury food but a staple. So it is often said, usually half jokingly, but this was indeed true for German day laborers and craftsmen at least until the middle of the nineteenth century and probably longer. It comes as no surprise that at the beginning of the twentieth century "liquid bread" was one of the most important industrially produced mass-consumption goods in Germany. The value of German beer production in 1910 amounted to a billion marks, equal to the value of hard coal or the whole iron and steel industry. As Mikulás Teich argues in Bier, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft in Deutschland, however, the economic and political importance of the brewing industry is widely underestimated. In studies of German industrialization, the dominant roles are given to iron and steel, [End Page 626] chemicals, and electricity. It is Teich's aim provide redress by "giving the brewing industry its due place in the industrial development of Germany" (p. 343); he thus focuses mainly on the scientific and technical aspects of industrialization.

Teich first provides a short overview on the art of brewing since the late Middle Ages, always with an eye on the striking regional differences between Northern and Southern Germany. Next he deals with economic and social aspects of the brewing industry from 1800 to 1914. Teich is concerned with beer prices and taxation as well as with the organization of the industry in the Deutscher Brauer-Bund and the Deutsche Brauer-Union, and of the brewery workers in the Brauer-Verband. Another main topic is the increasingly scientific character of the brewing industry, the development of research institutes whose efforts went into science-based analysis and new techniques.

The technical aspects of industrialization are the main focus of the third and by far longest part of the book. Guided by his extremely detailed knowledge, Teich describes the raw materials of beer production and the methods of brewing. Clearly, this account is informed by Teich's earlier work on the history of biochemistry and the industrialization of agriculture in Bohemia and Moravia. The fourth and last part of the book deals with the concentration of the brewing industry and the growth of large-scale production, a process that quickened rapidly after 1880. By means of his sound quantitative approach, mainly based on statistical material from contemporary literature and scientific journals, Teich succeeds in demonstrating the significance of the brewing industry for the entire German economy, thus fulfilling his aim of putting the industry into its proper place in the history of German industrialization. His study will serve as an indispensable starting point for all further work on the history of the German brewing industry. One has to remark, though, that there is no bibliography and that Teich did not consider the most recent literature on the topic, perhaps a result of his having worked on the book for so long, since 1974.

Moreover, readers interested in an analytic, theory-guided approach to the topic will be somewhat disappointed. By means of his descriptive rendering of minute details, Teich is able to close some gaps in recent research. But he fails to bind together the economic, scientific, and technological threads and demonstrate their interconnections in a theoretically informed way. Thus he foregoes an opportunity to address social history or consumption, which lie very close to his theme. Although this will entail further work on the history of the brewing industry, that work will have to commence with Teich's impressive compilation of data.

 



Luitgard Marschall

Dr. Marschall, a specialist in the history of biotechnology, is the author of Im Schatten der chemischen Synthese: Die Geschichte der industriellen Biotechnologie in Deutschland (2000).

Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer.

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