Automobilitat: Karl Drais und die unglaublichen Anfange (review)

What the reader gets with Hans-Erhard Lessing's 528 pages is more than one book: it is partly a biography of Freiherr Karl von Drais; partly a history of the draisine, its diffusion, and its reception; and partly a revisionist look at the origins of automobility. Before discussing the book's merits, I should note a quality that may put off readers used to soberly presented research: Lessing approaches his subject with sometimes quirky humor—comments often appear in comic-strip balloons—and he freely draws parallels with the present and argues ad hominem. There are several interconnected themes, and interesting sidelights lurk on nearly every page. What is lacking is a strong narrative.

Although Drais lived in a period where there was almost no protection for intellectual property, his attempts to "improve" the society he lived in did not stop at the draisine. While concentrating on his human-powered Laufmaschine, he also invented a typewriter, a calculator, and a wood-saving furnace. But the Laufmaschine, writes Lessing, was a "demand-induced invention," a response to the shortage of fodder and the European famine of 1816–17. Lessing likewise suggests a single reason for its "failed" reception: Drais's sympathies for "revolutionary"—i.e., democratic—political aims, which led to his being ridiculed by contemporaries and later by historians.

Lessing assesses the numerous modifications and "improvements" to Draisinen, including hand propulsion and different geometries and construction techniques—a fascinating story of the development of an invention through the responses of its users. While he does not note any of the current debates among historians of technology, aspects of the social construction of technology are readily apparent. The same is true for his remarks about the attempts of the authorities to "regulate" Laufmaschinen, to restrict their use or even ban them from roads or public parks. The conflict between users of Drais's invention and the German Obrigkeit (government) after 1817 anticipated the conflicts involving bicycles and automobiles around 1890. Even the groups of first users are strikingly similar, and Lessing's thesis that the Laufmaschine was the true forerunner of all machines to facilitate individual mobility gains much plausibility.

Lessing also explores many paths of "automobility before the automobile." Ultimately, he attempts nothing less than a paradigm change regarding the history of early automobiles and automobile culture, asserting that "the whig historians suppress the parentage of the bicycle to the automobile" (p. 14). He presents strong evidence for the important role of bicycle technology for other "mobility machines" such as the airplane, and for a strong similarity between the bicycle culture and the early motor-car culture. Here, Lessing's book fits well within the recent reassessment of early automobility by scholars like Christoph Maria Merki and by this reviewer.

The book's layout mixes text, reproductions of illustrations, and quotations quite freely, strange juxtapositions that can either be annoying or inspiring. In my opinion, less would have been more. Still, the question remains: Has the author hit his aim? Considering that there were multiple aims, he has come close. His biography of Drais is authoritative, his assessment of the user history of the Laufmaschine and the early bicycle is fascinating to read, and his attempts to put the role of the "inventors" of the automobile in context should provoke mobility historians to some thought.