kimerajamm
Joined: 28 Nov 2010
Posts: 785
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 Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:56 pm Post subject: The Bavarian Ludwig |
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As important as these improvements were, they could not compete with the impact of the railroad. German economist Friedrich List called the railroads and the Customs Union "Siamese Twins", emphasizing their important relationship to one another.[23] He was not alone: the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote a poem in which he extolled the virtues of the Zollverein, which he began with a list of commodities that had contributed more to German unity than politics or diplomacy.[24] Historians of the Second Empire later regarded the railways as the first indicator of a unified state; the patriotic novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, wrote: "The German empire was founded with the construction of the first railway..."[25] Not everyone greeted the iron monster with enthusiasm. The Prussian king Frederick William III saw no advantage in traveling from Berlin to Potsdam a few hours faster and Metternich refused to ride in one at all. Others wondered if the railways were an "evil" that threatened the landscape: Nikolaus Lenau's 1838 poem An den Frühling (To Spring) bemoaned the way trains destroyed the pristine quietude of German forests.[26]
The Bavarian Ludwig Railway, which was the first passenger or freight rail line in the German lands, connected Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835; it was 6 kilometers (4 mi) long, and operated only in daylight, but it proved both profitable and popular. Within three years, 141 kilometers (88 mi) of track had been laid; by 1840, 462 kilometers (287 mi) and by 1860, 11,157 kilometers (6,933 mi). Lacking a geographically central organizing feature (such as a national capital), the rails were laid in webs, linking towns and markets within regions,
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