Knowledge Management to Exploit Agrarian Resources as Part of Late-eighteenth-century Cultures of Innovation: Friedrich Casimir Medicus and Franz von Paula Schrank

Summary

This essay contributes to a recent strain of research that questions clear-cut dichotomies between ‘scientists’ and ‘artisans’ in the early modern period. With a focus on the exploitation of agrarian resources, it argues for the appreciation of a more complex panorama of intersecting knowledge systems spanning from botany as part of natural history, over administrational and teaching expertise, to various sorts of practical experience in agriculture. With this aim, the essay investigates the careers of two protagonists of the ‘economic enlightenment’ in Southern Germany in the late eighteenth century, Friedrich Casimir Medicus and Franz von Paula Schrank. Financed mostly by territorial powers to which they remained closely related throughout their lives, their careers were characterized by ‘scientific’ investigations as well as by engaging in higher education and extensive publication for diverse audiences. According to the argument set forth here, the panorama of the activities of these two figures can best be understood when seen in the light of early modern cultures of innovation aiming to stimulate economic growth by collecting, testing and distributing advanced technical knowledge. Against a position advocated for most recently in a monograph by Andre Wakefield on German cameralism, the final section argues for a long-term perspective on this development with regard to the emergence of technical sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as more appropriate than a focus on the ‘failure’ of such actors to turn their aims immediately into practice.

Notes

¹This essay is part of a research project at the Chair of Economic, Social, and Environmental History at Salzburg University, entitled ‘Early modern technology and European Integration.’ The author gratefully acknowledges funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project number M012019_P.

²The authoritative biographical studies on Medicus and Schrank are Ilona Knoll, Der Mannheimer Botaniker Friedrich Casimir Medicus (1736–1808): Leben und Werk (Heidelberg, 2003) and Annette Zimmermann, Franz von Paula Schrank (1747–1835): Naturforscher zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik (München, 1981).

³For approaches to this topic in pre-industrial Europe see, for example, Ursula Klein, ‘Technoscience avant la lettre’, Perspectives on Science, 13 (2005), 227–66; Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer and Peter Dear (editors), The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation (Chicago, 2007).

⁴With the approach followed here, it becomes very difficult to say where the ‘scientific’ occupations of Medicus and Schrank ended and the ‘technical’ or ‘administrative’ parts of their work began, as they were all intermingled to some extent. For the sake of convenience, the words ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ are used in the following, as most contemporaries would have concurred, to refer to the identification and classification of natural objects in a context that constituted natural history as an activity pursued in particular institutions like academies of science and botanical gardens.

⁵On the concept of ‘improvement’ see John Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture (Cambridge, 1994), 185–236; Paul Warde: ‘The Idea of Improvement, c. 1520–1700’, in Custom, Improvement and the Landscape in Early Modern Britain, edited by Richard W. Hoyle (Farnham, 2011), 127–48.

⁶See George E. Fussell, Crop Nutrition: Science and Practice before Liebig (Lawrence, KA, 1971); Joan Thirsk, ‘Agricultural Innovations and their Diffusion’, in Agrarian Change, edited by Joan Thirsk. (Cambridge, 1985) (=The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. 5/2: 1640–1750), 533–89, here 542–69; Simon Schaffer, ‘The Earth's Fertility as a Social Fact in Early Modern Britain’, in Nature and Society in Historical Context, edited by Mikulas Teich, Roy Porter, and Bo Gustafsson (Cambridge, 1997), 124–47.

⁷On the concept of ‘economic Enlightenment’ and its usefulness for agricultural contexts, in contrast to the otherwise comparable concept of ‘industrial Enlightenment’ more appropriate for contexts of artisanal production, see Marcus Popplow, ‘Economizing agricultural resources in the German economic enlightenment’, in Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory, edited by Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (Chicago, 2009), 261–87 and, in more detail, Marcus Popplow, ‘Die Ökonomische Aufklärung als Innovationskultur des 18. Jahrhunderts zur optimierten Nutzung natürlicher Ressourcen’, in Landschaften agrarisch-ökonomischen Wissens. Strategien innovativer Ressourcennutzung in Zeitschriften und Sozietäten des 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by Marcus Popplow (Münster et al., 2010) (= Cottbuser Studien zur Geschichte von Technik, Arbeit und Umwelt 30), 2–48, here 14–5. For the ‘industrial Enlightenment’ see the instructive introduction in Peter M. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment. Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester and New York, 2008), 1–21, and Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 (New Haven and London 2009), especially 40–62.

⁸See Henry E. Lowood, Patriotism, Profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment: The Economic and Scientific Societies 1760–1815 (New York and London, 1991) and the survey in Popplow (2010, note 7), 8–11.

⁹On comparable attempts to apply ‘useful’ natural history knowledge, see Staffan Müller-Wille, ‘Nature as a Marketplace: The Political Economy of Linnean Botany’, in Oeconomies in the Age of Newton, edited by Margaret Schabas and Neil de Marchi [= History of Political Economy, Annual supplement 34 (2003)], 154–72. For the context of mining see Ursula Klein, ‘Ein Bergrat, zwei Minister und sechs Lehrende. Versuche der Gründung einer Bergakademie in Berlin um 1770’, in NTM 18 (2010), 437–68.

¹⁰See, for example, Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007).

¹¹For Medicus’ biography as sketched below see Knoll (note 2), 11–60; for the Mannheim botanical garden, see also 224–7.

¹²On the Cameral College see Keith Tribe, ‘Die Kameral-Hohe Schule zu Lautern und die Anfänge der ökonomischen Lehre in Heidelberg (1774–1822)’, in Die Institutionalisierung der Nationalökonomie an deutschen Universitäten, edited by Norbert Waszek (St. Katharinen, 1988), 162–91; Marcus Popplow, ‘Von Bienen, Ochsenklauen und Beamten. Die Ökonomische Aufklärung in der Kurpfalz’, in Landschaften agrarisch-ökonomischen Wissens. Strategien innovativer Ressourcennutzung in Zeitschriften und Sozietäten des 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by Marcus Popplow (Münster et al., 2010) (= Cottbuser Studien zur Geschichte von Technik, Arbeit und Umwelt 30), 175–235, with references to additional earlier literature in German. For studies in English see Lowood (note 8), 312–21; Andre Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice (Chicago and London, 2009), 111–33; on Wakefield, see also the remarks at the end of this essay.

¹³Friedrich Casimir Medicus, ‘Chymische Versuche, so in den Vorlesungen des Sommer halben Jahres 1780 an der Kameral Hohen Schule zu Lautern sind angestellet worden’, in Rheinische Beiträge zur Gelehrsamkeit 3/2(1780), 12. Heft, 504–18; Georg Adolph Suckow, ‘Von dem Nuzen der Chymie zum Behufe des bürgerlichen Lebens (1775)’, in Sammlung kleiner Schriften der Kameral = Hohen Schule zu Lautern. Die seit 1775 bis 1781 erschienen sind (Mannheim and Lautern, 1781), 1–26.

¹⁴For Medicus’ publications, see Knoll (note 2), 71–103.

¹⁵Franz von Paula Schrank, ‘Ueber die Nectarien’, in Oberdeutsche Beyträge zur Naturlehre und Oekonomie für das Jahr 1787 (Salzburg, 1787), 73–132; see the discussion in Knoll (note 2), 98.

¹⁶On Medicus and the robinia, see Knoll (note 2), 61–9, and Marcus Popplow, ‘Hoffnungsträger ‘Unächter Acacien = Baum’: Zur Wertschätzung der Robinie von der Ökonomischen Aufklärung des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zu aktuellen Konzepten nachhaltiger Landnutzung’, in Technik, Arbeit und Umwelt in der Geschichte. Günter Bayerl zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Torsten Meyer and Marcus Popplow (Münster et al., 2006), 297–316. On Schrank's intervention see Francisco de Paula Schrank, ‘Animadversionum in quaedam locum Promtuarii ricensis continuatio’, in Annalen der Botanik 4 (1793), 5–24; for Medicus’ response see Francisco de Paula Schrank, in Critische Bemerkungen, 1st. Stück, 85.

¹⁷See Zimmermann (note 2), 25–6.

¹⁸For Schrank's biography as sketched below see Zimmermann (note 2), 15–52.

¹⁹See, for example: Franz von Paula Schrank, Gedanken über die Erziehung der Bauernjugend (Burghausen, 1779); Franz von Paula Schrank, Abhandlung von dem Nutzen der Theorie in der Landwirtschaft (Burghausen, 1781). On the Burghausen society see Sieglinde Graf, Aufklärung in der Provinz. Die Sittlich-Ökonomische Gesellschaft von Ötting-Burghausen 1765–1802 (Göttingen, 1993); Ludwig Hammermayer, ‘Zur Publizistik von Aufklärung, Reform und Sozietätsbewegung in Bayern. Die Burghausener Sittlich-Ökonomische Gesellschaft und ihr ‘Baierisch-Ökonomischer Hausvater’ (1779–1786)’, in Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 58 (1995), 341–401.

²⁰See Zimmermann (note 2), 26; Wakefield (note 12), 126–30 and 148–53.

²¹See Zimmermann (note 2), 26.

²²Franz von Paula Schrank and Karl Ehrenbert von Moll, Naturhistorische Briefe über Österreich, Salzburg, Passau und Berchtesgaden, 2 Vol. (Salzburg, 1785); Franz von Paula Schrank and Karl Ehrenbert von Moll, Anfangsgründe der Botanik (München, 1785).

²³Hölzl discusses Schrank's publications on forest reform as part of his self-promotion addressing high-ranking officials in the Bavarian administration. He also underlines Schrank's engagement in discourses on a more coherent exploitation of natural resources. See Richard Hölzl, Umkämpfte Wälder. Die Geschichte einer ökologischen Reform in Deutschland 1760–1860 (Frankfurt/New York, 2010), 127–29, 52–3, and 56.

²⁴See the list of his published travel accounts in Zimmermann (note 2), 124–5.

²⁵See Torsten Meyer, Natur, Technik und Wirtschaftswachstum im 18. Jahrhundert, Risikoperzeptionen und Sicherheitsversprechen (Münster et al., 1999) (= Cottbuser Studien zur Geschichte von Technik, Arbeit und Umwelt 12), 72–133; Emma C. Spary, Utopia's Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago and London 2000); Mary Fissell and Roger Cooter, ‘Exploring Natural Knowledge: Science and the Popular’, in The Cambridge History of Science. Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science, edited by Roy Porter (Cambridge, 2003), 129–58; Müller-Wille (note 9).

²⁶Friedrich Casimir Medicus, Index plantarum horti electoralis Manhemiensis (Manhemii, 1771); Franz von Paula Schrank and C. F. Ph. von Martius, Hortus Regius Monacensis (München and Leipzig, 1829).

²⁷See Knoll (note 2), 24–5.

²⁸See the list of publications in Zimmermann (note 2), 121–4 and 132–40.

²⁹See Knoll (note 2), 93–101.

³⁰See Jörg Kreutz, Cosimo Alessandro Collini (1727–1806). Ein europäischer Aufklärer am kurpfälzischen Hof (Ubstadt-Weiher et al., 2009).

³¹Friedrich Casimir Medicus, ‘Oekonomische Botanik … ,’ in Rheinische Beiträge zur Gelehrsamkeit 1/1 (1778), 6. Heft, 481–8, citation 487–8 (author's translation).

³²On the similarities of these institutions’ approaches, see Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven and London, 2000), 50–81.

³³Franz von Paula Schrank (note 19, 1781), 8 (author's translation).

³⁴Wilfried Willer, ‘Die Bibliothek der churpfälzisch physikalisch-ökonomischen Gesellschaft (1770–1804),’ Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 4 (1967), 240–302.

³⁵See, for example, Friedrich Casimir Medicus, ‘Stadt = und Landwirthschaftliche Beobachtungen, bey einer kleinen Reise gesammelt,’ in Bemerkungen der Kuhrpfälzischen physikalisch-ökonomischen Gesellschaft vom Jahre 1771, 174–337; and the list of related publications of Schrank cited in note 24.

³⁶See Popplow (note 12), 223–6.

³⁷For the countless texts produced in this context of ‘Volksaufklärung’, see the handbook by Holger Böning and Reinhart Siegert, Volksaufklärung. Bibliographisches Handbuch zur Popularisierung aufklärerischen Denkens im deutschen Sprachraum von den Anfängen bis 1850 [= vol. 1: Holger Böning, Die Genese der Volksaufklärung und ihre Entwicklung bis 1780 (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt, 1990); vol. 2/1 and 2/2: Reinhart Siegert and Holger Böning, Der Höhepunkt der Volksaufklärung 1781–1800 und die Zäsur durch die Französische Revolution (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt, 2001)].

³⁸See the methodological reflections in Michael Kopsidis, Agrarentwicklung. Historische Agrarrevolutionen und Entwicklungsökonomie (Stuttgart, 2006); for a case study with reference to the Palatinate, see Gunter Mahlerwein, Die Herren im Dorf. Bäuerliche Oberschicht und ländliche Elitenbildung in Rheinhessen 1700–1850 (Mainz, 2001).

³⁹See Popplow (2010, note 7), 15–6; this concept is developed in more detail in the forthcoming monographic study of the author's ongoing research project, see note 1.

⁴⁰See Marcus Popplow, ‘Why Draw Pictures of Machines? The Social Contexts of Early Modern Machine Drawings’, in Picturing Machines 1400–1700, edited by Wolfgang Lefèvre (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 17–48; Marcus Popplow, ‘Presenting and Experimenting. Renaissance Engineers’ Employment of Models of Machines,’ in Les machines à la Renaissance, edited by Pascal Brioist, Luisa Dolza, and Hélène Vérin (Paris, in press).

⁴¹See Edgar Zilsel, The Social Origins of Modern Science, edited by Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn, and Robert S. Cohen (Dordrecht, 2000).

⁴²See, for example, Robin Briggs, ‘The ‘Académie Royale des sciences’ and the pursuit of utility’, Past and Present 131 (1991), 38–87.

⁴³See, for example, Antoine Picon, L'invention de l'ingénieur moderne: L’École des Ponts et Chaussées, 1747–1851 (Paris, 1992).

⁴⁴The term ‘storage device’ is used in Joel Mokyr, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth’, The Journal of Economic History 65 (2005), 286–351; for a related case study, see Klein (note 9), 456–61.

⁴⁵See Jonathan Harwood, Technology's Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Science and Practice in Germany, 1860–1934 (Bern et al., 2005); Stefanie Harrecker, Der Landwirtschaftliche Verein in Bayern 1810–1870/71 (München, 2006).

⁴⁶See, for Germany, Frank Uekötter, Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Feld. Eine Wissensgeschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft (Göttingen, 2010).

⁴⁷See Popplow (note 12), 231–35.

⁴⁸Wakefield (note 12), 111–33.

⁴⁹See Wakefield (note 12), citation 133.

⁵⁰See Wakefield (note 12), citation 143.

⁵¹See Wakefield (note 12), 142.

⁵²See, for a comprehensive overview, Wolfgang von Hippel, ‘Die Kurpfalz zu Zeiten Carl Theodors (1742–1799) – wirtschaftliche Lage und wirtschaftspolitische Bemühungen’. Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins 148 (2000), 177–243.

⁵³See Popplow (note 12), 211–2.

⁵⁴For a comprehensive account, see Niels Grüne, ‘Local Demand for Order and Government Intervention: Social Group Conflicts as Statebuilding Factors in Villages of the Rhine Palatinate, c. 1760–1810’, in Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900, edited by Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu (Farnham/Burlington, 2009), 173–86.

⁵⁵See Wakefield (note 12), 138.

⁵⁶See Lowood (note 8) and, most recently, André Holenstein, Martin Stuber, and Gerrendina Gerber-Visser, ‘Nützliche Wissenschaft und Ökonomie im Ancien Régime. Akteure, Themen, Kommunikationsformen – Einleitung,’ in André Holenstein, Martin Stuber, and Gerrendina Gerber-Visser, Nützliche Wissenschaft und Ökonomie im Ancien Régime. Akteure, Themen, Kommunikationsformen, (Heidelberg, 2007) (= Cardanus 7), 7–16. Additional secondary literature is discussed in more detail in Popplow (2010, note 7), 34–8.