Nature's Evil

The Seven Years’ War began when Frederick II occupied neutral Saxony, the centre of mining activity. It was clear to everyone that the great struggle between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs was primarily for possession of the mines of Silesia and Saxony. If the minor princes, these distant heirs of Gilgamesh, hoped that their forests would fill the state coffers, the sovereigns of Prussia and Austria understood the role of the mines. Focused on metals, their cameralists paid less attention to traditional trades in grain, timber, potash or hemp, even though these massive exports brought money to their lands. 21 According to the law of Bergregal , all mines belonged to the ruling prince. For a landowner, the discovery of ore on his land could mean the eventual confiscation of his property. In practice, princes and vassals usually came to a compromise which would deliver profits for both sides. But the revenues were in the future, while the mines needed initial capital. The Cameras sought investors, and frequently these were foreigners – usually Dutchmen. Alternatively, the princes pledged their future profits in exchange for direct investments – bankers from southern Germany proposed such transactions. Once it had obtained funds, the Camera appointed managers with experience in the mining business, and the managers hired miners who were also often foreigners. There was never enough money, so the Camera made use of non-economic incentives. The miners often had a judicial privilege so that they could not be put on trial by the local civil courts, as if these miners were colonists in lands populated by natives. And sometimes they were colonists: German-trained cameralists spread their influence all over the European north – Scandinavia, Poland and Russia.

Since the time of Luther and Fugger, the life of the German lands had been connected with the subterranean world of the mines just as the life of the British Isles was connected to overseas colonies. In need of experts, princely states launched mining academies – Saxony in 1765, Prussia in 1770. When Ingolstadt organised a new academic centre for cameralists in 1784, its president defined its subject as ‘the science of resources’ (Quellen Wissenschaften ). 22 Leading German minds were trained as mining engineers, and many of them actually managed the extraction: Leibniz oversaw the booming mines in the Harz mountains, Goethe worked for the silver and copper mines of Ilmenau, Novalis served as a director of salt mines in Saxony, Humboldt managed the Freiberg mining field. No surprise that these Romantics perceived the unpredictable but fruitful environment of the mine as their chosen metaphor for the life of the soul. 23 If the mind was a mine and the poet a digger in search of truth, he could refine and sublimate his precious findings by using the hidden tradition of miners and smelters. Romantic literature developed as the alchemy of feelings, with psychology as its new scientific incarnation.

When the Seven Years’ War began, Frederick the Great appointed the leader of the cameralist movement, Johann von Justi, as the chief inspector of the Prussian mines, glassworks and steelworks. Born in Saxony, Justi began his career as the head of police in Göttingen and then became a professor of cameral science at the university there. The ‘iron kingdom’ of Frederick was poor in ores; it exported timber and grain so that it could buy iron in Saxony, Sweden and Russia. The Seven Years’ War ruined Saxony and interrupted supplies from Russia. The price of English and Swedish iron kept rising, and the Prussian artillery lagged behind its rivals. The war ended with the miraculous salvation of Frederick, and it became a matter of survival for Prussia to smelt its own iron. The king knew about the deposits of iron ore which were found to the east of the Oder. But the iron there was low grade, and the king put his faith in science. Frederick was particularly interested in the process of ‘tempering’, which had been invented by the English: iron blanks were heated for weeks in a mix of charcoal, ashes and salts. The iron absorbed carbon and became strong and durable; but the process depended on the characteristics of the local ore, and only the Swedes managed to reproduce it successfully.