FIVE

KÖNIGSBERG

At the Intersection of Land and Seaborne Trade

We welcome you, our fiery messenger, who upon your iron path, powerfully ensconced in steam, advance upon the awaiting city!

You carry with you the hopes that soon here too, an invigorated life will blessedly awake, and our city will be closer connected with the world.

Therefore we welcome you, whom we have been restlessly toiling for with our endeavor.

Hail you! Hail the work that you have so prophetically begun!¹

Inscription on the 1853 Ostbahn terminus in Königsberg (Kaliningrad)

From the administrative report, we learn about . . . the extraordinary upswing of the railroad operation and its extraordinary financial result. It is not only the Russo-Turkish war that closed the ports of the Black Sea and thereby brought sizable goods traffic to the Südbahn [and to Königsberg]; also, this railroad’s integration into an extensive international . . . network ensures that it can continue to be operated profitably even after the war’s end.²

From the 1878 shareholders’ meeting report, East Prussian Southern Railroad (Südbahn)

THE FIRST QUOTATION FROM THE Ostbahn terminus embodies the hope that both the Prussian state and the citizens of Königsberg—today’s Russian Kaliningrad—associated with the new means of transportation. Station buildings were particularly significant as “the nineteenth century’s distinctive contribution to architectural forms” and “ritual places of modernity.”³ Königsberg’s was no exception. Newspapers praised the “most splendid and biggest station building in the Prussian State.” The public regarded the three electric station clocks as engineering marvels.⁴ An inaugural engraving reveals a well-dressed Königsberg bourgeoisie admiring the massive building from a safe distance. Crowds of spectators greet the first train, arriving in Königsberg’s southwest, a largely rural part of the city.⁵ Four years later, after the completion of the Vistula and Nogat Bridges, Prussian officials inaugurated the continuous Ostbahn main line from Berlin to East Prussia; Königsberg was its preliminary terminus. At that time, an almost twenty-year-long struggle for efficient transportation between the capitals of Prussia and its province East Prussia ended.

Figure 5.1. The Ostbahn terminal in Königsberg (1853). Illustrirte Zeitung Leipzig, 529 (August 20, 1853): 113. Courtesy of Austrian National Library, ANNO.

A notable event that evidenced Königsberg’s new proximity to Berlin and western Europe was the 1861 coronation of King William I of Prussia, the future German emperor. Since East Prussia had been the nucleus of the state, its capital had been the coronation city for centuries. While many contemporaries called the bombastic traditional coronation ceremony “outmoded,” its organization symbolized modern times.⁶ On October 14, the king’s train stopped several kilometers outside the city. From here, the monarch entered the city on a luxurious horse-drawn carriage to attend the ceremony at Königsberg Castle. The railroad facilitated the convenient journey of numerous German and foreign delegations and media representatives to Königsberg. After the festivities, the king traveled by railroad to Berlin and Potsdam, where more celebrations soon followed.⁷

While the railroad proved to be of enormous importance for passenger transportation, Königsberg is also an excellent example of how the rail transformed a city whose economic well-being depended on foreign trade. In the nineteenth century, the capital of Königsberg was one of the largest cities in Prussia’s eastern provinces, second only to Breslau (Wrocław) in Silesia.⁸ It was a quickly developing urban center in the primarily agricultural province of East Prussia, creating a harsh urban-rural contrast.⁹ Its population almost doubled from roughly 71,000 in 1840 to 141,000 in 1880 and grew to 246,000 in 1910.¹⁰ At the same time, crucial railroad connections and the thriving seaport fostered unprecedented economic development—as reflected in the shareholders’ report of the second quotation above.

This chapter starts with an overview of Königsberg’s development at the onset of the railroad age. Second, the focus turns to the ways the railroad and steamship connections boosted the city’s trade and turned the place into a trading hub, facilitating commerce between western and eastern Europe. The following section is dedicated to Jewish Königsbergers and their unique role in cross-border trade. The fourth part focuses on the branch line from Königsberg to Ukraine, which facilitated competition with the Black Sea port Odesa. The chapter closes with an analysis of trade agreements between Prussia/Germany and the Russian Empire.

A PORT CITY ENTERS THE RAILROAD AGE

Königsberg had been a regional trading hub since the Middle Ages. In 1255, the Teutonic Order located the city, and it soon flourished. This was due to its convenient location on two channels of the navigable Pregel River (Pregolya), some forty kilometers to the east of the Baltic Sea and at the crossroads of long-existing trade routes. It became the capital of the State of the Teutonic Order in 1457 and later the capital of the Duchy of Prussia. With the foundation of Albertus University in 1544, the city made its mark on the educational map of Europe. It was the coronation city for the Hohenzollern dynasty until the First World War. Königsberg was thus one of the cradles of the Prussian state. In terms of trade, Königsberg belonged to the Hanseatic League, facilitating trade between eastern, western, and northern Europe from early on. Since the thirteenth century, the city was part of an extensive trade network across the Baltic Sea and overland to Poland and Muscovy. Some goods traded during this time, such as grain from producers in Prussia, Poland, and Lithuania, would dominate Königsberg’s trade for centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century, Königsberg developed into the most important Baltic port for rye and wheat export.¹¹

Historians sometimes call the eighteenth century the “Königsberg century” or the “golden age,” with many scholarly works focusing on this period.¹² This is certainly justified since, at that time, the city flourished economically and culturally. Königsberg developed into one of Europe’s centers of philosophical thought, with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) being the most prominent Königsberger. Shortly after the defeats of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, Napoleon forced the Prussian king and his government to flee to Königsberg. The Prussian reforms directed from Königsberg during the Napoleonic Wars are another example of the city’s genius loci. Prussia had transformed into a more modern state by the end of the Napoleonic Wars. As far as the remainder of the nineteenth century is concerned, it seems as if Königsberg’s (unlike Danzig’s) role as an interwoven part of European history is widely forgotten.¹³ As Stefanie Schüler-Springorum has pointed out, research on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Königsberg remains scarce and is limited to either popular science publications or works with a German-nationalist bias.¹⁴ As a result, the nineteenth century can be seen as Königsberg’s forgotten century—despite a turbulent development in industry and cross-border trade.

Industrial Development in the Shadow of the Railroad

As in Berlin, the advent of the railroad significantly accelerated the nascent industrial development of Königsberg. This occurred mainly in the less developed western and southern parts of the city, close to the city’s fortifications and its emerging railroad facilities—comparable to Berlin’s “urban frontier.” One example is the Union-Gießerei (Union Foundry) to the north of the Pregel River and not far from the future railroad stations. Just as was the case with Berlin’s Borsig Works, the company developed in an agricultural area of Königsberg’s West, to the south of the Botanical Garden and adjacent to the city fortifications. Established in the mid-1820s by the English immigrant Charles Hughes, the company began as a traditional iron foundry. It soon turned to agricultural machinery, steam engines, ovens, iron bridges, and various other iron products.¹⁵ In the mid-1850s, under director Gottfried Ostendorff, the company started the construction of iron ships and steam engines. In 1854, Union secured a contract to deliver its first steam engine for the Ostbahn. At a celebration during its delivery, a poem praised railroads as facilitators of trade, culture, and wealth that would turn iron into gold:

Figure 5.2. Section of Königsberg map (1905). Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon. Ein Nachschlagewerk des allgemeinen Wissens. 6. Auflage, 11. Band: Kimpolung—Kyzikos (Leipzig, 1905), inlet. Author’s collection.

Map legend:

1 Ostbahn terminal

2 Südbahn terminal

3 Lizentbahnhof (Pillauer Bahnhof)

4 Pier station (Kaibahnhof)

5 Ostbahn freight terminal

6 Südbahn freight terminal

7 Railroad gates in the former city wall

8 Railroad car manufacturer Steinfurt

9 Iron foundry and steam-engine manufacturer Union

10 Location of the future Main Station (opened in 1929)

11 Royal Castle

The company supplied locomotives to railroad companies across Germany, directly competing with the Borsig Works in Berlin. Still, Ostendorff had an amicable relationship with Albert Borsig and, in 1869, even recruited former Borsig employee Elias Radok to serve as Union’s senior engineer.¹⁷ In 1874, Union celebrated the manufacturing of its one hundredth locomotive, followed by the celebration of its one thousandth engine just twenty-five years later.¹⁸

Another company catering to the needs of railroad development was car manufacturer Waggonfabrik L. Steinfurth, on the southeastern Lomse-Island of Königsberg, next to the Old Pregel River. Founded in 1830 as an iron foundry and producer of steam and fire engines, in 1865, the company turned to the mass production of freight and passenger cars for the Ostbahn and other railroad companies in Prussia and the Russian Empire. It celebrated the manufacture of its one thousandth car in 1873, followed by the celebration of the ten thousandth car in 1899.¹⁹

These companies were part of an industrial landscape that increasingly dominated the southwestern part of Königsberg—in an area that had been dominated by shipbuilding and port facilities since the Middle Ages. In the 1850s, with rising traffic, the Ostbahn facilities south of the Pregel River gradually expanded and added freight depots. In 1865, the East Prussian Südbahn opened to traffic to Königsberg’s offshore terminal in Pillau (Baltiisk), some forty kilometers to the east. To this end, a new station building emerged just north of the Pregel River (Lizentbahnhof), later linked to the Ostbahn by way of a railroad bridge. With freight traffic on the rise, in 1878, the Ostbahn added a new pier station (Kaibahnhof) to facilitate the transloading from rail to ship.²⁰

Remarkably, unlike in Berlin, this development did not immediately lead to the abolishment of the city’s fortifications. On the contrary, in Königsberg, the 1840s and 1850s saw an extension of the existing fortifications. As a result, all railroad lines into the city passed through railroad gates in the city walls. The defortification gradually unfolded only at the turn of the century and only after the Prussian military established a belt of twelve modern military forts around the city.²¹

CONNECTING THE SEA WITH THE HINTERLAND: STEAMSHIPS AND RAILROADS

From the beginning, Königsberg’s economic success was rooted in its sea trade. After the development of new means of transportation and communication in the first half of the nineteenth century, the city became ever more closely connected to other European ports. In 1828, a joint-stock company established the first regular steamship connection with the Baltic Sea port of Elbing, transporting both passengers and goods. After initial success, the vessels could not cope with the harsh weather conditions, and the enterprise was canceled.²² However, in 1840, steamship companies established permanent connections with Königsberg. While regional passenger steamship traffic to the Baltic ports of Elbing and Danzig flourished until the advent of the rail, cargo transportation by boat between Königsberg and Kaunas in the Russian Empire remained significant even thereafter.²³

In 1852, just over one thousand ships entered the port of Königsberg; this number rose twofold in the next eight years.²⁴ The 1850s and early 1860s saw the introduction of several important technological innovations and relevant international developments. During the construction of the Ostbahn in 1854, Prussia established an electromagnetic telegraph line between Berlin and Königsberg, enabling merchants to react more quickly to changing commodity prices in the European markets. This line was connected to the imperial Russian system just one year later.²⁵ The Crimean War of 1853–1856 boosted Königsberg’s trade further. At the time, the Ottoman Empire and its allies blocked the Russian Black Sea ports, and the British government officially barred their merchants from doing business with the Russian Empire, imposing a blockade of its Baltic ports. Ignoring the government’s measures, British, Danish, and Dutch merchants redirected cargo flows from imperial Russian ports to Königsberg and Memel (Klajpėda). From there, to avoid the British navy, shallow-draft vessels facilitated the trade of goods along the coast to and from the Russian Empire. As one British witness observed, this “sabotage contraband traffic in shallow waters . . . placed the port of Memel at the service of the Czar.”²⁶ In light of the British naval blockade and frequent British incursions into Russian waters, the overland import routes into the empire became increasingly vital.²⁷ As a result, thousands of “Lithuanian kibitkas, narrow, four-wheeled wagons,” transported goods from the ports over the Prussian border and into the Russian Empire.²⁸

The wartime Russian government temporarily reduced most of its tariffs to boost the desperately needed foreign trade further. During the war, British companies established the first regular steamship connections with Königsberg.²⁹ After the war, trade continued to prosper, benefiting further from the 1857 Copenhagen Convention, which abolished the Sound Dues that had previously obstructed free trade across the Baltic Sea. For Königsberg’s commerce, the most important ports were London and Hull in England and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands.³⁰ Gradually, steamships began to substitute sailing vessels, surpassing them in number by 1868.³¹ It now took a mere couple of days to get goods from Königsberg to eastern and western European markets and vice versa. Advertisements of internationally operating steamship companies evidence Königsberg’s growing interconnectedness within the European trade network. In 1862, for example, the “well-known steamship L.N. Hvidt” regularly ran between Königsberg and Rotterdam, facilitating trade not only with the Netherlands but also with Hamburg and Copenhagen, and along the Rhine River.³² In 1878, Bailey and Leetham advertised weekly steamship services between Königsberg, Hull, and London. A connection to Newcastle upon Tyne operated every other week.³³

Railroads as Game Changers

While steamships revolutionized Königsberg’s trade to some degree, they did not resolve the fundamental problem of how to get export products to the port or how to distribute imported goods to Königsberg’s vast hinterland, including East Prussia, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Russian Empire’s Baltic and western provinces. The solution to this problem would be the railroad, which led to an “infinite extension of Königsberg’s previous catchment area.”³⁴

In 1857, continuous rail traffic between Königsberg and western Europe was established. Ever since the start of the Ostbahn project, the extension to the border and a connection with the emerging Russian railroad network was part of the discussion; however, it took four years to accomplish this task. One of the pressure groups actively advocating for the project was the Association of Königsberg Merchants. They sent a petition to the Prussian House of Representatives, which debated it in March 1857.³⁵ Just one month later, the House voted for a Prussian-Russian bilateral agreement leading to the relatively speedy construction of the link.³⁶ Finally, in 1861–1862, Prussian and Russian railroad companies accomplished the connection between the Ostbahn and the Russian rail system.

Contrary to expectations, the first months of the cross-border rail link had merchants, who had just settled in the border town of Eydtkuhnen, complaining about fierce competition and stagnating international trade.³⁷ As a matter of fact, it seemed as if the Prussian government’s very modest expectations concerning the development of Prusso-Russian trade proved to be accurate: just months before the opening of the rail link with Russia, Prussian officials had not considered that there would be a significant increase in goods transportation.³⁸ Apparently, trade needed time to adjust to the new transportation opportunities.

However, this was true only for the first months of the rail link’s existence. By the end of the year, when ice drifts blocked seaborne transport to the Russian Empire, an increasing flow of goods moved to the rail. Additionally, the freeze allowed for efficient transportation to the stations by sleigh.³⁹ As a result, the number of goods coming into Königsberg by rail in 1861 increased by 18 percent while the number of goods going out increased by 51 percent, when compared to 1860.⁴⁰ The influx of grain from the Russian Empire into East Prussia reached unheard-of quantities. The railroad proved to be the missing link that boosted the long-standing sea trade, guaranteeing excellent connections to the hinterland. It significantly decreased transportation costs from the producers in East Prussia and the northwestern part of the Russian Empire to consumers abroad. The complaints from those in the more remote regions of East Prussia, who were not yet connected to Königsberg by railroad or canal, provide striking evidence. These inhabitants had to bear freight rates to the port that were often double that of the shipping costs from Königsberg to England.⁴¹

However, it was not only the new and quicker means of transportation that boosted international trade: the completion of the cross-border railroad also occurred during a period when both the German Customs Union and the Russian Empire abolished and eased many tariffs and bureaucratic obstacles.

Bureaucracies and Technology

Before Königsberg merchants could fully benefit from the new opportunities, the problem of how to control and reload goods at the railroad border stations had to be solved. It was evident from the onset that a close collaboration between Russian and Prussian customs officials and railroad entrepreneurs was inevitable. In chapter 4, we have seen how Russian, Prussian, and European agreements gradually overcame the technical and bureaucratic hurdles of customs borders and different track gauges. These problems occurred at the political borders and in Königsberg itself. Here, many goods arriving by rail were reloaded on vessels for export. The same applied to imported goods coming into Königsberg on waterways; they were transferred on the rail and sent to the Russian Empire. As a result, customs and reloading procedures often occurred twice—at the border and at the port. Only a Russian gauge from the port right to the border would have made a difference. However, this change occurred only with the border shifts following the Second World War.

Port and railroad authorities had to arrange for technically appropriate reloading facilities. Still, customs officials also had to ensure that shipping companies would not lose too much time on formalities. This was not an easy task, given the officials’ interest in overall control for the sake of tariff revenue. In Königsberg in the 1860s, the royal provincial director of taxation initially insisted that incoming goods from the rail had to be reloaded into tightly locked horse-drawn carts (Coulissenwagen) and then transported to the customs office in the port. Only after customs clearance were goods transferred to the boat. The railroad administration initially rejected this measure as too expensive and too time-consuming.⁴² However, for a transitional period, shipping companies had no other choice but to follow the official instructions.⁴³ In the following months, the railroad company built appropriate customs facilities at the stations at its own cost and linked them directly to the rail.

Global Commodity Chains: Herring, Tea, and Grain

Soon afterward, reloading and customs control in the port and at the border proved too inefficient for the burgeoning trade with the Russian Empire. As we have seen in chapter 4, in the mid-1860s, Prussian government officials and the Ostbahn administration worked together to clear goods during the reloading procedure at the border—a system that had been successfully implemented at the French-Prussian border before. As a result, the main logistical challenges moved to the border crossings, and the port of Königsberg focused on technical issues related to the interconnection of rail and maritime transportation.

With all these obstacles overcome, trade flourished. As a local newspaper reported, Königsberg’s traditional role in the western European grain trade with the Russian Empire increased enormously—to the disadvantage of the port of Memel, which was still without a railroad connection.⁴⁴ These developments affected consumer patterns as well. Advertisements and articles in the established, liberal-minded paper Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung are evidence of this development.⁴⁵ The paper is an excellent source for information reflecting changes in economy and society, as many of its readers belonged to an increasingly mobile group of Königsbergers, such as merchants, state employees, and other members of the Bildungsbürgertum (educated classes). Articles and advertisements in this paper thus reflect the increasingly cosmopolitan consumer patterns of this group. In 1862, the Hartungsche Zeitung advertised mainly French wines and fashion. In contrast, by 1878, it was promoting a whole range of imported products, ranging from Hungarian wines to English drapes, French hats, and Chinese teas.

An example of the increased turnover is Königsberg’s salted-herring trade. In 1861, merchants imported 65,157 herring barrels (approximately 155 kilograms each), of which one-third transited by rail to the Russian Empire.⁴⁶ The principal producer countries at this time were Great Britain (mainly Scotland), the Netherlands, and Norway. Over time, exports to the empire experienced a steady increase. In 1912, Königsberg sent 615,000 herring barrels across the border, equaling roughly 10,000 freight cars. Thirty-one percent of the Russian Empire’s herring imports were cleared in German ports and shipped by rail across the border; Königsberg’s share was at two-thirds.⁴⁷ This is remarkable since the Russian Railroads introduced preferential tariffs for herring transport cleared at its domestic port in Libau (Libava, Liepāja) that disadvantaged imports through Königsberg. In addition, because of the reloading and customs clearance at the border, despite a similar distance to the empire’s central consumer regions, the transit time was 50 percent longer from Königsberg than from Libau.⁴⁸ Königsberg merchants managed to dominate even the herring rail transport from the Baltic Sea to Odesa on the Black Sea, a distance of 1,600 kilometers—despite the growing direct imports coming through Odesa.⁴⁹ One reason could be the traders’ traditional networks to the consumer regions that could not easily be replaced by new routes. In addition, Russian economic policies focused more on supporting the export of agricultural products to improve its trade balance. Along those lines, it was not relevant if imports came in through a domestic or a foreign port.⁵⁰

Tea was another commodity that dominated the city’s trade for decades. Merchants imported it directly from London, the leading marketplace. Most of the tea then transited to the Russian Empire. Königsberg traders established branches in London, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and China. In 1866, seven wholesale firms in Königsberg, owned mainly by Jews, specialized in tea.⁵¹ Philosopher Hannah Arendt’s maternal great-grandfather founded one of these businesses; later, her maternal grandfather Jacob Cohn took over, transforming it into one of the largest trading firms in Königsberg.⁵² When the railroad started operating in 1862 and the empire cleared tea imports across its western land border, Königsberg’s exports to the empire amounted to 3,630 metric tons. This number rose to a record 14,409 metric tons in 1879 and declined after that.⁵³ Still, according to official Russian trade reports, in 1886, half of the empire’s tea imports through European ports reached the country via East Prussia—mainly Königsberg.⁵⁴ At first sight, this does not seem to be a considerable number compared to the global marketplace for tea in London. The importation of tea into the expanding London Docklands reached 81,000 metric tons in 1875.⁵⁵ Given the 3 million inhabitants of London compared to Königsberg’s 112,000 (1871), this is still a much higher number per resident in East Prussia’s capital.⁵⁶

Starting in the 1880s, Königsberg’s tea trade suffered from three developments. First, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 shifted trade routes between Europe and East Asia. As a result, the Russian Empire’s Black Sea port of Odesa became a significant competitor in the seaborne import of tea to the empire, outperforming Königsberg for the first time in 1887.⁵⁷ Second, the gradual completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 1890s led to a further decline in the Königsberg tea trade. Henceforth, the Russian Empire could import tea more quickly and less expensively directly from China⁵⁸ Third, tea from London increasingly made its way to the empire’s Baltic ports, such as Riga.⁵⁹ Accordingly, the empire satisfied its growing tea demand directly from the Far East or from Great Britain, while Königsberg’s merchants had to look for alternative trading opportunities.

The setbacks in the tea trade notwithstanding, Königsberg developed into an east central European trading hub for agricultural goods. Despite significant setbacks through changing trade routes, bad harvests, changing customs policies, and global economic crises, the railroad and the port guaranteed constant growth until the First World War. Just as, globally, the rail as “network technology” served as a feeder for ports and facilitated trade with the hinterland.⁶⁰

The Association of Königsberg Merchants (Korporation der Kaufmannschaft in Königsberg in Preußen) was the most important organization monitoring these developments. They provided accurate numbers for grain, legumes, seeds, and animal-feed trade. The influx of these commodities to Königsberg from Prussia and other German states grew from 139,000 metric tons in 1860 to 250,000 tons in 1913. Even more impressive is the import from foreign countries, overwhelmingly from the Russian Empire. Here, we observe a growth from 214,000 tons in 1860 to 663,000 tons in 1913, peaking at 873,000 tons in 1912.⁶¹

To cope with the rising trade volume, the city repeatedly expanded its port facilities and trading capacities. Even before 1860, Königsberg had extensive storehouses and grain elevators along the wharfage on the Pregel River. In 1875, the impressive Renaissance Revival Stock Exchange opened to trade, and in 1897, a modern grain elevator followed. The most significant innovation after the railroad’s arrival, though, was the 1901 completion of the 42-kilometer Seekanal, a 6.5-meter-deep ice-free waterway from Königsberg to the port of Pillau on the Baltic Sea. Henceforth, large modern vessels no longer had to unload in Pillau but could sail through to the city center. In the 1910s, construction had started on new modern port basins, but it was interrupted by the First World War.

As we have seen, most of the goods coming into the city by rail were transiting to other places. International trading companies were crucial to facilitating this trade, and Jewish merchants had a significant position—albeit disturbed by government policies against non-Prussian citizens in the second half of the 1880s.

JEWISH MERCHANTS

Quantitatively, Jewish Königsbergers represented only a tiny share of the overall population (oscillating between 1.5 and 3.5 percent); however, they had enormous importance to the city’s economic development. While the fields of banking, medicine, and industry had many Jewish representatives, trade was the most critical sector that Jewish Königsbergers contributed to. This “unusual occupational distribution,” as Jack Wertheimer has called it, was rooted in the Jewish population’s precarious legal status. Despite improvements in 1812, 1847, and 1850, Prussian Jews de jure remained second-class citizens until the founding of the German Reich.⁶² As a result, a majority made a living in professions that had been traditionally open to people of the Jewish faith, such as commerce. A registry of members of the Jewish religious community of 1853 reveals that at this time, just before Königsberg’s trade began to boom, an overwhelming majority of Jews operated as merchants (Kaufmannsstand), while salesmen, mostly in retail (Krämer und Händler), formed the second-largest group.⁶³

From the 1840s, another group of Jewish people increasingly influenced trade in Königsberg—namely, emigrants from the Russian Empire. Unlike many recent Russian Jewish immigrants to Germany who worked in industry, the Königsberg immigrants were primarily merchants. This resulted from the Jewish population structure in nearby Lithuania and Belarus, where many Jews traditionally engaged in trade. The dominant professions of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland in the nineteenth century also shifted from crafts to trade. After immigrating to Prussia, they stuck to their profession and maintained their cross-border connections, which were fostered by improved railroad, telegraph, and postal systems. As a result, Russian Jewish middlemen boosted Königsberg’s trade with the Russian Empire. This is especially true for the vital grain trade, where good connections between producers and middlemen in the empire were crucial for economic success. The same applies to the lumber, flax, and manila trade.⁶⁴

While many Jewish traders remained relatively poor, some became successful. Hannah Arendt’s grandfather Max Arendt is one example. Due to his economic and social advance, he succeeded in becoming city council president.⁶⁵ Among the successful traders was also dry goods merchant Fima Schlossberg, father of Leah Schlossberg, who, as Leah Rabin, would later become Israel’s first lady.⁶⁶ Another example of a successful business with Jewish owners is the shipping and trading company of Marcus Cohn & Son.⁶⁷ Max Leo, the company’s partner, also served as an American consular agent in 1898—evidence of an increasingly globalized world.⁶⁸

Jewish Königsbergers seemed to have found their place in the city’s society. However, in the second half of the 1880s, the city’s trade suffered enormously from the German government’s policies against nonnaturalized citizens. As we have seen in previous chapters, the completion of the Ostbahn occurred at a time of growing anti-Polish sentiment in Prussia and, subsequently, Germany. After the founding of the German Empire, the government’s policies toward ethnic Poles (and other linguistic minorities, like the Danish) further radicalized, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was at the forefront of these efforts. In the 1870s, Polish was no longer accepted in administration, at court, or as the language of instruction in schools. During the Kulturkampf from 1872 to 1878, the government diminished the influence of the Catholic Church in education; this measure was an explicit anti-Polish directive since most Polish speakers were Catholics.⁶⁹

While the government enacted these measures to Germanize Polish speakers who were legal German citizens, in 1885, Bismarck ordered the expulsion of nonnaturalized citizens from the Russian and Habsburg Empires. They supposedly threatened “Germandom” in Prussia’s East. As a result, between 1885 and 1887, Prussian police evicted an estimated thirty-two thousand foreigners, primarily Polish speakers. However, one-third of the expellees were Jewish.⁷⁰ Christiane Reinecke has identified a strong antisemitic component, coinciding with growing distrust toward Jews from eastern Europe, which would culminate in the stereotype of the wily, distrustful Ostjude.⁷¹ This suggests a combination of anti-Polish and anti-Jewish motives behind the measure.

Bismarck enforced the eviction despite massive resistance from East Prussia’s economic sphere, which relied on cheap seasonal laborers from Prussia’s eastern and southeastern neighbors.⁷² Others, however, regarded the immigrants as unwelcome competition. From early on, the Königsberg Board of Merchants warned Bismarck of the likely consequences: the sheer fear of expulsion would have an unprecedented negative influence on trade in the city, facilitated mainly by Russian Jewish traders. The city council openly condemned the measures and pointed to the antisemitic component.⁷³ Jack Wertheimer emphasizes the economic motivation behind the merchants’ protests, claiming that “the immigrants would not have received this kind of support had they been perceived solely as business competitors or economic parasites.”⁷⁴ However, given the manifold connections between Christian and Jewish merchants, humanitarian aspects also seem to have played out. Königsberg was more liberal than many other regions of the German Reich, let alone its government, making antisemitic acts in East Prussia’s capital before 1914 less likely than elsewhere.

Because of good connections to their non-Jewish trading partners and local authorities, many of the Russian Jewish merchants in Königsberg successfully arranged for exemptions, even though those were sometimes only temporary. Nevertheless, Prussian authorities expelled at least 1,200 people from Königsberg, primarily nonnaturalized Jews from the Russian Empire. This accounts for one-fifth of Königsberg’s Jewish community and half of its Russian Jewish members.⁷⁵ While many merchants were forced to leave the city, others abandoned their businesses out of fear of discrimination and relocated them to the Russian Baltic coast. Trade statistics evidence the measures’ impact. In the typical business year of 1884, the imports of foodstuffs (grain, legumes, seeds, and forage) to Königsberg accounted for 300,000 tons. This number declined to 123,000 tons in 1886, the first full year after the start of the expulsions. At the same time, the volume of exported goods dropped from 192,000 to 139,000 tons.⁷⁶

Even after the end of mass expulsion in the late 1880s, Russian Jews faced great difficulties when attempting to settle in East Prussia’s capital. They had to obtain a certificate from the Königsberg Board of Merchants confirming their economic usefulness. Also, they had to declare that they would not start a new family in Germany or bring in family members from the Russian Empire.⁷⁷

KÖNIGSBERG AND ODESA: COMPETITION AND INTERACTION

While Germanizing government policies limited trade, the accomplishment of the rail link between East Prussia and Ukraine helped to increase Königsberg’s foreign exchange further. Ukraine was the Russian Empire’s leading grain producer. For most of the nineteenth century, 75 percent of all exported wheat was produced in the fertile black earth regions of Ukraine. This number rose to 98 percent right before the First World War.⁷⁸ As a result of constructing a crucial rail link to Ukraine in the 1870s, Königsberg developed into Germany’s most important grain harbor, leaving rivals such as Danzig far behind.⁷⁹

At the outset of this development came the construction of the privately financed East Prussian Southern Railroad (Ostpreußische Südbahn, henceforth Südbahn). At the head of the enterprise stood European “railroad king” Bethel Henry Strousberg, born in 1823 in Neidenburg (Nidzica) in East Prussia to a Jewish family. After his father died in 1835, he moved to live with an uncle in London and was employed as a merchant. He became a publisher and an expert in banking and modern finance.⁸⁰ At the beginning of his decade-long meteoric rise to become one of the globe’s richest men, he invested in the East Prussian railroad between Tilsit (Sovetsk) and Insterburg (Cherniakhovsk) and subsequently in the Südbahn, raising the necessary funds mainly from British investors and applying a novel financing model—paying the building contractors in railroad shares.⁸¹

In 1865, the company first completed the forty-six-kilometer Südbahn trunk line between Königsberg and its ice-free Baltic Sea port of Pillau. The shareholders hoped to develop commerce between western Europe and the Russian Empire further. The railroad remedied two of Königsberg’s major transport problems. First, many incoming goods had had to be reloaded in Pillau since the canal between East Prussia’s capital and Pillau on the Baltic Sea accommodated only smaller vessels—at least until its upgrade in 1901. Second, the canal often froze during wintertime.⁸² However, initially, the shareholders’ expectations were not met, and the railroad did not yield significant returns. A turnaround would only come with the extension of the line to Ukraine.

Figure 5.3. Russian South-Western Railroads in 1899. The border with East Prussia is marked in the northwest, and the port city of Odesa is marked in the southeast. The distance between Königsberg and Odesa is about 1,500 kilometers. Karta Iugo-Zapadnykh zheleznykh dorog 1899 goda.

Public domain, adapted from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Південно-західні_залізниці_-1899-_Railway_South-West.jpg.

Between 1870 and 1873, amid financial problems, Strousberg built the Prussian and Imperial-Russian branch lines to connect the Südbahn to the future Russian South-Western Railroads. This line connected the East Prussian border station of Prostken with Brest in Belarus and from there with the Ukrainian railroad junctions of Koziatyn (Kazatin), Khmerinka, and Balta to Odesa. After completion, the line linked East Prussia to the fertile regions of Ukraine and the important Black Sea port Odesa, further facilitating the grain trade between the Russian Empire and Königsberg.⁸³ Also, when Germany and the Russian Empire concluded a convention on the cross-border railroad, they took earlier experiences into account and obliged the railroad companies to introduce a uniform cross-border tariff from the very beginning.⁸⁴

When Strousberg started his railroad ventures in East Prussia, he ruled over a European economic empire of railroad companies, mining companies, and factories in Germany, the Habsburg and Russian Empires, and Romania, employing between 100,000 and 150,000 people. However, the Südbahn started to prosper only after Strousberg’s fall in the 1870s, when wars and economic crises toppled his empire and banks took over.⁸⁵ This belated prosperity came when Russian grain exports reached new heights, as industrialization in western Europe ensured a growing demand for this vital staple. Even when the United States, Canada, and other grain-producing countries entered the global market, the Russian Empire’s wheat export continued to increase—and it did so fivefold between 1861 and 1913.⁸⁶

However, the export of Russian grain through the port of Königsberg was a thorn in the imperial officials’ side since they would rather have seen their domestic railroads, ports, and merchants benefit. Indeed, with every new railroad link traversing the Russian Empire’s western land border, the share of land-bound grain exports increased consistently. Accordingly, in 1884, Russian officials successfully requested state intervention in South-Western Railroads’ tariffs to redirect grain away from Königsberg to Baltic ports in the empire.⁸⁷ Still, in the late 1880s, the new minister of railroads and finance, Sergei Vitte, lifted railroad tariffs on transit goods.⁸⁸

Even with efficient transportation opportunities, it is surprising that Königsberg managed to compete with Odesa, some 1,600 kilometers away. In fact, grain bound for export from central Ukraine would have had a much shorter course to the Black Sea. However, transportation times and shipping costs did not necessarily coincide with distance. In 1873, railroad connections from central Ukraine to Königsberg were excellent. They followed a straight line, whereas the lines to Odesa, for geostrategic reasons, had built-in detours, leading to higher freight rates.⁸⁹ Also, once the grain arrived in Königsberg, shipping to the vast grain consumers in northern Europe was much faster and thus less expensive than shipping via Black Sea ports.

Additionally, international crises benefited Königsberg. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, export goods moved away from the Black Sea to the Baltic ports—as the second quotation from this chapter’s beginning shows. As a result, the amount of grain transported into East Prussia almost doubled from 270,191 tons in 1876 to 462,250 in 1878. In 1878 and 1879, the Südbahn’s shareholders thus profited with high dividends of 13.67 percent and 14.33 percent, respectively.⁹⁰ New storage and port facilities in Königsberg contributed to this growth.

While benefiting greatly from the blockade of Black Sea ports, the Südbahn suffered enormously from the expulsion of Jewish merchants, the occasional bad harvests, and the tariff conflicts between Russia and the German Reich. The impact of freight transportation on the railroad’s profitability was particularly significant since the Südbahn shut down cross-border passenger express trains in 1875 and thus relied almost entirely on the revenue from the grain transport.⁹¹

BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: TRADE WARS AND TRADE AGREEMENTS

Official political relations between Prussia/Germany and the Russian Empire significantly influenced trade development between the two countries. Customs policies were critical as they directly influenced the price of goods crossing the border.⁹² As economist Erich Stoehr correctly asserted in the 1920s, “because of its geographic situation, Königsberg’s trade [was] a transit trade.”⁹³ The quarterly reports of Königsberg merchants mirror the up- and downturns in domestic or German-Russian markets and globalizing foreign markets, all of which were profoundly influenced by tariff increases, wars, and crop failures—both domestic and foreign.⁹⁴

While the Russian Empire did not increase tariffs after the Crimean War and instead decreased them further in the 1860s, it never fully embraced free trade. Uwe Müller concluded that despite the nineteenth century’s increasingly dense global trade networks, national borders between Prussia/the German Reich and the Russian Empire were more divisive economically than western European borders.⁹⁵ Although in the 1850s and 1860s the Russian Empire concluded commercial treaties with several western European countries to benefit mutual trade relations, it initially enacted no such agreements with Prussia.⁹⁶ The rising Russian-nationalist, anti-Prussian/anti-German sentiment in the empire’s government and resistance from Prussian agrarian pressure groups initially prevented the two states from concluding trade agreements.⁹⁷

However, despite these difficulties, mutual trade was on the rise. As long as tariff policies did not decisively affect the flow of goods, agricultural goods from the Russian Empire and industrial goods from Prussia/the German Reich mainly faced transportation costs and customs bureaucracies. As a result, the 1860s and early 1870s saw relatively little interference from politicians in cross-border trade; this situation changed decisively with the return to protective economic measures, the so-called “regulative turn” (ordnungspolitische Wende). The Russian Empire introduced less-favorable tariffs on imported goods in 1877, and Germany followed suit in 1879. In 1877, Königsberg witnessed an extraordinary increase in grain imports from the Russian Empire due to the blockade of Black Sea ports during the Russo-Turkish War. According to German agrarian pressure groups, this increase threatened domestic German agriculture. They based their assumptions on the slow economy, rising imports, and falling grain prices during this time. However, for the sake of profitable international trade, other economic groups opposed higher tariffs.⁹⁸

Some of the most potent advocates for free trade and lower tariffs were the merchants of Königsberg, who “stood at the forefront of those fighting for almost complete free trade.”⁹⁹ At the other end of the spectrum, German chancellor Bismarck sought to generate more customs revenue. Bismarck depended on this income to diminish the central government’s dependence on contributions from the federal states. Such policies were supposed to cover rising armament costs. Bismarck utilized existing anti-Russian sentiments in parts of society and certain economic circles to introduce higher tariffs under the guise of anti-Russian “self-defense” or “struggle” (Schutzzoll or Kampfzoll).¹⁰⁰ However, the chancellor found his fiercest opponents among the liberal and social democratic politicians in Königsberg, who dominated city politics from the nineteenth century until 1933.¹⁰¹ The tariff of 1879 amounted to a moderate 4.6 percent on wheat and 6.3 percent on rye (ad valorem duty); nevertheless, it contributed to a temporary decline in Königsberg’s imports from abroad. The rise of Libau as a Russian export harbor in the 1870s because of railroad construction aggravated the situation further.¹⁰² An additional blow came from the crop failures in Prussia and the Russian Empire in 1880. At the time, several provinces of the empire suffered from severe famine, jeopardizing even the food supply of St. Petersburg.¹⁰³

In 1887, two additional tariff increases resulted in a prohibitive tariff of approximately one-third of a product’s value. As a result, the worsening political and economic relations headed to economic warfare.¹⁰⁴ In the Russian Empire, railroad and finance minister Sergei Vitte’s policies (1882–1903) aimed at protecting the empire’s growing industry from cheap imports. He relied on the export of agricultural products to finance his ambitious railroad and industrialization program. The empire’s grain export accounted for 51 percent of the total revenue between 1887 and 1891.¹⁰⁵

In 1891, Germany concluded commercial treaties with Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Italy, significantly reducing duties on traded goods. As a result, the Russian Empire’s exports to Germany faced a significant disadvantage. In response, Vitte drastically increased duties on German imports by 50 percent; German retaliation with higher tariffs on Russian imports followed, countered with another 50 percent rise in Russian duties. This amounted to a full-fledged commercial war between the two countries. At the time, political advocates of protective tariffs, such as the newly established Bund der Landwirte (Farmers’ Union), gained ground. They accused the government of ruining German agriculture by diminishing import duties, thus causing a rapid price decline. However, economic historians hold that the duties in question amounted to only one-sixth of the decrease. At the same time, the international price drop of agricultural goods had a more significant impact.¹⁰⁶ Unlike the Farmers’ Union, German industrialists and merchants had no interest in alienating the Russian Empire as an essential trading partner. Finally, German port cities joined forces with industrialists and advocated for the speedy conclusion of a commercial treaty to end the conflict.

At the forefront of this conflict was once again Königsberg. The city’s transit trade was somewhat shielded from the impact of the tariff because the tariff stipulated a certificate called “proof of identity” (Identitätsnachweis) that allowed Königsberg merchants to store grain from Ukraine and other parts of the empire in special transit warehouses, where they were exempt from customs if they were exported.¹⁰⁷ Still, as in previous Russian-German economic battles, the merchants emphatically demanded an end to the conflict, which had caused the city’s sea-bound grain export to plummet by 50 percent. To remedy this situation, the merchants advocated for introducing a most-favored-nation clause with the Russian Empire, following the example of the German-French trade agreement. They threatened the German government with a public discussion on the issue. However, the government’s only concession was the aforementioned tariff exemption on transit trade.¹⁰⁸ Additional pressure came from the railroad companies. Arthur Krüger, the director of the Südbahn, lobbied for a treaty that would decrease Russian railroad tariffs to Königsberg to put them on par with those to the Russian Baltic Sea ports.¹⁰⁹

Given the heavy economic losses and disadvantages for both Russia and Germany, in 1894, after eight months of economic war, both sides agreed on a commercial treaty. As a result, mutual trade rebounded. Apart from significantly lower import duties—adjusted to match those imposed on imports from other European countries—the treaty facilitated the commercial activities of German companies in the Russian Empire and guaranteed goods transit free of duties.¹¹⁰ Another main advantage for Königsberg was the elimination of the proof of identity certificate, which was replaced by importation and exportation certificates (Einfuhrscheine and Ausfuhrscheine). Henceforth, merchants had to obtain certificates stating the value of certain exported goods (especially grain and legumes). Subsequently, they could use the certificates to import goods of the same kind without paying import duties.¹¹¹ As a result, Königsberg merchants mixed grain from the Russian Empire with grain from East Prussia to obtain the quality desired by customers in different parts of Europe.¹¹² This refinement procedure increased prices for exported grain and helped East Prussian domestic farmers export more significant quantities of their own produce.¹¹³ Yet another stipulation of the treaty helped funnel grain to Königsberg: the Russian Empire pledged to apply the same freight rates on the railroads to Königsberg as on the railroads to its domestic Baltic ports of Libau and Riga. This was significant since the Russian railroads had previously privileged long-distance grain transportation to its domestic ports.¹¹⁴ As a result of these two measures, the import of Russian products into Königsberg returned to pre–trade war levels.

The treaty of 1894 was to be renewed after ten years. In the meantime, German-Russian political relations cooled down significantly, resulting from anti-German and, respectively, anti-Russian interest groups that were on the rise in both countries. In Germany, the Farmers’ Union gained more influence and advocated aggressively for higher tariffs on agricultural imports. The Russian Empire increasingly leaned toward Germany’s rival France in foreign affairs. Despite these antagonisms, members of the economic spheres of both countries had no interest in another devastating commercial war. During the military conflict with Japan in 1904–1905, the Russian Empire needed stable commercial relations with its most important trading partner to the west. Consequently, a new treaty took effect in the summer of 1904. Despite a tariff increase on German grain imports from the empire (and higher tariffs on industrial goods exported to the empire), overall Russian exports to Germany, as well as transit trade, remained on the rise, benefiting Königsberg’s port. As an added benefit for the empire, the treaty projected a war bond of 500 million Reichsmarks, supporting the war effort.¹¹⁵

However, this new tariff did not last for long. In 1905, Germany unilaterally announced higher duties on agricultural products from the Russian Empire, which took effect in March 1906. At this point, one of Königsberg’s long-lasting difficulties in the grain trade was aggravated once again—namely, its lack of storage facilities. As a rule, most grain transports occurred after the harvest, in late fall and winter. During this time, grain supplies regularly backed up at the railroad stations, borders, and ports. In February 1906, after the new tariff announcement, 212,528 freight cars of grain clogged Russian railroad stations. With the new tariff to go into effect shortly, Russian and German merchants tried to get as many goods as possible into Germany, leading to a chaotic situation.¹¹⁶

Still, since the demand for agricultural products in western Europe was constantly expanding, increased tariffs and serious competition from North American producers did not significantly obstruct transit trade through Königsberg. As a result, Königsberg developed into Germany’s biggest grain-exporting port. Grain transportation on the Ostbahn and Südbahn increased almost tenfold, from 69,381 metric tons in 1866 to 598,967 tons in 1877.¹¹⁷ The import of Russian grain into Königsberg and its subsequent export nearly doubled from 308,236 metric tons in 1874 to 557,707 tons in 1912.¹¹⁸ This was despite the completion of a railroad link connecting Libau to Ukraine in the early 1870s and the massive expansion of the Libau port. Because of the increased export from Prussia, the overall grain export was even more impressive, rising from 356,985 tons in 1874 to 705,059 tons in 1912.¹¹⁹

Königsberg in Full Bloom

After the 1894 German-Russian Agreement, Königsberg developed unprecedentedly; industries flourished further, and new city quarters emerged. Because of the extensive transportation and trade networks, Königsberg was also a very international city. The Hartungsche Zeitung regularly reported on grain prices not only in Germany, Great Britain, the Russian Empire, and England but also in the United States. Twice a day, steamships with agricultural goods left for western Europe, transporting back salted herring and manufactured and colonial goods. Between 1895 and 1910, the city’s population rose from 173,000 to 246,000.¹²⁰ This increase might not seem impressive compared to the growth of metropolises such as Paris, London, Berlin, or St. Petersburg. From a regional perspective, though, this was different since there was no other urban center of comparable size within a range of four hundred kilometers.

Trade developed even more impressively. The total influx of goods into Königsberg in 1872 was 620,000 metric tons, and it rose almost fivefold to 3,410,000 tons in 1913. At the same time, exports increased fourfold, from 450,000 metric tons to 1,862,000 tons.¹²¹ While the significance of maritime transport relatively decreased during this time, the importance of the railroad dramatically increased.¹²² Königsberg strengthened its position as Germany’s most significant grain-exporting harbor. However, it lost a share of its massive grain exports to Black Sea harbors and its nearby competitors on the Baltic Sea.¹²³

While Königsberg’s role as a hub for Russian grain export thus relatively declined in the lead-up to the First World War, a rising number of other agricultural products from the empire more than compensated for this loss.¹²⁴ One example of the shift in exports is the legumes trade. Königsberg merchants arranged for an efficient processing and refinement system, along with novel storage facilities. As a result, 90 percent of the Russian Empire’s export of lentils went through Königsberg. Per unit, lentils returned higher profits than grain; thus, transportation costs were less critical. Consequently, in 1907, merchants sold three times more tons of rye than lentils, but both products fetched an equal revenue (13.5 million marks for rye versus 13.4 million marks for lentils).¹²⁵ Sources suggest that Königsberg was the most important European marketplace for legumes at the time. However, further claims that Königsberg was also the global leader are difficult to verify.¹²⁶

To accommodate the ever-growing international trade, the city was also about to expand its railroad and port facilities. To this end, the railroad companies acquired a large plot of land to the south of the existing Ostbahn facilities. As a result, fifty years later than Berlin, the city finally eliminated the city fortifications to benefit the construction of improved transportation facilities. At the same time, the port started to build modern basins to the west of the existing Kaibahnhof. However, the outbreak of the First World War postponed these plans.

CONCLUSION

The crucial impulse for Königsberg’s commercial success was the interconnection of rail and maritime transportation. The growing flow of goods demonstrates that the city was part of an increasingly interconnected world with dramatically declining transportation costs. Times of peace with reasonable tariffs, good political relations between Prussia/Germany and the Russian Empire, and economic growth were undoubtedly a blessing for the city. However, international crises in Königsberg’s hinterland sometimes positively influenced trade.

Russian-German encounters during rising nationalism sometimes erupted into trade conflicts. Nonetheless, the city’s peculiar geopolitical situation in an entangled borderscape was usually beneficial. Jewish merchants acted transnationally, and with their traditional networks, they facilitated cross-border trade. Over time, they became widely respected citizens. However, state-sponsored ethnic nationalism disturbed this emancipation process and motivated the temporary expulsion of Russian Jewish Königsbergers, leading to declining trade.

Ostbahn and Südbahn, as nonhuman actors, left their mark on the city. They not only facilitated increasing international economic exchange, such as with the grain-producing regions of Ukraine, but also changed the cityscape. A new wave of infrastructural transformation of railroad and port facilities was on the way when the First World War broke out.

NOTES

1.Born, Die Entwicklung der Königlich Preußischen Ostbahn, 60. Translation: Jesse Lillefjeld.

2.“Handel, Verkehr,” KHZ, 123 (May 27, 1878, Abendausgabe): 1493.

3.Richards and MacKenzie, Railway Station, 3; Burckhardt, Metamorphosen von Raum und Zeit, 278.

4.Born, Die Entwicklung der Königlich Preußischen Ostbahn, 60–61.

5.Albinus, Lexikon der Stadt Königsberg Pr. und Umgebung, 231–232.

6.Mieck, Große Themen der preußischen Geschichte, 776.

7.Jasiński, Historia Królewca, 218–220.

8.For an overview of nineteenth-century Königsberg history, refer to Lavrinovich, Iz korolevstva—v imperiiu. For a general overview of the history of Königsberg, refer to the somewhat-outmoded book by Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen. II. Band.

9.Oberdörfer, “Königsberg, das übrige Ostpreußen und ihre Presse,” 480–481.

10.Städtisches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch . . . 1908, 2; Städtisches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch . . . 1911, 2.

11.Between 1791 and 1795, Königsberg facilitated 33 percent of all Baltic rye exports, compared to Danzig’s 14 percent and Riga’s 21 percent; the figures for wheat are as follows: Danzig, 30 percent; Königsberg, 38 percent; and other Baltic ports, 32 percent. Refer to Tielhof, “Mother of All Trades,” 46, 54, 338, 339.

12.Schlögel, “Königsberg-Hannah Arendts Stadt,” 227; Komorowski, “Die Erforschung der Königsberger Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte,” 156.

13.Since Danzig became a major issue in the Polish national movement of the nineteenth century and in the controversy over the city’s belonging after 1918, many scholars have since researched the city’s entangled economic history. Danzig plays a major role in all scholarly works on Poland’s foreign trade of the nineteenth century. Refer to Jezierski, Handel zagraniczny Królestwa Polskiego.

14.Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 12–13. As far as the city’s nineteenth-century economic history is concerned, we can draw on some interwar publications. Unfortunately, many archival materials were destroyed during the Second World War, with the remainders scattered across Europe. After 1945, Königsberg ended up as a highly militarized, closed city and the westernmost point of the Soviet Union. As a result, it was very difficult to conduct research in the city itself.

15.Union-Gießerei AG Königsberg Pr., 100 Jahre Union-Gießerei Königsberg Pr., 19–20.

16.Union-Gießerei AG Königsberg Pr., 26.

17.Union-Gießerei AG Königsberg Pr., 30–31.

18.Union-Gießerei AG Königsberg Pr., 32, 36.

19.Waggonfabrik L. Steinfurt AG, 100 Jahre L. Steinfurt, 28–31, 36.

20.Overmann, “Die Ostpreußische Südbahn,” 966.

21.Albinus, Lexikon der Stadt Königsberg Pr., 296–297.

22.Arno Zimmer, 100 Jahre Königsberger Dampfschiffahrt, 6–10.

23.Zimmer, 14–15, 18–19.

24.Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen. II. Band, 555–556.

25.Gause, 556.

26.Earp, History of the Baltic Campaign, 83, 344.

27.Anderson, “Crimean War in the Baltic Area,” 342.

28.Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen. II. Band, 557.

29.Simon, Die Korporation der Kaufmannschaft, 19.

30.Arno Zimmer, 100 Jahre Königsberger Dampfschiffahrt, 31–35.

31.Zimmer, 35.

32.Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung (KHZ), 108 (May 9, 1862): 822.

33.KHZ, 79 (April 2, 1878, Abendausgabe): 916.

34.Stoehr, “Königsberg als Getreideausfuhrhafen,” 43–44.

35.Stenographische Berichte . . . 18. März 1857, 513–514.

36.Stenographische Berichte . . . 12. Mai 1857, 761–764.

37.“Provinzielles,” KHZ, 89 (April 15, 1862): 655.

38.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8127, 45–46.

39.GStA PK, Nr. 8128, 100–108.

40.“Handel, Gewerbe,” KHZ, 87 (April 12, 1862): 635.

41.N. N., “Ein Brief über den Nothstand in Ostpreußen.”

42.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 5–8.

43.Königliche Regierung Gumbinnen, “Außerordentliche Beilage zum Amtsblatt der Königlichen Regierung in Gumbinnen,” in GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 91–96.

44.“Handel, Gewerbe,” KHZ, 87 (December 4, 1862): 635.

45.Forstreuter, “Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung,” 50–51. On periodicals in Königsberg, refer to Oberdörfer, “Königsberg, das übrige Ostpreußen und ihre Presse.”

46.“Handel, Gewerbe,” KHZ, 87 (April 12, 1862), 635.

47.Siltmann, Der Salzheringshandel Königsbergs und Danzigs, 15, 16.

48.Siltmann, 36. Siltman refers to a report by Königsberg’s herring traders that calculated a transportation time of ten days from Libau to Kharkiv (Kharkov) in Ukraine, compared to sixteen days from Königsberg to Ukraine (a similar distance of 1,425 kilometers).

49.Siltmann, 37–38. In 1908, Königsberg delivered 6,847 metric tons of herring; Libau delivered roughly one-fourth of this number.

50.I would like to thank my colleague Katja Wezel for her input on this question.

51.Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen. II. Band, 578; Simon, Die Korporation der Kaufmannschaft, 39–40.

52.Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, 6.

53.Bienkowski, Teeproduktion und Teehandel, 50.

54.CADMAE, fonds 282CCC, t. 50, 211–212. Because of the different measurement units, it is difficult to compare the various import and export statistics. For example, the French diplomats’ reports on Russian tea imports in the 1880s are consistently 25 percent lower than the Königsberg merchants’ numbers. In 1886, the Königsberg numbers indicate 10,033 metric tons, and the Russian numbers indicate 7,650 tons. This might be due to the significant amount of undeclared or only partially declared customs.

55.N. N., “London,” 929–930.

56.Städtisches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch . . . 1908, 2; London Government Office Region, “Vision of Britain through Time.”

57.Herlihy, Odessa, 202–203; CADMAE, fonds 282CCC, t. 50, 211–212.

58.Gause, Die Geschichte der Stadt Königsberg in Preußen. II. Band, 578–579, 668.

59.Bienkowski, Teeproduktion und Teehandel, 50.

60.Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 715–717. Concerning the network and hubs of European trade from a theoretical point of view, refer to Casson, “Networks in Economic and Business History.”

61.Benecke, Die Königsberger Börse, 79–81.

62.Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, quotation on p. 92; Hartmann, “Die jüdische Bevölkerung in Ostpreußen,” 24, 25, 33, 34.

63.Hartmann, “Die jüdische Bevölkerung in Ostpreußen,” 34, 35, 39.

64.On the manila trade in the early 1880s, refer to CADMAE, fonds 149CCC, t. 9, 184–187.

65.Hensel, “Der Wandel in den ökonomischen Funktionen der Juden,” 156–159; Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 163–165.

66.Rabin, Rabin, 41.

67.Jacoby, Jüdisches Leben in Königsberg/Pr., 13, 15, 16.

68.Various Correspondence of consular agent Max Leo in 1898. Series “Copir-Buch from October 10, 1898, to March 5, 1900,” 38–40. Consulate Konigsberg, Germany, vol. 9. Record Group 84: Records of Foreign Service Posts, US National Archives in College Park.

69.Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik, 134–142.

70.Reinecke, Grenzen der Freizügigkeit., 156–157.

71.Reinecke.

72.On seasonal laborers from the Russian Empire, refer to Musekamp, “Saisonale Migration als Bedrohung für den Staat?”

73.Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 179.

74.Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 94.

75.Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 163, 176; Jacoby, Jüdisches Leben in Königsberg/Pr., 13. The French consulate indicated that some 1,500 Königsberg Jews were expelled in September 1885 alone. Refer to CADMAE, fonds 149CCC, t. 9, 235–236.

76.Benecke, Die Königsberger Börse, 80.

77.Schüler-Springorum, Die jüdische Minderheit in Königsberg/Preußen, 180.

78.Magocsi, History of Ukraine, 345.

79.On the competition between Danzig and Königsberg in exporting grain from the Russian Empire, refer to Weissberg, “Der Getreidehandel in Danzig und Königsberg.”

80.On Strousberg’s rise and downfall, refer to Borchart, Der europäische Eisenbahnkönig Bethel Henry Strousberg.

81.Borchart, 47–56. The Südbahn was incorporated into the Prussian State Railroads in 1903.

82.“Handel, Gewerbe,” KHZ, 87 (April 12, 1862): 635.

83.Borchart, Der europäische Eisenbahnkönig Bethel Henry Strousberg, 56–59; Overmann, “Die Ostpreußische Südbahn,” 964.

84.“Convention entre l’Allemagne et la Russie,” 379.

85.Roth, Das Jahrhundert der Eisenbahn, 114–130.

86.Herlihy, Odessa, 206.

87.Kitanina, Khlebnaia torgovlia, 114.

88.Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, 59. On Vitte’s role in the modernization process in the Russian Empire in general and on railroad tariffs in particular, refer to Bochanov, “Probleme der industriellen Modernisierung Rußlands.”

89.Herlihy, Odessa, 217.

90.Overmann, “Die Ostpreußische Südbahn,” 965.

91.Overmann, 958, 965.

92.On tariff policies of the German Empire, refer to Burhop, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Kaiserreichs, 101–117.

93.Stoehr, “Königsberg als Getreideausfuhrhafen,” 43.

94.The severe crop failures in Scotland, England, and France in 1877 provide one example. As a result of the failures, the Russian sugar export to these countries prospered greatly. Refer to CADMAE, fonds 149CCC, t. 8, 177–178.

95.Uwe Müller, “Der deutsch-russische Handelsverkehr,” 130.

96.Kislovskii, Istoriia tamozhni gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 60–61.

97.Müller-Link, Industrialisierung und Außenpolitik, 47–50.

98.Bonwetsch, “Handelspolitik und Industrialisierung,” 277–280. More recently, we have seen similar fears by the European Union’s eastern member states when the bloc abolished customs on Ukrainian grain exports to compensate for the economic obstacles imposed by the Russian blockade in the Black Sea during the war on Ukraine.

99.Simon, Die Korporation der Kaufmannschaft, quotation on p. 32, 42–43.

100.Müller-Link, Industrialisierung und Außenpolitik, 164–175.

101.Manthey, Königsberg, 535–553.

102.Stoehr, “Königsberg als Getreideausfuhrhafen,” 56.

103.Müller-Link, Industrialisierung und Außenpolitik, 192.

104.Hardach, “Die Wende von 1879,” 287; Müller-Link, Industrialisierung und Außenpolitik, 330.

105.Bonwetsch, “Handelspolitik und Industrialisierung,” 279.

106.Jürgen Schneider, “Die Auswirkungen von Zöllen und Handelsverträgen, 310–311.

107.Diehl, Zur Frage der Getreidezölle, 72.

108.Löbel, “Der deutsch-russische Zollkrieg 1893/94,” 148, 151, 165–166.

109.Shindo, Ostpreußen, Litauen und die Sowjetunion, 513.

110.Wulff, Handel und Politik in den russisch-deutschen Beziehungen, 20–21.

111.Diehl, Zur Frage der Getreidezölle, 73–79.

112.Benecke, Die Königsberger Börse, 52.

113.Stoehr, “Königsberg als Getreideausfuhrhafen,” 89–90.

114.Wyszomirski, “Wirtschaft und Verkehr in der Provinz Ostpreußen,” 448–449; Jurowsky, Der Russische Getreideexport, 120–122.

115.Wulff, “Der russisch-deutsche Handelsvertrag von 1904.”

116.Telegramm des Staatssekretärs des Auswärtigen Amts von Tschirschky und Bögendorff an die Botschaft in St. Petersburg (February 19, 1906), in Lemke, Deutsch-russische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, 33–34; Jurowsky, Der Russische Getreideexport, 125.

117.Stoehr, “Königsberg als Getreideausfuhrhafen,” 48.

118.Stoehr, 56, 131.

119.Stoehr.

120.Städtisches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch . . . 1908, 2; Städtisches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch . . . 1911, 2.

121.Ernst Ferdinand Müller, “Zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Preußenlandes,” 523.

122.According to Katja Wezel, the Riga case is different. Here, because of speedier vessels, the maritime trade developed more dynamically than trade facilitated by rail. Refer to Wezel, “The Most Successful Trading Hub in Late Imperial Russia.”

123.Between 1900 and 1902, only 22 percent of Russian grain export took the Baltic Sea route or crossed the western border by rail (compared to 60.7 percent in the late 1870s), while 77 percent went through Black Sea ports. Königsberg accounted for approximately ten percent of the Russian Baltic Sea grain exports, followed by Riga but outperformed two times by close competitor Libau and four times by St. Petersburg. Refer to Jurowsky, Der Russische Getreideexport, 7, 23, 188–193. For detailed statistics on Russian grain exports to Germany, refer to Müller-Link, Industrialisierung und Außenpolitik, 390, 393, 394.

124.Benecke, Die Königsberger Börse, 52.

125.Shindo, Ostpreußen, Litauen und die Sowjetunion, 507.

126.Shindo; Benecke, Die Königsberger Börse, 65.