Chapter 15 From Amsterdam to Venice
It was June, already summer, and the whole of Prussia was not affected by the war. The streets and alleys of Berlin were bustling with people, shops and factories were operating as usual, and the scene was full of vitality.
For two months, Ernst has been busy with the establishment of the Hechingen Development Bank. Fortunately, it is still very easy to set up a bank in this era, with relatively few thresholds and regulations.
After two months of preparation, the Hechingen Development Bank was established. Many executives of Ernst's companies attended the opening ceremony. After completing the equity confirmation with many factories under Ernst, the Hechingen Consortium was initially formed.
After the establishment of the Hechingen Development Bank, in addition to opening up basic businesses such as savings and loans, its first major move was to invest in the establishment of the Berlin Electricity Company and the Berlin Energy and Power Company.
This is naturally Ernst's masterpiece. Now the two companies are still empty shells. In order to find management personnel for the new company, Ernst has made great efforts. In addition to visiting various universities, he also inspected companies in the industry and placed recruitment advertisements in newspapers. After completing a lot of screening work.
On July 28, Frenchman Etienne Lenoir became the first general manager of Berlin Energie-Dynamique. Etienne Lenoir was the inventor of the first internal combustion engine.
Although Lenoir was an important promoter of the development of the internal combustion engine, his research consumed huge financial resources and no one invested in or cooperated with him, so he was not very wealthy and lived a tight life.
After receiving Ernst's invitation, he readily agreed to Ernst's request because in addition to offering a generous salary, Ernst also promised to support his research work.
At the same time, a young man named Karl Friedrich Benz, who was about to graduate from school, became Lenoir's assistant.
At this time, Karl Benz was a student who was about to graduate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Ernst discovered him ahead of time and directly appointed him as the assistant of Mr. Lenoir, skipping his original factory internship.
The Berlin Energy and Power Company also invested in purchasing the engine patent of a young Frenchman, Alphonse Beau-Rouchat, and appointed him as a technical consultant. The Berlin Energy and Power Company was initially formed.
This Alphonse Beau Rorschach is not famous in history, but it was he who registered Ross August Otto's vaporizer patent.
Ross August Otto was the inventor of the first four-stroke engine in history. Ernst originally wanted to find this inventor who influenced the course of human history to serve as a senior executive of the company.
But unfortunately, he was a step too late. Ross August Otto obtained the patent for the innovative two-stroke engine in 1863. Soon he found a partner to provide him with funding. Eugene Langen was the son of a German sugar merchant, a typical rich second generation. The two of them jointly founded a company to manufacture internal combustion engines.
Now Ross August Otto does not need to look for new partners and investors, as the two-person factory has already started to make a profit.
The newly established Berlin Energy and Power Company also recruited many newly graduated college students as talent reserves. College students of this era are real elites. With these talents, the Berlin Energy and Power Company looks well-established.
The first instruction Ernst gave to the new company was to develop a more advanced four-stroke engine based on Alphonse beau Rorschach's patent.
Historically, no prototypes were produced for Alphonse beau Rorschach's patent, so it was forgotten, but Ernst still bought his patent and planned to further improve and develop it.
With the help of Lenoir, a pioneer in the field of internal combustion engines, this goal would not be difficult for the new company. It might even be able to develop a practical four-stroke engine before Ross August Otto.
Lenoir was the first person to invent the internal combustion engine. Although his internal combustion engine was only in its rudimentary form and had extremely low efficiency, it would be difficult to find a few people in the world who were more familiar with internal combustion engines than Lenoir.
With Benz, the young man who is scheduled to take over in the future, Ernst can realize his layout in the automotive industry in advance.
…
On October 3, the young Karl von Linde was appointed as the first general manager of the Hechingen Development Bank, and the Berlin Electric Company began to operate.
Compared to the internal combustion engine, an industry that had its foundation in the steam engine, the theory of electricity was only recently proposed, and many of the theories are not even mature.
Ernst searched all over Europe before he found a suitable person in Carl von Linde, who was the man who invented the refrigeration machine, or refrigerator, in history.
As for talents in other fields of electricity, they were too difficult to find. Germany's most famous Siemens family was itself aristocratic family and was valued by the Prussian government. There was no place for Ernst to make his move.
Moreover, Siemens itself is a synonym for cheating. The only people Ernst knew of who could be compared with Siemens were Edison and Tesla from the United States. Of course, Ernst did not include those theoretical giants.
These were all geniuses that Ernst had gone to great lengths to find. As a student of science and engineering, Ernst knew many scientists and inventors who later became famous, but some of them had already achieved success, or were still unknown in some corner of Europe and the United States, or were still children or had not yet been born.
After screening out those of age and those who do not need investment cooperation, you still have to look for a needle in a haystack all over the world.
Fortunately, these two fields have not yet exploded with huge power, and they are the most cutting-edge technologies of this era, so only a few members can engage in related industries and research.
If you keep an eye on the list of companies and well-known universities that have already made a name for themselves in these fields, you can still pick out one or two that stand out.
Ernst had no good way to cheat the Berlin Electric Company. He could only follow the development of the times and let his subordinates make some small innovations.
In the future, we will have to follow the trend of Siemens and some American companies. After all, we can earn some hard-earned money by setting up factories through patent licensing.
…
On October 20, when the Vienna Conference was being held, Ernst came to the Port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands for inspection. This time, Ernst's goal was to find a suitable partner to prepare for the development of the Far East market.
Ernst naturally missed the Far East as his hometown in his previous life. Of course, the temptation of interests was hard to resist. In the contemporary world, apart from those resource-rich regions, there are two regions coveted by European and American colonists and powers because of their huge population markets: India and East Asia.
India, this magical country, is the lifeblood of Britain, and the Indians have such unique ways of thinking that Ernst dared not get involved.
East Asia is different. Ernst dares to say that no one in Europe knows East Asia better than him. Compared with countries like India, which kneel down when faced with a strong enemy, East Asians still have some blood. This makes it difficult for the great powers to completely take root even though they have opened the door to a certain East Asian country.
Even if all the great powers united, they could not fully grasp the situation in East Asia. The forces there were in disarray. Even if a Prussian sneaked in to make a fortune, he would not be too conspicuous, which was just convenient for Ernst to fish in troubled waters.
However, it is impossible for Ernst to swim to East Asia by himself to get involved, so he needs to find a long-distance commercial fleet to cooperate with. Recently, Ernst has reached an agreement with several old Dutch ocean trading companies. Ernst will send people to East Asia to establish a purely commercial base, and the Dutch will earn the difference as a middleman.
As for the transportation of goods and the transmission of business intelligence between Europe and East Asia, they can only be completed by the Dutch. Compared with a country like the Netherlands that is based on business, Ernst the British is not at ease. As a German nobleman, you go to Britain to cooperate. Should the British government pay special attention to you? Ernst does not want to deal with any official, as that means trouble, especially since he has no connections in the UK!
Although the Dutch, who had been sanctioned by the British, could not compare with the once-powerful British Empire in terms of cost and security in ocean trade, they were still more cautious than the British about damaging their reputation. After all, the Netherlands could only survive on commercial trade, and its reputation in Europe was more important.
Of course, Amsterdam in the Netherlands is only Ernst’s best choice at the moment. In the future, Ernst will shift his focus to ports along the Mediterranean coast.
In a few years, after the opening of the Suez Canal, Ernst could use this intelligence advantage to develop his own fleet and shipping routes.
In addition, after the unification of Germany in the future, commercial trade routes can pass through Austria. Prince Constantine still has some old friends in the Austrian Empire. After all, Hechingen is not far from Austria. Just looking at the map, Hechingen is closer to Vienna than to Berlin, which also means that this route is safer.
Finally, passing through ports on the Adriatic Sea such as Venice and through the Suez Canal, we can avoid detouring around most of the western coastline of Africa, and the distance to East Asia is directly reduced by half, and the freight is also cheaper.
Not to mention these, just say that goods departing from the Netherlands can also be transferred to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal to reach the destination.
Before the long-hidden plan in Ernst's mind began, Hamburg in Germany was also a transitional option, but it had to wait until the unification of Germany. The German region currently lacked experience in ocean-going commerce, and its ship technology was not as good as that of the Netherlands and Venice.
Therefore, Ernst was not in a hurry to invest in a shipyard in Hamburg. His focus now was Venice. The scale of his own industry had not reached the level where he had to rely on sea transportation. After all, he had not yet entered into the commodity trade. Therefore, although it required land transportation from Berlin to Venice under the rule of the Austrian Empire, Ernst could afford the cost.
It won’t be too late to establish a fleet in Hamburg when you want to engage in large-volume commodity trade in the future.
Therefore, planning for the Mediterranean Sea and scouting out locations in advance can already begin. After finishing his trip to the Netherlands, Ernst plans to conduct an investigation around the Adriatic Sea.
(End of this chapter)
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