Technology in Modern German History: 1800 to the Present by Karsten Uhl (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by:

• Technology in Modern German History: 1800 to the Present by Karsten Uhl
• Marcus Popplow (bio)

Technology in Modern German History: 1800 to the Present By Karsten Uhl. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Pp. 280.

Karsten Uhl's volume is, indeed, "the first English-language book specifically on the role of technology in German history" (p. 1). Such an endeavor is more than welcome as, so far, introductions to and surveys of the history of technology focusing explicitly or implicitly on Germany have all been published in German. This is true for Joachim Radkau's Technik in Deutschland (1989), the five-volume Propyläen Technikgeschichte (1990–92), Wolfgang König's Technikgeschichte (2009), Martina Heßler's Kulturgeschichte der Technik (2012), Ulrich Wengenroth's Technik der Moderne (2015), and Provokationen der Technikgeschichte, edited by Martina Heßler and Heike Weber (2019). None of these works has been translated into English, so they have remained inaccessible for non-German readers so far—at least until powerful and easily accessible translation tools have been devised more recently. It is somewhat astonishing that Uhl does not refer to these surveys in more detail and mentions most of them, if at all, only in passing, even if his own approach throughout the book is based on a wide range of secondary literature. As the annotated bibliography also focuses on English titles only, readers are not made familiar with the historiography of German research into the history of technology.

According to the requirements of the Bloomsbury History of Modern Germany Series, the book is divided into a first part, "Tracing the History," which is rather descriptive, while the second part covers "New Directions"; that is, the results of more recent historiographical and methodological discussions. The reader should thus not expect a chronological account of the history of technology in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany, nor an overview structured according to various sectors of technology. Uhl instead loosely pairs the chapters of the first and second parts, so that "traditional" issues correspond with more explorative ones: "industrialization" with the "human body in highly technified environments," "urban" with "rural technologies," "high tech" (aviation, rocketry, nuclear power) with "everyday technologies," and "visions of progress" with "apprehensions of uncertainty"—in the sense of protest against technologies and the emergence of environmental concerns. The latter pair shows, however, that Uhl to some [End Page 744] extent subverts this structure, as "visions of progress" so far have not featured in the standard program of introductions into the history of technology. However, this case, as well as Uhl's other topic choices, allows many fresh insights into developments that have only seldomly been comprehensively discussed in the history of technology in Germany.

The first chapter is the most conventional, discussing the interaction of political, social, and economic contexts of German industrialization with a strong focus on changing conditions of labor. In the end, however, all the chapters convincingly succeed in exploring the "mutual relationship between technology and culture" (p. 1) in Germany. The multiperspective approach chosen by Uhl thus offers food for thought into topics as diverse as the limited effectiveness of user agency, innovations not promoting social change but fostering traditions and social inequalities, and the relevance of emotions and expectations in the history of technology. As most of the single chapters follow a chronological structure, reading the book results in multiple journeys through time.

Another aim of the book—namely, to identify "particular national features" in the history of technology in Germany—is a difficult task, as Uhl himself admits in the conclusion. Without enough space for in-depth comparisons, German developments are mostly related to European neighbors and the United States but not to other world regions. At the same time, as Uhl explains, a national approach can hardly do justice to the considerable diversity among German regions—not the least with regard to the different paths taken in Western and Eastern Germany in the decades between World War II and unification. Finally, features often dubbed characteristically German remain contradictory: a strong environmental movement went hand in hand with a well-respected chemical industry, and worship of nature with an enthusiastic reception of technical innovation. Uhl thus concludes that...