African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 18: Chapter 15: From Amsterdam to Venice

In June, it’s already summer, and the whole of Prussia has not been impacted by the war. On the streets and alleys of Berlin, people are bustling, shops and factories are operating normally, presenting a vibrant scene.

For the past two months, Ernst has been busy with the establishment of the Heixinggen Development Bank. Fortunately, starting a bank in this era is relatively easy, with fewer thresholds and regulations.

After two months of preparation, the Heixinggen Development Bank was established. Many senior executives under Ernst attended the opening ceremony. With the confirmation of equity in the numerous factories under his control, the Heixinggen Consortium initially took shape.

After its establishment, the first major move of Heixinggen Development Bank, besides offering basic services like savings and loans, was to invest in the formation of the Berlin Power Company and the Berlin Energy Power Company.

This was naturally Ernst’s masterpiece. Currently, both companies are still shells, and to find management for the new companies, Ernst put in a lot of effort. He visited various universities and conducted industry inspections, while also placing recruitment ads in newspapers. After extensive screening work.

On July 28, the Frenchman Etienne Lenoir became the first general manager of the Berlin Energy Power Company. Etienne Lenoir is the inventor of the early internal combustion engine.

Although Leno was an important promoter of the development of the internal combustion engine, his research consumed significant financial resources, with no one investing or collaborating with him, making him not very wealthy and leading a frugal life.

Upon receiving Ernst’s invitation, he gladly agreed to Ernst’s requests, as Ernst not only offered a generous salary but also promised to support Lenoir’s research work.

At the same time, a young man about to graduate from school, Karl Friedrich Benz, became Lenoir’s assistant.

At this time, Karl Benz was still a student soon to graduate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany.

Ernst discovered him early, allowing him to directly serve as the assistant to the elder Lenoir, bypassing his original historical period as a factory intern.

The Berlin Energy Power Company also invested in purchasing the engine patent from a young Frenchman named Alphonse Beau de Roshach and appointed him as a technical advisor, forming the initial shape of the Berlin Energy Power Company.

This Alphonse Beau de Roshach was historically not famous, but it was he who historically preempted the patent for the carburetor, made famous by Ross August Otto.

Ross August Otto is the inventor of the four-stroke engine in history. Ernst had originally wanted to recruit this inventor, who influenced the course of human history, to serve as a senior executive in the company.

Unfortunately, he was a step late; Ross August Otto had obtained the patent for the two-stroke engine innovation in 1863 and soon found a partner to provide him with funding, named Eugene Langan. Eugene Langan was a son of a German sugar merchant, a typical second-generation rich kid, and together they established an internal combustion engine manufacturing company.

Currently, Ross August Otto does not need to search for new partners and investors, as the factory run by him and his partner has already started to be profitable.

The newly established Berlin Energy Power Company also recruited many freshly graduated college students as a reserve of talents. College students of this era were genuinely elite, and with these talents, the Berlin Energy Power Company looked quite promising.

Ernst’s first directive to the new company was to develop a more advanced four-stroke engine based on the patent of Alphonse Beau de Roshach.

Historically, Alphonse Beau de Roshach’s patent did not result in any prototype production and was thus forgotten. However, Ernst still purchased his patent and plans to further develop and perfect it.

Coupled with the assistance of Lenoir, a pioneer in the field of internal combustion engines, this goal was not difficult for the new company. It might even beat Ross August Otto to develop a practical four-stroke engine.

Lenoir, as the first inventor of the internal combustion engine, although his internal combustion engine was in a rudimentary form and extremely inefficient, finding someone more familiar with internal combustion engines than him might be challenging worldwide.

With Benz, the young heir apparent, in the future, Ernst could preemptively arrange for the layout of the automobile industry.

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On October 3, the young Karl von Linde was appointed by the Heixinggen Development Bank as its first general manager, and the Berlin Power Company began operations.

Compared to the internal combustion engine industry, which had steam engines as a precedent, the theory of electricity had only recently been proposed, and many theories remained immature.

Ernst searched all over Europe and finally found Karl von Linde, a suitable candidate. Karl von Linde is historically known as the inventor of the refrigerator, that is, the cooling machine.

As for other talents in the field of electricity, they were hard to find. Germany’s most renowned Siemens family themselves were aristocrats and were significant in the eyes of the Prussian government, leaving no room for Ernst to intervene.

Moreover, Siemens was synonymous with success, and the only figures Ernst could think of who were comparable to Siemens were the American Edison and Tesla, excluding those theoretical greats.

These were the genius talents Ernst had painstakingly found. As a science and engineering undergraduate, Ernst knew many noteworthy scientists and inventors of the future, but some had already achieved fame and success, while others were obscure and mired somewhere in Europe or America, or were still children or yet to be born.

After filtering out those who were unrelated due to age or investment need, he had to scour the globe as if looking for a needle in a haystack.

Thankfully, the enormous power in these two fields hadn’t yet been unleashed, and they belonged to the cutting-edge technology of the era, allowing only a minority to engage in related industries and research.

By keeping an eye on companies already successful in these fields and the lists of well-known universities, it was still possible to spot one or two notable figures.

For the Berlin Power Company, Ernst had no great strategies to leap ahead, so he could only follow the development trends of the era, letting his men engage in small innovations.

In the future, he still had to develop along with Siemens and some American enterprises, as running a factory with patent authorization could also earn some hard-earned money.

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On October 20, while the Vienna conference was being held, Ernst arrived at the port of Amsterdam in Holland for an inspection. This time, Ernst’s target was to find suitable partners to prepare for the Far East market development.

The Far East, as his homeland in previous lifetimes, was naturally unforgettable to Ernst. Of course, the lure of profit was hard to resist. Apart from those resource-rich regions, areas with massive markets, coveted by European and American colonizers and great powers, were India and East Asia.

That magical country, India, was Britain’s lifeline, and Ernst dared not mix with their unique brains.

East Asia was different. Ernst dared to thump his chest, saying that no one in Europe understood East Asia better than him. Unlike India, which would kneel whenever facing a strong enemy, East Asians had some spirit, making it difficult to completely take root even after the great powers opened the doors of a major East Asian country.

Even if all the great powers united, they couldn’t fully control the situation in East Asia. The forces within were chaotic, making it not too conspicuous for a Prussian to fish in troubled waters.

However, Ernst couldn’t simply swim to East Asia to join in, so he needed to find a partner to cooperate with long-distance commercial fleets. Recently, Ernst had reached agreements with several established Dutch shipping companies, wherein Ernst would send people to East Asia to establish purely commercial outposts, with the Dutch earning the intermediaries’ fees.

Regarding the transport of goods between Europe and East Asia and the transfer of business intelligence, Ernst could only rely on the Dutch. Compared to the Dutch, a commerce-based nation, Ernst didn’t trust the British. If a grand German noble ran to cooperate with the British, it might attract special attention from their government, and Ernst didn’t want any dealings with any official entity, as that meant trouble, especially since he had no connections in Britain!

Although the Dutch, sanctioned by the English, were not as cost-effective and secure in long-distance trade as the then-flourishing British Empire, the Dutch were still more cautious about damaging reputations than the English, as their reliance was wholly on commerce and trade.

However, Ernst planned to shift his focus to Mediterranean ports in the future.

Within a few years, after the opening of the Suez Canal, the window of intelligence opportunity would enable Ernst to carry out more informed shipping routes with his fleet.

Also, after Germany unified, commercial routes could pass through Austria. Prince Constantine still had some old friends in the Austrian Empire, meaning this route would also be safer. With the final passage through ports like Venice on the Adriatic Sea and through the Suez Canal, the distance to reach East Asia without having to detour around half of Africa’s western coastline would be halved, making freight costs cheaper.

Not to mention, goods departing from Holland could be trans-shipped via the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, as an option during transition, with Hamburg also being a transitional option after Germany unifies, given the German region currently lacks experience in long-distance commercial trade and that its ship technology lags behind the Dutch and Venice regions.

Thus, Ernst isn’t in a rush to invest in shipyards in Hamburg now. As his industry’s scale hadn’t reached a level that necessitated relying on maritime transport, given that he hadn’t ventured into bulk commodity trading yet, it wasn’t urgent. Therefore, focusing on Mediterranean areas and scouting ahead could already begin after his Dutch journey when Ernst intended to inspect the surrounding regions of the Adriatic Sea ports.