The German Genius
And partly because, with the conception of the germ theory of disease (see Chapter 20), there arose a need for antiseptics. These were almost all phenols, which the dye companies had for years been using as dyestuff components. 21
Antipyretics and analgesics were discovered much as mauve was—by accident in the search for something else. Dr. Ludwig Knorr at Erlangen was yet another of those looking for a quinine substitute when he found that the pyrazolone compound he had just manufactured had pain-killing and fever-lowering properties. Höchst, originally a dye company near Frankfurt, bought the rights to this drug in 1883, and it was quickly followed by similarly acting substances, of which the most notable were “Antifebrine” (1885), pure acetanilide, Phenacetin or p-ethoxyacetanilide (1888), dimethylaminoantipyrine, sold as “Pyramidon” by Höchst (1893), and aspirin (1898). Sedatives appeared in the 1890s—“Sulfonal” and “Trional” (Bayer) and “Hypnal” and “Valyl” (Höchst). The work of Koch and Pasteur on immunology (also Chapter 20), led Höchst into the large-scale production of serums and vaccines to treat such dreaded diseases as diphtheria, typhus, cholera, and tetanus.
Following the lead at Höchst, and Bayer, another dye and drug company, at Elberfeld, Westphalia, interest in pharmaceuticals snowballed, with various firms employing bacteriologists, veterinarians, and other specialists. 22 The new field of insecticides saw the building of laboratory-greenhouses where botanists and entomologists tested the killing power of pesticides. Photographic film, paper, and developing chemicals comprised another new branch of laboratory specialization. But the other two momentous processes that were discovered/invented at that time were nitrogen fixation, carried out at Ludwigshafen, and artificial rubber, developed at Bayer. 23
Nitrogen fixation was the original achievement, in 1902, of two Norwegians, Kristian Birkeland and Sam Eyde, who demonstrated that the oxides of nitrogen could be produced simply by heating air to a very high temperature by means of an electric arc. This was commercially feasible in Norway because hydroelectric power was so abundant and so cheap, but these conditions applied in few other locations. In the search for a more economical method of fixing nitrogen, Fritz Haber at Badische Anilin und Soda-Fabrik, near Mannheim, Germany’s lagest dye factory, found it in 1909 by synthesizing ammonia out of nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressure and temperature. Carl Bosch refined Haber’s process so that an ammonia plant was operating at Oppau near Ludwigshafen by 1913, establishing the firm’s pre-eminence in the fertilizer and munitions industries.
A final sense in which the chemical/dye industry was important was its trade organization. After the unification of Germany in 1871, the dye manufacturers established an organization with an exceedingly long name, the Association for the Protection of the Interests of the German Chemical Industry—Registered Association. In existence since 1876, most people know it as the Verein and it was the Verein that was instrumental in the creation of the cartel and the chemical company IG Farben. 24
Cartels proliferated in the 1880s until, by 1905, the Ministry of the Interior counted 385 in Germany, 46 of them in the chemical industry. By 1908, the Bayer company was a member of twenty-five cartel agreements.
The emergence of the cartel was a response to changed working conditions having to do with science. As commercial competition increased, profits declined to the point where capital and long-term investment and research could not be justified. As a result, the cartel fixed prices and market share. One of the first such controls occurred in 1881, fixing the price of alizarin (otherwise madder red) and allocating to each producer a certain fraction of the market. (Between 1869 and the date of the cartel, the price of alizarin had dropped from 270 marks per kilogram to 17.50.) This cartel didn’t last, partly because, as John Beer says, it was impossible for former rivals to bury the hatchet overnight, but also because the Swiss dye companies did not form part of the arrangement. Later cartels did work, mainly because, instead of being defensive, they discovered it was more effective to pool their patents and share profits in predetermined ratios. Former rivals now became more cooperative as they shared a bigger cake.
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher