ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Epistemic Virtues and Narratives of Sustainability in 19th-Century German Mining

• In Event: Minescapes 3: Religion as Knowledge Matrix between Earth Science and Resource Management

English Abstract

Discipline formation in the earth sciences, the emergence of mining academies, and the codification of mining techniques changed the epistemic setting for extractive industries in 19th-century Germany. The paper delineates how religion, despite processes of secularisation in science and administration, continued to serve as a knowledge matrix: it shaped long-lasting epistemic virtues such as honesty and utility and provided a narrative structure for “sustainable mining” that carried older ideas of providence into modern mineral resource appraisals. The paper pivots on an autobiography published in 1818 by mineralogist and mining expert Heinrich von Trebra. Littered with Lutheran, Pietist, Romantic, and Masonic references, the text reworked a centuries-old Christian tradition evident in the region’s material culture and religious topography and provided a literary exemplar for a new type of technical-scientific expert.
Engineers educated at the Freiberg Mining Academy were in high demand internationally until ca. 1870, when similar training became more available in other national contexts. To show how Freiberg’s religious knowledge matrix interacted with extractive cultures elsewhere, the paper concludes by tracing the careers of Freiberg students, including the unusual trajectory of Kwasi Boachi (1827-1904), a Ghanaian-Dutch mining engineer, who went on to prospect for coal in the Dutch East Indies.

Author

• Sebastian Felten, Universität Wien, Institut für Geschichte