ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of the rise of the electrical industry and the development of a state-controlled system of electricity supply in Germany before the First World War. Of all the federal states of the German Empire at the end of the nineteenth-century, in which electricity was produced by water power, Baden and Wuerttemberg had experienced a particularly early and dynamic start in this sector. The number of electric power plants constructed in Germany reached its peak in the first decade of this century, so that there were more than 4,000 individual plants in Germany on the eve of the First World War. The characteristic features of the way Baden's electrical industry developed can be summarised as follows: topographical factors and the transport possibilities generated by the ports of Mannheim, and Karlsruhe, encouraged the development of business interests, particularly in electrical manufacturing and in the electro-chemical industry.
