ABSTRACT
Historical research has so far failed to recognize the fact that the food industry in Germany has to be counted among the leading sectors of industrialization in the 'long nineteenth century'. The blast furnaces of the mighty iron and steel corporations, for example, did not only dominate the outer appearance of the 'industrial revolution', but they also held historians' attention. Thus, Walther G. Hoffmann of Múnster, whose thesis claiming that the food industries had initially played a leading role but then fell behind the overall economic growth rate during the period of high industrialization remained valid up to the 1990s. 2 This misjudgement can be put down to the fact that the exclusive consideration of highly aggregated statistical averages obscured important specific developments. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the food and luxury food industries had been developing an exceptional dynamic of growth which initiated the 'take-off' of the whole sector. 3 Thus, by 1895, every fifth employee in the food industry worked in a factory with more than 200 employees. According to the results of the trade census of 1907, the average company size amounted to 6.4 employees. However, the mass of small and very small businesses, such as butcheries and bakeries, was offset by big mechanized industrial companies with high technological standards, such as those in the sugar and brewing industries. By 1846. horsepower (h.p.) per employee in the food industry was the second highest, and only surpassed by the heavy iron and steel industry. This position was consolidated up to the First World War, which meant the food industry attained the leading position in terms of increments in production. 4 The high technical efficiency also explains the tremendous capital needs of the sector. The food industry not only counted among the pioneers of modern joint-stock trading in Germany, but was ahead of other branches of the economy and industry up to the turn of the twentieth century; it also accounted for most of the companies in this modern and innovative form of business before the First World War. Moreover, most companies in the food industry were outstandingly successful, as the balance-sheet analysis of selected sectors shows. 5 What was long true of the food industry as a whole, is still valid today for some of its sectors: mechanically produced and packed flour, canned vegetables and fruits, ready-for-use sugar obtained from sugar beets, bottled beer or mineral water and, not forgetting the production of starch in factories, were new but they were soon considered 'mundane'. However, from today's perspective, their contribution to the late nineteenth and twentieth-century 'nutrition revolution' cannot be overestimated.
