Dislocated to Success

by Iain Bowen

  One of the more interesting things about our journey northwards was seeing how the Dislocation had changed things as we travelled: in Austria and Bavaria, there appeared to be little change; as you moved into Franconia, you could see a little more change - which disappeared as we drove into Thuringia, but reappeared in some of the Saxon Duchies and became more apparent as you moved into the more Littoral states. Those who would say back in 1984 that Hamburg is medieval and primitive needed to do this journey, just to see how much Hamburg had changed compared to other cities in the Reich.

  One of the key changes is how roads have changed since the Dislocation, a reasonable B-road standard wasn’t that difficult to achieve even in 1984. The journey out of Vienna saw decent roads; they then faded into what I would consider a bad road, but by the end of the journey I felt they were above average. After Linz they became worse, and I started to understand why such journeys were usually made in small convoys - there weren't any breakdown trucks or garages around. We then stopped overnight in Passau, which was a small pleasant city with an extensive agricultural hinterland and very little sign of modernisation. It had a small petrol station, where after doing some mathematics I worked out that a gallon of petrol cost about five times as much as in the UK. No wonder Hannover and Poland-Lithuania had invested so they could produce their own. The accommodation was a little grim; I understand the drivers accommodation at the petrol station was actually somewhat better.

  The journey to Nürnberg was not much better, the short and somewhat late lunch stop in Regensburg making up for it. Not only was the food very good, but Regensburg is exceptional in its architecture - whilst I had been once before, a short after-lunch walk was needed. However, the road to Nürnberg was calling, and luckily was a lot better than the road to Regensburg. By the time we got to Neumarkt it was as good as an English B-road. We also passed a couple of steam wagons hauling goods, which was interesting, as I had thought that was mainly a French thing.

  Nürnberg used to be a very rich city, but had never quite fully recovered from the Thirty Years’ War. It was still a well off city by the time of my visit, but the days when it was known as the Imperial Treasure Chest were gone. It was unusual amongst Imperial Cities in that it had substantial lands around it, but that was also the cause of some of its problems as some of those lands were claimed by the Margraves of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and Brandenburg-Ansbach, cadet houses of the House of Hohenzollern. There was also a complex revenue sharing system with some of the city lands and the two Margraviates. However, its richness and its distance from the Northern littoral means that it had been doing nicely from agricultural revenues whilst its craftsmen had been copying what they can of some English designs. There was also a rich cultural heritage and many attractive buildings including several churches with good choirs for a Protestant city. Alas, the Meistersingers had died out; I was told that you had to go to Swabia to hear them as I indeed did a few years later..

  My reason for visiting was simple - neither the Pegnitz or the Regnitz were navigable to more than very shallow draft barges. The Main at Bamberg was navigable, although to take anything more modern than a Thames lighter it would need considerable work. The idea that had been floated was a railway to bring coal down from Pegnitz and Auerbach in the Oberpfalz and and iron ore from the Fichtelberg and use it in Nürnberg, then to transport the goods produced to Bamberg on the Main. Now the backers had the money, and the markets were certainly there, but there was no agreement between the Free City, the two Margraves and the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg - or rather no agreement on what tariffs and fees would be paid. The UK interest, of course, would be in the building of the railway, which would be a substantial amount in our coffers.

  Luckily, the Elector of Hannover was with us and he was able to talk freely about the benefits of his railways. He was very frank about the profit that his railway was generating and about how he was now able to transport petrol around his immediate area at under UK prices, never mind the ones in Mitteldeutschland. With his coal magisterial, as he had named the railway, opening in the next couple of months, he hoped to do the same for coal. The representative of the Prince-Bishop was unmoved by this, but both Margraves - whose land rovers were in the courtyard - suddenly seemed interested. There were a few questions about the price of coal as well; Georg Friedrich of Bayreuth spent some time doing some sums on a scrap of paper after that, and started smiling - which was unusual for him. However, we were making progress; a small squabble about territorial disputes was stopped by the Prince-Bishop's representative uttering the single word "Bayern" and a comment about "hanging together”. This was the first time that the Franconian antipathy to being included in what they called Groß-Bayern raised its head in diplomatic matters as a positive effect; it was not to be the last time.

  Eventually, we had an agreement. It was subject a couple of caveats: Georg Friedrich of Bayreuth wanted a medical check-up in the UK as soon as possible; Karl Wilhelm of Ansbach wanted a branch-line to Ansbach, but was persuaded that that would come later if he didn't spend his revenue unwisely; the Prince-Bishop's representatives were somewhat unmoved, but wanted a movement of the station and docks at Bamberg to a different position from that historically, where they had been placed awkwardly for commerce for the city. The Nürnbergers wanted to enquire if they could get a British loan rather than a local one. All of this was easily remedied with a couple of telegrams, and the final contract was signed a few weeks after my departure.

  After spending a relaxing day in Nürnberg after these talks, I made my way northward - after separating from the Elector, who was eager to return to Hannover to prepare for the official opening of the Minden coal magisterial. I then travelled firstly to Bayreuth, which was somewhat unchanged except for what I was told was the most modern sewerage system in the Reich - it certainly smelt much better than many towns. Georg Friedrich put us up in the Schloß but otherwise ignored us. His son, however, gave us a nice tour of the small town and its surrounding area, and of the small school he had persuaded his father to start. He was a nice young chap, anxious to get married soon and concerned that his father would not reform fast enough. He pointed to his historical reforms and that "he would do them tomorrow”. I had heard this viewpoint a few times from young heirs to the various thrones.

  After that it was a gentle drive through the Ernestine Duchies; obviously respects were paid at various small courts, but in general this was mainly just for leisure. It was noticed that the road went poor again north of Bayreuth until you hit Electoral Saxony; for all the mining wealth of Thuringia and a great deal of small crafts, there was very little showing the way of progress - except it was pointed out by my small entourage that there were a few modern designed waterwheels. You could tell our progress was unusual by the large number of people, not just children, who would gawp at the land rover.

  This section of the journey ended in Meißen, where I wanted to visit the Albrechtsberg and help a little business along. Electoral Saxony in 1984 had not really reaped the dividends of the Dislocation so far, except in odd spots like Meißen; partly this was down to distance from the UK, but the Elbe was a broad, navigable river even then - at least to trans-boats and small modern barges - and improvements were underway, albeit slowly in some areas. The problem for Electoral Saxony was that August the Strong very much stayed in Poland, which had rapidly become the richest part of his realms; his son was supposed to govern Electoral Saxony, but spent much of his time in England with his son who had a number of health issues which took some years to resolve fully. The good news was that August's grandson was a very bright young man who will receive an English education in full, and was been vaccinated against smallpox; the bad news was that it left von Brühl is effectively in charge in Electoral Saxony for a few years and anyone with a good reading of history knew about von Brühl and his problems.

  However, Meißen was even then a bright spot - the advantage for it was that both Augusts looked very favourably on the UK, and in 1981, Roya
l Worcester and the Royal Porcelain Factory came to a very useful agreement. There is a bright modern new factory by the Treibisch which quadrupled the output of the factory within months, the town was an early adopter of electrical power and by 1984 had a small coking plant and a busy set of wharves on the Elbe. Meißen has been marketed by Royal Worcester in the UK as a premium product, and very successfully; in return Royal Worcester blanks are sent to Meissen for hand painting, which allows Royal Worcester to produce its premium product more cheaply. It has been a mutually beneficial arrangement which has made a great deal of money for both sides and seem set to continue. As a result, the folk of Meißen are amongst the most prosperous I have seen outside of Hamburg. There was even a Hartmann Hotel here by 1984, although quite a small one, and even at that juncture there were plans for tourist cruises from Hamburg to Dresden within a year. The English influence back then was already starting to appear, places had signs saying they have English radio, a few had English spoken signs, and the Domkeller proclaimed it had English Hygiene.

  Apart from taking in the rather glorious castle and enjoying a small city which is certainly making an effort, my personal business was to order a nice new monogrammed dinner set at a very favourable price. I was given a delightful tour of the new factory, which really was very much up to modern standards, and afterwards I have a tour of the modern Meißen winery which from 1984 started produced white wine for the English market, Quite good, although a little flinty for me, but certainly something that people who liked the more austere Chablis should enjoy.

  One of the services offered in Meißen, back then, was that they would take your car on a barge up the Elbe; I was told this was mainly due to the condition of the roads between here and Magdeburg, however, this did take around 48 hours. I decided we would risk the roads; the main hazard was supposed to be flooding and it had been dry for a couple of weeks. To be honest, this may have been a mistake - we got to Dessau very, very late and very tired and the next day was, if anything, worse. ‘Dry’ was a very loosely-used term in the often marshy lands of the Elbe Valley. The progress of time has removed this hazard and travel down the Elbe valley is much easier.

  However, we eventually made it to Wolfenbüttel, where I had been invited by the Duke for a chat about his successors - nothing formal, not representing the government, just a chat in a personal capacity. Wolfenbüttel was interestingly half-finished in terms of many of its grander buildings, but had a lot of delightful half-timbered ones; the current duke had put a stop to various plans of his due to the state of the Treasury. Considering he was terminally ill and even beyond the hope of modern Medicine, he was very jolly and had done a lot of thinking. He was concerned about the inheritance; his cousin Ferdinand Albrecht had what the medical types called "Doom Syndrome", as he had found out when he was going to die and had fallen into an extreme - almost catatonic - depression. A British doctor had said that he was unfit to rule and probably even likely to die before the current duke, who had decided that if his cousin hadn't improved by Christmas then he would write him out of the succession.

  However, he was concerned by Ferdinand Albrecht's children. He had stopped Anthony Ulrich going to Russia, which caused a hell of a row - both with the Russians and with Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was worried that Karl was likely to be a spendthrift - and there was no time to secure against that - and he was very concerned about certain marriages that weren't going to happen. The doctors could give him maybe an extra year, but he was concerned that everything would go to blazes.

  My advice was simple: his cousin’s younger sons would be best off getting a British education instead of being Prussian generals; and that he'd been completely right in making sure Anthony Ulrich didn't go to Russia, as Russia was being if anything even stranger after the Dislocation than it had been before it. As for everything else, I suggested that, if perhaps if he committed his Treasury reserves now on projects then his second cousin wouldn't be able to waste them. As for Anthony Ulrich's future, perhaps if he gave him Blankenburg in the Harz as a paragium, it might get him a decent marriage that wasn't to the Russians.

  After that we spent sometime talking about libraries and books; the library at Wolfenbüttel was quite large - the largest in trans-Europe - but a newer one was only two-thirds finished. I suggested that if he finished it and stocked it with modern books, that could be interesting. He smiled at that and considered that it would offend a lot of people, so he would have to give it serious consideration. I did also suggest that he took up one of the offers from UK Universities to help with the collection; he raised a number of questions about this, which I took back to UK. He was an astute man with a fine sense of humour, but slightly given to thinking the future is unchangeable when it has already all changed.

  One little encounter I did have whilst there was with the young lady Elisabeth Christine, who would have been the Crown Prince of Prussia's intended and now was looking rather on the shelf. The Duke had pulled the marriage - ‘for diplomatic reasons’, he claimed, but I suspected that as a voracious reader he had seen an unhappy and loveless marriage ahead. She seemed a little more spirited than history had portrayed her, and said that, as England had taken her future husband from her, perhaps she could have an English visa to take a husband from England. I said I would ask the Duke if she could, but I could see no real objection on the United Kingdom's part.

  After a day or so of talks, and a delightful day looking at the rare books and the art collection, it was time for my little working holiday to end. I had an official appointment in Hannover for the opening of the new railway line to Minden and then I would fly home by air taxi; Marcio brought back the Land rover via Hamburg. The journey to Hannover would be much easier than most of the rest of the journey - once you got to Braunschweig, the main roads became of a pretty decent quality for the time; in fact it only took around three hours.

  The great joy of the Foreign Office is that there is always something unexpected that pops up and either causes great joy or great problems. I had spent the morning with John Major - who had just moved to the Foreign Office as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State whose responsibilities include liaison with the Commonwealth and Colonial Office - where I was explaining to him what the rules were on who did what, especially around Africa. He was quite interested in this, although a little concerned about our general lack of engagement outside of our small enclaves. My comment was that this would come with time; we needed to essentially make ourselves much more aware of what polities there were, and how they wanted to interact with us. At the moment, we had neither the knowledge or the skills and my main concern was to let Africa be Africa and not have a second scramble for it. I felt we needed a lot more information to act, and that, at least in the immediate areas of the colonies, the Commonwealth and Colonial Office were in the best position to do that. I didn't let on that the idea of being a Diplomat in, say, West Africa was about as appealing as a country pancake to the average member of the FO, and that some of the briefings we had from SOAS were just disturbing. I did, however, point out that CCO should be careful where it engaged in case it gave the wrong impression.

  Having said that, I was looking forward to preparing for Party Conference; previous Foreign Secretaries had often had a very rough ride, but I usually got a decent reception now that the tables of the world had turned. A few hints of the iron fist inside the velvet glove always went down well, and whilst I didn't have the legendary skills of, say, Michael with the twinset and pearls brigade he had the much stickier wicket to deal with. However, you always had to be careful about which bon mots to use, which carefully chosen nation to praise and which one to be a little cutting about. The Ottomans were a good bet for a few digs, but I was aware of both the coffee supply and the rather tricky Tutankhamen situation - Roy Strong had thrown an enormous public tantrum at even the thought of the death mask going back to Egypt. What the press wanted was some demonstration of how the UK was good and noble, what the MPs wanted was news of more export
s and jobs being created, and what the grand dames and the dowagers wanted was news of how Britain was Top Dog again. It was really a question of balance.

  I had decided that I was going to actually praise the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; the Grand Duchess had now settled in her role and was proving to be not just a game old bird but a rather wily one as well. She had cleared out the Augean Stables of the court, generally just sending many of them back to their villages and telling them not to darken Firenze's doors again, banishing a few of the worst culprits and only making an example of a couple of the more egregious gold-diggers. We had ended up giving a handful of them asylum; some had taken ship to find their fortunes and a new identity, although friends told me one or two were hanging around the City of Quebec. In addition to this, she had kept Gian Gastone's sensible liberal economic reforms and not clamped down too much on the other matters; tolerance of non-Catholics remained - just.

  However, the reason for my praise would be on other matters: she had engaged with cis-Italians, spent some of her own considerable monetary reserves and was trying to encourage various small industries, agricultural concerns and the like. Livorno was being improved and a decent road being constructed to Firenze; art experts had been called in and a programme was being arranged where some would be sold over a period of time - some would be leased to UK museum, and the proceeds would be invested in modern facilities in Firenze and a major renovation of the galleries there. However, the biggest investment which was still to be agreed was for us to provide a geothermal power station, which would probably supply the energy needs for Pisa and Livorno for the foreseeable future. The only question was how much the UK would be contributing, as there was an interest in geothermal for Costa Rica and eventually for California.