Thus far we have considered the Bagdad Railway almost entirely as a business undertaking. In its inception, in fact, it was generally thus regarded throughout Europe. As time passed, however, the enterprise overstepped the bounds of purely economic interest and entered the arena of international diplomacy. The greatest usefulness of the Bagdad Railway was in the economic services it was capable of rendering the Ottoman Empire and, further, all mankind. Its widest significance is to be sought in the part it played in the development of German capitalistic imperialism. Its greatest menace was its consequent effects upon the relations between Turkey, Germany, and the other Great Powers of Europe. The succeeding chapters will deal with the political ramifications of the Bagdad enterprise.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
[1] Dr. Arthur von Gwinner (1856- ) is one of the most distinguished of modern financiers. He was born, appropriately enough, at Frankfort-on-the-Main when that city was a center of international finance. His father, a lawyer, was an intimate friend of Schopenhauer and the latter’s executor and biographer. In 1885 young Gwinner married a daughter of Philip Speyer and thus became a member of one of the famous families of bankers in Europe and America. For a time he conducted a private banking business in Berlin, but in 1894 he became an active director of the Deutsche Bank. Two years later he was sent to America to supervise the reorganization of the Northern Pacific Railway by its European creditors; and while he was in the United States, he formed lasting friendships with J. Pierpont Morgan and James J. Hill. In 1901 he succeeded Dr. von Siemens as the guiding spirit of the Deutsche Bank, which under his administration made even more remarkable progress than under his capable predecessor. As managing director of the Deutsche Bank he became president of the Anatolian and Bagdad Railway Companies. It was in 1909 that Dr. von Gwinner’s father received from the Kaiser the patent of hereditary nobility—an honor said to have been intended as much for the distinguished son as for the distinguished sire. Intellectually, Dr. von Gwinner is an international man: he quotes Dickens and Shakespeare and Molière, Goethe and Schiller and Lessing, with almost equal facility. His delightful personality stands out in all the Bagdad Railway negotiations.
[2] Infra, Chapter IX. The French bankers also shared in the ownership of the construction company. A. Géraud, “A New German Empire: the Story of the Bagdad Railway,” in The Nineteenth Century, Volume 75 (1914), p. 967; Report of the Bagdad Railway Company, 1903, pp. 4, 8.
[3] Among the German members were Dr. von Gwinner; Dr. Karl Testa, representative of the German bondholders on the Ottoman Public Debt Administration; Dr. Alfred von Kaulla, a director of the Württembergische Vereinsbank, and original concessionaire of the Anatolian Railways; Dr. Karl Schrader, a member of the Reichstag; Dr. Kurt Zander, general manager of the Anatolian Railway Company. The directors nominated by the French interests were Count A. D’Arnoux, Director General, and M. Léon Berger, French member, of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration; MM. J. Deffes, G. Auboyneau, P. Naville, Pangiri Bey, and A. Vernes, of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, the last-named being vice-president of the Bagdad Railway Company; M. L. Chenut, a member of the Ottoman Régie Générale de chemins de fer. The Turkish members of the Board were Hamdy Bey, representative of the Ottoman bondholders on the Public Debt Administration; Hoene Effendi, under-secretary in the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs; and two Constantinople bankers. The Swiss were Herr Abegg-Arter, president of the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, of Zurich, and M. A. Turrettini, of L’Union financière de Genève. The Austrian was Herr Bauer, of the Wiener Bankverein, and the Italian was Carlo Esterle, of the Italian Edison Electric Company, of Milan. There were few important changes in the personnel of the Board of Directors between 1903 and 1914, perhaps the most notable being the election of Dr. Karl Helfferich, in 1906. Cf. Reports of the Bagdad Railway Company, 1903, et seq.
[4] Cf. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, fourth series, Volume 120 (1903), p. 1371. During the Great War a conspicuous German general complained that the Swiss in charge of the operation of the Railway was more interested in the commercial than in the strategic value of the line and did not coöperate with the military authorities. Cf. Field Marshal Liman von Sanders, Fünf Jahre Türkei (Berlin, 1919), p. 40.
[5] Verhandlungen des Reichstages, Stenographische Berichte, XII Legislaturperiode, 1 Session, Volume 231 (1908), p. 4253c.
[6] Supra, p. 77.
[7] Paul Imbert, “Le chemin de fer de Bagdad,” in Revue des deux mondes, Volume 197 (1907), p. 672. The Deutsche Bank, with its capital and surplus of about $75,000,000, was the foremost of the German banks. Associated with it in the Bagdad Railway enterprise were a number of other financial institutions, including, it is said, the Dresdner Bank and the Darmstädter Bank, ranking second and fourth respectively among the great banks of the German Empire. Riesser, op. cit., pp. 642–644.
[8] Supra, Chapter IV, Note 48; Fraser, op. cit., pp. 48–49; Jastrow, op. cit., p. 94; Report of the Bagdad Railway Company, 1904, p. 3; 1905, p. 4.