Frankfurt in the 18th Century


Home A Dispute Between French and Austrian Soldiers Before a Gate in the City Wall of Frankfurt in 1797. Watercolor. The Southwest Bastion in the Frankfurt City wall, Called the Mainzer Bastion German Dialect and Foreign Languages in 18th Century Frankfurt	Frankfurt in the 18th Century Frankfurt City Wall, Water Color, Around 1750 As a prosperous free city with its special relation to the Holy Roman Empire laid down in the Golden Bull, the Frankfurt of the 1700's, was both provincial and metropolitan, its character both radically German and unselfconsciously international. The citys walls, bastions, fifty-five watchtowers might crowd out its four church spires and give the approaching visitor an impression of solid civic nonentity, but the dumpy little cathedral in which the emperors were crowned, express the idea of the Holy Roman Empire, in all its abstractness, better than the pomp of Vienna. The true symbols of the town, however, were the two great municipal cranes on the wharves, and the ancient bridge, with its fourteen arches, across the Main River, which served as more than just a link with the old suburb of Sachsenhausen. Frankfurt was the junction of no fewer than twenty-six major roads, far enough up the Main river, for land travelers to avoid the rugged Rhineland Hills, yet not so far as to the inconvenient to the Rhine river itself, Northern Europe's principal waterway at a time when sailing downriver was the fastest of all forms of in land transport. In particular Frankfurt linked the roads from the East, from Franconia (now Northern Bavaria), Thuringia and Saxony (the southern part of eastern Germany) and Silesia (southern Poland today) with a great north-south route that ran from Italy through Switzerland to the low countries, Amsterdam, and the sea, taking up on its way major western tributaries from Lyons, Paris, and Lorraine. Around a community of craftsmen, therefore, no different from the kernel of many other old German towns, there had grown up the city of merchants, bankers, and -- equally international in their outlook -- innkeepers, over a hundred of these last out of a population of 36,000, and some of them very wealthy men. The textile trade, especially in English woolen and cotton stuffs and in French silks (and related crafts of the tailors, two hundred of these in Goethe's day), and the old spice, wine, and metal trades were the foundation of many a family fortune, joined later in the eighteenth century by dye stuffs, colonial imports, and porcelain. Banking naturally flourished, and from the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which Frankfurt survived better than most, the city was not only Germany's major military recruiting and provisioning center but also the money market where finance was found for the wars of kings. The 18th century brought a steady, if unspectacular increase in prosperity and in the second half of the century the city numbered 183 families with fortunes of over 300,000 guilders, among them eight millionaires. The rich man of Frankfurt were as cosmopolitan as their interests: much of the trade with England was in the hands of the descendents of Dutch immigrants or of Huguenots expelled by Louis XIV; a smaller number of Italians that come with the trade in Mediterranean fruits; and prominent among the bankers were Jewish families, concentrated in Frankfurt after expulsion from other cities such as Cologne and Nuremberg. Twice a year, at the great fares at Easter and Michaelmas, the city spread out the full span of its European affiliations: 350 extra stalls was set up in the value of the goods on display was estimated at 15 to 20 million guilders. Home Next Page - 18th C. Polyglot Frankfurt	Eschenheimer Tower in the Frankfurt City Wall, Water Color, around 1790