1820 Vienna AT – Industrial Exhibition

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1820 Vienna

Name:	Industrial Exhibition
Dates:	1820
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A number of events began from 1820 around variousAustrian cities, but major national events were held in Vienna. The famous Congress of Vienna had been held in 1814-15 to resolve European issues following the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. It redrew the borders of Europe and established the German Confederation. But it was a later Vienna meeting that would spawn a second German event (assuming Prague 1791 was the first).

Friedrich List was an 18^th/19^th century German economist who had spent some time living in the USA. He would later develop theories in his 1841 Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (National System of Political Economy) that contrasted the economic behaviour of an individual with that of a nation. This opus is attributed by many to have influenced National Socialism (Nazism) and to eventually become the basis of the European Economic Community (interesting bedfellows).

But back in early 1820 there was a congress of German ministers held in Vienna. List travelled to the city, although he was not admitted to the meetings his presence was enough to convince the ministers to create a new committee to consider economic affairs. This led to a regional customs union (Germany at this time had 38 internal customs’ borders) and agreements that recognised the Congress of Vienna’s calls for freedom of river navigation.

List as the secretary of the Union of Merchants twice met up subsequently with the emperor, as well as anyone else who would give him a hearing. The key item on his agenda was a German national industrial exhibition.