June had arrived, and it was now summer. The whole of Prussia remained untouched by the war. Berlin's streets bustled with pedestrians, shops and factories operated as usual, and everything brimmed with life.
For the past two months, Ernst had been busy establishing the Hohenzollern Development Bank. Fortunately, opening a bank in this era was quite easy, with few barriers and regulations.
After two months of preparations, the Hohenzollern Development Bank was founded. Many executives from Ernst's companies attended the opening ceremony. Once the equity stakes in Ernst's many factories had been confirmed, the Hohenzollern Conglomerate began to take shape.
After the Hohenzollern Development Bank was established, it opened basic services such as savings and loans. Its first major move was to invest in the establishment of the Berlin Electric Company and Berlin Energy Power Company.
Naturally, this was Ernst's handiwork. The two companies were still empty shells, and Ernst went to great lengths to find managers for them. Besides visiting universities, he investigated companies within the industry and placed recruitment advertisements in newspapers. After conducting extensive screening—
On July 28, the Frenchman Étienne Lenoir became the first general manager of Berlin Energy Power Company. Étienne Lenoir was the inventor of the first-generation internal combustion engine.
Although Lenoir had been an important driving force in the development of internal combustion engines, his research had consumed enormous funds, and no one had invested in or partnered with him. He was not wealthy himself and instead lived a straitened life.
When Ernst invited him, he gladly accepted Ernst's offer. Besides offering a generous salary, Ernst had promised to support his research.
At the same time, a young man about to graduate from school, Karl Friedrich Benz, became Lenoir's assistant.
At this time, Karl Benz was still a student about to graduate from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany.
Ernst had recruited him in advance and directly made him the assistant of the senior Lenoir, allowing him to skip the factory internship period he would have had in his original history.
Berlin Energy Power Company also paid to acquire the engine patent of a young Frenchman, Alphonse Bo-Rochat, and appointed him as a technical consultant. Berlin Energy Power Company had begun to take shape.
Alphonse Bo-Rochat was not famous in history, yet it was he who had historically registered Ross August Otto's carburetor patent first.
Ross August Otto was the inventor of the four-stroke engine. Ernst had originally wanted to find this inventor, who had influenced the course of human history, and appoint him to the company's upper ranks.
But unfortunately, he was a step too late. Ross August Otto had already obtained a patent for improvements to the two-stroke engine in 1863. Before long, he found a partner named Eugen Langen to fund him. Eugen Langen was the son of a German sugar merchant, a typical rich second-generation heir, and the two jointly established a company manufacturing internal combustion engines.
Ross August Otto no longer needed to seek new partners or investors. Their factory had already begun turning a profit.
The newly established Berlin Energy Power Company also hired many recent university graduates as a reserve of talent. University students in this era were genuine elites, and with these people on board, Berlin Energy Power Company finally looked the part.
The first order Ernst gave the new company was to develop a more advanced four-stroke engine based on Alphonse Bo-Rochat's patent.
Historically, Alphonse Bo-Rochat's patent had never produced a single prototype and was therefore forgotten. Yet Ernst still bought the patent, intending to further refine and develop it.
With Lenoir, a pioneer in the field of internal combustion engines, assisting them, this goal was not difficult for the new company. They might even produce a practical four-stroke engine before Ross August Otto did.
As the first person to invent an internal combustion engine, Lenoir's engine was only a rudimentary model, with pitifully low efficiency. Even so, it would be difficult to find several people in the world more familiar with internal combustion engines than Lenoir.
With Benz, the young man slated to be his future successor, Ernst could make early arrangements in the automobile industry.
On October 3, the young Carl von Linde was appointed by the Hohenzollern Development Bank as the first general manager, and the Berlin Electric Company began operations.
Compared with the internal combustion engine industry, which had steam engines to pave the way for it, electrical theory had only been proposed not long ago, and many of its theories were still immature.
Ernst had searched all over Europe before finding Carl von Linde as a suitable candidate. Historically, Carl von Linde was the man who invented the refrigeration machine—the refrigerator.
As for talent in other electrical fields, they were simply too difficult to find. Germany's most famous Siemens family were nobles themselves and were valued by the Prussian Government, leaving no room for Ernst to dig his shovel in.
Moreover, Siemens itself was practically synonymous with cheating. The only figures Ernst knew who could stand shoulder to shoulder with it were Edison and Tesla in the United States, though he was not counting those giants of theory.
Ernst had gone to tremendous effort to find these genius figures. As an engineering student, he knew many scientists and inventors who would become famous in later generations, but some had already achieved fame and success, while others were still obscure in some corner of Europe or America. Some were children, and some had not even been born.
After filtering out those of the wrong age and those who did not need investment or partners, he still had to search for needles in a haystack across the entire world.
Fortunately, neither field had yet unleashed its tremendous power, and both were cutting-edge technologies of the era. There were only a small number of people able to work or conduct research in these industries.
As long as he kept an eye on companies that had already made their name in these fields and on the rosters of famous universities, he could still fish out one or two conspicuous talents.
As for the Berlin Electric Company, Ernst had no good way to cheat his way ahead. He could only follow the tide of the times and have his people make a few minor innovations.
In the future, he would still need to follow Siemens and certain American enterprises closely and develop along with the trend. After all, he could earn some hard money simply by licensing patents and operating factories.
On October 20, while the Vienna Conference was underway, Ernst arrived at the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands for an inspection. His goal this time was to find suitable partners and prepare for the development of the Far Eastern market.
As the homeland of his previous life, the East Asian region naturally lingered in Ernst's thoughts. Of course, the lure of profit was equally irresistible. In the contemporary world, aside from resource-rich regions, there were two areas with vast population markets that made European and American colonizers and great powers drool with desire: India and East Asia.
India, that bizarre country, was Britain's lifeblood. Besides, the Indians' train of thought was so strange that Ernst did not dare involve himself.
The East Asian region was different. Ernst dared to beat his chest and say that no one in Europe understood East Asia better than he did. Compared to a country like India, which fell to its knees whenever it encountered a powerful enemy, East Asians still had some backbone. This made it possible for the great powers to force open the gates of a major East Asian nation, yet difficult for them to truly put down roots there.
Even if all the great powers joined forces, they could not fully control the situation in East Asia. The forces within were a chaotic jumble, and even if a Prussian slipped in to make a fortune, he would not stand out too much. It was the perfect opportunity for Ernst to fish in troubled waters.
But Ernst could not possibly swim all the way to East Asia and meddle there himself, so he needed to cooperate with oceangoing merchant fleets. Recently, Ernst had reached agreements with several established Dutch overseas trading companies. Ernst would send people to East Asia to establish purely commercial footholds, while the Dutch would earn the middleman's price difference.
As for transporting goods between Europe and East Asia and relaying commercial intelligence, he could only rely on the Dutch. Compared with a nation founded on commerce like the Netherlands, Ernst did not trust the British. If a major German noble went to Britain to seek cooperation, would the British Government not pay special attention? Ernst did not want to deal with any officials; that meant trouble, especially when his family had no connections in Britain.
Although the Netherlands, which had been sanctioned by the British, could not match the Empire on which the sun never sets at the height of its power in terms of cost and security in overseas trade, the Dutch were more cautious than the British about smashing their own signboard. After all, the Netherlands could only survive through trade, and reputation mattered more in Europe.
Of course, Amsterdam in the Netherlands was merely Ernst's best current choice. In the future, he would shift his focus to ports along the Mediterranean coast.
In a few years, once the Suez Canal opened, Ernst could use this intelligence advantage to build his own fleet and shipping routes.
Furthermore, after Germany was unified, commercial trade routes could pass through Austria. Prince Constantin still had some old friends in the Austrian Empire. After all, Hechingen was not far from Austria; looking at the map alone, Hechingen was closer to Vienna than to Berlin, which also meant that route was safer.
Finally, passing through ports such as Venice on the Adriatic Sea and then through the Suez Canal would avoid detouring around more than half of Africa's western coastline. The distance to East Asia would be cut in half, and freight costs would be cheaper as well.
Leaving that aside, goods departing from the Netherlands could also be transferred through the Mediterranean Sea and pass through the Suez Canal to reach their destination.
Before the plan Ernst had hidden in his heart for so long could begin, Hamburg in Germany was also a transitional option. But that would have to wait until after Germany was unified. The German territories currently lacked experience in overseas commerce, and their shipbuilding technology could not compare with that of the Netherlands and Venice.
Thus, Ernst was in no hurry to invest in shipyards in Hamburg. Venice was the priority now. The scale of his industries had not yet reached the point where they had to rely on maritime transport. After all, he had not yet entered bulk commodity trade, so even if traveling from Berlin to Venice under Austrian Empire rule required land transport, Ernst could bear the cost.
When he began trading those large-volume goods in the future, it would not be too late to establish a fleet in Hamburg.
Therefore, the Mediterranean layout could begin, and he could start scouting locations in advance. After concluding his trip to the Netherlands, Ernst planned to inspect the areas around the Adriatic Sea.
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