William Mulvany is known to Germans as the man who turned the Ruhr into an industrial heartland, writes Derek Scally
Shamrockstraße is not your typical German street name. But the unremarkable, winding street in the western town of Herne is the key to the remarkable story of William Thomas Mulvany.
Mulvany left Ireland 150 years ago and became a key figure in the transformation of the Ruhr into the industrial heartland that has served as Germany's economic engine ever since. He was born on March 11th, 1806 in Sandymount, Dublin, the first child of Mary Field Mulvany and Thomas James Mulvany, a painter of modest talent whose popularity on the Dublin scene outweighed his commercial success.
William grew up in an artistic, liberal Catholic household, with four brothers and two sisters. His third-level education at Trinity College, studying botany and engineering, ended after a just few months due to family financial problems.
Through his father's connections he got his first experience of technical drafting from the architects Francis Johnston and John Semple, whose father designed several Church of Ireland churches in Dublin.
Mulvany decided to convert to the Church of Ireland, opening up previously blocked paths in the civil service, and in 1826 he joined the Ordnance Survey office.
A decade later he moved to the Board of Public Works where he acted as chief engineer for drainage works and supervised the construction of the Shannon-Erne canal. But Mulvany fell victim to rising anger among landowners at the rising cost of the drainage works and, receiving little support from his superiors, was forced out of the Board of Public Works.
His life took a fateful turn in 1854 on a trip that took him to Belgium and the Netherlands. But it was in the north Ruhr that he saw the greatest potential. A year earlier he had heard about the promise of the region at an industrial exhibition in Dublin.
"I looked at the geological maps and saw immediately what wonderful, extensive riches were under the earth," wrote Mulvany later. "I said to myself immediately, 'These people don't understand what they have here'."
At that time, the burgeoning mining industry was located further south, near the River Ruhr. The idea of mining further north - near Bochum - was considered too expensive and impractical. Not only was the coal too deep for the mining methods of the time, there was too much ground water and no means of transport for the coal.
But by the mid-1850s, the first railways were being built through the north Ruhr. At the same time, Prussian authorities reformed the mining industry, abolishing state control and throwing open the industry to private capital, making it a far more attractive prospect to foreign investors.
"Mulvany was the right man in the right place at the right time," says Dr Olaf Schmidt-Rutsch, author of a detailed history of Mulvany's life and work. "But he had a tremendous talent for spotting opportunities and putting things in place before anyone else." He organised a consortium of investors - including railway tycoon James Perry and shipowner Joseph Malcolmson - to buy a collection of unprofitable mines in Gelsenkirchen, near Bochum.
On March 17th, 1855 the first sod was turned on the new mine, which Mulvany named Hibernia as it was St Patrick's Day. In June, the consortium bought another collection of mines in the nearby town of Herne, which were renamed Shamrock.
Mulvany bought in the latest mining technology in Belgium and Britain and even managed to win the services of Newcastle shaft-mining engineer William Coulson.
HIS AMBITIOUS CONSTRUCTION work attracted the attention of local authorities, and the mine construction featured in two trade press articles.
"The skill and speed with which this Irish company constructed their shafts is surprising," wrote one magazine in 1858. That year the consortium operated by Mulvany employed 357 people who mined over 18,000 tonnes of coal. Just six years later, there were 1,001 employees mining 316,000 tonnes of coal annually.
"There was a real gold rush mood in the Ruhr. The mines paid well and people left their families and came here to earn money," says Dr Schmidt-Rutsch. "The Mulvany mines changed the Ruhr forever - remember there's no steel industry without coal."
Mulvany became a well-known figure in Ruhr industry circles and gained influence in the industrial federations that would have huge influence in the newly-united Germany.
The Mulvany family donated all of his papers to the Rhein-Westphalia Economic Archive (RWWA) in Cologne - but they were all destroyed in the second World War, making research difficult and leaving huge gaps in detailed knowledge about Mulvany's private life, particularly after he left Ireland.
"It was a challenge but also a chance to write a biography not fixated on one man - the typical industrial tycoon heroic biography - but also to look at him in his environment, the politics and structures of the time," says Dr Schmidt-Rutsch.
"Mulvany invested little money in the mines; his strength was organisation and negotiation with mining authorities. His civil servant background helped him deal with the Prussian bureaucrats. He was also a good self-publicist."
He married Alicia Winslow from Co Fermanagh in 1832. The couple had one son and three daughters, one of whom died aged 15. A great-grandson of Mulvany, Hans-Christoph Seebohm, served as transport minister in all five of German chancellor Konrad Adenauer's cabinets from 1949 to 1963.
MULVANY REMAINED A towering figure in Ruhr industrial circles for the rest of his life. Even when he was fired by the consortium running Shamrock and Hibernia in 1864, he kept up his federation work and a third mine, Erin, owned by the Mulvany family. But it went bankrupt in 1877 during an economic slump, ending any hopes Mulvany had of becoming a wealthy man.
"If Erin hadn't gone under, Mulvany could have been a level higher, up there in the big industrial league with Krupp," says Dr Schmidt-Rutsch.
In 1880, at a party celebrating his quarter-century in Germany, a colleague said: "Seldom has a foreigner succeeded in finding his way so quickly and so successfully on our territory to attract such recognition and respect from private people and authorities." Mulvany's death on October 30th, 1885 - aged 79 - was marked in newspapers in Germany and Ireland.
"Mr Mulvany was an Irishman of great energy and resource who, before all things, looked to the advancement of his native land," wrote The Irish Times in its obituary.
"It is a suggestive commentary on our system that long experience and abilities of high order, which should have been devoted to the amelioration of this country and the development of its resources, were more highly-prized and rewarded in a foreign land."
Mulvany's legacy was kicked around in the decades after his death. One of the first biographies was anxious to portray him as a man motivated by hatred of the English. Other biographies and articles during the Nazi era relativised his involvement in the mines, giving German companies the credit.
In 1983, some 130 years after Mulvany wrote of the "extensive riches" under the ground of the Ruhr, the last of his mines - Erin - closed. Today the area is a business park with a Celtic cross.
There are still traces of Mulvany in the Ruhr, like Mulvanystraße in Gelsenkirchen and Shamrockstraße in Herne, near the former mine. And if all that talk of mines leaves your mouth feeling dry, it's even possible to raise a glass and toast the great man with some Mulvany beer.
William Thomas Mulvany: An Irish Pragmatic and Visionary in the Ruhrgebiet by Olaf Schmidt-Rutsch is published by RWWA, Cologne