The Hybrid Expert in the ‘Bergstaat’: Anton von Ruprecht as a Professor of Chemistry and Mining and as a Mining Official, 1779–1814

Summary

In the course of the 18th century a new type of scientifically educated functional elites developed, who were trained to administer mines. The educational project that led to the formation of a corps of mining engineers was part of a programme of administrative and economic reforms that led to a new configuration of bonds between state, economy and science. At the same time the status of this new group of experts was predicated substantially by the new emerging corpora of the scientific, technological and cameralist knowledge of the period between 1760 and 1800. The aim of this paper is to discuss this group using the example of a leading expert in the context of the mining and metallurgy of this period. Anton von Ruprecht (1748–1814) was strongly grounded in the social and epistemic context of the Habsburg mining bureaucracy, which employed his scientific and technical savoir faire to serve their mercantile goals in several areas of mining expertise.