Reflecting on a century of technological development in German mechanical engineering, the historian Conrad Matschoss noted in 1908 that the “extraordinary progress of the last few decades” contrasted favorably with conditions during the greater part of the nineteenth century. Until recently, he stated, the field had suffered from a vast gap between theory and practice. On one side had stood the prestigious representatives of engineering theory and education – characterized by “scholarly, theoretical debates that only rarely display common sense… and most often were useless for actual engineering.” On the other side could be found anonymous practitioners, who “learned to get along without the scholars… and often rightfully mocked the arrogance and sterility of science.”

Matschoss attributed this fateful division not to any inherent difficulty in fusing theory and practice but to peculiarly German social conditions. Contemptuous of business and practical know-how, engineering educators in the past had approached their subject as a pure science and a strictly academic discipline, in consequence of which they had lost touch with reality. The professors had ignored the problem for decades, because as scholars and academics they enjoyed public esteem far above that of the practical engineers, “who as former artisans also stood socially much below the representatives of the sciences.”