Abstract

Intermeriate organisations between two extremes tend to have a stressed life because of their adjusting character. Intermediate technical education in Prussia existed from 1821 to 1876 enabling graduates either to go to the Berlin Gewerbeakademie or to start a business on their own. This fell a victim when the bourgoisie striving for emancipation by education (and the association of the German mechanical engineers, VDI) insisted on the highest possible school‐degree as entry for students of technology. Reports on the positive experience in Switzerland, political considerations to integrate the able workers into the middle classes, local and regional economic interests as well as competition between the ministries of education and commerce from 1890 on resulted in a slow and then rapid extension of intermediate technical education, all this against the massive protests of the engineering professions.Establishing the Landesgewerbeamt and the DATSCH, who embraced all German (and even more German speaking representatives of) technical high schools, who both strongly influenced the shape of technical education in 20th century, mark the successful end of this process of differentiation.