Ferdinand Lehn: Drawing exercises from studies in civil engineering at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, 1891-1893, 67.9 × 43.5 × 4.0 cm, half-leather binding. KIT Archives 28016/31, page 29.
Producing technical drawings, like those shown here, was an important part of studying at Karlsruhe Polytechnical College and the later Polytechnic. Students developed these skills in courses in such various subjects as freehand drawing, plan and terrain drawing, or lighting theory and perspective. They also engaged in extensive exercises in descriptive geometry; and calligraphy to head such drawings was also part of the curriculum. This training was a common requirement across engineering disciplines, including architecture. The civil engineering student Ferdinand Lehn (born 1871) had the architectural drawings he had made between 1891 and 1893 bound into an elegant half-leather volume, indicating the lasting value he attached to these exercises. His drawings provide an overview of subfields within civil engineering: bridge construction, railroad construction, hydraulic engineering, road construction, and surveying. The curriculum also included related disciplines like architecture and mechanical engineering. The professors in the civil engineering department at the time also figure on these pages with their distinctive marks attesting a student’s performance: Reinhard Baumeister (1833–1917) in urban planning; Friedrich Engesser (1848–1931) in bridge and railroad construction; Matthäus Haid (1853–1919) in surveying; and Kosmas Sayer (1851–1899) in hydraulic engineering; as well as the architect Adolf Weinbrenner (1836–1921) and the mechanical engineer Karl Keller (1839–1928). kn
Ferdinand Lehn’s album illustrates the breadth of civil engineering studies in the 1890s. It includes typical engine-element designs alongside localized planning projects for a mill canal or a railroad line. The representation techniques range from sectional drawings and geometric analyses of static phenomena, to shaded building elements and colored landscape depictions. Wood, quarry stones, bricks, vegetation, water, and stratified soil are all meticulously reproduced. But human figures are nowhere to be seen, not even as decorative additions. Lehn’s drawings document the significance of infrastructure projects at the height of industrialization. Apart from omnipresent railroad construction, “river correction” also played an important role, extending far beyond the major channelization project of the Rhine. The reduction of travel times on the then-still-established stagecoach routes through constructing new road bridges also features prominently, smoothing the way for the later transition to motorized road traffic. By the time Lehn compiled his album in the late nineteenth century, technical drawings had long been established as a medium. Whilst known since antiquity, they still played a minor role in medieval cathedral construction. Their widespread use in Central Europe increased with the introduction of rag paper around 1400, hence predating the establishment of “modern” techniques of perspectival representation. The affordability of paper compared to animal-skin parchment was a key factor. Leonardo da Vinci’s ingenious skills at all levels soon elevated technical drawing to new heights. Even for Leonardo’s engineering contemporaries, drawings began to serve various functions: from sketches of buildings on travels, to elaborately presented client proposals, and technical treatise illustrations. When the first training schools for civil and military engineers emerged, drawing became a core part of the curriculum. Collection holdings similar to Lehn’s album, from renowned eighteenth-century French engineering schools have also been preserved. Not just the viaduct project shown here, but other pages of the album as well thus illustrate how drastically the required skills for (construction) engineers have evolved. Keyboard typing and screen scrolling have long since replaced the less forgiving use of brush and pen. If drawing by hand remains part of engineering training at all, it is on the hope that such a “haptic” practice may still foster specific cognitive skills in modern design. Lehn’s memento thus demonstrates that not only technology changes over time, but also what can be described as the history of knowledge in the engineering profession — shaped then, as it is now, by current media possibilities and the individual mastery of them. Marcus Popplow