Ernst Seidler von Feuchtenegg · 1900
Seidler’s reform essay treats Austrian water law as a condition of industrial modernization. Electrical transmission allows waterpower to serve production beyond the riverbank, while costly fuel and abundant watercourses give Austria particular reasons to develop it. His argument begins with the depletion of an established energy resource:
Es ist eine bekannte Thatsache, dass die Kohlenvorräthe der Erde in rapider Abnahme begriffen sind.
English translation: It is a well-known fact that the coal reserves of the earth are in rapid decline.
Combined with electricity, hydropower could reorganize the geography of production. Realizing that promise, however, requires legal as well as technical and commercial change. Seidler moves from criticism of existing legislation and state monopoly toward a reconstruction of water rights, development rules, and administrative institutions.
The imperial framework law of 1869 and provincial implementing statutes inadequately delimit competing uses while leaving administrators excessive discretion. Conflicts between industrial installations and timber rafting exemplify the problem; short concession periods also discourage capital-intensive investment. Seidler identifies the authority’s protective task:
Die Behörde hat die etwa aus der Anlage erwachsenden „Nachtheile“, die Beeinträchtigung der bereits bestehenden Wasserbenützungsrechte, insbesondere der Flösserei, ins Auge zu fassen.
English translation: The authority has to take into consideration the "disadvantages" that may arise from the installation, the impairment of already existing rights of water use, in particular of timber rafting.
Such protection should not permit officials to substitute their commercial assessments for entrepreneurial judgment. Seidler distinguishes lawful administrative supervision from proprietary control inherited from the regalian system.
He nevertheless considers state monopoly seriously. Coordinated development, prevention of speculation, and public revenue offer arguments for it, and established electricity stations may suit bureaucratic operation. His governing criterion, however, is explicit:
Wenn wir dem Staatsbudget diese Concession machen, so muss andererseits betont werden, dass der unserem Thema adäquate Gesichtspunkt nicht der fiscalische, sondern der volkswirtschaftliche ist.
English translation: If we make this concession to the state budget, it must on the other hand be emphasized that the point of view adequate to our theme is not the fiscal one but that of the national economy.
Operating an established undertaking differs from identifying opportunities and creating new works under uncertain profitability conditions. Exclusive state control could impede the initiative required for development. Seidler consequently rejects a legal monopoly without excluding substantial public enterprise.
His positive programme begins with hydrological interdependence. Distinctions based on navigation, landownership, or the emergence of a spring inadequately describe connected water systems. He proposes treating flowing waters, including underground streams, as public things, while classifying groundwater as common to all. Public status does not imply state ownership; it grounds regulated access.
This reconstruction distinguishes interests protected by objective law from individual public rights, including concessions. Even a concession attached to an estate remains public in character. Landownership, water-passage rights, and ownership of channels, by contrast, remain civil-law matters. Separating these legal spheres would clarify the respective competence of courts and administrative authorities.
Concessions should depend on defined legal conditions. Priority would protect existing works, while coordinated operating schedules could reconcile rafting and industrial dams. Seidler opposes arbitrary revocation but also perpetual concessions that entrench inefficient arrangements. He proposes general terms of fifty years and terms of fifty to ninety years for electricity stations, railways, and comparable undertakings, with specified extensions and conditional renewal rights. Security remains subject to procedures requiring harmful installations to be altered or closed. His accommodation of competing interests favors industrial development: fisheries should generally receive compensation rather than exercise a veto, although sanitary restrictions remain.
Expropriation provides another instrument for fuller utilization. Under differentiated statutory tests and compensation rules, land and existing water rights should become available to economically superior projects. The state and provinces would enjoy preferential opportunities to undertake projects, but public and private operators alike would face construction deadlines and operating obligations. Productive concentration is desirable; speculative accumulation that leaves waterpower unused is not.
The concluding proposals combine protection of established concessions with a thirty-year transition for developing formerly private watercourses, specialized authorities possessing legal and technical expertise, procedural deadlines, and preferably unified imperial legislation. Throughout, entrepreneurial security is joined to compulsory productive use and public coordination. Seidler’s economic horizon includes workshops, agriculture, mining, lighting, and transport alongside large industry: legal reform should turn transmissible power into widely distributed productive capacity.
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