Railway tracks, telegraph wires, water pipes, but also the bureaucratic apparatus, health authorities, or the banking and stock exchange systems – with the development of the modern technical and administrative apparatus in the second half of the 19th century, the term 'infrastructure' was established, which soon became a catch-all for promises of stability, smooth operations, and continuous mobility. Steffen Richter demonstrates in his extensive cultural-historical study how infrastructure was celebrated as an agent of self-empowerment of individuals and criticized as hard, cold, and alienated in the works of Ernst Jünger, Max Weber, Wilhelm Raabe, Gustav Freytag, Friedrich Spielhagen, Heinrich Seidel, Theodor Fontane, and others between 1848 and 1914. Thus, the discomfort and fascination with those deep structures on which our society is also based become tangible.