The opportunity which British capitalists neglected German financiers seized. Dr. Alfred von Kaulla, of the _Württembergische Vereinsbank_ of Stuttgart, who was in Constantinople selling Mauser rifles to the Ottoman Minister of War, became interested in the possibilities of railway development in Turkey. With the coöperation of Dr. George von Siemens, Managing Director of the _Deutsche Bank_, a German syndicate was formed to take over the existing railway from Haidar Pasha to Ismid and to construct an extension thereof to Angora. On October 6, 1888, this syndicate was awarded a concession for the railway to Angora and was given to understand that it was the intention of the Ottoman Government to extend that railway to Bagdad _via_ Samsun, Sivas, and Diarbekr. The Sultan guaranteed the Angora line a minimum annual revenue of 15,000 francs per kilometre, for the payment of which he assigned to the Ottoman Public Debt Administration the taxes of certain districts through which the railway was to pass. Thus came into existence the Anatolian Railway Company (_La Société du Chemin de Fer Ottomane d’Anatolie_), the first of the German railway enterprises in Turkey.[5] The German concessionaires were not slow to realize the possibilities of their concession. They elected Sir Vincent Caillard to the board of directors of their Company, in order that they might receive the enthusiastic coöperation of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration and in order that they might interest British capitalists in their project. With the assistance of Swiss bankers they incorporated at Zurich the _Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen_, which floated in the European securities markets the first Anatolian Railways loan of eighty million francs—more than one fourth of the loan being underwritten in England. Shortly thereafter this same financial group, under the leadership of the _Deutsche Bank_, acquired a controlling interest in more than 1500 kilometres of railways in the Balkan Peninsula, by purchasing the holdings of Baron Hirsch in the Oriental Railways Company. The _Bank für orientalischen Eisenbahnen_ became a holding company for all of the _Deutsche Bank’s_ railway enterprises in the Near East.[6] Under the direction of German engineers, in the meantime, construction of the Anatolian Railway proceeded at so rapid a rate that the 485 kilometres of rails were laid and trains were in operation to Angora by January, 1893. About the same time a German engineering commission, assisted by two technical experts representing the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works and by two Turkish army officers, submitted a report on their preliminary survey of the proposed railway to Bagdad. This was enthusiastically received by the Sultan, who reiterated his intention of constructing a line into Mesopotamia at the earliest practicable date.[7]