Census in Germany

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The first census in present-day Germany took place in 1816 in the Kingdom of Prussia . Between 1834 and 1867, the German Customs Union regularly carried out censuses in the member states every three years . The so-called "customs clearance population" was determined. A time was chosen for the implementation when it was to be expected that the largest part of the population would be at home. The Zollverein set December 3rd as the date. A census planned for 1870 had to be postponed due to the Franco-German War .

Counts to 1834

Schleswig-Holstein

The first general censuses took place in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein under the Danish reign in 1803. Before that, there were individual counts in individual regions from 1693 (Fehmarn) or 1755 (Eutin).

Prussia

After the territorial reorganization of Germany in the Congress of Vienna and the establishment of the German Confederation , the first census was carried out in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1816 . Since then there have been general censuses in Prussia every three years (1819, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1831 to 1867) and these were often combined with investigations into the building stock, with cattle counts and other statistical investigations. This three-year tour was retained in the German Zollverein. The 1870 census was canceled due to the Franco-German War.

Saxony

After so-called consumer registers had to be submitted annually to the Saxon government on the basis of two general ordinances of July 23, 1790 and August 19, 1791, the first census in the Kingdom of Saxony took place on July 3, 1832 .

Counts 1834-1925

From 1834 to 1867, censuses were regularly carried out every three years in all member states of the German Customs Union . This uniformity was necessary because the revenue of the customs union was distributed in relation to the number of inhabitants. In frequent conferences of the participating statisticians, agreement was reached on the minimum scope of the necessary surveys. In the German Reich , censuses took place in 1871, 1875 and then every 5 years. The total numbers for the inhabitants of the Reich were:

  • 1871: 41,058,792 inhabitants
  • 1875: 42,727,360 inhabitants
  • 1880: 45,234,061 inhabitants
  • 1885: 46,855,704 inhabitants
  • 1890: 49,428,470 inhabitants
  • 1895: 52,279,901 inhabitants
  • 1900: 56,367,178 inhabitants
  • 1905: 60,641,489 inhabitants
  • 1910: 64,903,423 inhabitants

The increase was 23,844,631 people (= 58.1%) in the period from 1871 to 1910 and 4,261,934 people (= 7.0%) from 1905 to 1910. According to the 1910 census, there were 120 people per square kilometer in the German Reich, against 104 in 1900 and 76 in 1871.

The last census before the First World War was on December 1, 1910. After that, counting was only carried out at irregular intervals. After two war censuses on December 5, 1916 and 1917 for the purpose of food distribution , regular censuses were carried out again on October 8, 1919 and June 16, 1925.

Census during the Third Reich

The censuses of 1933 and 1939 during the time of National Socialism were at the same time population, occupation and company censuses and, like the one from 1925, were conducted by the population scientist Friedrich Burgdörfer . Already in the census of June 16, 1933, about half a million "religious Jews" were recorded. With the 1939 census , a “supplementary card” was filled out for all Jews, “mixed race” and foreigners, which served as the basis for the Reich index of Jews and “ Jewish mixed race” within the meaning of the racist Nuremberg Laws . This contained name, maiden name, apartment, gender, birthday, religion, mother tongue, ethnicity, occupation and number of children under 14 years of the respective household. The results of both censuses formed the most important prerequisite for determining the population planned for later deportation .

The Reich Statistical Office created it by order of the Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick of 17 May 1939, a "Volkstumskartei" which, according to the historian Götz Aly , the "keystone in the capture of the Jews" and the bureaucratic condition of their deportation and extermination was. The “Statistics of the German Reich” in 1936 explained that this was not a question of abuse, but of results that were wanted from the start

"[To get] an overview of the biological and social conditions of Judaism in the German Reich with regard to the fundamental transformation brought about by the National Socialist government in the position of Judaism towards its German host people "

- quoted from Götz Aly

Counts in divided Germany

Logo of the population, occupation, living space and building census on December 31, 1981 in the GDR

After the Second World War , population and occupational censuses were carried out under the responsibility of the occupying powers in December 1945 in the Soviet occupation zone , in January 1946 in the French occupation zone and in October 1946 in all four occupation zones in Germany. This was done in particular to record the war casualties and the numerous flows of refugees, resettlers and displaced persons . After the two German states were founded in 1949, several censuses were held there.

In the GDR , the 1950 and 1964 censuses were taken as population and occupational censuses. The 1950 results were not published for political reasons. The censuses of 1971 and 1981 took place in the GDR as complex censuses of people, occupations, living space and buildings. The 1964 data were published extensively by the State Central Statistics Office, but the results of the 1971 and 1981 censuses were only partially released.

The censuses carried out in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950 and 1987 were censuses of people, occupations, buildings, apartments and workplaces, while the censuses of 1961 and 1970 were censuses of people, occupations and workplaces. During the building and apartment census of 1956, the resident population in the Federal Republic was also counted ("small population census"). The publication of the data of all censuses in the Federal Republic of Germany, from 1994 also the results of the censuses in the GDR, was carried out by the Federal Statistical Office .

The 1987 census

Personal form from the 1987 census

The census in the Federal Republic of Germany was from the federal government originally been planned already for the year 1981st In the eyes of the federal authorities, it had become necessary, among other reasons, to adapt the infrastructure to a changed social structure and introduce new measures accordingly. This applied to traffic planning as well as to social care and other things.

Due to a dispute over the amount of the federal subsidy for the census, the adoption of the law was delayed until 1982 and thus the planned census date to 1983. Furthermore, with the historically significant census ruling of December 15, 1983 , the Federal Constitutional Court formulated the fundamental right to informational self-determination resulting from the Human dignity of Art. 1 GG and the right to free development of the personality according to Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG. The survey therefore had to be partially redesigned by separating personal information from the questionnaires and revising the questionnaires themselves in order to better guarantee the anonymity of the respondents.

The boycott was supported by a broad alliance of various social and political groups and was organized by the “coordination office against the surveillance state” in the Bonn office of the Young Democrats , the former youth organization of the FDP. The then party “The Greens” , represented in the Bundestag for about four years at the time , was one of the critics of the census and took part in the campaign with many of its members .

Overall, based on the determined population data, the total in the state financial equalization had to be corrected by around 935 million DM (about 478 million euros), the sum in the municipal financial equalization of the large cities had to be corrected by around 700 million DM (about 358 million euros). The extrapolated number of people in employment was one million (3.6 percent) too low compared to the results of the census, the number of foreigners by almost 600,000 (12.0 percent), the number of apartments (25.9 million) by around one million (3.8 percent) too high. The unemployment rate had to be adjusted downwards by around 20 percent in around a third of the employment office districts.

After reunification

The population censuses originally planned for 1991 in the Federal Republic and the GDR were no longer carried out. Thus, after 1987, a census only took place in the Federal Republic of Germany again in 2011, despite the reunification of 1990, with which around 16 million other citizens with different infrastructural requirements joined the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany.

At the beginning of July 2007, all of the population register data for all residents was sent to the Federal Tax Office for allocation of a uniform tax number, which by the end of 2007 generated an eleven-digit tax number for each individual inhabitant. These were compared with the population registers and cases of doubt were resolved. This created a central register that is not available for statistical purposes. As a side effect, it can be assumed that the population register data will be more exact than before after this comparison.

The first census after the reunification of Germany is the 2011 census as part of the first joint census in the member states of the European Union . The next census is to be carried out in Germany with the 2021 census.

See also

literature

  • Hermann Pelocke: Petzold's community and local lexicon of the German Empire. Directory of all municipalities and manor districts, post, rail, light rail and shipping stations as well as all non-independent localities, colonies, hamlets, etc. of the German Reich territory, the latter up to 50 inhabitants downwards. Second, completely revised and enlarged edition ; Verlag EH Petzold, Bischofswerda (Sa.), October 1911
  • Roland Appel, Dieter Hummel (ed.): Beware of the census - recorded, networked and counted . 4th edition, Kölner Volksblatt Verlag, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-923243-31-6 .
  • Jürgen Arnold, Jutta Schneider (ed.): Census counted . Verlag Zweausendundeins, Frankfurt September 1988.
  • Nicole Bergmann: Census and data protection. Protests for the 1983 and 1987 census in the Federal Republic of Germany . Hamburg 2009, ISBN 3-8366-7388-6 .
  • Klaus Brunnstein et al .: in: processes , journal for civil rights and social policy, vol. 91, January 1988 ISBN 3-925763-91-0 .
  • Helmut Köhler: Educational statistical results of the population censuses of the GDR 1950 to 1981. Documentation of the evaluation tables and analyzes of the educational development . Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-87985-085-2 .
  • Mario Martini : The 2011 census as a problem of intermunicipal equal treatment , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-428-13590-5
  • Harald Michel: Censuses in Germany. The recording of the population from 1816 to 1933 . In: Yearbook for Economic History 1985/2, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1985, pp. 79–91 ( digitized version ; PDF; 3.7 MB)
  • Jürgen Taeger (ed.): The census . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1983, ISBN 3-499-15245-2 .
  • Horstmann, Kurt; Hofmann, Heinrich (1983) The 1983 Census in the Federal Republic of Germany. Geosciences in our time; 1, 1; 12-18; doi : 10.2312 / geosciences . 1983.1.12 .
  • Götz Aly, Karl Heinz Roth, Helga Arp: Complete coverage. Counting, identifying, sorting out in National Socialism , Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 978-3-596-14767-0 .

Web links

Wikisource: Law relating to the making of an occupation and business census in 1907  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Working group for population registers
  2. ^ Censuses in Dithmarschen
  3. ↑ Hermann Pelocke: Petzold's community and local dictionary of the German Empire. Directory of all municipalities and manor districts, post, rail, light rail and shipping stations as well as all non-independent localities, colonies, hamlets, etc. of the German Reich territory, the latter up to 50 inhabitants downwards. Second, completely revised and enlarged edition ; Verlag EH Petzold, Bischofswerda (Sa.), October 1911
  4. ↑ Götz Aly in: Appel / Hummel eds. Caution, census, Cologne 1987, 163 ff.
  5. ↑ Volume 415/5 1936. Götz Aly In: Appel / Hummel eds. Caution, census, Cologne 1987
  6. ↑ Stürmer / Würzberger in: Taeger, Volkszählung, p. 167ff.
  7. ↑ Federal and State Statistical Offices: Questionnaire for the 1987 census (pdf, 1.6 MB)
  8. ↑ Federal Statistical Office: What did the 1987 census bring, how were its results used? ( Memento from August 3, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Heise.de: 20 years ago: 10 minutes that help everyone from May 25, 2007.