Workhouse

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Former workhouse in Cheshire, UK, built in 1780

The workhouse represented one of the main features of poor policy efforts since the middle of the 16th century: People affected by poverty , especially beggars , were to be taken in there and thus removed from the public. Therefore, neglected orphans were not infrequently among the inmates, sometimes mentally handicapped as well . At the same time, the labor of these people was used by making themselves available to the manufacturing method of production, which among other things formed the main income of the absolutist state. The conversion of the wandering poor into economically viable subjects should be achieved through labor education methods . The utilitarianism of the emerging industrial age then placed the workhouse in the 19th century under the motto “ If you don't work, you shouldn't eat ” in order to help establish a factory discipline in a capitalist way.

General

Homeless people in the workhouse, Die Gartenlaube 1857

The first European workhouse was founded in London in 1555 . A little later, houses in the Netherlands ( Amsterdam ) followed. The first German foundations can be found in Bremen (1609), Lübeck (1613) and Hamburg (1620). The concentration on urban space is striking. Most of the start-ups in the German-speaking area go back to municipal initiative in the cities, which shows that the workhouse is by no means a product of the absolutist state alone .

The spread in Protestant areas is also striking . If one follows the Protestantism thesis of the sociologist Max Weber , then this was connected with a new understanding of work that was shaped by Martin Luther , but especially by Johannes Calvin : The Reformation gave rise to a piety within which work was to be carried out in a faithful manner , on the other hand, the fortune thus acquired was regarded as a sign of divine pleasure.

Another factor related to the Reformation was that the dissolution of monasteries opened up spaces that could be used for other purposes. However, this tendency was not limited to Protestant areas. There were also many workhouses in former monasteries in Catholic areas.

Despite official distinctions between workhouses, penitentiaries or other possible names (manufactory house, factory house, correction house), the designation was not necessarily an indication of the actual "concept" that was hidden behind an institution. Even houses in which admission was supposedly voluntary could have inmates who were arrested there through raids and without their intervention. For example, the Munich Military Workhouse - designed to be a voluntary place to stay - was opened on New Year's Day 1780 with a raid on Munich beggars.

In terms of quantity, the workhouses did not play a major role. Presumably they did not cover a significant part of the poor population. Nevertheless, they had an indirect disciplining effect, since they obviously represented a deterrent by the city regiment or the absolutist state.

Since the workhouses were primarily intended as a measure of poor policy and for poor relief , almost all the outsiders that the early modern era had brought together gathered in them : beggars , prostitutes , former soldiers , artisans without employment, delinquents or orphans . The only unifying element was their work potential. A separation of the groups according to gender or age was only given in some houses.

The houses were usually run by an inspector who was responsible for economic matters. A foreman or foreman supervised the inmates. In addition, journeymen or other assistants were employed. A clergyman or preacher was almost always part of the staff. The houses were seldom self-sustaining, but were subsidized by the state in addition to production income, as well as income from lottery winnings, collections and donations from sovereigns and cities. In this way they became competing companies to the handicrafts, which was viewed very critically by the guilds .

Workhouse in German criminal law

Empire

Long before the 19th century, the assumption that poverty was at least partly self-inflicted formed the basis of the criminal discipline through instruction in the workhouse. The criminal law must therefore be seen as a counterpart to the corresponding legal regulations and efforts of poor relief (cf. in particular the Elberfeld system ).

With the establishment of the German Reich , states of poverty such as vagrancy, begging and homelessness as well as behavior such as “play, drink and idleness” or “work shyness” were criminalized across the board at the national level. The legal basis was formed by § 361 and 362 of the Criminal Code of 1871 , which proved these behaviors, also known as "anti-sociality", as violations in addition to imprisonment with the penalty of corrective detention in the workhouse (up to two years). The compulsion to work in the workhouses was supplemented by the compulsory work for the poor. This means that the support of the poor was tied to the obligation to use their labor according to their abilities. Failure to fulfill the duty to work led to induction into the workhouse. The basis for this procedure was the law on the support residence (UWG) of 1870. Such a "support residence" not only served the division of responsibilities, but above all the control of welfare recipients. It was acquired through two years of residence, marriage or descent and entitled to a small amount of support from the local poor association.

The judiciary of the empire made ample use of the possibility of sanctioning poverty by being placed in workhouses. According to an estimate by Wolfgang Ayaß, this affected around 10% of all homeless people at any point in time who, after being imprisoned for days or weeks, were often sentenced to work house stays, especially if they were repeated, "to get better". Expressed in absolute numbers, the year 1888 is taken as an example with 13,512 male and 2,680 female convicts from a total population of approx. 49 million inhabitants.

Weimar Republic, National Socialism and Federal Republic until 1969

In the Weimar Republic , given the literal continuation of the relevant laws, the assignment of criminalized poor people to workhouses fell sharply, with occupancy falling to 50% across the board; House rules have also been relaxed.

With the global economic crisis from 1929 the unemployment rate rose suddenly to almost 30%. The associated lack of income exacerbated the problems of poverty and poverty crime again extremely. The National Socialists, who came to power in 1933, therefore applied the law more strictly than ever before. In September 1933 tens of thousands of homeless people were arrested in a raid and taken to workhouses.

On November 24, 1933, the law against dangerous habitual criminals and the measures of protection and reform introduced the measures of protection and reform into the penal code (effective from January 1, 1934). In addition to the still permissible accommodations in a psychiatric hospital, a detoxification facility or in preventive detention and accommodation was provided in a workhouse (§ 42d).

Anyone who was convicted of “ begging , vagrancy , industrial lunacy , work shyness or drinking or gambling addiction and idleness” (so-called “ anti-social ”) could be assigned to a work house. According to Section 42d of the Criminal Code, initial placement was limited to a maximum of two years, and renewed placement was possible for an indefinite period. The accommodation conditions in the workhouses have been tightened considerably. From 1938 to 1945 the rule was hardly applied any more, as the people were no longer handed over to justice but instead were deported to concentration camps as preventive detainees.

The workhouse was supposed to serve "to stop work and get used to a regular and orderly life".

A stay in a workhouse that had already taken place could serve as the basis for the induction as an anti-social person in one of the concentration camps by the competent Gestapo office . This has often happened , for example, within the framework of the “ Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich ”.

After the Second World War , the assignment to a workhouse in the American occupation zone was temporarily abolished, but after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany it was reintroduced in all former western zones. According to the regulation of the penal code, offenders convicted of begging, vagrancy and industrial lunacy could still be admitted to the workhouse. The first placement was possible for up to two years, further placements for up to four years each. The goal of the workhouse, namely to get used to a regular and orderly life and to encourage work, was also adhered to. Until the workhouse was abolished as a measure by the Great Penal Reform in 1969, a total of 8,000 people were admitted.

GDR

For ideological reasons, the causes of homelessness, “work reluctance” and “anti-sociality” were assumed to be solely due to the personal fault of those affected, as the supposedly progressive socialist social order could not have any part in it. Alcoholism , lack of employment etc. were perceived as offenses against the “working people” and sanctioned on a changing legal basis after the criminal law reform of 1968, which explicitly defined “ asociality ” as a criminal offense. According to the criminal law reform of 1968, placement was possible for up to two years instead of imprisonment for the first conviction, and for up to five years for repeated convictions (even without previous placement). The consequence for the individual was induction into workhouses with military drill and rigid regulations aimed at re-education in the sense of the official image of man. A GDR institution that was specially designed for conspicuous young people and in the tradition of the workhouse was also that of the youth work center . The innovation from 1979 abolished the workhouse for adults, but extended the term “antisociality”, threatened with imprisonment for up to two years, for repeated convictions up to five years, to anyone who posed a threat to public order created a rubber paragraph to act against unpleasant groups of people, such as punks. Close social control was used to track such deviant behavior.

Historical representation

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition 1888–1890, comments on the term as follows (abbreviated):

There are three types of workhouses:
1) Institutions in which forced labor is used as a means of punishment and which, in addition to punishment, also want to achieve the moral improvement of the convicts [...]. The penalty of the workhouse, which was first methodically applied in England in the 16th century and imposed in several German states before 1871, has been abolished in Germany by the Imperial Criminal Code. The state police authority should, however, be empowered to house certain people (beggars, prostitutes) in a workhouse or to use them for charitable work after serving their prison sentence for up to two years. [...]
2) Forced labor houses for stubborn beggars and idlers that are harmful to the community, in which they are forced to work hard. According to their nature and purpose, today's German A., then according to their main character the English A. (workhouses) can be counted here, the latter playing a great role in English poor relief. The establishment of the English Werkhaus is based excellently on the deterrent theory. It is calculated to discourage the use of public aid as much as possible and to avoid acceptance into A. through own acquisition.
3) A., in which working poor can voluntarily be accepted or are accommodated in the sense of humane poor relief. They can be private as well as public institutions. In favor of such A. it is said that here the earnings can to some extent cover the costs of support, which are very reduced due to common use, etc., and that the facilities of the institution should make it possible for the supported to maintain the pleasure of work which at the same time assured him that he had not yet sunk down to the class of alms-recipients. Since people willing to work, but unemployed, deserve humane participation, the Werkhaus must never be associated with institutions for criminals and idlers; Rather, everything must be done to spare the sense of honor of these innocent unfortunates. ...

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Ayaß : The work house in Breitenau. Beggars, vagrants, prostitutes, pimps and welfare recipients in the correctional and rural poor institution in Breitenau (1874 - 1949) . In: Kassel University of Applied Sciences; Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies eV (Ed.): National Socialism in Northern Hesse . No. 14 , 1992, ISBN 3-88122-670-2 , ISSN  0175-1840 ( online [PDF; 13.7 MB ]).
  • Hermann Daners, Josef Wißkirchen: What happened in Brauweiler: The Nazi era and its consequences in the Rhenish Provincial Labor Institute . 1st edition. History Association, Pulheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-927765-39-9 .
  • Elisabeth Elling-Ruhwinkel: Securing and punishing: the Benninghausen workhouse (1871-1945) . In: Research on regional history . tape 51 . Schöningh, Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-506-71344-5 .
  • Michel Foucault : Monitoring and Punishing. The birth of the prison . 1st edition. Suhrkamp , Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-518-27784-7 (French: Surveiller et punir .).
  • Christian Marzahn: The breeding and work house. The core institution of early bourgeois social policy . In: University of Bremen (ed.): Working papers of the research focus on reproductive risks, social movements and social policy . No. 5 . Bremen 1980.
  • Christoph Sachße, Florian Tennstedt : From the late Middle Ages to the 1st World War . In: History of poor relief in Germany . 1st edition. tape 1 . Kohlhammer Verlag , Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 978-3-17-005412-7 .
  • Carl Twele: "Der Arbeitshäusler": a life on the country road in the late 19th century . In: Paul Hugger and Silke Wagener-Fimpel (eds.): The folklore paperback . No. 44 . Limmat, Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-85791-508-6 .
  • Carl Twele: "The work house man". A life on the country road at the end of the 19th century, edited by Paul Hugger and Silke Wagener-Fimpel, Zurich 2006.
  • Dominik Nagl: No Part of the Mother Country, but Distinct Dominions. Law Transfer, State Formation, and Governance in England, Massachusetts, and South Carolina, 1630--1769 . In: Norbert Finzsch, Knud Krakau, Ursula Lehmkuh (eds.): Studies on the history, politics and society of North America / Studies in North American History, Politics and Society . No. 33 . LIT Verlag, Berlin, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-11817-2 ( online ).

Web links

Wikisource: Poverty  - Sources and Full Texts
Commons : Workhouse  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: work house  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß : The "corrective Nachhaft". On the history of workhouse accommodation under criminal law in Germany , in: Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 15 (1993), No. 3/4, pp. 184-201.
  1. ↑ See collection of sources on the history of German social policy 1867 to 1914 , Section II: From the Imperial Social Message to the February Decrees of Wilhelm II (1881-1890) , Volume 7: Communal Poor Care , edited by Wilfried Rudloff, Darmstadt 2015, No. 57.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: The "corrective Nachhaft". On the history of workhouse accommodation under criminal law in Germany , p. 19.