Population history

The population history or historical demography is a scientific discipline that the population asks viewed in its temporal development in absolute numbers and their distribution, while the causes and effects of changes in the number of births, marriages and deaths.

The preferred study period of population history is the period from around 1550 to 1850, when church records are available as sources . If there is also a question about social differences in the distributions, there is a direct connection to social history .

After there had already been promising approaches for a comprehensive population history in the German-speaking area at the beginning of the 20th century, a new phase of development was initiated through work in France at the end of the 1940s. The previously recurring hunger crises were related to climate and weather fluctuations , grain prices , epidemics (such as the plague ) and the consequences of the war and systematically analyzed.

The population history progressed from the application of joining (aggregative) methods, e.g. B. the counting of residents from tax lists and the calculation of the number of housing and the counting of the main life events births, marriage and death in church records, for the analytical evaluation of local family records . In addition to numerous total surveys and analyzes of individual villages and towns, there are now also samples from family registers, on the basis of which a representative population history of England and Denmark has been written. For an analogous work for the German-speaking area, all preparatory work has been completed in the Central Office for German Personal and Family History in Leipzig .

literature

• Karlheinz Blaschke : Population history from Saxony to the industrial revolution . Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar 1962.
• Arthur E. Imhof : Introduction to Historical Demography . CH Beck, Munich 1977.
• Gunnar Heinsohn , Otto Steiger , Rolf Knieper : Human production. General population theory of the modern age . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979.
• Markus Mattmüller : Population history of Switzerland. Part I: The Early Modern Age 1500–1700 . 2. Vol. Basel 1987.
• Alexander Pinwinkler : Historical population research. Germany and Austria in the 20th century, Wallstein Verlag: Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1408-5 .
• Günter Stangl: Ancient populations in numbers. Verification options for demographic figures in ancient texts . Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-54275-0 .
• Andreas Weigl: Population History of Europe . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-8252-3756-1 .

Web links

• Rolf Gehrmann: Balance sheet and perspectives of historical-demographic research in Germany. October 29, 2009– October 30, 2009, Rostock . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , January 16, 2010 (conference report).
• Izabela Taraszczuk: Who counts the peoples - and doesn't forget the people? Demographic Congress at the University of Grünberg / Zielona Góra [In:] "Kulturpolitische Korrespondenz", No. 1267 of December 20, 2008, Ostdeutscher Kulturrat, Bonn (Ed.) Ostdeutscher-kulturrat.de .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Holger Müller: Review of: Stangl, Günter: Ancient populations in numbers. Verification options for demographic figures in ancient texts. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2008 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , February 1, 2010.