Prussian regulation

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The Prussian Regulation of March 9, 1839 (actually: Regulation on the employment of young workers in factories ) was a law with which the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. the child labor restricted. It was the first continental European law to restrict child labor and the first German law on occupational safety .

Historical development

Working hours of 13 hours under health-endangering conditions were not uncommon for children in the first two thirds of the 19th century. The “factory children” often suffered from physical and mental-emotional damage, while compulsory schooling was often completely neglected. The earliest critics of industrial child labor were educators and philanthropists.

Hardenberg and Berlin ministries then drew attention from 1817 to the fact that factory work led to the neglect of compulsory schooling.

In 1828, the royal Prussian lieutenant general Heinrich Wilhelm von Horn (1762–1829) pointed out to the Prussian king in his Landwehr business report that because of child labor that was widespread in industry, the factory areas in the Rhine Province “cannot provide their troop contingent in full and therefore from the districts who practice agriculture are in part surpassed ”. Thereupon, Friedrich Wilhelm III. Minister of Education, Baron Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein (1770–1840) and Minister of the Interior Friedrich von Schuckmann (1755–1834) started looking for “rules of measure” to protect “the tender youth” in the Kingdom of Prussia . In the further course these cabinet orders and thus the military recruit argument played no role, as recent research can show.

Rather, the decisive factor was the commitment of the Prussian officials, who no longer wanted to tolerate the fact that child labor led to a violation of compulsory schooling (a primary state goal) and thus to a high proportion of illiterate workers. There was also civil society engagement. In 1826, for example, the manufacturer and MP Johannes Schuchard criticized the excesses of child labor in the cotton mills in the Rhineland in the “Rheinisch-Westphälischer Anzeiger”. In 1837 he caused a public stir in a newspaper report about the suicide attempt of a twelve-year-old working girl and fueled the growing outrage against child labor. In the same year he introduced an application to the Rhenish provincial parliament for a child protection law, which resulted in a petition to the king on July 20, 1837. Schuchard may have worked in consultation with the Rhenish President Ernst von Bodelschwingh . In cooperation with the Minister of the Interior Gustav von Rochow , Bodelschwingh ensured that the Prussian regulation of March 9, 1839 was enforced .

content

Since the starting point for the Prussian regulation was the violation of compulsory schooling, the law was mainly concerned with measures to guarantee that children would attend school. For example, children up to the age of 9 were banned from regular work in the factory, in mines, smelting works and stamping works . The working hours of young people under 16 years of age could not exceed ten hours. Young people under the age of 16 who could not prove three years of schooling, after which they “read their mother tongue fluently” and “made a start in writing”, were prohibited from working in the factory. The exception to this were factories that had their own schools attached and guaranteed educational entitlement. Night work from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., work on Sundays and public holidays was prohibited for young people.

Local police and school authorities should take on control functions. In the event of non-compliance, sanctions were threatened. The relevant ministries should issue special regulations to ensure compliance with the “health of factory workers”.

Restriction against child labor in other countries

In England alone there was an earlier law, but the Prussian regulation went further than this English law of 1833.

In the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1840 similar provisions have been adopted in other German states until the 1860s.

The historian Wilfried Feldenkirchen judges: "In most of the other industrialized countries of Western Europe laws to restrict child labor were passed much later than in Germany, with almost all states only restricting child labor in factories."

literature

  • Dieter Kastner: Child labor in the Rhineland. Origin and effect of the first Prussian law against the work of children in factories from 1839 , Cologne 2004.
  • Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Child Labor in the 19th Century - Its Economic and Social Effects, in: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 26 (1981), pp. 1–41.
  • Nikolas Dörr: 165 years of restricting child labor in Prussia. A contribution to the beginning of social legislation in Germany. In: MRM - MenschenRechtsMagazin Heft 2/2004, page 141 f., Human Rights Center of the University of Potsdam (ed.), Potsdam 2004.
  • Christiane Cantauw-Groschek, Ulrich Tenschert: Everyday Childhood in Stand and Country 1800–1945. Pictures and reports from the archive for Westphalian folklore. In the series Back then with us in Westphalia. Rheda-Wiedenbrück 1992.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kastner, Dieter: Child labor in the Rhineland. Origin and effect of the first Prussian law against the work of children in factories from 1839. Cologne 2004, p. 8.
  2. ^ Kastner, Dieter: Child labor in the Rhineland. Origin and effect of the first Prussian law against the work of children in factories from 1839. Cologne 2004. p. 8.
  3. ↑ Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Child Labor in the 19th Century - Its Economic and Social Effects, in: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 26 (1981), pp. 1–41; Kastner: Child Labor, p. 71 f .; Kastner criticizes the fact that this cabinet order is wrongly named as the central document for the development of the law in order to be able to use the military as a decisive mover for restricting child labor, p. 73.
  4. ↑ Kastner: Kinderarbeit, pp. 13–116.
  5. ↑ Uwe Eckardt:  Schuchard, Joha (n) n (es) Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 622 ( digitized version ).
  6. ↑ The letter is printed in Kastner: Kinderarbeit, p. 116 f.
  7. ↑ Alexander and Alfred Schuchard, Carl vom Berg jr .: Johannes Schuchard, Barmen. 1782-1855. His ancestors and descendants. Philipp Kühner, Eisenach 1904.
  8. ↑ Kastner: Kinderarbeit, p. 9 u. 140-176.
  9. ↑ Kastner: Child Labor, p. 8.
  10. ↑ Wilfried Feldenkirchen, Child Labor in the 19th Century - Its Economic and Social Effects, in: Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 26 (1981), pp. 1–41, here p. 12.