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The origins and development of institutional welfare support in early modern Württemberg, c.1500–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2007

PAUL WARDE
PAUL WARDE
Affiliation:
School of History, University of East Anglia.
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Abstract

This article examines the development of formal poor-relief provision across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in rural Germany, through a case study of a district of the Duchy of Württemberg. It presents a detailed picture of practices to support the poor, whether through payments and alms from the poor chest, institutions providing credit, common rights or village and town granaries. In building up a picture of institutional practice, it also presents extensive information on the recipients of relief. It is argued that both the institutional framework and new trends in its development during the period ante-dated the Reformation, and that this society enjoyed a wide and varied capacity to support the poor that bears comparison with the English Old Poor Law. However, in a differing socio-economic context, demand for support remained more limited, and the demographic catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War arrested trends towards increasingly formalized collections, pensions and doles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 2007 , pp. 459 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

ENDNOTES

1  von Hippel, W., Armut, Unterschichten, Randgruppen in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1995), 102Google Scholar. In the general bibliographies provided in Robert Jütte's survey volume, every single work that deals with the reality of the poor in central Europe before 1750, as opposed to the contemporary literature about them, deals with large cities. For general surveys, see Jütte, R., Poverty and deviance in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar, and Abel, W., Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa: Versuch einer Synopsis (Berlin, 1974)Google Scholar. However, works that deal with the alleviation of rural poverty in south-west Germany are not entirely absent; see for example Schott, C., Armenfürsorge, Bettelwesen und Vagantbekämpfung in der Reichsabtei Salem (Bühl/Baden, 1978)Google Scholar.

2  See Lynch, K., Individuals, families, and communities in Europe, 1200–1800: the urban foundations of western society (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar, and von Hippel, Armut, 104–5.

3  A brief summary of the voluminous literature is provided in Scribner, B., ‘Communities and the nature of power’, in Scribner, B. ed., Germany: a new social and economic history, Vol. I: 1450–1630 (London, 1996), 291–325Google Scholar.

4  For a small selection of the work, see Leeuwen, M. van, De rijke republiek: gilden, assuradeurs en armenzorg 1500–1800 (The Hague, 2000)Google Scholar; Grell, O. P., Cunningham, A. and Roeck, B., eds, Health care and poor relief in 18th and 19th century southern Europe (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar; Jütte, R., Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge in Deutschen Reichsstädten der frühen Neuzeit: städtisches Armenwesen in Frankfurt am Main und Köln (Cologne, 1984)Google Scholar; McIntosh, M. K., ‘Local responses to the poor in late medieval and Tudor England’, Continuity and Change 3 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Slack, P., Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

5  Solar, P., ‘Poor relief and English economic development before the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review 48 (1995), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6  One must also acknowledge, however, the much more extensive and sophisticated literature that exists for England, some of which has recently downplayed the centrality of formal systems of relief. See Hindle, S., On the parish? The micro-politics of poor relief in rural England c.1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, S. and Tomkins, A. eds., The poor in England, 1700–1850: an economy of makeshifts (Manchester, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and King, S., ‘Reconstructing lives: the poor, the poor law and welfare in Calverly 1650–1820’, Social History 22 (1997), 318–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7  Detailed consideration of this last, however, must await future publications on the wider operation of credit in this society.

8  E. Schepers, ‘Regieren durch Grenzsetzungen: Struktur und Grenzen des Bettelrechtes in Bayern im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, in Schmale, W. and Stauber, R. eds., Menschen und Grenzen in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 1998), 241–58Google Scholar; Schott, Armenfürsorge. Ogilvie briefly notes the existence of a public obligation to support those who could not be sustained by kin in Wildberg; see Ogilvie, S., State corporatism and proto-industry: the Württemberg Black Forest 1580–1797 (Cambridge, 1997), 60–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9  See Warde, P., Ecology, economy and state formation in early modern Germany (Cambridge, 2006), 120, 138–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 154 and passim.

10  Stadtarchiv Leonberg, Leonberg (hereafter StAL), Armenkastenrechnungen; Fruchtvorratrechnungen.

11  See Slack, Poverty and policy, 39.

12  Warde, Ecology, 33–98, 113–38; Warde, P., ‘Subsistence and sales: the peasant economy of Württemberg in the early seventeenth century’, Economic History Review 59 (2006), 289–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Sabean, D., Property, production and family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

13  See Warde, Ecology, 84–92, 137; Warde, ‘Subsistence’, 297, 301.

14  The chronicler Ginschopf gives a complete series of prices for the city of Stuttgart from the later fifteenth century up until 1630 for ‘corn’, that is threshed and de-husked spelt, the main food crop. Ginschopf's Stuttgart prices are generally much the same as those paid or received by institutions in Leonberg and the hospital of Markgröningen in any given year. See Ginschopff, J. [sic], Chronica/Oder Eygendtliche Beschreibung vieler Denckhwürdigen Geschichten/die sich im Fürstenthumb Württemberg/sonderlichen vmb Stutgart her zugetragen (Durlach, 1631)Google Scholar.

15  Abel, Massenarmut, 87–98; Braudel, F. and Spooner, F., ‘Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750’, in Rich, E. E. and Wilson, C. H. eds., The Cambridge economic history of Europe, Vol. IV: The economy of expanding Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Cambridge, 1967), 374–486Google Scholar.

16  Ginschopff, Chronica, f.93.

17  Intriguingly, some evidence suggests that the 1612 problems were primarily caused by failures in the wine harvest but those of 1614 from a collapse in grain supply. Wine-production figures can be found for the nearby Imperial city of Esslingen, but tithe series only for the somewhat more distant Switzerland. In 1614, Ginschopf records that the winter crop was destroyed by snow that lay for over four months. Oat shortages from wet weather may have contributed to the problems of 1612. See Warde, Ecology, 88–9; C. Pfister, Bevölkerung, Klima und Agrarmodernisierung 1525–1860: das Kilma des Schweiz von 1525–1860 und seine Bedeutung in der Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Landwirtschaft, Bd II (Bern, 1985); Ginschopff, Chronica, f.113v.

18  Warde, Ecology, 29–30.

19  The classic formulation of this is A. Sen, Poverty and famines: an essay on entitlements and deprivation (Oxford, 1982). People were of course quite well aware that lack of purchasing power was as much of a problem as absolute shortage in the sixteenth century; see Abel, Massenarmut, 38.

20  Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge, 42–4.

21  Such policies were implemented widely across central Europe. See A. L. Reyscher, Vollständige, historisch und kritisch bearbeitete Sammlung der württembergischen Gesetze (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1825–1841), Bd XII., 65–8, passim; W. Soll, ‘Die Staatliche Wirtschaftspolitik im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Tübingen, 1934), 41–2; see also F. Göttmann, Getreidemarkt am Bodensee. Raum – Wirtschaft – Politik – Gesellschaft (1650–1810) (St Katharinen, 1991) and Abel, Massenarmut, 45, 49, 51–2, 56, 91, 153.

22  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 326–30, 416–19, 446, 486–7, passim. Some sales evidence recorded for villages in the district of Merklingen in the 1620s suggests that the existence of such granaries and other relief institutions as a ‘guaranteed market’ does indeed appear to have brought in the bulk of local grain trade to these bodies; Hauptsstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (hereafter HStAS), A237 Bü 601. See also Warde, ‘Subsistence’.

23  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 419; also discussed in Warde, ‘Subsistence’.

24  Ginschopff, Chronica, f.95; translation mine.

25  Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge, 92; Wright, W. J., Capitalism, the state and the Lutheran Reformation: sixteenth-century Hesse (Athens OH, 1988), 177, 180Google Scholar.

26  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 69–73. The ‘undeserving’ were defined as property holders who did not save in good years; see Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge, 30, 40.

27  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 122–30.

28  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 319–23, 326, 329, 486–7.

29  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 624, 630–9, 682–3.

30  Warde, ‘Subsistence’, 303–7.

31  See for example StAL Armenconsignation, 1574–1744 (6 June 1699).

32  See Solar, ‘Poor relief’: in some German jurisdictions the first of these drawbacks certainly did take place. See Schott, Armenfürsorge, 20, 41–4, and Schepers, ‘Regieren durch Grenzsetzungen’, 251–2.

33  These numbers are calculated from household numbers recorded in 1598; see HStAS J1 Nr 141g.

34  See Grube, W., ‘Dorfgemeinde und Amtsversammlung in Altwürttemberg’, Zeitschrift für württembergische Landesgeschichte (1954), 194–291Google Scholar; Warde, P., ‘Law, the “commune”, and the distribution of resources in early modern German state formation’, Continuity and Change 17 (2002), 183–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Landwehr, A., Policey im Alltag: die Implementation frühneuzeitlicher Policeyordnungen in Leonberg (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 47–54, 153–6Google Scholar.

35  An extensive investigation of the legal aspects of parochial jurisdiction can be found in Fuhrmann, R., Kirche und Dorf: Religiöse Bedürfnisse und kirchliche Stiftung auf dem Lande vor der Reformation (Stuttgart, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36  Boelcke, W. A., ‘Zur Entwicklung des bäuerlichen Kreditwesens in Württemberg vom späten Mittelalter bis zu Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (1964), 319–58Google Scholar.

37  Markgröningen, Stadt, 700 Jahre Heilig-Geist-Spital Markgröningen (Tübingen, 1997), 37–148Google Scholar.

38  HStAS A572 Bü 25.

39  StAL Armenconsignation, 1574–1744 (8 June 1699).

40  StAL Armenconsignation, 1574–1744 (21 January 1695).

41  V. Trugenberger, Zwischen Schloss und Vorstadt: Sozialgeschichte der Stadt Leonberg im 16. Jahrhundert (Vaihingen/Enz, 1984), 40–1.

42  StAL Heckenpflegerechnungen. My work on this source was greatly facilitated by notes kindly supplied by Volker Trugenberger.

43  These data come from surveys of livestock ownership taken in 1622 in the district of Göppingen, where 1,796 households were resident in 1629. Of these 573 had crops in August 1622, and nearly all of them held livestock. This 32 per cent of the sample is probably lower than the Württemberger average, and obviously is subject to error due to the seven-year gap. Livestock-holders made up 1,223 households, and thus 39 per cent of households had livestock but no arable crops. Overall, just under 60 per cent of households held dairy cows (a result mirrored from elsewhere in Württemberg), and about 68 per cent held livestock, with a goat being the preferred animal if there was no cow. See HStAS A237a 582; A261 Bü 969. On the use of the common land and the value of its products, see Warde, P., ‘Common rights and common lands in south-west Germany, 1500–1800’, in Moor, M. de, Shaw-Taylor, L. and Warde, P. eds., The management of common land in north west Europe ca.1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002), 195–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44  As is clear from the mayoral accounts; see StAL Bürgermeisterrechnungen and Warde, Ecology, 154.

45  As more generally in central Europe; see Warde, ‘Common rights’, 195–224.

46  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 11; the practice was used extensively as early as 1370. See Boelcke, ‘Zur Entwicklung’, 327.

47  StAL Armenkastensignatoren, 1574–1744 (1575/1576). At a price of roughly 3.5 fl. for a bushel of spelt, which according to records of the 1690s could provide 108 days’ worth of bread, 8,050 fl. could have kept 600–700 people in bread for an entire year. On England, see Slack, Poverty and policy, 147.

48  In the district of Leonberg, most villages could have relatively easily afforded the 5 per cent interest payments. For seven villages where there are data, between 28 per cent and 97 per cent of the loan taken on in 1572 was still outstanding in 1576, but the debts appear to have been largely paid off by 1582. See StAL Armenkastensignatoren, 1574–1744; HStAS A572 Bü 42.

49  See note 47, above. Leonberger private citizens borrowed at least 1,400 fl., while in 1575 the town had only 649 fl. from the communally organized loan. Indeed, as part of the latter, independent of the town of Leonberg's debt three Leonberger private citizens (including the district administrator) had also taken on a further 850 fl. loan, which they may have in turn loaned out themselves.

50  Trugenberger, Zwischen Schloss und Vorstadt, 41; StAL Armenkastenrechnungen.

51  Landwehr, Policey im Alltag, 106.

52  HStAS A572 Bü 31.

53  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

54  StAL Armencastens renovierter Lagerbuch, 1616.

55  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

56  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

57  High ‘income’ in the early 1580s, 1640s, 1660s and 1670s was a result of the overseer choosing not to spend the money at his disposal and carrying it over to the next year, where these reserves are recorded as income. Much of the money notionally held by the overseer was in fact loaned out and payments in default were also recorded in the next year as ‘income’. This money was not really at the disposal of overseer at all. The very high ‘income’ of 1651 reflects the conversion of various outstanding payments from the wartime period into interest-bearing annuities treated as a one-off income for that year.

58  On the poor house, see Trugenberger, Zwischen Schloss und Vorstadt, 43, and on leper houses A. Englisch, ‘Über Leproserien in Württemberg’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, 1951). Leonberg had a ‘soul-house’ as an infirmary, but also constructed a new ‘poor house’ between 1599 and 1602.

59  This expression means ‘for God's sake’, or ‘as God wills it’, but does not have the exclamatory sense that the phrase later acquired in both German and English.

60  The totals under each heading were recorded by the overseers themselves, but the totals recorded here have been added up myself from the individual payments. In fact, the overseers were largely accurate in their accounting.

61  See StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

62  The discussion in the following paragraphs is drawn from the annual account books, StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

63  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1572/1573.

64  StAL Armenconsignation, 1574–1744 (19 January 1574).

65  StAL Gerichtsprotokoll, Nr 4, 1574–1644 (23 October 1620).

66  Calculated in terms of silver, this equates to around £25, and thus is comparable with levels of support in English towns in the same period. Of course, silver prices would have been variable, and real prices of basic goods were probably a little higher in England. Calculated from StAL Armenkastenrechnungen; see Warde, Ecology, 140–2; Braudel and Spooner, ‘Prices in Europe’, 470–1; and Slack, Poverty and policy, 181.

67  The daily wage in Leonberg and Bietigheim appears to have been around 0.13–0.17 fl. in this period, giving a potential wage of 40 fl. in a 300-day working year. In practice, it is unlikely that many in fact won their income by providing day-labour for such a long period. See Warde, Ecology, 113–60.

68  In the twenty years after 1572, the Heckenpflege disbursed 587 fl., as against 4,559 fl. from the poor chest.

69  In the twenty years after 1570, Leonberg's population appears to have remained fairly stable, in part because of serious plague epidemics and dearth during the 1570s and in the mid-1580s. The mortality rate, and (one must assume) some migration, meant that the population turnover must have averaged at least 5 per cent per annum, though it was possibly quite a bit higher. As the town's population was around 1,100, over twenty years at least double that number of people would have lived there, so we are dealing with at least 2,200 and perhaps more like 2,500 people. In this time, around 250 people received payments from the poor chest or the Heckenpflege, but we must imagine that a much larger number of dependents of the direct recipients also received some benefit.

70  Hindle, On the parish?, 115–16, 138, 140, 232, 240, 275–82; Slack, Poverty and policy, 176–7.

71  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen.

72  Armenkastensignatoren, 1574–1744 (22 January 1574).

73  StAL Almosen zedel was sie brot ÿn die Kirchen geben würt; StAL Gerichtsprotokoll Nr 4, 1574–1644 (19 November 1593; 31 October 1601; 15 November 1602; 17 November 1604; 20 November 1609; 24 April 1621; 24 June 1622).

74  StAL Armenkastensignatoren, 1574–1744 (5 June 1634).

75  StAL Gerichtsprotokoll, Nr 4, 1574–1644 (23 October 1620; Pfingstagsmontag, 1627; 24 August 1627; 2 June 1628; 24 August 1629).

76  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1635–1642.

77  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1556–1700.

78  Armenkastensignatoren, 1574–1744 (1574, especially 12 January 1574).

79  StAL Höfingen Bürgermeisterrechnungen, 1703–1706.

80  This probably amounted to a tenth of Hemmingen's population, though data on the total population from this period do not survive. See Armenkastensignatoren 1574–1744 (1574).

81  StAL Beilagen zur Armenkastenrechnungen (5 December 1679, 1680).

82  Warde, ‘Subsistence’.

83  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 10.

84  Reyscher, Sammlung, Bd XII, 329.

85  This took advantage of the good run of harvests of the early 1580s. See HStAS A572 Bü 42.

86  HStAS A206 Bü 1002.

87  This was not universally the case, however, as rye sales were generally profitable, but spelt was sold at a loss. As one would expect the granary to buy soon after harvest and sell later in the year, which would make a profit more likely, the pattern for spelt is even more striking.

88  StAL Fruchtvorratsrechnungen.

89  StAL Fruchtvorratsrechnungen.

90  StAL Fruchtvorratsrechnungen; HStAS A237a Bü 586.

91  HStAS A237a Bü 601.

92  StAL Fruchtvorratsrechnungen, 1657/1668, 1658/1659, 1680/1681.

93  This compares favourably with the achievement of large cities. See von Hippel, Armut, 21; Jütte, Obrigkeitliche Armenfürsorge, 19.

94  It may be, however, that some of these loans were for seedcorn rather than consumption.

95  StAL Armenkastenrechungen, 1556–1700.

96  StAL Kirchenkonventsprotokolle (25 May 1680); StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1676/1677.

97  StAL Beilagen zur Armenkastenrechnungen (22 April 1699).

98  StAL Beilagen zur Armenkastenrechnungen (22 April 1699; 6 June 1699; 8 June 1699).

99  In the opinion of Slack, the centralized character of the Old Poor Law project is indeed key to understanding its entire development, although this in itself cannot explain the rise to prominence of the civil parish as the unit of implementation, or why English parishes would dance to a central government tune more than Württemberg's communes or Bavaria's parishes. See Slack, Poverty and policy, 114–18; see also Schepers, ‘Regieren durch Grenzsetzungen’, 249.

100  This proportion was not much higher in the Duchy of Württemberg even in the mid-nineteenth century; see Warde, Ecology, 120.

101  See, on England, Shaw-Taylor, L., ‘Labourers, cows, common rights and parliamentary enclosure: the evidence of contemporary comment c. 1760–1810’, Past and Present 171 (2001), 95–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Warde, ‘Common rights’.

102  Warde, Ecology, 64.

103  StAL Armenkastenrechnungen, 1665/1666–1671/1672.

104  HStAS A572 Bü 68.

105  The south-western micro-state of the Catholic abbey of Salem, studied by Claudia Schott, appears to have supported considerably more paupers – surveyed and granted alms at the abbey gates or in their communities of residence – prior to the Thirty Years' War than at any time thereafter. See Schott, Armenfürsorge, 28–9.