From parish register to the “historical table”: The Prussian population statistics in the 17th and 18th centuries

Abstract

This overview deals with the development of population statistics in Germany and Prussia, where different streams and trends in the field of statistics can be observed until the end of the 18th century: (1) the so-called university statistics (Staatenkunde); (2) political arithmetic; (3) table statistics; (4) “German Kameralia;” and (5) Prussian financial science. The most important sources for historical demographic research are the parish registers. In Germany, they start in the early or high Middle Ages as baptismal lists. In Prussia in the 16th century, parish registers consisted of entries and items of baptisms (births), marriages, and funerals (deaths). Based upon these parish registers at the end of 17th century in the Brandenburg Electorate, population lists were set up as registers or tables of population movement, as “general registers of the born, the married, the deceased, and the communicants.” Physicians and such Prussian medical authorities as the Collegium medicum and the Collegium sanitatis collected data about the causes of death and the longevity of human life (people more than 90 years old). In the course of 120 years during the 17th and 18th centuries, about 350,000 immigrants came to Brandenburg-Prussia. The Prussians developed excellent migration and census statistics in the form of historical tables. From the founding of the Prussian Office of Statistics in 1805 until its reorganization in 1809–1810, historical tables were set up using population statistics.