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Archiver > AUS-QLD-SE-Germans > 2002-09 > 1030936878


From: "Chris Sichter" <>
Subject: RE: History of the Uckermark
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 13:21:18 +1000
In-Reply-To: <000201c251ff$9417e720$2d458890@nsw.bigpond.net.au>


Page 4


shoemaker, the tailor, the tinker etc. - found it increasingly hard to
compete. People are never loyal. They will buy where the goods are
cheapest.

About this time there was a series of disastrous seasons with flooding and
extreme cold which seriously affected wine grapes, the main cash crop. For
most a decade there was virtually no vintage and this placed a terrible
strain on an already impoverished population. This lack of farm income
meant that the village economy, so dependent on the grapes, was in ruins.

There were other factors as well. For hundreds of years, a delicate but
stable balance existed, based on the village and the surrounding farm. Then
for reasons not fully understood even to this day, the population of Germany
began to increase - slowly at first, and then to the point where it could be
described as a population explosion. Infant mortality dropped, families
were larger and more people were living into old age. Perhaps it had
something to do with better education or better health care.

The farms of the south and west of Germany were traditionally passed down
from generation to generation to a surviving son, and in the case where more
than one son survived, the farm was subdivided. With the rise in population,
and with more sons surviving, these already small farms were being
subdivided to the point where little more than a subsistence living could
be expected from them. Thus the economy in this part of the country was in
ruins, leaving its people with few alternatives. Some shifted to the
industrial towns that were springing up on the Rhine, but most chose to
leave Europe.

The part of Germany ease of the Elbe was made up largely of huge estates and
here the economic structure was quite different from that in the south and
west. Generally, each village was attached to the Rittergut of the same
name, for example the Uckermark village of Steglitz which, by the way, gave
its name to the district of that name (near Beenleigh) had in 1860, a
population of 158. The village itself covered 648 acres of land of which
100 acres were given over to building, 506 acres were ploughed land or
fields and 42 acres wee meadows. The Rittergut itself comprised 3320 acres:
6 acres of buildings, 25 acres of gardens, 2990 acres of ploughed land or
fields, 198 acres of meadows, 100 acres of pasture. The Gut also owned 4000
acres of woods. Steglitz was first mentioned in 1248 and the church was
built in the 13th Century.

There were about seven independent small farmers cultivating village land
but the bulk of the population were either craftsmen of the usual king or
agricultural labourers working at the Rittergut. This included the women
and children as well as the men. Theoretically, and often in practice, it
was a good system, bolstered and sustained by hundreds of years of custom
and usage. The Junkers who owned these estates had a reputation throughout
Germany as managers and innovators.

However in the late 18th Centuries the so-called agricultural revolution
began to have its effect of German life particularly east of the Elbe. Thus
the ever innovative Junkers began to mechanise and to take advantage of all
those new and improved methods of farming which that era produced. He now
no longer needed that vast army of agricultural labourers to do his work for
him. As well as this, he was no longer under an obligation to care for
those persons who had been the serfs of previous generations. When you add
this to the effects of the population explosion, the drop in infant
mortality and the increase in the sizes of families, it is not hard to see
what a devastating result was produced for those people who were lease
equipped to cope.

However the results of these changes were cushioned to some extend east of
the Elbe and didn't have the same immediate effect as they did in the west.
This is why the mass emigration didn't begin from this area until the
1860's.

Nevertheless the changes were just as dramatic. The population had three
alternatives. They could move to the larger towns and cities which were
quickly industralising though not fast enough to absorb the newly available
workforce, they could stay at home and starve, or they could emigrate. Thus
to sum up, whilst religion and politics have played some small role in
forcing our emigrants to leave Germany, by and large they came to Queensland
for economic reasons.

However it is not possible for mass emigration to take place unless there
are countries willing to take these emigrants. The sociologists call this
the "push Pull" theory of emigration. Put simply this theory means that if
a successful mass emigration is to take place, there must be a powerful push
from the country of origin and an equally powerful pull from another area
or country.

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