Central European household and family systems, and the ‘Hajnal–Mitterauer’ line: The parish of Bujakow (18th–19th centuries)

Abstract

The article examines marriage behaviours, household patterns and household formation rules prevailing among the population of the Upper Silesian parish of Bujakow during the late 18th and the first part of the 19th century. Their character, it is argued, is crucial not only for the proper understanding of European family systems in the past, but also for accurate comparisons of family systems in Europe and Asia. The family pattern prevailing in this part of central Europe exhibited a ‘hybrid’ nature in many respects. The pattern's chief characteristics were a moderate age at marriage, the dominance of simple family households and the high incidence of lifecycle servants. Serial household lists revealed, however, the significant diversity in proportions of household types between censuses and between villages. Despite the strong indication of a stem family pattern in the parish, the analysis of headship transmission revealed the concurrent co-existence of various modes of household formation among families. Some of these formation processes did not vary much from neo-local principles or followed exactly this type of pattern. This study also made it possible to reconsider the supposed relationship between the seigneurial authority and family behaviours in the parish pointing out the considerable degree of autonomy of the peasant subjects.

Keywords:

• Household systems
• Stem-family
• Headship transmission
• Developmental cycle
• Central Europe
• Silesia

Acknowledgements

This article has its roots in my PhD research carried out between 2000 and 2003 at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, under the guidance of Prof. dr hab. Marek Górny. Further investigation of the Bujakow community was possible thanks to research grants obtained from Max-Planck Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen and from Institut für Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte in Münster. On this occasion I wish to express special thanks to Professor Jürgen Schlumbohm and to Dozent Georg Fertig.

I acknowledge the criticism and remarks that Richard Smith, Chris Briggs, Richard Wall, Jonas Lindström and one anonymous reviewer kindly added to the final draft of this essay. I also thank Waldemar Pasieka for his technical help with the database management and my sister Julia Szołtysek for her patience in correcting my English.

Notes

1 Laslett, however, spoke of ‘sets of tendencies’ in ‘family systems’, rather than of family systems per se (Laslett, 1983).

2 Few, but valuable, exceptions are: Cerman (2001), Plakans and Wetherell (2001), Dennison (2003), Polla (2003, 2006). English economic historians have recently rediscovered the importance of studying central and eastern European peasant societies for understanding the boundaries of ‘modern economic culture’ in historic Europe, see e.g. Ogilvie (2001).

3 Laslett used only one list of parishioners from historic Poland (Laslett, 1983, pp. 526–529). However, by 1983 there were at least four extensive and good-quality household lists published in the Polish historical demographic literature that could be easily analysed with the use of his classification scheme (Szołtysek, 2007).

4 The system implied one married couple per farmstead as a basic rule, no marriage previous to the succession of property, frequent handing over of farmsteads through remarriage of a widow, retirement (Ausgedinge) as a form of maintenance of the parents and, above all, domestic service as a flexible form of labour supplementation according to the individual needs of the farmstead (Kaser, 2001, pp. 31ff.).

5 The term ‘Hajnal–Mitterauer's line’ has been introduced by Kaser (1997, p. 166). For testing the concept on Bohemian, Austrian and Hungarian data, see Cerman (2001). Actually, a much larger part of the supposed ‘transitional zone’ spread across the historical Kingdom of Poland, crossing the Upper Silesian territories (Kaser, 2000, p. 75). However, according to the German nationalist view of peasant societies from 1930s, a Hufenverfassung pattern was specific to German and other ‘Germanic’ rural societies and was distinguished from their Slavic and western European counterparts (Ipsen, 1933).

6 No. 4. Communicanten Register der Kirche zu Bujakow aus dem Gross Dubenster Archypresbyteral Kreis siehe den 5. des Reglements, A.D. 1766. The source was found in the church archive in Bujakow.

7 First, ‘communion books’ do not designate the ages of any household members, mostly do not register children under the age of 11years (with the possible 25% under-registration of the parish population), and do mention some persons (mainly servants) solely by their first names. Therefore, the Bujakow listings cannot be analysed in a way comparable with more detailed population registers (cf. Alter, 1987; Janssens, 1993; Cerman, 2001). Apart from social categories of household heads, ‘communion books’ do not contain any information related to the economic status of the families. No cataster-like sources have been found for the parish (see more in Szołtysek, 2003, 2004). By ‘partial family reconstitution’ I refer to the procedure of linking the census data for selected families with information obtained from parish registers (e.g. date of birth; children's birth order; the deaths of family members) either for the purpose of correcting the absence of ages in Bujakow lists or revealing the context of inter-generational transfers or individual life-courses.

8 For all parochial villages, censuses from 1785 and 1786 represent a departure from overall standards of the completeness of registration and should be treated with caution. In general, however, ‘communion books’ reveal the structure of particular households and their changing character in a proper way. They contain a clear relational terminology which — substituted with the information from parish registers — enabled me to establish kin relationships between household members.

9 This institutional context resembles an agrarian landscape east of Elbe dominated by the institution of Gutsherrschaft (manorial lordship) or system folwarczno-pańszczyźniany (system of manorialism with compulsory labour — as it has been called in Polish historiography), and corresponds to what is already known from Hagen (1998), Melton (1998), Cerman (1999), and Ogilvie (2001). The term ‘second serfdom’ is often used in English literature as a shorthand to refer to the massive growth in a landlord's powers over the rural population during the early modern period, essentially in central and eastern Europe.

10 The exact amount of peasant labour dues in the villages of Bujakow is unknown. However, in one of the neighbouring parishes at the end of the 18th century they amounted to 6days of work on the demesne for full peasants (with the wagon and team consisting of two persons) and 3days for small holders (one person with no wagon); see Schäffer (2007). Cf. Melton (1998, pp. 299–300, 303).

11 The beginning of agrarian reforms took place in three parochial villages between 1820 and 1822 (Szołtysek, 2003). In all of them, in order to be granted with full ownership over the land, the peasants were obliged to transfer half of their holdings to the landlords. More on the Prussian agrarian reforms in Harnisch (1986).

12 Only between 10 and 20% of all households.

13 Apart from 1783, exact population totals for the parish are not available until the 1820s. The figure for 1766 and all estimations of the population totals used on subsequent pages come from substituting the census data with the 25% possible under-registration (Gieysztorowa, 1971, pp. 573–574).

14 The significant population decline around 1783 (to 662 inhabitants) could have resulted from the operation of Malthusian positive checks caused by repeated epidemic diseases, poor harvests and hunger years between 1770 and 1783 (Ładogórski, 1955). The average baptism/burial ratio was 1.49 between 1765 and 1800 (median = 1.45; standard deviation = 0.51). In six out of 36years, the deaths exceeded recorded births in a significant manner. Out-migration could not be estimated for the parish, but was not impossible as the villages were part of larger estates.

15 This was reflected in the German landowning elite's complaints about too early and reckless marriages of Silesians, bringing out the overpopulation and proletarianization (Konieczny, 1958, pp. 100–101).

16 Among manorial farm workers in the parish, female servants predominated during the late serfdom period. As a consequence of land redistribution during the 1820s and the economy's intensification on enlarged manorial estates afterwards, the landowners' demand for a labour manpower in the post-emancipation period increased. This demand, however, could have hardly been met with male workers alone, as they increasingly found employment opportunities in industrial neighbourhoods more attractive. A strong propensity towards the partitioning of landholdings appeared in all villages after the 1820s' reforms, which increased the feasibility of forming neo-local households, and enlarged the proportion of landless households at the same time (Szołtysek, 2003, pp. 73, 220–221).

17 The data from Bujakow stands for a generally representative pattern not only for much of 18th- and 19th-century Upper Silesia (although not for Lower Silesia), but also for large parts of the central-western and northwestern Kingdom of Poland (then Polish territories under different sovereignties) (Szołtysek, 2003, pp. 127ff).

18 Describing the systems of early marriage, Hajnal (1982, p. 452) referred to the pattern where ‘mean ages at first marriage are under about 26 for men and under 21 for women’.

19 These figures are in general conformity with those obtained by Berkner for the impartible region of Calenberg in 18th-century Germany (Berkner, 1976, p. 87).

20 In accordance with prior remarks, here as well as in subsequent paragraphs the figures reported in the listings from 1785 and 1786 are given a limited credence.

21 Inter-village variations with regards to nuclear and complex households were approximately equal among the villages. For both nuclear and complex households, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that differences between villages contributed much more significantly to the total variance within the whole sample than the variance within them (for nuclear: F _(2,34)=29, P<0.05; similar values for complex households). Proportions from defected 1785 and 1786 censuses were excluded from these calculations.

22 Only the simulation exercise would fully support this tentative argument (see Laslett, Wachter, & Laslett, 1978). Nevertheless, there is a strong indication that the observed changes in proportions of household types between various censuses (except the fluctuations between 1770 and 1792) did not result from under-registration. For example, the nominative comparison of the 1793 and 1794 lists revealed that families that changed structure from complex into simple did so mostly due to departures of co-residing kin to other households in the parish, or because of their death in the meantime. Although, household complexity in the parish was positively correlated with the status of a full peasant. It was not, however, an exclusive privilege of this village strata.

23 The maximum frequency of the frereche type of family (including co-residing married cousins) in the total number of households in one enumeration did not exceed 2%. The focus on the 1792 and 1793 listings is dictated by a high quality of their record keeping relative to other lists.

24 Kin are defined here as the relatives of the household head apart from their spouse and offspring, but including stepchildren. They could make up from 5.5% (Bujakow) to 10% (Klein Paniow) of the entire village population (means from population totals for every census adjusted for 25% possible under-registration) (Szołtysek, 2003, pp. 239–240).

25 This led to the creation of extremely large tables that cannot be reproduced here. Table 6 summarizes the main structural patterns.

26 There is a general agreement that, although in England relatives have occasionally co-resided in households, their presence there generally did not match the existence of specific non-nuclear household formation rules (Laslett, 1978).

27 The 1590 inventory of the villages from Little Poland brings the evidence of servants present in more than 50% of peasant households. The servants made up 20% of the village populations there (Kamler, 2005, pp. 42–45).

28 Servants working for the manor houses accounted for 40% of the servant population in the parish. There was, however, a constant flow between these two groups, with the large part of peasants' servants working on the manors for a shorter or longer time.

29 A random nominative record linkage of Bujakow parish registers and lists revealed that servants in peasant households were usually young (below 20years old) there, and some of them were below the age of 10years. The period of servanthood could have lasted for 10years in some cases in the parish. For example, Baltazar Włodarz and Wojciech Konieczny, unmarried male servants 1792–1795, were registered as heads of full-peasant holdings in 1801. In both cases, the holdings they succeeded in did not belong to their parents.

30 Kin as lodgers are excluded. The number of inmates was the highest in Bujakow (maximum 8.7%) and the lowest in Klein Paniow (maximum 4.9%). They appeared more frequently among smallholders than among full peasants. They were also present in the households of cottagers and artisans.

31 Kaser (2002, p. 377), for example, pointed out the crucial role of the analysis of inheritance practices for the proper understanding of prevailing household forms.

32 These numbers do not relate to the actual number of transfers in the parish, but to what has been possible to discern given the sources' limitations. Because this work is based on household lists and parish registers alone, what I have been able to explore were the changes in the position of the household head but not the complex modality of the devolution of property (see more in Ehmer, 1998, p. 61; also Ochiai, 2003, p. 3).

33 These and other estimations of the mean age discussed in this section are based on the linkage of specific household events with the data from the parish registers.

34 This stands in striking contrast to inheritance practices known from more eastern parts of 18th century Silesia (the estate of Książ). There, among 241 transfers of peasant households, more than 60% occurred through passing down the holding to a non-kin (Michalkiewicz, 1969, pp. 29–31).

35 Regarding the entire period and the whole parish, on average only 46% of households from the last enumeration could be ascertained to be the continuation of the domestic groups mentioned in the 1766 listing.

36 Compare Fig. 1 reported by Hajnal (1982, p. 465) on the relationship between entry into marriage and into headship.

37 The latter number refers to the 45 marriages after subtracting 14 cases in which couples disappeared from the parish after marriage.

38 The explanation of these cases would preferably refer to landowners' politics of re-organizing the land allotments in the villages, and to their right to expel a peasant family from the holding and to replace it by another one, usually the newly married young couple (Kula, 1976).

39 In total, between 1772 and 1806, 17 peasants from the parish paid off their landholdings to the landlords and through this obtained the hereditary rights to their usufruct (Szołtysek, 2003, p. 72).

40 Inmates (komornicy) co-residing with non-related persons, it is assumed here, have formed a separate production and consumption units. Their position in Upper Silesia has been determined mainly by their contractual relationship with the landowner (not with the head of a particular peasant holding) (Orzechowski, 1956, pp. 134, 136).

41 Cerman (1999, p. 19) would probably mediate these two camps by arguing that there was neither a uniform impact of second serfdom on family structure nor a particular household type specifically designed to cope with manorial lordship in central Europe.

42 See Verdon (1998), on the conflictual nature of the stem family.

43 According to the normative view of lassitischer Besitz, male adults could become a Lassit only after reaching the age of 26years (Orzechowski, 1959).

44 Females had equal rights in succession into headship, as they could become a Lassit after the death of their husband or father. However, it has been assumed that they usually had that position only temporarily (Orzechowski, 1959).

45 However, widows holding large farms and keeping the headship longer than 1year appeared much more seldom than was the case for smallholders.

46 Further elaboration on that issue would require information on marriage and retirement contracts and also local court records (not available for the Bujakow parish).

47 On stochastic variation in household structures in small populations, see Laslett et al. (1978).

48 A large-scale project examining household structures of 100 parishes from historical Polish territories at the end of the 18th century is currently under realization at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (Szołtysek & Pasieka, 2006; Szołtysek, 2007).

49 Methodological approaches other than those applied in the Eurasian Project on the History of Population and Family should be taken into consideration as well (see Hayami, 2000).