Periphery to Powerhouse: Urbanization in Industrial Prussia, 1875-1910

Aleksandra Dul, University of Cambridge

Over the course of the nineteenth century Upper Silesia, the easternmost part of the Prussian Province of Silesia experienced rapid industrialization. Its landscape evolved into a dynamic industrial area based on coal production, second in Prussia only to that of the Ruhr region. This led to the emergence of entirely new cities that quickly took up the role of administrative, business and commercial centres – often in places where no urban settlement existed at all before the 19th century. The aim of this paper is to provide a quantitative insight into the evolution of the occupational structure of a newly emerging city, and a close up study of the dynamics of urbanization in its most accelerated phase. The process is illustrated with a case study of Katowice. The introduction of civil marriage registration in Prussia in the 1870s makes possible a novel insight into the forming urban population. As opposed to census data, the emerging structures can be observed through a close up examination of a particular group – newlyweds. Marriage certificates contain information collected at a point in their lives when they were generally socially deemed ready for starting their own household. This is essential to the basic assumption that this very social group, motivated, active, and keen to work, can be largely seen as the driving force of the city’s economy, and as such sets the tone for its development in the decades to come. A standardized, compulsory civil registration system offers an especially promising insight into the polarized Upper Silesian society. Increasingly pronounced each decade, a division line was cutting through multiple aspects of the past socio-economic reality, setting apart two groups: Polish-Catholic employees and German-Protestant employers. One of the aims of this research is identifying the economic roots of this growing tension.

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 Presented in Session 35. Land Cessions, Town Settlements, and the Growth of Markets