The demography of the Thirty Years War re-revisited: Günther Franz and his critics

German History

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 1-21

  Theibault, John ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039597917     PISSN: 02663554     EISSN: 1477089X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/gh/15.1.1     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (49)

1. Myron Gutmann, War and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Princeton, 1980)
2. Rudolf Schlögl, Bauern, Krieg, und Staat (Göttingen, 1988)
3. Thomas Robisheaux, Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (New York, 1989)
4. Bernd Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden (Göttingen, 1989)
5. see also John Theibault, German Villages in Crisis: Rural Life and the Thirty Years' War in Hesse-Kassel, 1580-1720 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995)
6. Geoffrey Parker's highly regarded survey is indicative of the lack of integration of demography and society in general surveys of the war. It relegates the social impact of the war to a short subchapter within the final chapter. Only seven of 226 pages of text address the impact of the war on society. Geoffrey Parker et al., The Thirty Years War, 2nd edn. (London, 1987)
7. Arthur E. Imhof, ed., Historische Demographie als Sozialgeschichte, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1975)
8. Michael Mitterauer and Reinhard Sieder, The European Family (Chicago, 1982)
9. Ulrich Pfister, 'The Protoindustrial Household Economy: Toward a Formal Analysis', Journal of Family History, 17 (1992), 201-32
10. Christian Pfister, Bevölkerungsgeschichte und historische Demographie (Munich, 1994), p. 62
11. Alain Croix, Nantes et le pays nantais aux XVIième siècle (Paris, 1974)
12. Pfister, Bevölkerungsgechichte, p. 77
13. See L.M. Cullen, 'Population Trends in Seventeenth Century Ireland', The Economic and Social Review 6, (1975), 149-66
14. Gutmann, War and Rural Life, p. 199
15. Parker, The Thirty Years' War, p. 282
16. Gerhard Schormann, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg (Göttingen, 1985)
17. Johannes Burkhardt, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg (Frankfurt/Main, 1992)
18. Georg Schmidt, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg (Munich, 1995)
19. Roeck, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden
20. Franz, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, 4th edn, p. 59
21. Among recent works that fail to mention or cite Franz are the excellent historiographical overview by Sheilagh Ogilvie, 'Germany and the Seventeenth Century Crisis', Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 417-41, and the up-to-date interpretation of post-war Bohemia
22. Markus Cerman, 'Bohemia after the Thirty Years' War: Some Theses on Population Structure, Marriage and Family', Journal of Family History, 2 (1994), 149-75
23. Hans Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. I, 1700-1815 (Munich, 1987), p. 54
24. S.H. Steinberg, 'The Thirty Years' War: A New Interpretation', History, n.s., 32 (1947), 89-102
25. and his The 'Thirty Years' War' and the Conflict for European Hegemony 1600-1660 (London, 1966)
26. For evidence of the critical reception of Brunner's Nazi affinities see the English translation of his major work, Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship, trans. and ed. Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton (Philadelphia, 1992), pp. xxxiii-xxxix
27. See also the critical surveys by David Nicholas, 'New Paths of Social History and Old Paths of Historical Romanticism: An Essay Review on the Work and Thought of Otto Brunner', Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 277-94
28. Robert Jütte, 'Zwischen Ständestaat und Austrofaschismus. Der Beitrag Otto Brunners zur Geschichtsschreibung', Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, 13 (1984), 237-62
29. Gernot Heiss, 'Vom Österreichs Deutschen Vergangenheit und Aufgabe. Der Wiener Schule der Geschichtswissenschaft und der Nationalsozialismus', in Gernot Heiss et al., eds., Willfährige Wissenschaft. Die Universität Wien 1938 bis 1945 (Vienna, 1989), pp. 39-76
30. On German historiography in the Nazi era see Wolfgang Weber, Priester der Klio. Historisch-sozialwissenschaftliche Studien zur Herkunft und Karriere Deutscher Historiker und zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft 1800-1970 (Frankfurt, 1984)
31. Winfried Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach 1945 (Berlin, 1989)
32. Schulze, German Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s', in James Van Horn Melton and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., Paths of Continuity: Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s (New York, 1994), pp. 19-42
33. and Willi Oberkrome, Volksgeschichte. Methodische Innovation und völkische Ideologisierung in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft 1918-1945 (Göttingen, 1993)
34. On Franz's assessment of his own role, see Günther Franz, 'Das Geschichtsbild des Nationalsozialismus und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft', in Oswald Hauser, ed., Geschichte und Geschichtsbewußtsein (Göttingen, 1981), pp. 106-7
35. For this, see the brief observations in Schulze, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft, p. 318. Interestingly, Schulze does not mention Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und das deutsche Volk as one of Franz's major publications
36. Two recent publications have pointed to the errors: Bernd Roeck, 'Bayern und der Dreißigjährigen Krieg. Demographische, Wirtschaftliche und Soziale Auswirkungen am Beispiel Münchens', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 17 (1991), 434-58
37. and Manfred Vasold, 'Die deutschen Bevölkemngsverluste während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges', Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte, 56 (1993), 147-60. Vasold cites extensive literature to show that Franz's figures are more widely cited and accepted by historians than are Steinberg's. Roeck observes pithily that Wehler adopted Steinberg's arguments 'even though they are untenable'
38. Steinberg, The 'Thirty Years' War', p. 106. It is hard not to read the passage as implying that the huge birth rate would overcome the losses in one year's time, which would be impossible even if half of the remaining population were women of child-bearing age and had children
39. Gerhard Benecke, 'The Problem of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years' War: New Evidence from the Middle Weser Front', European Studies Review, 2 (1972), 239-53, here p. 251. I have my doubts that his evidence sustains the interpretation of town finance that he makes, but that is another story
40. Pfister, Bevölkerungsgeschichte, p. 76
41. On approaches to Nazi-generated demographic and genealogical source material for modern analysis, see John Knodel, 'Ortssippenbücher als Quelle für die Historischen Familienforschung', Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 1 (1975), 288-324. The fact that a large proportion of Franz's citations of works produced after 1945 were by East European scholars could be due either to ironic atonement for his Nazi past or to symptomatic blindness to ideological scholarship
42. Compare Franz, Der Dreißigjährige Krieg, p. 8
43. See Theibault, German Villages in Crisis, p. 169
44. Barbara Spencer, 'Size of Population and Variability of Demographic Data: 17th and 18th Centuries', Genus, 32, No. 3-4 (1976), 11-42, makes a case for the representativeness of even small populations for important elements of demographic analysis. Unfortunately, Grandenborn has too few events for us to be confident about its representativeness. However, the point here is to demonstrate that the sources generated in Grandenborn are, in fact, representative of what happened in Grandenborn
45. Massimo Livi Bacci and David S. Reher, 'Other Paths to the Past: From Vital Series to Population Patterns', in David S. Reher and Roger Schofield, eds., Old and New Methods in Historical Demography (Oxford, 1993), pp. 66-83, here p. 74, mention that the peak crude birth rate for New Castile was 42/1,000
46. Hilmar Milbradt, Das Hessische Mannschaftsregister von 1639 (Frankfurt, 1959) p. 115
47. Cerman, 'Bohemia after the Thirty Years' War', p. 168
48. Rudolf Schlögl, Bauern, Krieg und Staat. Oberbayerische Bauernwirtschaft und Frühmoderner Staat im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1988)
49. and Jörg Witzel, Hersfeld 1525 bis 1756. Wirtschafts-, Sozial-, und Verfassungsgeschichte einer mittleren Territorialstadt (Marburg, 1994)