Migration - East Prussia to West Prussia 1840-1850's

ow-preussen-l
1

Hallo:
I have recently immersed myself in reading many books about Prussia. My
goal was to learn about migration between various regions in Prussia
(specifically if there was an obvious reason for people moving from East
Prussia to West Prussia in the 1850 timeframe - as some of my family
members did). I also wanted to learn what life was like for people in
the 1860-1900 period who worked on Rittergut or Junker Estates in Kreis
Mohrungen in East Prussia.

One of the questions that wasn't answered for me is this - does anyone
know of a particular reason that people would leave East Prussia
(specifically the towns of Sonnenborn and Reussen in Kreis Mohrungen) and
move to the Kreis Rosenberg area in West Prussia (specifically the towns
of Seegenau, Bonin, and Gros Herzogswalde)? I have found quite a few
collateral and direct family lines who did this. Earlier on, they were
in Kreis Mohrungen in East Prussia and then quite afew of these families
appear in Kreis Rosenberg in approximately 1850
(these surnames don't appear in the Kreis Rosenberg church books before
approximately 1850).

The only thing that I can think of after the reading I have done is that
the Revolution of 1848 might have caused some of them to leave East
Prussia and go to West Prussia. Is this logical and did this happen
frequently? I have read about the 48er's who came to America, but was it
common for people to migrate within Prussia rather than migrating
overseas after the Revolution of 1848?? Does anyone else have any
other suggestions that I might follow up on? In the 1850 timeframe, was
West Prussia better off economically than East Prussia? Were there any
particular problems going on in East Prussia around 1850 that weren't
going on in West Prussia? I'm wondering if, in the 1850 timeframe, if
these towns in Kreis Rosenberg were larger and more prosperous than the
small towns of Sonnenborn and Reussen in Kreis Mohrungen in East Prussia.
I look forward to hearing any insight anyone might have on this topic as
well as if anyone else has noticed a large migration in their families
from East Prussia to West Prussia in this timeframe.

Also, I've read much about Rittergut and Junkers - but rarely do I see
the word sharecropper used in books that I've read about Prussia. Does
anyone know if a sharecropper would be considered the employee on a
Rittergut or the employee of a Junker? Or, was sharecropping something
else entirely? Family lore is that my great-grandmother's parents were
sharecroppers. I found my great-grandmother's civil registration of
birth in the Kreis Mohrungen records. She was born in Reussen in 1880.
I looked up Reussen in Meyers-Orts and it is listed as a Dorf (village)
rather than a Rittergut. This is probably a stupid question, but were
there sharecroppers in a "village"? Were there farms in a village? Or,
would people live in a village and go to the outskirts daily to a farm to
be a sharecropper? Was a sharecropper the same thing as a Rittergut
worker? If they are not the same thing, what is the difference?

I'd appreciate any insight that anyone can offer to these questions.
Danke,
Laura

2

Hi again, Laura,

Some interesting questions you got there, and I shall try and answer some of
them to give you an idea.

(1) VILLAGE: A village is a small, incorporated rural settlement, often
independent, and sometimes directly connected w/ an estate ("Gut" or
"Rittergut" as the case may be). In contrast to Great Britain, in the US
such settlements often call themselves cities. In the European (legal) view,
settlements are grouped according to size from the smallest to the largest
(German terms given): Weiler (hamlet), Dorf (village), Kleinstadt and
Mittelstadt (town), Gro�stadt (city). Traditionally, farm buildings would be
found in (independent) villages, whereas farmers' fields would be situated
outside the settled area (much like in the New England of the olden days).
In recent times, there were also farm houses in the midst of farmers' fields
(the East Prussian technical term for this type of a farm is "Abbau").

(2) SHARECROPPER is an American term denoting a farmer "who gives part of
his crop as rent to the owner of the land". In a way this resembles
conditions under the old European feudal system of the Middle Ages which
required farmers/serfs to hand 10% of their harvest to their lord (who owned
the land) or to the church respectively. In East Prussia you would rather
find estate laborers or farm laborers (called 'Instmann' [plural
'Instleute'] or 'Losmann' [plural 'Losleute']) who had a contract to work
for the owner of an estate or of a large farm and were given accommodation,
a garden, and some land where they could grow potatoes, grain and
vegetables, and keep a cow, 1--2 sheep, 1--2pigs and some hens. In addition,
laborers received a limited sum of money. A laborer's wife and children were
expected to help w/ his work. Their accommodation would be either a cottage
in the village or a small apartment in an "Insthaus" (row-house for
"Instleute" and their families) on the estate grounds.

(3) Regarding migration from East to West Prussia, there could be many
reasons for it: Re-organization of land ownership that took place at the
time in question, the progress of agriculture in Prussia between 1830 and
1860 (new farms sprang up), the changing political situation in Europe (e.g.
growing nationalism in general, here particularly that of the Poles and the
German reaction to it, especially in West Prussia) etc. - Emigration of
revolutionaries (Revolution of 1848) to the USA is a different issue and
concerned a different class of people (usually not farm laborers).

Rolf-Peter