Marital Fertility and the Family in Poland from the Late Nineteenth To

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XLIX:2 (Autumn, 2018), 279–303. Grażyna Liczbińska, Ewa Syska, Renata Koziarska-Kasperczyk, and Anna Kledzik Marital Fertility and the Family in Poland from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century This research note presents the results of a pilot study of marital fertility and of family size in Poznań, Poland. At the end of the nineteenth century, the city of Poznań was variously affected by political, economic, and cultural changes associated with the modernization of society, improvements in the quality and style of life, and a general increase in circulated information. The prevail- ing assumption was that such rapid changes at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century would result in blurring the differences in fertility between Poznań’s inhabitants regardless of their religion and social affiliation. Nonetheless, the unsatisfactory state of research into fertility patterns in Poznań during the period of the demographic transition calls for further studies. Fertility patterns and their causative factors have received little attention in Poland; methods based on family reconstruction have yet to be applied there extensively. Borowski’s work in the 1980s was of great significance, however, especially regarding the demographic processes in the micro-region of the village of Czacz in Grażyna Liczbińska is Assistant Professor, Dept. of Human Evolutionary Ecology, Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. She is the author of “Age at Menarche in Polish University Students Born before, during and after World War II: Economic Effects,” Economics and Human Biology, XXVIII (2018), 23–28; with Zbigniew Czapla and Janusz Piontek, “Body Mass Index Values in the Gentry and Peasantry in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Poland,” Journal of Biosocial Science, XLIX (2017), 364–379. Ewa Syska is Associate Professor, Faculty of History, Institute of History, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. She is the author of “Ein Ritterwappen auf dem Stadtsiegel oder über die Anf änge von Bernstein [Pełczczyce] und Bärwalde (Mieszkowice),” in Klaus Neitmann (ed.), Landesherr, Adel und Städte in der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Neumark (Berlin, 2015), 223–234; “The document by Zulis von Wedel for the Commitee of the Joannites from Suchania from 1371,” Roczniki Historyczne, LXXVIII (2012), 213–220. Renata Koziarska-Kasperczyk is Research Officer, Dept. of Human Evolutionary Ecol- ogy, Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. Anna Kledzik is a member of the Faculty of Biology, Institute of Anthropology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. The authors thank the anonymous reviewer for helpful and valuable remarks and advice. © 2018 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc., https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01269 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jinh_a_01269 by guest on 25 September 2021 280 | LICZBIŃSKA, SYSKA, KOZIARSKA-KASPERCZYK, AND KLEDZIK Greater Poland. The target of Borowski’s studies were peasant families from three types of parish registers. In 1990, Piasecki mod- ified the method of family reconstruction for individuals by first coding the data derived from parish records and then entering it into computer memory for calculations. But at this point, no studies of fertility in nineteenth-century Poland based on the reconstruction of reproductive histories of families have appeared.1 Makowski’s important 1992 monograph was a step in the right direction, but it deployed only traditional narrative methods, without any sophisticated statistical analysis. Notably, the sources for Makowski’s demographic research included parish registers; guild documents; the personal files of officials, physicians, and teachers; and the records of the Archbishop’s Ordinary and Evan- gelical consistory. Unfortunately, however, it covered only the Catholic and Protestant populations; all of the documentation about the Jewish community in Poznań was lost during World War II. Catholic populations from Greater Poland, Silesia, and Little Poland also came under anthropological scrutiny—for exam- ple, the parishes of Szczepanowo, Płużnica Wielka, and Wielkie Drogi. Moreover, several studies about biological dynamics have recently appeared, including research into fertility, based on the reproductive histories of Protestant women in the cities and villages of Poznań province during the second half of the nineteenth century. But this research note carries the investigation further.2 POZNAŃ IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES Poznań, the capital of Greater Poland, was the largest Polish city 1Stanisław Borowski, “Procesy demograficzne w mikroregionie Czacz w latach 1598–1975,” Przeszłość Demograficzna Polski, IX (1976), 95–191; idem, “Prawdopodobieństwo powiększania rodziny w mikroregionie Czacz od XVII do XX wieku,” ibid., X (1978), 135–155; Edmund Piasecki, Ludność parafii bejskiej (woj. kieleckie) w świetle ksiągmetrykalnychzXVIII–XX w. Studium demograficzne (Warsaw, 1990). 2 Krzysztof Makowski, Rodzina poznańska w I połowie XIX wieku (Poznań, 1992); Maciej Henneberg, “Ocena dynamiki biologicznej wielkopolskiej dziewiętnastowiecznej populacji wiejskiej. II. System kojarzeń ipłodność,” Przegląd Antropologiczny, XLIII (1977), 245–272; Elżbieta Anna Puch, “Dynamika biologiczna polskich społeczności wiejskich z różnych systemów społeczno-kulturowych w XVIII i XIX wieku,” Przegląd Antropolo- giczny, V (1993), 5–36; Liczbińska, “Fertility and Family Structure in the Lutheran Population of the Parish of Trzebosz in the Second Half of the 19th Century and the Beginning of the 20th Century,” History of the Family, XVII (2012), 142–156; idem and Ewa Nowak, “Reproduc- tive Behaviour in the Lutheran Urban Family from Historical Poland (the Parish of St. Peter from Poznań, the Second Half of the 19th Century),” ibid., XX (2015), 122–140. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jinh_a_01269 by guest on 25 September 2021 MARITAL FERTILITY AND THE FAMILY | 281 under Prussian occupation during the second partition of the Re- public of Poland in 1793. From 1815 to 1848, Poznań was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Poznań, and from 1848 to 1918, it was the capital of Poznań province. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the city had almost 24,000 inhabitants; from 1871 to 1895, the population of Poznań increased from 56,000 to 73,000.3 The city had three main religious denominations. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Catholics constituted about 60 percent of the civil population. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, Lutherans were 30 percent: Most of the Lutherans were Germans; German officials and their families came to the city as the administration was developing. By the mid-nineteenth century, Jews constituted about 20 percent of Poznań’s population. Their number decreased to 7.9 percent in 1900. Melting into the German bourgeoisie, they eventually became part of the German population.4 In the nineteenth century, Poznań became an important economic center. The first industrial plants appeared there as early as the second half of the nineteenth century, but the driving force for its development was technical progress and the growing demand for various types of machinery, equipment, and agricultural fertil- izers. Despite changes in production, the city had only about ten major industrial enterprises in the 1860s; craftsmanship still played a crucial role in its progress. Favorable conditions for development took hold during the late 1870s, with the advent of a new European and American market for groceries (dairy- and meat-processing industries and bakery and confectionery industries). Thereafter, the number of industrial and craft enterprises increased by 30 percent. The vodka and spirits producers were the first to take advan- tage of this boom. The situation was also propitious for Poznań’s grain milling, which continued to thrive until the outbreak of 3Mieczysław Kędelski, Rozwój demograficzny Poznania w XVIII i na początku XIX wieku (Poznań, 1992). 4Kędelski, Rozwój demograficzny Poznania; Liczbińska, “Infant and Child Mortality among Catholics and Lutherans in Nineteenth Century Poznań,” Journal of Biosocial Science,XLI (2009), 661–683; idem, Umieralność i jej uwarunkowania wśród katolickiej i ewangelickiej ludności historycznego Poznania (Poznań, 2009); Makowski, Rodzina poznańska; Lech Trzeciakowski, “Polacy i Niemcy w życiu codziennym w Poznaniu w XIX wieku,” Kronika Miasta Poznania, I–II (1992), 7–18. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jinh_a_01269 by guest on 25 September 2021 282 | LICZBIŃSKA, SYSKA, KOZIARSKA-KASPERCZYK, AND KLEDZIK World War I. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the food industry came to the fore in Poznań. The growth of the metal industry, which specialized in the production of agricultural machinery, was more modest. The Metbelsky, Cegelski, and Moegelin metal plants, which produced machinery and agricultural tools, steam locomotives, and wagons, initiated capitalist enterprise in Poznań. Not to be overlooked was the emergence of the chemical industry, primarily in the form of fertilizer production (such as the Moritz Milich and Roman May varieties). None- theless, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 93 percent of Poznań’s enterprises were still craft workshops and small industries, employing no more than ten workers.

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