Rural and Urban Migration in Germany

Migration is usually linked to modernization which is closely connected to industrialization. Therefore, it is often assumed that migration is mostly a process of people moving away from the countryside to an urban environment, as has been described by Ravenstein and Weber among others. The main reason to take part in the process of migration was the poverty that many people in rural and urban areas suffered from. For this reason, people tried to escape poverty and move to areas that were more advanced economically, in hope for a better and wealthier life. In the case of Germany, where industrialization started to grow rapidly around 1850, the assumption that migration in the industrial age is moving away from the rural to the urban space, is not necessarily correct. Migration in Germany has mostly been rural. In fact, while industry was still growing immensely in the the beginning of the twentieth Century, migration declined. The first World War was a major reason for mobility to go down and migration rates proceeded to drop afterwards. For this matter, city registration data from 1924 show that in- and outmigration in urban areas sank from 18% in 1912 to around 9% in 1924-1926 (Hochstadt 453).

The common assumption that migration takes place mostly in cities and that people from urban environments are more prone to move away in search for better life conditions, is not true in the case of Germany. During the nineteenth Century people in Germany mostly migrated from one rural area to another (Hochstadt 457). Indeed, censuses show that most people who do not live in their birth place any more, move to rural areas. In 1871 72% of migrants in Bavaria moved to a rural environment, while in the Duchy of Oldenburg 69% of migration was rural in 1880 (Buecher 4-5).

Before World War I more than 50% of migrants from foreign countries, such as Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary, came to rural areas in order to find work in the agricultural sector (Nichtweiss 142-143). Only by the 1940s did rural migration rates drop and the movement to urban areas became more significant. As a result, about 70% of the population in Prussia were considered urban by this time (Statistik des Deutschen Reiches 144).

Xenia Suschkow 

Works Cited:

Buecher, Karl. "Zur Statistik der inneren Wanderungen und des Niederlassungswesens." Zeitschrift fuer Schweizerische Statistik 23 (1887): 1-13. Print.

Hochstadt, Steve. “Migration and Industrialization in Germany, 1815-1977.” Social Science History 5.4 (Autumn 1981): 445-468. Print.

Nichtweiss, Johannes. Die auslaendischen Saisonarbeiter in der Landwirtschaft der oestlichen und mittleren Gebiete des Deutschen Reiches. East Berlin: Ruetten und Loening, 1959. Print.

Ravenstein, Ernst Georg. "The Laws of Migration." Journal of the Royal Statistic Society 48 (1885): 167-227; 52 (1889): 241-301. Print.

Weber, Adna Ferrin. The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics. New York: Macmillan, 1899. Print.

Statistik des Deutschen Reiches (1903, 1941) Vols. 150, 151, 552 (N.F.)