Historische Finanzsoziologie, Quantitative Sozialgeschichte und Computerkartographie in Hamburg, Oldenburg und Rostock – ein Forschungsbericht

Abstract

It was still in the time of punch cards when, in 1980, a research group around Kersten Krueger in Hamburg started computer aided quantitative analyses of early modern tax registers and census lists. The object was the reconstruction of local and regional social structures of the past as shown in the sources by three essential items: demographic data, occupation, and economic productivity, the latter measured by the assessment of taxable property and income. Due to the well developed sophisticated direct taxation systems in the old 'Reich' and several territorial states, tax registers as well as census lists proved to be excellent sources for quantitative studies in social history. Databases exist from Altona, Herleshausen, Homberg, Kiel, Oldenburg, Rostock, and Wismar. At Rostock university in 1991, Ilona Buchsteiner took up a computer aided research project on social and mental change within the nobility of Pomerania 1750-1950. The database of seven generations gives valid information about the change of the nobility from a class of land owners to a group with vocational diversification and modern marriage patterns. Innovation by interdisciplinary combination was achieved by Gyula Papay in Rostock: quantitative analyses are being integrated in computer made maps and presented in complex information systems.