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Translation of Das Kolonisationswerk Josefs II in Galizien - Darstellung und Namenlisten by Ludwig Schneider Translation © copyright 2001-2003 by GGD Background and Index of this Galician History book Chaper II - Galizien to 1772: (published in the January 1998, GGD Newsletter #13) Short historical review. Kleinpolen (Little Poland), which was formerly the Austrian Crownland of Galicia, is the southeast part of the republic of Poland and includes the four districts of Krakau, Lemberg, Stanislau and Tarnopol. It stretches from the Biala River, the small tributary of the Weichsel, the west to the Zbruca, a tributary of the Weichesel, the west to the Zbruca, a tributary of the Dniestr, which is its border with the Soviet Union on the east. From the Carpathian mountain's border in the south the land drops off precipitously to the lowlands and an west-east line from Lemberg crosses the great (sarmatic) plain. Galicia measures approximately 78,000 sq. km. The land has an exciting history behind it., In the time of the tribal wandering it was the passageway for the Teutonic tribes on their wanderings over southeast Europe. Continual storms roared over the land: invasions of the Tartars, Turks, Walachians, Muskovites, Cossacks, and Sweden under Charles XII. Its historical name is Rotreussen (Red Russia) or Rothburgenland (Red Castleland). It has always been frontier land and has changed occupiers often during the course of its history. In historical times it belonged originally to Russian Kiev. Russian prices erected here the independent principality of Halicz-Wolodymir, which included the eastern part of the land. (Translator's note: Kiev was founded by Vikings and the name Russ comes from a Norse word meaning red.) Prince Lev founded Loewenburg (Lion Fort), which was named after him, and on which foundation the city of Lemberg (Lvov, Lwow) stands, and which until the 17th century carried the official name of Lemberg. In 1182 Kasimir, duke of Poland, expelled Duke Wladimir of Halicz. In 1198 Roman of Wolodymir controlled all of Rotreussen; however, he fell in 1212 in the struggle against the Poles. Therefore, Koloman, son of Andreas II of Hungary, became King of Rotreussen. In 1225 the Russian Daniel Romanowicz took possession of the ducy once more called Halicz, then lost if however in 1236 to Hungary. After many battles the Russian princes came again into possession. But the last Haliczan prince, Gregor II was murdered and the Polish King Kasimir the Great laid claim to the land, marched into Rotreussen and conquered it. In 1134 he captured Lemberg. From that time Rotreussen was a component of Poland until 1772 partition of Poland when it was attached to Austria under the name Galicia. The peopling of the land is very colorful; in the West great numbers of Poles; in the east approximately between the San River, the Carpathians and the Zbrucz River are Ukrainian Ruthenians); in between are Jews and descendants of Armenia. Here is a short overview of the censuses of 1921 and 1931; 1921 in the possession of the Main Statistical Office of the Republic of Poland (Warsaw), was published in 1925. Of the results of the second census of 1931 there appear at present periodic early results. We give in the following the corresponding official numbers of 1931: the 1921 figures are in parenthesis. Kleinpolen has a surface of 78,089 km. It has 174 cities, 6106 villages and 2260 estates, altogether 8540 administrative units. The population is 8,505,902 (7,478,535) of which 40,303 (41,350) are Germans. The statements about Protestant German are used with reservations because they are in reality wrong. It appears for example that the German colonies of Schonthal, Falkenstein, Broczkow, Konigsberg, Steinau, Burczyce, Kupnowice and Hanunin total 1048 Evangelicals, of that number; however not a single Germ an was shown; therefore, the census figure for the German Evangelical religion was removed. The Catholic Germans had also been severely undercounted. The Germans are greatly dispersed in small groups over the whole country. A compilation for the Evangelical German part yield for 1921 the following picture: 1-10 Protestants lived in 1041 places (about 1 in 162 places, 2-50 in 302, 551-100 in 80, 101-200 in 71, 201-500 in 29, over 500 Evangelicals in 17 places. A private count of the Germans in Kleinpolen calculates approximately 33,000 Evangelicals and 22,000 Catholics. The land had already lived through a previous German immigration. The Polish King Kasimir the Great organized it after the big raid of the Tatars of 1241 had badly devastated and depopulated the area. He called German colonists into the land, founded cities and strongholds to the German pattern, gave them German law, promoted trades and trading, led the administration to German order and jurisdiction, and laid the ground thereby for an economic and cultural boom which continued in the 15th and first half of the 16 century under the Jagellon kings. After the dying out of the Jagellons, 1572, under the system of electing kings, the Polish downfall began. It may be blamed on the inner social and political conditions of the country, which then, because of its internal disorder, fell to foreign powers. 2. The internal political development Aristocracy and peasantry. In Poland itself the aristocracy developed out of the concept of family and the assumption of special coats of arms as distinctive signs of the affiliation to a specific clan. The first source of the formation of an aristocracy was naturally property. For the rich families, this came out of the time of tribal formation. A further source for the formation of a Polish aristocracy was war service. The warriors got states and a patent of nobility. Both led to a continuing formation of their own, closed, equipped with privileges, the "szlachta" (fighters). They had already formed in the 13th century. Because also the poor by reason of their clan were counted among the szlachta even if they had no coat of arms, it came about that in Poland the aristocratic rank was more numerous than in any other land. It is clear that power and meaning in public life depended on the wealth of the individual noble and his family. In this sense there were great differences. The rich were called "nozni", the mighty. They formed the knighthood, "stan rycerski". At the king's call they had the task of equipping and leading a military force for the defense of the borders or invasion into neighboring lands. The lesser szlachta broke down to the szlachta "zagrodowa", which were those who developed their land with their own hand, also known as szlachta "zasciankowa", approximately the by-standers. The szlachta "czynszowa", rent-nobles, sat on leased estates. Further there were szlachta "zaciezna", the forced-labor nobles, who had obligated dues to their overlord, and szlachta "chodaczkowa", the "sandal-nobles" The principle was that all aristocracy was the same, each nobleman, rich or poor, had the same laws without difference of rank. Therefore, for example, the saying "The nobleman on his estate measures himself with every duke." In addition to the aristocracy the Catholic church had decisive power in the lives of the nation and the nation. Only these two ranks, the aristocracy and the church could acquire estates. They were exempt from all taxes and paid only two grosschen per hide (120 acres) to the national treasury. The government consisted of the nobility, the elected king (after 1572) and the senate. Especially since the 16th century the great power of the nobles was undisputed. It alone represented the nation and declared itself the only legislative body. After the death of Siegmund II August, the last Jagellon king, the method for the election of the new king that hitherto had been in force and also in title was abolished. Thereafter aristocratic parties and foreign powers announced their candidates for the Polish throne. The highest expression of the political tyranny of the aristocracy and outstanding peculiarity in the constitution of the Polish republic was the "liberum vet", that law in the legislature through which a single "No" vote thwarts a law, even dissolves the legislature, as happened in 1652. Under August III (1733-1763) not a single legislature met. Far beneath the aristocracy in social life stood the impoverished Christian citizens. Poland could have produced out of its own elements no middle class and no cities because the aristocracy and the Jew dominated all. It would have been well to have made a promising advance for the education of a viable citizenship and to the formation of a blooming civic consciousness as Kasimir the Great had done when he called German traders and craftsmen into the land. Krakau, Lemberg, and different cities and marketplaces developed into important European trade and transfer points where goods were exchanged between the European West and places to the East, the Scandinavian north and the lands of the Mediterranean basin, thanks to the trade policies of this German element. The heyday of Polish civic concern was in the 15th century; decay begins in the 16th century. Causes of decline were on the one hand due to outside circumstances, as the fall of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Italians on the Black Sea, whereby the transit-trade to the east was prevented. On the other hand was the discord and the party conduct of the townspeople themselves, because the newly rich nobles oppressed the poor and did not allow profitability. The noble carries most of the blame for the downfall of civic consciousness. With envy he saw the rising to power and prestige of the foreign, German, middle class and didn't rest until the royal privileges they had been given were withdrawn. So it is also understandable that the German industrial element of the Middle Ages, because of the economic pressure and because the aristocrat out of his pride looked down on the merchant, looked to the preservation of its life-potential and let money be exalted, took on the clothing , manners, and uses of the Polish leadership, finally language and way of thinking, and gradually sank wholly into the Polish nationality. That, however, was also the fate of the middle class and the besieged cities. They were impoverished; in the 17th century they were only fragments of earlier gloss, and into the gaps the Jews entered, who in their turn brought trades and crafts. The turn of the 18th century brought all disaster, as the internal disorder had degenerated into anarchy, out of one more religious dispute. In the age of the reformation, Poland was recognized as the most tolerant land in Europe. Therefore, the counter-reformation with the iron Cardinal Hosius in charge, changed the toleration into severe religious persecution of dissidents and non-Catholics. The consequence of the discrimination of those out of the Catholic confession was that it gave foreign powers the first pretext to mingle themselves into the internal issues of the nation as if it were for the protection of religious minorities and to force Poland to accept the Warsaw Treaty. The lot of farmers in the Middle Ages and until the Age of Enlightenment was everywhere wretched in the lands of Europe. Estates were the property of the princes and the aristocracy, and the farmer was un-free, was subject to his Lord, belonged to him, had to "roboten",) the expression is significantly a Slavicbr' loanword) meaning give forced labor. Kasimir the Great had legally moderated the lot of the farmers. The estate owner had made himself indebted to his subjects, so they recovered their personal freedom again. Especially the rural colonization in the west of Kleinpolen by German farmers out of nearby Silesia was a blessing for the Polish peasantry overall. Because the Polish farmer-settlements received the German law, they were held strongly to adjust and lot it to penalty if they habitually went back to the old Polish law. Various swings of the legislatures of later times again removed the blessings of the German law for the farmer. A serf who had no land of his own, who settled on the estate of a noble or prince of the church, worked for his lord and was kept alive by him; they were called glebae adscripti. The lord could dismiss them or transfer them from one place to another, they might not leave their lord of their own will. Next to them there were liberi, personally free, who to be sure in any case had no land of their own but because of high rank received an estate of management, whereby they performed for the lord set payments and services. They had the right to dissolve their relationship to their Lord, but they had to provide him with an equivalent substitute. In time, because lifestyles had changed, the knight became a land-nobleman, therefore farmer; the lord needed the work of landless peasants for the management of his extended property. From this the compulsory service developed. The lord distributed the largest part of his property among the serf-farmers. Lacking work-hands, the land would be concentrated on a farmhouse and mostly was leased out by the lord. As renters the Jews came first in line for consideration (see page 82). The lord's important source of revenue flowed out of the right to make schnapps and to sell it. Practically, the Jewish leaseholder (and the village inn) pushed it and became a social plague on the land: the farmer had to buy a certain measure of schnapps and mead, so that he could pay the high rent. (The translator thinks the last "he" refers to the Jewish leaseholder or innkeeper.) The payments and "duties", the peasants had to give the landlord many sorts; there is a fruit and tobacco-tenth, a market-tenth for merchandise bought at the market, a salt-tenth, a beer-tenth, an electionale at the election of the village magistrate and juries, holiday money for officials, servant money for guarding the palace, poultry, streets and bridges money (which was paid to the Jew because he had this income source at lease for which, however, for the improvement of the streets, he does nothing), court expenses and fines for real and alleged offenses. To these natural taxes the forced labor was added: (from Brawer, Galicia, "How it came to Austria") a family with two pairs of draft animals gave 32 days forced labor, a clan with a pair gave 64 days, a family without draft animals 95 days of forced labor on foot. The total forced labor dues of the Kleinpolen peasantry in the last quarter of the 18th century was calculated by Brawer as follows: Grain-tenth 371,000 Lower Austrian pecks to the value of 111,600 rhenish Gulders, poultry-tenth ½ million hens and 1 ¼ million eggs for 70,000 rhenish florins, 12,300 barrels for the honey-tenth, that is 12,100 hl. for 22,300 rhenish florins, 1 million skeins of flax at 3 Kreuzer are 50,000 rh. florins, at interst for correction reasons and different fields and gardens of 116,000 rhenish florins totals 2,1 40,000 rh enish florins, that is 5 florins 49 Kreuzers on a farm family. On the 367,207 Kleinpolen farm families, 22,408,000 forced labor days were imposed, that is 62.02 days on average per family. The peasant duties were imposed on the property, not on the person, so that a noble, if he took over a farm of a landowner, there was compul sory interest. According to the size of the farm there is whole farmer, half-, quarter-farmers and lodges without agricultural busin ess. The farmers had no possibility of acquisition in the cities, so the city people might not sell domiciles to peasants, in order to hold the peasantry to the land. This strict division of rural and town people hardened to a stiff system, which excluded the reciprocal social complement of the needs of city and country. The Polish researcher Kutrzeba judged the situation of the Polish peasantry into the 18th century as follows: "It was un-free, without possibility of developing itself, it sat on all little pieces, was encapsulated within itself, without relationship to the outside world; therefore, it took no share in the development of culture and remained in the old pathway. Finally, the farmer sat on little more than half or a quarter field, sank down to being a day-laborer and felt as well off as earlier because he had previously had to pay the landlord taxes, while as day-laborer he received a piece of ground without charge. To the time of the first division of Poland, the farmer was crude and unknowing, a victim of the anarchistic, situation that doesn't arise among a people with education. He was poor, by the landlord, by Ockonom (??), exploited by leaseholds and Jews. His allotted piece of land was inadequate. The three-field system prevailed without careful cultivation. Large spaces in east Galicia were not yet in the possession of farmers, but was divided from time to time between the members of a village, some years used as fields, then left barren or used as pasture. He became torpid because why strain oneself if the work is destroyed through confused situations and unrest. The situation had made him unsettled. If the political condition of the peasantry in Poland was like that in Western Europe, his social condition was much worse than that of the farmer in the west." 3. Galicia, how it came to Austria. On the 5th of August 1772, the negotiations of the three owners, Russia, Prussia, and Austria over the first division of Poland had closed. The cession agreement between the last king of Poland, Stanislaus August, and the Austrian empress came about on the 18th of September 1773. Austria got Galicia with the Kreis Zamosc; however, without Krakaw. During the Napoleonic wars Zamosc was severed from Austria, out of Krakaw its own Duchy was formed, first incorporated into Austria in 1846. The first week of October 1772, Galicia was put under the administration of a civil governor. The first governor was Earl Pergen. The Polish administrative districts were abolished and the area was divided into 18 kreises with a Kreis administrator at the head. The former royal domains crossed over into imperial occupation. The Polish judiciary was turned out and a new legal procedure was introduced. From 1772 to 1780 no fewer than 10 military censuses were planne in Galicia. The first census was happened immediately in 1772. At that time Galicia had approximately 2,600,000 inhabitants, 280 cities and markets, 5,467 villages, 700 bishoprics, Jews were counted as 224,981. There were 95,000 noblemen, therefore about 1/28 of the total population were nobles (about 3 ½%). There were almost 19,000 titled families. Noble living quarters were 6,450. The average inhabited place came to 12.30 sq. kilometer. Of un-free inhabitants there were 1,859,580, 71.57% of the total population. Of those according to Lucca) 89,824 were full-farmers with full management and with 2,239,858 souls, so that 84% of the un-free population remained which had only a little ground or no property at all (half-farmers, quarter-farmers, gardeners and house-holders or renters). Of the 367,207 farmer-families 79,920 occupied former royal lands, so the rest, 287,287 were on private lands of the nobles. There were 4,021 Catholic church, 244 synagogues, 218 cloisters, 363 castles, 6,450 noble houses, 15,751 Jewish homes, 11,599 inns, 121,019 town and rural houses, 321,659 simple farm huts; the latter were without stoves or chimneys (smoke houses). From 1773 to 1795 - 1131 fires were recorded. Kratter counts in his Letters about the present situation in Galicia" for 1776; 254 cities, 57 markets, 6395 villages, 486,081 houses, 501,302 Christian families, 35,881 Jewish families, 7944 religious, 28,168 noblemen, 724 officials. Compare 1780 against it; 261cities, 67 markets, 6429 villages, 503,326 houses, 17,382 Christian families, 36,302 Jewish families, for a total of 553,684 families, 7609 religious, 29,911 noblemen and 17,135 officials and dignitaries, 1066 Roman Catholic churches, 2,955 Greek Catholic churches. In 1776 there were, according to Kratter: 16,503 town and professional people, 100,230 farmers, 4406,450 householders, gardeners, and landless, 383,005 children 1-12 years, 98,856 teenagers, 2,436,596 Christians, 144,200 Jews. (DeLucca, "Geography of Austria, Bd. V, page 270, quotes for 1781): 43 tile burners, 16 servants, 17 plasterers, 188 painters, 113 stocking workers, 63 hat makers, 2 glove makers, 23 soap boilers, 19 plumbers, 23 dyers, 31 watchmakers, 8 bag makers, 7 sugar bakers, 2,800 smithies. In 1776 there were 5,117 mills, almost every place had a mill. Half of the land was used for meadows and grazing. In 1772 developed fields amounted to only 11.3% of the overall against 48.45% in 1872 at only three times the population density. The Austrian government on 22nd December 1772 determined these numbers (Brawers V): developed fields of 2,007,659 koretz (1 koretz = 1,056 square Klafter, 1 Klafter = 6 ft. ergo, 1 koretz = 38,016 sq., ft. or about .88 acre), of which 488,694 are winter fruit, 1,041,493 with summer fruit, fallow land of 547,471, gardens 268,777, meadows 769,746, pasturelands 78,148 Koretz. The livestock were: oxen 342,851, cows 649,819, calves 555,277, horses 296,658, sheep 538,685; poultry; geese 26,330; turkeys 136,810, guinea fowl 9,078. In addition to the foregoing farm lands are also manorial lands of 975,630 Koretz, fallow for 1 year 229,216 koretz, for 3 years 39,043 koretz. The following quantities of grain-types existed on March 30, 1772: wheat of 67,930 koretz, corn 55,134, barley 39,557, buckwheat 21,414, oats 60,586, peas 2,426, millet 1,534, hempseed 437, linseed 72, groats 106, lentils 6, malt 147 koretz. Haystacks or barns 117. All that in greater Galicia with Lublin and Zamosc. The forest culture was driven by ruinous exploitation, so that Turkish wood had to be imported to some extent. In 1772, the government forbad the export of grain. On the extensive pastures, no feed crops were grown. Clover was unfamiliar. Against that 1-1/2% of the total land was covered with fiber plants because the canvas industry had developed strongly, also raw flax was exported. According to Meyers, the quantity of rye amounted to 191 liters per inhabitant. This was too little for nutrition of the population, especially as a large part was used for production of brandy, and another part went to the Danzig market. The people made bread for themselves out of barley and oatmeal, wherefore the barley-cultivation prevailed. Livestock on the then 82,000 sq. km. large Galician area amount in 1772 to: 296,658 horses, 342,851 oxen, 649,819 cows, 555,277 calves, 538,685 sheep, 352,492 pigs. The meadows delivered 1,037,300 cartloads of hay. The livestock were badly cared for, did not have clean stalls and were underfed. The ground provides extraordinary fertility, yet because of the bad economy, famine often came into the land. Bredetzky judges: "What dear mother nature gave us without effort, was taken and used." There was in the land little industry, some few iron smithies and foundries. Hazuet remarked, in the only foundry in Smolna at Skole the German customs officer is the only director who understands his work force. The giant wealth of land from petroleum was hardly suspected, still in no way used. Only salt played a role in the economic activity of the population. The salt works in Wieliczka and Bochnia occupied 1,800 workers. Salt was exported to Danzig so that Poland had to import salt into its northern provinces. There was a salt boiling plant around Kalusz. There are some small glassworks. The only tobacco factory existed in Winniki at Lemberg. As of 1788 the K.K. tobacco Administration monopoly in Galicia was established; the government leased the factory to the Jew Moses Honig and Joseph Schreck. The Galician tobacco cultivation delivered about 40,000 hundredweight. In 1780 at Stanislau, Kolomea, the Czortkow new warehouses were erected. A big leather factory was founded at Busk, halfway between Lemberg and Brody by the German industrialist Friedrich Wilhelm Preschell. The tax production from the whole of Galicia had constituted in the Polish time 900,000 Polish gulders; under the incoming Austrian government it rose to quadruple, not without the important tightening of the tax screw. In 1796 the pay of day workers of Lemberg in the building time was at the following level: foreman bricklayers 45 kreuzers, journeymen 30, apprentices 20, master masons 17, laborers 15. People's education was low. There were few elementary schools, in the countryside none at all, in the cities only one because the Christian population in the cities was low and poor. In contrast there were more middle schools (Jesuits and Piarist (a member of the Roman Catholic teaching congregation) ) in which mainly the Latin language was taught. In Lemberg Kreis with approximately a half a million Christians there was in 1774 only 10 schoolmasters, of those 8 could read and write only Polish, while only 2 possessed an advanced education. Because of the great misery of the masses of the people and the bad housing and unsanitary living conditions, the health of the whole population was bad. Pestilences were continuous guests in he land. Syphilis, one of the results of war, an unhappy heritage of the Asian hordes in earlier centuries, could in our days in the eastern Carpathian lands still not be eliminated. Such also was the great alcoholism of the farmers, which, as shown above, was promoted by the aristocracy. The mortality point of the rural population lay between the 30th and 40th year of life. Note: 1 gulder/gulen = 60 kreutzers. 100 kreutzers = 1 florin + 40 kreutzers. |