Transcript:Schwenningen Great Emigration 1847

Schwenningen’s great emigration in the year 1847
As documented by newspapers
Schwenningen’s Daily News from 12 March (year?)
(roughly translated)

After the lowness of the general economical conditions in the second decade of the 19th century, a new throw-back into dearth and unemployment began in our area in the [eighteen] fifties burdening the people. Several successive economically unsuccessful years carried the danger of [hunger] into every house where up to now the necessary foods for the daily needs were produced by farming. In addition to this, the clock merchants in the industrial Black Forest made hardly any business away from home and they could only send small orders to the homeland. “ So the cup of misery is pretty full,” it is written in a contemporary report about the Black Forest, “the thought of how things are supposed to go on under these circumstances effects the hearts and minds depressively. Never have so many afflictions existed at the same time as presently. Whoever is in debt now and can not pay interest or make payments sees himself being ruined by forced sale of his possessions. Yet the proceeds are so low that even the creditor does not receive very much any more after the total costs have been deducted. The forced sales, which are spreading here everywhere like an epidemic and of which not even the most industrious citizen are spared, give way to the question of who will be left to keep up the community households.”

In the are of Baden, the misery reached such magnitude that Villingen and other cities [began] to buy from the grain storage of other cities and to establish soup kitchens for the families most in need. A distinct sign of the public danger of this situation of the famine is the accumulation of thefts and burglaries at mills and farms in the entire area.

On account of these circumstances it is understandable that everywhere the emigration to America is felt as a salvation from all evil, especially since letters from former emigrants arrive in the area in which is written that over there everybody has meat to eat every day and wears clothes fit for a count in Germany.

The emigration develops into a more serious character at the point where it is pursued by communities as an official measure to free themselves from the burden of the poor. One has heard of small amounts of assistance which were given to people who were playing with the thought of emigrating. But in April 1847 [came] the news from Schwenningen that the community wanted to ship the considerable number of 224 emigrants to America at the expense of the district! The “Schwarzwalder Wochenblatt” (“Weekly Schwarzwald Journal”), which is first to spread the extraordinary news, comments:

“Nowadays there is much talk about the emigration of the poor at the expense of the communities. The straitened circumstances of these times, the growing burden of [end page 1] the poor because of it, seem to make it understandable that the communities come to the desperate conclusion to spend and to borrow substantial capitals to shove the community members in need away to a foreign country. They state their bill in such a way that the interest of the borrowed capital is smaller than the continuous cost of living of the needy. However, from experience we know that the poorer population has more children and that the number of the poor is growing yearly and no reduction is in sight. It seems to be a mathematical advantage to take over the total transportation cost of the emigration. Such commendable logic seems to have stirred the district office of Schwenningen to take up a loan of 20,000 gulden to help, with the approval of the government, over 200 local poor people to get across the ocean. One asks oneself however, whether the people in question like the deliverance bestowed upon them. Of course, this question has to be answered with a “yes” because they say plainly it could become worse for them than it is now. Besides, the longing to be able to get out of this deplorable situation, the lust of the palate for the pots full of meat in America is aroused, and also especially the forgiveable sin of Eve to exchange the rags with cloths. But will the emigration be for their good in the long run? How will they fare when they go on land in New York equipped with only little means? 20,000 gulden are a big sacrifice in these times of need, but it is a miserable situation to reduce people, however poor, to money and consider them as passive capital which surely can only occur at our praised times. England transports its people to Botany-Bay, but they are criminals. They are taken care of in the new land and given work and wages. Our poor, however, have not been in conflict with the law, yet they are disposed of to a ship power and helplessly put on the shores of the other country. Therefore, the communities help take care. But they drive the poor into a dubious fate.”

A few days later, on the 26th of April 1847, the long trek of vehicles on which the emigrants of Schwenningen are loaded starts moving and takes its way via Villingen to the Kinzigtal (Kinsiz Valley).

The “Villingen Daily News” reports:

“Today we have seen the passing through of the seemingly endless caravan from Schwenningen through our city and have been witnesses of the fight with the pain which the fathers of families, mothers with infants, old and young people departed from relatives and friends staying behind, from homeland and all that was dear to them from their youth on, and said goodbye. No eye remained dry and tears came to our eyes too at the sight of this moving drama, and accusingly one asks time and again what wrong they have done that they can rightly be sent away like this and be exposed to an uncertain future.”

They were not the lat ones to endeavor from our homeland to the new world in these years. At the beginning of the fifties, after the unlucky attempt to bring about [end Page 2] the unification of Germany by means of an insurrection and with it the improvement of the prosperity, many Germans threw their faith in a political future of Germany overboard, the stream of emigration started anew and with increased numbers.

J. HENOLD, VILLINGEN