Lebenslaufe, Familien, Hofe: Die Bauern und Heuerleute des Osnabruckischen Kirchspiels Belm in proto-industrieller Zeit, 1650-1860.

As the title indicates, this study traces life-courses, families, and farmsteads in a Northwest German township over the course of two centuries. Readers will notice the cross-fertilization of ideas, but also important contrasts, between Jurgen Schlumbohm and David Sabean, who spent nearly a decade as colleagues. In contrast to Sabean's Neckarhausen, characterized by partible inheritance, Belm's 3,000 strong inhabitants comprised a bipolar society resulting from indivisible inheritance patterns, divided between peasant proprietors (Bauern) and propertyless tenants (Heuerleute). Sustained by rigid class endogamy, about 100 large peasant holdings and a similar number of smaller farms persisted alongside a steadily increasing number of tenants who combined cottage industry with subsistence agriculture.

Schlumbohm's strategy of asking large questions in small places is reinforced by a masterful command of demographic and family history literature, both theoretical and empirical. Throughout the book, footnotes point up parallels and contrasts in peasant societies of the German-speaking world and throughout Western and Central Europe. Another principal strength of this book is its rich evidentiary base, including fewer colorful obscenities than Sabean's, but more hard demographic and social data (reflected in over 90 tables and 30 graphics). Family reconstruction evidence is creatively combined with census cross-sections to reveal not only the structure of this society, but also the social processes through which they were created and reproduced.

The demographic regime which Schlumbohm documents is one of "low pressure," with relatively low mortality for its time, a high marriage age, and long birth intervals resulting from nursing. That the population nevertheless tripled over six generations resulted above all from patterns of nearly universal marriage. The link between inheritance and reproduction, as postulated by population theorists such as Gerhard Mackenroth, was short-circuited by an ever-growing tenant class. This provides confirmation of the demographic consequences of cottage industry which Schlumbohm and his collaborators postulated in earlier work. But their original hypothesis is revised to the extent that peasant proprietors, not tenants, produced the most linen per capita or family. This, in turn, reflected life cycle patterns in which few tenant children remained at home after age 15, but rather served as servants or farmhands for peasant proprietors, where they were occupied with spinning and weaving in the off-season.

Ironically, Schlumbohm confirms both Peter Laslett and his critics, finding a low proportion of extended family households at any given time, but a relatively large number who at some time probably passed through this stage. Moreover, his family reconstruction reveals that reliance on family names in household lists alone leads to a huge under-enumeration of relatives among supplemental households members. In tracing demographic and household composition trends over time, Schlumbohm explodes both "modernization" theories of increasing individualism and 19th-century conservative idealization of peasant "Gemeinschaft" by the likes of Wilhelm Riehl and Frederic Le Play. For example, illegitimacy rates did peak near the end of the study around 10 percent, but rather than evidence of increasing individualism, this was merely a return to patterns of the late 17th century after a decline to below 2 percent illegitimacy in the mid 18th. Other evidence of "Gemeinschaft" is sought and largely found lacking: non-inheriting children rarely stayed as unmarried servants or married tenants on their home farm, servants were extremely mobile and even the average length of tenure of individual renters was short. Schlumbohm does find suggestions of "ritual kinship" in that tenants often chose as godparents the landowner or members of his family. However, tenant children seldom became servants or tenants of the proprietor from whom their parents rented. Rather than decreasing over time, parent-child successions as tenants increased, often combined with multigenerational households, reflecting the worsening economic situation of this class with the decline of cottage industry, but belying any increased individualism in the modern era. A final blow to any visions of a benevolent peasant patriarchate was a massive emigration after 1830 of the tenant class, which Schlumbohm sees as "voting with its feet" (p. 617) against prevailing conditions. But despite the social polarization, which might seem more characteristic of a modern class society than a traditional peasant society, Belm largely retained its peasant character notwithstanding the influence of cottage industry and the numerical preponderance of the propertyless. (p. 621)

While it is hard to imagine a 1.5 kilogram book suffering from omissions, nowhere does one learn how socially equal the parents of illegitimate children were. The frequency with which relationships were subsequently legitimized would seem to preclude tenants' daughters being victimized by their social superiors, and women as well as men of the peasant proprietor class refrained from marrying propertyless partners with whom they had a child. (pp. 423-4) Naming practices also suggest a comparatively strong position of women: when a man married into a farm, he took on its and his wife's name. But while issues of gender (in)equality emerge repeatedly, Schlumbohm affords them no separate, systematic treatment. When examined, religion in this confessionally mixed township proved to be of little consequence, but possible effects on landowner-tenant relations are ignored. The study seldom goes beyond the borders of Belm for its "anthropological" evidence. Legal disputes, though much less numerous than in Sabean's village, did leave enough archival traces to cast some revealing light, when contextualized with social-structural evidence, onto the inner workings of this society. However, had Schlumbohm cast a wider net in the Osnabruck region, he might better have captured the social values which explain behaviors he has so painstakingly reconstructed.

For a book of this complexity, it was extremely well produced. Despite its thematic organization there is very little repetition, but consistent cross references to other information on the same family or related topics. This is fortunate since the index is relatively sparse and does not include names. The book deserves an abridged English edition at very least. Although we remain largely in the dark regarding the peasants on the great estates east of the Elbe, this book, in conjunction with Sabean's study of Neckarhausen, provides an extremely revealing portrait of two of the three basic regional variants of German peasant society.

Walter D. Kamphoefner Texas A & M University