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In ancient and medieval thought, there were many different ways of seeing the human lifespan (Curriculum vitae) and assessing its individual phases. From the 13th century on, a figure of thought came to the fore that interpreted the life cycle as an ascending and descending movement. The culmination, at which individuals come closest to the peak of perfection, is therefore reached in the middle of life. In 1540 Jörg Breu the Younger and Cornelis Anthonisz in Amsterdam brought out woodcuts [3. 26]; [2. 19] that visualized this concept in the form of a double set of steps: four…

1. Precursors Precursors of the census in European history were registers of inhabitants of a town or region. These sporadically date back to the High Middle Ages, and became more widespread from the Renaissance. The sovereign power had such registers made primarily for purposes of taxation (e.g. the English Poll Tax of 1377), and they generally confined themselves to listing taxable households (Population 1.4.). One exception in terms of completeness and precision was the Florentine Cadaster (Italian catasto) of 1427, which listed all people living in the city and terr…

1. Terminology Age distribution indicates the composition of a population according to age or the relationship of individual age groups to one another. It is the product of the complex interplay of several demographic factors, especially Fertility (which influences the proportion of infants and small children and, over the long term, also the proportion of higher age groups), age-specific mortality and life expectancy (which reflect the effect of disease and mortality risks in individual age group…

Remarriage (Matrimony) was very common in early modern Europe. A major reason was the high rate of mortality, which frequently confronted married women and men with the loss of their marriage partner, forcing them to decide whether to spend the rest of their lives as widows or widowers (Widow[er]) or to enter into wedlock once more. This decision was influenced by economic, social, and cultural factors, and not least by gender, and was accordingly complex. At the same time, though, we can identify relatively constant structures and functions of remarriage [4].One important functi…

1. Definition and theoryIn German-speaking Europe, seasonal labor as a legal and socio-scientific concept did not become common until the second half of the 19th century. It was associated with a change in the rural employment regime on the one hand and on the other with the increasing juridification of working conditions, the isolation of national labor markets, and the control of trans-national occupational migration. The intensification of agricultural production, especially on the large estates…

1. DefinitionRetirement is both a phase in the  curriculum vitae following retreat from gainful employment and a lifestyle characterized less by age-related limitations than by a spectrum of activities unrelated to earning a living. The concept of retirement emerged in a variety of historical contexts in early modern Europe, with terminology that varied from language to language. English  retirement is attested from the mid-17th century onwards with both a social and a spatial meaning: retirement from a profession as well as retirement from the city to the countryside [4. 141].…

1. Discussion and practices 1.1. TerminologyUntil the late 18th century, the German term  Bevölkerung (population) was used in the sense of “populating,” increasing the population. Krünitz’s  Oeconomische Encyclopädie (1788) still used it as the opposite of  Entvölkerung (depopulation)[1]. The term did not take on its modern meaning until the dawn of the 19th century. In the first volume of the Grimms’  Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854), the verb bevölkern appears in the traditional sense, but the substantive  Bevölkerung is now defined as  Einwohnerschaft (inhabitants; pop…

1. Definition and scholarshipIn the political and economic thought of the early modern period, especially the 17th and 18th centuries, Romance and English terms such as  population and  popolazione played a major role. They denoted both the number of inhabitants of a territory and their increase. In German,  Population was used synonymously with  Peuplierung ( Impopulation) (Plantation [population]) until the mid-18th century, in the sense of population increase; only later did it come to mean the absolute size of a population as well. Originally, German  Population or  Peu…

1. ConceptThe term marital consent (German Ehekonsens) had a twofold meaning in the early modern matrimonial law of the Holy Roman Empire. Firstly, in matrimonial canon law it denoted the agreement or declaration of intent on the part of a man and woman to enter into a marriage  (Marriage, contraction of). Secondly, in many German territories – particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries – it denoted the permission to wed or recognition of a marriage that was granted by the sovereign power and local a…

1. DefinitionThe term life interest denotes a social arrangement in certain early modern European rural societies that tied the transfer of property – primarily peasant or smallholder real estate (Land ownership) – to social security for the owner conveying it. A life-interest contract, oral or written, guaranteed these benefits, which encumbered the transferred property. The life interest usually included provision of food and heat along with the right of residence on the property, which in the cas…

1. SurveyWidow’s funds were institutions for the support of widows (Widow[er]) and half-orphans of male functionaries employed by the church or the state – from the 16th century on, primarily Protestant clergy, from the 17th century on also civil servants and members of the military, that is, wage earners from the “the genteel and middle class,” whose survivors were assured not just of a bare existence but a livelihood appropriate to their station [1. 432]. As a rule, the remuneration of these occupational groups was not sufficient to allow them to save up eno…

The term rural laborer (or  agricultural laborer; French  ouvrier agricole, German Landarbeiter, Italian  lavoratore agricolo) emerged as a specific social category in the socio-political and social-scientific debates of the late 19th century [3]; [6]. It denotes members of a social group who earned their living exclusively or primarily by wage labor in agriculture, often throughout the year and their entire working life. Rural laborers were employed at short notice as day laborers or with weekly or monthly labor contracts; …

1. Social functionsProvisions for old age have two social functions. First, it means social security for people whose advanced age has left them partially or totally unable to survive and care for themselves. This includes safeguarding the material necessities of life by providing food, clothing, shelter, and money, but also personal services such as assistance, care, and support in illness and infirmity as well as emotional care. In early modern Europe, this function of old-age assistance became …

1. Definition and courseThe concept of the Demographic Transition is of central importance in the history of population. It serves to describe the long-term decline in both mortality and fertility, and the concomitant growth in population, seen in the various societies of Europe from the late 18th century. The essence of the concept can be summarized in two points [2. 2]. First, it depends on the assumption that, during the transition to modernity, every human society must go through three successive phases: (1) a stable equilibrium between mortality…

1. DefinitionThe term day laborer (Latin  mercenarius or operarius, German Tagelöhner or  Tagwerker , French journalier, homme/gens de journée, or manouvrier) does not denote a homogenous social group, but a spectrum of positions in the early modern world of work. Typically, day laborers display a range of characteristic common features: wage labor without contractual regulation, irregular employment with frequent change of employer, short-term working positions with a wide variety of actual work done, and an ab…

1. DefinitionIn medieval Christian thought, intellectual activity and gainful employment were incompatible. Selling “words and knowledge” [10. 211] was frowned upon, since knowledge (like time, in which tradesmen and money lenders speculated) belongs to God. It was only in the cities of the high and late Middle Ages that the view became widespread that jurists, physicians, teachers in schools and universities, and other intellectuals were engaged in intellectual work and deserved to be paid for it [9]. The increasing value attached to work since the late Middle Age…

1. Definition The conceptual field of “age” or “old age” – in contrast to a historical age (Latin  aetas,  aevum) [3. 270] – had two meanings in the early modern period. As the opposite of “young” or “youth,” it meant the whole of adulthood, but it could also be restricted to a later phase of life, denoted unequivocally by the term  old age (Latin  senectus) [3. 270]. Early modern German also spoke of Greisenalter (advanced old age) in contrast to Mannesalter or männliches Alter (“manhood, adulthood, man’s estate”) [4. 85].Josef Ehmer2. DemarcationThe demarcation of old a…

1. Terminology and state of researchThe term curriculum vitae means “course of life”, and corresponds to German  Lebenslauf, in use since the 18th century. In the 19th century it came to emphasize a description of the course of someone’s life [5] in the sense of a biographical narrative, but also in a formal structure for bureaucratic purposes. As early as the 18th century, Zedler’s  Universal-Lexicon insisted: “But for a completely useful description of someone’s life, I must know that person’s sex, when he was born, when he married, when and how many chi…

1. DefinitionThe term “demographic crisis” is used in three ways in historical population studies. In a first, very general sense, it denotes severe interruptions in the long-term growth of the European population consisting of declines or periods of stagnation. The term in this sense thus relates to the long-term cycles of demographic development. From such a perspective, it is possible to characterize the periods from the mid-14th to mid-15th centuries, and the 17th century, as demographic crises [14. 16]. That of the Late Middle Ages was heralded by the first wave o…

1. Terminology and originThe English, French, and German term pension (from Latin  pensio, “payment”) had several meanings in the early modern period. It meant primarily annual revenues, service payments, or salary, but it could also mean money for room and board or an institution offering food and shelter in return for payment [4]. From it we have the derivative  pensioner (French  pensionnaire, German  Pensionierer, Italian  pensionario) for a recipient of a pension or a boarder. During the early modern period, usage narrowed: initially to income receive…