Abstract

During the conflict between the Liberal-Protestant state and the Catholic Church, Germany introduced a system of registration of births, marriages, and deaths by public authorities. This replaced a system of data-gathering by churches which informed state authorities of the entries in their registers. The transition from church to state did not imply a secularization of registers. Moreover, civil registers were not combined systematically with other sources of information on the population; for instance, they played little role for the registers on residents, migrants, and travellers. This chapter argues that the profusion of registers theoretically allowed German states access to a great deal of information on individuals, although they rarely linked it. While registration thus always fell short of fulfilling expectations, it produced a tradition of informing the state about matters considered private in other countries which greatly increased the scope of planning population development.