“Poverty is rife all over the Upper Inn Valley, and this only increases every year from spring to autumn. It will hardly be possible for some men to feed a large family. Because of this,they seek to send the children who cannot be of help to them on the farm – namely the children aged nine to fifteen- abroad for herding.”
The temporary removal of children from their own homes is one of the saddest chapters in Tyrolean history. Many 19th century families in the Upper Inn Valley and the Vinschgau were unable to feed their children with the proceeds of their work on the farms.
In these areas of the Tyrol, there was the so-called Realteilung, an Inheritance Property Division.
The inherited agicultural property was divided equally amongst the children. As a result, over the generations the area of the property grew smaller and smaller until the property was so small that the owners were unable to feed themselves and their families. At the same time, however, this type of inheritance meant that many children were born. Each one of these was an “owner” and therefore able to obtain a marriage license to form their own family.
In addition, the areas of the Upper Inn valley and the Vinschgau were prone to having very poor land– with poor soils and little rainfall.
For a long time, it was also possible for the people living there to sell their home industry products, crops and mine yields. However, from the 19th century onwards, this became increasingly difficult as factory production became cheaper, mines became unprofitable or it simply became too expensive to transport products from areas of Europe with poor road networks.
A potential solution was therefore to “rent out” many children for labour.
© 2010 MIH. With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union
Presentation
Starting in the late 17th Century, the so-called Schwabenkinder (Swabian children) emigrated to the southern German regions around Lake Constance and the Allgäu, where they found work on the region’s rich farms. This seasonal migration was at its peak in the 19th century, when thousands of boys and girls emigrated from March to November into Swabia.