Welfare Measures for Soldiers' Wives and Children in the Old Prussian Army

Military history does not only encompass the substantive study of the composition and organization of the respective armed force, questions of tactics, training, uniforming, equipment and the study of military-historical events and individual biographies of military leaders; a comprehensive understanding of the military as an institution also includes engagement with its relationship to society as well as further social-historical questions, e.g. concerning the social reality of the soldier. This social reality of the soldier included (and includes) the living conditions of military personnel¹_.

Against the background of this task, the situation of soldiers' wives and children (of the ranks) in the old Prussian army shall be considered here; in particular, the (state) measures to improve the living conditions of this group — which in history was always threatened by material poverty — will be presented².

However, if one wishes to properly appreciate the range of the corresponding welfare measures, the numerically considerable share of the military in the total population must first be emphasized; only against the background of these figures does the great social challenge become clear that the large group of soldiers' wives and children represented for the old Prussian state and its materially constrained budget.

Characteristic of the reign of Frederick William I was a disproportionate growth of the army; thus it was increased from 39,947 (February 1713) to 81,034 men (June 1739)³. In March 1777 the old Prussian army already numbered 202,806 men. Belonging to the military, as a socially but also organizationally and legally self-contained group, were, besides the actual combatants, also the members of the subordinate staff, the servants of the officers and above all the soldiers' wives and children. The soldiers' wives and children — like the officers' servants — were subject to military jurisdiction. In relation to the total population, the military made up a significant proportion in 18th-century Prussia. According to Schmoller, Prussia in 1740 was the tenth largest state by area, the thirteenth by population, but the third or fourth by the strength of the standing army in Europe. Accordingly large was the number of soldiers' wives and children. Following Süßmilch, half of the garrisoned soldiers were married and to the 200,000 soldiers belonged 300,000 soldiers' wives and children. Küster reports that on average 500 children came to 1,000 soldiers and in 1776 the number of women remaining behind when troops marched out was estimated per infantry regiment and per cuirassier and dragoon regiment at 300 and per regiment at 500.

Formation         Jahr           Unteroffiziere               Feldscher*                  Spielleute                    Gemeine                        Kinder

Among the cavalry the circumstances were similar: the cuirassier regiment of Rochow (K 8, Ohlau etc.) in 1755 counted a total of 254 “soldiers' wives,” namely 163 present and 91 absent, furthermore 345 children, namely 224 present (116 sons and 108 daughters) and 121 absent (63 sons and 58 daughters).

According to Büsching⁴, in 1775 the Berlin garrison included besides 670 officers, 2,404 noncommissioned officers, 390 musicians, 325 members of the subordinate staff and 23,539 privates also 10,913 soldiers' wives with 13,572 children (!). The military was also numerous in other garrison towns:

In Halle, for example, the complete billeting status in 1738 comprised 2,383 men with 702 women and in 1748 2,604 men with 738 women. In 1795 Halle had 19,780 inhabitants, of which 2,699 were military; in 1801 there were 21,840 inhabitants including 2,942 military persons.

Neuruppin (total population: 3,500) at times housed 1,500 soldiers. In 1806 the garrison consisted of 2,180 men, of whom 837 were on active duty. 424 were married and had 704 children.

In Spandau in 1784 there lived 4,484 civilians and 2,206 military persons. Among the latter group were 416 women and 561 children. Two years later there were 4,605 civilians to 2,209 military persons, among them 391 women and 555 children.

Stettin, which had 12,740 inhabitants in 1740, received an increase of 4–5,000 people due to the military; Magdeburg with 19,580 inhabitants (1740) gained 5–6,000 people.

Due to this astonishingly high number of soldiers' wives and children the old Prussian state was confronted with social policy problems, for the maintenance, accommodation and further life course, especially of soldiers' children, could not be indifferent to it. The accommodation of soldier families was particularly problematic:

Since 1714 the infantry was garrisoned in the towns, the cavalry, initially located in the countryside, followed in 1721 with a preference for small country towns. The soldiers were billeted in civilian quarters, whereby especially the married noncommissioned officers and privates represented a severe burden for the billeting host. Both Frederick William I and Frederick the Great were aware of this, yet only after the Seven Years' War did one begin increasingly to barrack the married ranks. A royal directive of 12.09.1767 ordered the construction of barracks for the seven infantry regiments stationed in Berlin. The same was done in Spandau, Nauen, Prenzlau, Frankfurt an der Oder and Königsberg. Each barracks was to accommodate 240 men, according to Jany 48 married and 192 single. Before 1763 there were only isolated barracks, e.g. in Magdeburg, Neiße and Neuruppin. In 1774 the construction of a barracks for the infantry regiment von Wolffersdorff (No. 9) was approved in Hamm; the new barracks in Potsdam (1774) were to be built three stories high. In Potsdam there had been a barracks since 1753 for the life squadron of the regiment Gardes du Corps (K 13); the “Mounted Exercise Battery” received a barracks in 1773. Mente describes the artillery barracks in Breslau. The barracks financed from public funds were intended to relieve the citizen and created — albeit only limited — space for the “married” soldiers, but they were not necessarily popular with the soldiers and were sometimes poorly judged by contemporaries such as Berenhorst and Klöden. A side effect was that by barracking the soldiers they became easier to supervise.

Accommodation in civilian quarters was secured through a system of billeting and lodging payments. The former was the royal servis, i.e., the state compensation to the billeting host for the quartering and the associated in-kind burdens; it was paid only for the soldiers whom the host took in beyond the number assigned to him. For example, in the town of Burg the billeting payments amounted for a “married” sergeant/noncommissioned officer to 1 thaler, 4 groschen, for an unmarried sergeant/noncommissioned officer 18 groschen, for a “married” drummer/private 20 groschen and for an unmarried drummer/private 10 groschen. In 1767 these payments were reduced; from then on one received for a “married” man 12 groschen and for an unmarried man 8 groschen. The billeting payments were taken from the servis chest, which was financed from state funds, excise revenues and mainly from municipal taxes. In addition to the levies to the servis chest, the citizens also had to bear their share of billeting and in-kind burdens. Trade and agriculture also contributed to the servis chest through portion taxes. The soldiers' wives were “in billeting reckoned equal to their husbands,” but had “no special exemption for light, wood and beds,” they could only claim “shelter and sleeping place with their husbands” and did not receive the royal servis. “If they wash and eat,” they should “not become a burden to the host.”

If the citizen was financially able to do so, he could billet the assigned people out for payment of appropriate sums. These then received lodging payments, which increased their monthly wages. The pay was meager and the same for the unmarried and the “married” soldier. The latter, however, received ongoing or one-time allowances, which leads over to welfare in the form of monetary benefits.

According to Mente, soldiers' sons who were “obligate” to the regiment and generally entered their fathers' regiment as soon as they were strong enough were clothed from company funds; so-called “child allowances” were paid equally for sons and for daughters. According to Schnackenburg, the parents of 2,800 children received educational subsidies from the funds of the Potsdam Military Orphanage. Under General von Rohdich, the governor of Potsdam, the child allowances were increased from monthly 4 to 16 groschen; a measure that applied to the entire Potsdam inspection. Through these measures they tried to ease the financially precarious situation of married, often large-family soldiers. In addition to ongoing payments, one-time benefits to this group are also known, for instance a password order of 30.08.1783 stipulated that each squadron of the dragoon regiment Ansbach-Bayreuth (D V., Pasewalk etc.) should receive 6 thalers from the poor fund to distribute to “married” dragoons with many children. It was, however, emphatically noted as a precaution that this was not an obligation but a charity.

Some parole orders from the year 1751 likewise report such “grace monies”:

"A list shall be submitted the day after tomorrow to Count Haack of the wives and children who received money last year; in case the companies have departures, they can well bring another in their place who stays in the town, but above all no outsiders.

On 13.11.1751 it said: 'On the back of the women's list the departure is to be indicated whether they are married or have died, and also the amount that they received the year before. Children of 14 years and above get nothing, also the women who have remarried.'".

The “main poor fund” should “however be able to give a moderate aid.” Quarterly the military poor charged the Poor Directorate in Hamm with 236 thalers, 1 groschen and 6 pfennigs. Fundraising was always problematic. Above all the beggars troubled the town, a group among whom, according to reports of the magistrate, there were also military personnel. Therefore state assistance was demanded, citizens were forbidden to give beggars anything and a workhouse was requested, which was indeed established in 1801. The social problem of beggars, the infirm and the wretched was the other face of the gallant Rococo era, yet this burdened not only the old Prussian state but all and above all the ecclesiastical states. It was a typical phenomenon of an era that already conceived welfare as a public task but did not yet possess a sophisticated social assistance system. Christian activism, very much in the spirit of Pietism, stimulated social activities of state and civil forces in 18th-century Prussia: there was not yet state dominance in the social sphere; church and private engagement primarily supported the marginalized groups of society, but the basic structures of a state welfare system had already been created by Frederick William I. Pioneering and stylistically formative was and remained the military orphanage in Potsdam modelled on the Francke foundations in Halle.

In 1722 the construction of the Potsdam Military Orphanage began (completed 1724), an institution for the accommodation of soldiers' children (not only orphans!) with partial vocational school character. In 1725 a girls' house was built; in the years 1751–55 the construction of a new girls' house followed. In the period from 1724–86 this institution housed:

This significant creation of the Soldier King, devoted to the upbringing, care, feeding and training of soldiers' children, was financially autonomous, for since 1734 the revenues from the administration of the warehouse had been assigned to the Potsdam Military Orphanage; in 1739 the incomes of the gold- and silversmith manufactory in Berlin and of the alum works near Freienwalde followed, as well as the Jewish protection monies and the "tobacco differential."

Indirectly related to the welfare measures for soldiers' wives and children are employment-creation measures. Not only the foreign soldiers acted as Freiwächter⁵ in the economy, but also their wives and children. Employment measures, indeed compulsory work, were a state-ordained alternative to pauperization and, given the low wage levels, an indispensable necessity. Monthly allowances improved the financial situation of the “married,” such as the aforementioned “child allowances,” yet the standard of living remained modest, indeed poor. If the state could or would not further burden the budget by raising personnel costs, it still had to protect this large population group from complete impoverishment. It is characteristic of the Hohenzollerns that they closely linked these employment measures with the emerging (textile) economy and fully exploited the available labor potential of needy military dependents; in this way the developing agrarian state benefited and the public coffers were additionally relieved. A large part of the soldiers and their dependents worked as manufactory workers and day laborers; the women and children performed mainly auxiliary work in the textile industry. Their supplementary livelihood consisted primarily of the state-ordered spinning of wool. On 23.11.1751 a parole order addressed the soldiers' wives who had “recently” been granted grace-money, instructing them to spin wool. If they did not comply with this instruction, it was threatened that they would be stricken from the ration list.

On 03.09.1752 it was ordered that the regimental commanders should urge the soldiers, soldiers' wives and children to spin. In an ordre of 6.6.1763 to the commanders of the regiments stationed in Silesia it was stated that they should induce the soldiers' wives and children to fetch wool from the manufacturers for spinning. Otherwise the manufacturers were to offer spinning work to the company commanders; as a coercive measure the threat of withdrawing servis and bread monies also served here. Soon the barracks resembled real factories. In contemporary Prussia there were consequently many manufactories that employed countless military persons, especially state enterprises such as the warehouse and the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin. Hinze, however, also cites examples from Breslau, Frankfurt an der Oder and Stettin; Krüger gives further examples from Halle, Magdeburg and Silesia (Glatz). On the one hand, this supplied the important textile industry with necessary labor, on the other hand the state created appropriate employment opportunities for the necessary supplementary income of soldiers, soldiers' wives and children. Public welfare, self-help and state interest entered into a symbiosis here, although the widespread child labor, originating from England and Holland, was already criticized by contemporaries. This is likewise a state-sanctioned and promoted system.

Thus many children of the Potsdam Military Orphanage worked in the textile sector. The boys were apprenticed to masters after confirmation or assigned to individual wool and silk manufacturers. Girls worked in the Brabanter edge bobbin lace industry (from 1749 run by the protection-Jews Ephraim and Gumpertz), gold- and silver lace making, finishing factory, straw hat factory and in the so-called “rough sewing room.” In 1764 a gold- and silver wire drawing shop for 30 boys was established. Children from the Potsdam Military Orphanage also worked in the Berlin gold- and silver manufactory, likewise in the Spandau rifle factory (Splittgerber & Daum) and in the aforementioned Royal Porcelain Manufactory. In Neuruppin an industrial school was founded alongside the garrison school in 1780; in 1796 a bobbin lace school for soldiers' daughters was added, and in 1797 a wool finishing school. The spinning school in Frankfurt an der Oder even produced an annual net profit of 1,500–1,600 thalers. In 1802 General von Rüche! founded a work and industrial school in Potsdam. Fundamentally, self-help was to complement, if not replace, public support. According to Hinze, 200 pupils of the Potsdam Military Orphanage died annually due to overstrain, and 300–400 children were chronically ill. For this reason in 1779 four hundred boys were placed with farmers in the countryside. It should be noted, however, that child mortality at that time was generally very high, the general hygienic conditions are often described as very poor and medicine had not yet reached a satisfactory standard. For this reason both Frederick William I and his successors strove to raise the level of health care.

The state influenced the prices of staple foods, not least to keep the price level tolerable for the self-supplying soldiers. In the garrisons mixed commissions of military and local authorities had to agree monthly on price scales for bread, beer and meat⁶; they had to find a compromise between the purchasing power of the soldiers and the profit-seeking of the resident food producers, traders and merchants: "The tax shall, as grain and livestock are cheap and dear, be made higher or lower, also so arranged that the soldiers and citizens persist thereby, the citizens pay to His Majesty their burdens, and the soldiers should not have to pay more for bread, beer and meat than is fair and right." The military further supervised the offered food with regard to quality and quantity, since the provisioning of the garrison had to be secured. State grain magazines regulated the price of bread by a mechanism of buying and selling, prevented price collapse and inflation and catastrophic effects of poor harvest years. The military personnel also benefited from this.

Another aspect of state efforts for the large group of soldiers' wives and children were educational policy activities. The field preacher did not only hold catechism exams and devotionals with the privates but also with their wives. Although the field preacher's activity centered on pastoral services, especially the so-called ministerial acts, such as marriages, baptisms etc., youth instruction was also his métier. The establishment of regimental schools was customary; in setting up the soldiers' children's schools August Hermann Francke advised the Soldier King. Known among others are the regimental schools in Potsdam (garrison school, founded 1721, reorganized 1787), Berlin (regimental schools of the cuirassier regiment Gendarmes, K 10, and of the infantry regiment von Pfuhl, No. 46), Neuruppin (regimental school of the infantry regiment von Tschammer, No. 27, founded 1780), Treuenbrietzen (school of the standing grenadier battalion von Scholten, No. 1), Frankfurt an der Oder (regimental school of the infantry regiment Herzog Leopold von Braunschweig, No. 24), Spandau (regimental school of the infantry regiment Prinz Heinrich von Preußen, No. 35) and in Hamm (regimental school of the infantry regiment von Wolffersdorff, No. 9). In the Potsdam school 700 soldiers' children received instruction, in Hamm it was 80 children. The latter were taught by a schoolmaster who received from each company commander of the regiment a monthly 6 thalers for this. The field preacher of the infantry regiment Herzog Fr. Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Öls, No. 12, Stahr, cared for, besides the Junkers, also the soldiers' children in two regimental schools in Prenzlau. These were established in the barracks and numbered over 200 pupils. In his teaching office Stahr was assisted by two sextons. When General von Rohdich died in 1796, he bequeathed a substantial legacy to the garrison school of Potsdam in his will. The regimental schools were financed from various fees and levies. Ultimately, however, the school funds were too small and the school conditions unsatisfactory, which the field provost Kletschke sharply criticized in a memorandum on the state of the garrison and regimental schools of 10.02.1787. Frederick William II took this as an occasion to reform the military school system with the AKO of 09.02.1788 and 09.02.1797.

Provision for invalid soldiers was effected by transfer to a garrison unit or a country regiment, granting of the so-called “Gnadenthaler,” placement in subordinate positions with civil authorities (with the General Directorate, with the chambers, with the governments, with the postal administration, with the General Tobacco Administration, with the regie or as schoolmaster), as well as appointment as “instructor and colonist.” Furthermore there was the possibility of placement in the Invalids' House. There was no legally founded entitlement to provision in the event of invalidity; this was purely a matter of grace, whereby merits and need were the main criteria. Provision was also considered under the aspect of whether the needy person had a family to support. At regimental level precise invalid lists were kept, which also provided information about the marital status of the invalids and the number of any children, distinguished by sons and daughters. On 2.5.1747 the foundation stone for the construction of an Invalids' House in Berlin was laid, on 15.11.1748 the handover took place. This building, already planned by Frederick I, served to accommodate about 600 invalids. On 16.11.1748 Colonel von Retzow reported that the current number of invalids including the noncommissioned officers amounted to 522 men. Among these invalids were 216 married (the budget, however, provided for only 126 married). It is also known that at times soldiers' widows received from the king a small plot for house construction together with the necessary building materials as a gift. Finally, it should be reported that soldiers' sons were to be admitted into the trades free of charge and that the correspondence of soldiers' wives with their husbands serving in the field was exempt from postage fees.

Hinrichs highlights the “military social policy” of Frederick William I and emphasizes that from the day of his accession he strove to raise “the urban proletariat”⁷ morally and economically. Krüger disputes this. Indeed many surviving reports of the time are critical and describe the living situation of the “married” soldiers, soldiers' widows and orphans often in the darkest colors. Among the critics are civilians (Klöden) and military men (Berenhorst, Lossow); but there are also positive contemporary remarks⁸. Thus a ambiguous picture emerges for today's reader. After 1740 the living conditions of soldiers and their dependents deteriorated, due to inflationary economic processes. The low pay, still adequate under the Soldier King, was frozen while prices rose. With the constant increases of the army the number of soldiers' wives and children also grew. After 1763 foreign replacement was more emphasized; the foreign recruits partly brought wives and children into their new homeland, which the king welcomed for population-policy reasons. Furthermore, marriage certificates were issued more frequently: the aim was to stabilize the partly restless and insecure foreign contingent and to prevent desertions. Many company commanders thereby ignored the economic situation of the marriage candidates, which actually belonged to their duties. The Silesian wars had caused the number of invalids to grow disproportionately, among them many married soldiers now unfit for service. The ever-increasing number of those in need of assistance gradually became a social question and ultimately overwhelmed the fiscal means of the old Prussian state, particularly because after the seven-years struggle for existence the domestic economy was exhausted and its restoration was now the focus of the old king's governmental activity. If therefore the Prussia of that time proved insufficiently able to cope with the oppressive living conditions of the “military proletariat,” the efforts of the Hohenzollerns, the responsible military, authorities and institutions for the large group of soldiers' wives and children, as the above catalogue of measures shows, cannot be denied and Berenhorst's devastating judgment⁸ must be rejected; however, the practical results of Bismarckian social policy in the late 19th century were still a long way off.