ABSTRACT
Long swings in Germany's urban development in the nineteenth century deserve attention not only because they add yet another case to the 'long swing' chapter of econometric history, but because the interaction of population change and housing investment emphasised by such swings is so central to our understanding of German urbanisation. The objects of the 'housing question' were mainly working-class dwellings and their potential working-class inhabitants. Its subjects, that is, those who asked the often rhetorical questions and supplied the answers, can be divided into two general groups representing contrary positions which continually collided with one another. The main structural features of the 'housing question' are easily sketched. Massive migration into cities in the second half of the nineteenth century transformed the latter into production centres with large concentrations of working-class populations which had to be housed. Urban housing remained until 1914 a sector dominated by private profit expectations.
