ABSTRACT
The present contribution will be concerned primarily with the actual mechanism of population growth and its social and economic repercussions and will be based on official statistical series and local monograph studies. Regional differences, however, were already apparent in the initial period of growth in the second half of the eighteenth century. The endogenous explanation originated in the writings of German neo-Malthusians, such as Weinheld, who posited a positive correlation between population growth and nascent industrialisation. An endogenous rise in population could also have been initiated by an increase in the proportion of adults eventually marrying, which could have been a prime determinant of the crude reproduction rate (CRR). An explanation of the significant rise in German population in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries must therefore be sought in the operation of the other major demographic variable, namely mortality.
