Eugen von Philippovich, Die staatlich unterstützte Auswanderung im Grossherzogtum Baden (1892)

Eugen von Philippovich’s journal article reconstructs Baden’s subsidized emigration policy from official administrative records. Its central question is why a government that opposed encouraging departures in 1842 came to finance them at the end of the decade. Moving from ministerial debates to detailed settlement histories, emigrant reports, and subsequent policy changes, Philippovich interprets assisted emigration as a response to a crisis of subsistence and governance. The eventual retreat from this policy marks a recognition that constitutional and legal reform could not secure social order without attention to people’s material livelihoods.

Initially, Baden’s Interior Ministry argued that population growth was moderate and workers could find employment locally. Parliamentary advocates, by contrast, sought organized emigration that would preserve German nationality overseas. A memorandum of 1847, which Philippovich attributes probably rather than certainly to Nebenius, connected rising departures with population growth, subdivision of landed property, and threatened downward mobility. It proposed information services, consular protection, and potentially overseas settlement. Philippovich distinguishes these national aspirations from the pressures that actually brought the government to subsidize departures: mounting poor-relief expenditure, emergency food purchases, and policing costs.

Man betrachtete demnach die Unterstützung der Auswanderung als eine Art staatswirtschaftlicher Investition, die sich, wenn auch nur indirekt, doch auch wirtschaftlich bezahlt mache.

English translation: Accordingly, support for emigration was regarded as a kind of investment in the state’s economy which, even if only indirectly, would nevertheless also pay off economically.

This fiscal calculation converted emigration from a loss of useful inhabitants into an anticipated saving. In 1850, regional authorities recommended the departure of roughly 18,000 people from 351 communities. The Interior Ministry envisaged restoring a balance between population and available resources by selecting supposedly surplus inhabitants. Finance Minister Regenauer opposed the expense and denied that Baden was overpopulated, recommending stricter relief practices alongside agricultural and commercial improvements. Philippovich criticizes his moralizing one-sidedness but credits his insistence on domestic reform. The Interior Ministry’s mechanical solution, supported by vague population theory, secured only a fraction of its requested appropriation.

The settlement histories complicate the claim that impoverishment resulted simply from too many inhabitants. Philippovich examines inland “colonies” founded by landlords or small territorial authorities to supply labour and income. Their inhabitants generally lacked adequate land and depended on employment, grazing privileges, and paternal assistance. Legal emancipation dismantled these arrangements without necessarily creating an independent economic foundation:

Die Kolonisten wurden frei, wie alle anderen Bürger, wie ihr Grundherr selbst. Aber nun standen sie auch allein.

English translation: The colonists became free, like all other citizens, like their landlord himself. But now they also stood alone.

Freedom here exposes a gap between formal citizenship and effective subsistence. At Fabrik Nordrach, secularization, factory closure, and the state forestry administration’s enclosure and acquisition of land destroyed successive sources of livelihood. Disputes over relief responsibility then produced restrictive settlement and marriage policies, reinforcing dependence on the forestry authorities. At Rieneck, inadequate land and employment made begging and unauthorized wood gathering means of survival. Following years of unsuccessful proposals, subsidized departures in 1849–50 largely dissolved the community; organizing them required clothing, transport, assistance on arrival, and liquidation of indebted holdings.

Other cases establish that emigration was neither uniformly applied nor sufficient by itself. Langenwinkel combined selective departures with proposed agricultural improvements. Tollnayshof exposed the struggle to assign responsibility between a landlord, the state, and neighbouring communities: partial emigration improved its finances temporarily, but eventual dissolution required state purchases. Hohenwettersbach supplies the principal counterexample. Repeated emigration schemes failed over contributions and the landlord’s demand to be relieved of responsibility for those remaining. In 1863, a special law instead established an independent municipality, supported by land acquisition, a loan, and a state grant. Later population decline nevertheless suggested that its resources remained insufficient for all its inhabitants.

Das Problem war ja schließlich das, einem durch kein individuelles Verschulden, sondern durch die soziale Entwicklung ins Elend geratenen Teil der Bevölkerung wirtschaftlichen Erwerb und Nahrung zu verschaffen.

English translation: Ultimately, the problem was to provide employment and sustenance for a section of the population that had fallen into misery through no individual fault, but through social development.

This formulation is the article’s conceptual centre. Although Philippovich reproduces—and sometimes adopts—administrative language about moral deterioration, his historical explanation locates poverty in inherited property arrangements, insecure work, and institutional change. Reports of emigrants finding employment, accumulating savings, and enjoying good reputations challenge the assumption that their earlier offences revealed permanent personal defects. These favourable accounts, derived from letters and official reports, chiefly concern the early years; Philippovich also acknowledges that a precise total of state-assisted emigrants cannot be established.

The concluding policy history shifts from removing distressed inhabitants to improving the conditions under which they could remain.

Aber die Reinigungspolitik der früheren Jahre hörte in dem Maße auf, als man sich ernstlich mit den Fragen der inneren Wirtschaftspolitik beschäftigte.

English translation: But the policy of cleansing pursued in earlier years ceased to the extent that serious attention was given to questions of domestic economic policy.

Agricultural instruction, improved land arrangements, vocational schools, support for industries, and transport construction accompanied stricter relief administration. Direct state intervention in emigration ended in 1866, while municipal assistance remained supervised. An 1881 directive expressly rejected subsidies intended merely to discharge local poor-relief obligations when emigrants faced an insecure future. The article’s enduring relevance lies in this distinction between enabling viable livelihoods and exporting administrative burdens: its history shows how the social consequences of legal emancipation forced economic welfare into the centre of state responsibility.