Census in Germany

A national census in Germany (German: Volkszählung) was held every five years from 1875 to 1910. After the World Wars only a few full population censuses have been held, the last in 1987. The most recent census, though not a national census, was the 2011 European Union census.

Nuremberg in 1471 held a census, to be prepared in case of a siege. Brandenburg-Prussia in 1683 began to count its rural population. The first systematic population survey on the European continent was taken in 1719 in the Mark Brandenburg of the Kingdom of Prussia, in order to prepare the first general census of 1725.

In Habsburg ruled Austria, a population count had been introduced in 1754, but due to resistance by nobility and clerics, no full census was held after 1769. A century and many political changes later, census resumed in 1869, and were held also in 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910, in the same years as the German Empire census. Between the wars, census were held in 1920, 1923, 1934 and 1939, to be resumed in 1951 with a ten-year occurrence.

For 1806, a population of 24,241,000 for several Imperial Circles is quoted in the "Statistik des deutschen Reiches", even though the old Holy Roman Empire had fallen apart, and a new German Empire did not exist yet as a political entity. By 1821, the population within the newly founded German Confederation had grown to over 30 million.

When the German Confederation had been founded in 1815, some states had been anxious to prove they had a small population in order to contribute fewer soldiers to the Federal Army. On the other hand, when the first custom union between southern states were formed, they wanted to show they had a large population in order to claim a larger share of the custom revenue. The German Customs Union, the Zollverein, conducted population counts from 1834 to 1867, every three years on 3 December, in order to share its revenue among the member states accordingly. The date of 3 December was chosen as most people of the „Zollabrechnungsbevölkerung“, the custom accounting population, were expected to be at home then. The Eastern parts of Prussia remained outside of the Confederation for most of the time, but the whole of Prussia was part of the Zollverein. While most states joined the Zollverein sooner or later, the Austrian Empire never did until the German Confederation and the Zollverein broke up in the civil war of 1866. The Zollverein regrouped and held another census in 1867, but the census of 1870 was postponed due to the ongoing Franco-German War and the foundation of the German Empire.

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