Religion, Human Capital, and Economic Diversity in Nineteenth-Century Hesse-Cassel

We document the religious diversity of the German principality of Hesse-Cassel in the mid-nineteenth century. Over 63% of the villages and towns were majority Protestant, and 13% were majority Catholic. Only 23% of Hessian villages and towns, however, were home to Jews, who typically made up less than 10% of the inhabitants in these places. Still, we find that Jews made up 2.6% of the principality, a larger percentage than has been estimated for Germany as a whole at this time. Our maps show the principality’s extraordinary variety in the different principal Christian denominations, the Jewish population, and minority Christian enclaves. Protestant-majority communities were spread across most districts, as were communities with any Jews. Catholic-majority communities were clustered in two districts, while Christian minorities could only be found in Protestant-majority localities. Meaningful differences in the socioeconomic characteristics of communities existed, with majority-Protestant places a bit more urban than majority-Catholic ones and places with Jews the most urban. We document the occupations of the Jewish population, finding many traders, consistent with the literature, but a surprisingly large number of farmers and fewer moneylenders than might be expected. Hessians were segregated to a large degree by religion, and this was related to various economic, social, and demographic outcomes.