Escape from the great confinement: the genealogy of a German workhouse.

Abstract

Early in 1588, the city council of Nuremberg commissioned a blue-ribbon panel of local notables to address the perennial local problem of street begging. Since the council’s centralization of almsgiving and poor relief in 1522, all public panhandling had been considered unnecessary as well as illegal. Yet despite over sixty years of mandates and ordinances threatening fines, imprisonment, or even banishment, the practice appeared to magistrates to be actually increasing in frequency and magnitude. Among the various suggestions offered by panel members, one stands out by reason of its remarkably precocious timing. Councilman Paulus Koler commiserated with his fellow city councilors on the plague of street beggars harassing and occasionally threatening the city’s residents. He considered all previous legislation useless, however, and could not foresee that simple rewording of the same would in any way alter the outcome. Even previous surveys of beggars in the city and its suburbs “had borne little fruit,” both because of the list compilers’ ineptitude and the council’s failure to make effective use of the information. Instead Koler made the following more radical proposal: “that the council ordain a special place (for which purpose the pesthouse might be renovated) . . . and therein appoint an industrious man (who might be chosen from among the alms officials) and have an ordinance written for him [entailing] how and under what conditions he should feed the arrested beggars and children and otherwise provide for the