The emergence of the industrial landscape of the Saarland, 1830-1900

• Applicant: Dr. Ludwig Linsmayer
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392523214

There is no other German federal state whose autonomy is so closely related to the process of industrialization like the Saarland. The shape of the federal state Saarland is not completely identical with the shape of the industrialized area, but the industrialization of the 19th century initiated the geographical and socio-cultural development of the country and was responsible for the formation of that political and cultural unity called Saargebiet/Saarland after the First World War.The enormous importance of industrialization for the political, economic and cultural history of the Saarland was the reason for choosing archival documents related to industrialization for a pilot scheme of digitalization. The pilot scheme of the federal archive of the Saarland aims to compile those files that are most important for national and international research on the emergence of the industrial landscape of the Saarland within a “virtual economical archive”. The basis of that archive which should be enlarged in the future is formed by the inventories below related to coal mining:Bergwerksdirektion SaarbrückenBergamt Saarbrücken, St. Ingbert, Mittelbexbach I and II, FrankenholzThe initial limitation to these inventories is due to the utmost importance of coal mining that was the key industry for the economic development of the region and made industrialization possible. But the industrialization of the Saarland was not limited to coal mining and the iron and steel industry. The region also saw the development of glass and ceramic industries or mechanical engineering. Finally, industrialization included the complete rearrangement of the material and socio-cultural living conditions of the population as shown in demography, transport, infrastructure, working conditions, social policies or societies and associations. In order to grasp all these aspects of industrialization two further inventories were chosen for partial digitalization:Landratsamt St. Ingbert and Landratsamt Saarbrücken.The complete amount of the files to be digitalized adds up to nearly 1.300 which corresponds to about 35 serial meters.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)