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The replies from the Upper Palatinate concerning the “survey” of the Bayerischer Verein für Volkskunst und Volkskunde, 1908/09

A total of 32 replies were received from the administrative district of the Upper Palatinate. Three formerly submitted letters for the Upper Palatinate belong today to Upper Bavaria, two to Lower Bavaria and one to Upper Franconia, since the towns changed their district association during the administrative reform of 1972. Over time, at least 38 letters disappeared from the holdings.

Who replied?

All answers marked by name were written by male authors, mainly local teachers, one of them was also a journalist. Further replies were supplied by four persons in holy orders, by a mayor and by a magistrate. Among the rest of them are a forester, a pharmacist and a factory owner. In the case of four letters, neither names nor other details have been preserved. The answers from the Upper Palatinate are mostly short: 85% of the responses are up to nine pages long, two replies consist of more than ten and two of more than 20 pages. With 41 pages, the longest contribution comes from Speinshart, today located in the district of Neustadt an der Waldnaab. This reply was published soon after its submission in the monthly publication of the Bayerischer Verein für Volkskunst und Volkskunde (Bavarian Society for Folk Art and Folklore, year 8, 1910, pp. 5–10 and pp. 18–24).

Population structure of the villages


In c.1900, two thirds of the villages had less than 500 inhabitants, not quite a fifth reached up to 1,000 while a good fifth had over 1,000 inhabitants. The statistics do not contain any data on social stratification. More than half of the towns and villages had an exclusively Catholic population, almost half of the towns and villages were predominantly Catholic with some Protestant inhabitants. Only the village Poppberg (municipality Birgland, district Amberg-Sulzbach) was mostly Protestant. There were also inhabitants of Jewish faith in four cities. However, the answers of the survey usually did not deal with differences in faith or confession. The map gives a first impression over the regional distribution of all places that originally had to be surveyed, as Torsten Gebhard described in his essay “Bemerkungen zur volkskundlichen Umfrage” (Remarks on the Folkloristic Survey, Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 1986/87,p. 9).

Selected collectibles from the “survey” of 1908/09

>> This collection concerns the “survey” of the Bayerischer Verein für Volkskunst und Volkskunde (Bavarian Society for Folk Art and Folklore) from the collection of the Institut für Volkskunde (Ethnological Institute).