oldenburg-l - Nachricht 1999-10 00009

[Gerd Cornelius <Cornelius5(a)...]

Hi,

Fred Rump schrieb:
> The book I recently mentioned speaks of travel to work in the
> Ziegelfabrikien in Holland were bricks were made and burned. Personally I've
> never heard of any bricklayer's treck.

Actually, there were bricklayer's trecks every season, mainly from the area of 
Lippe (they were called the "lippische Wanderziegler") to Holland and 
Ostfriesland. The workers started may be in April and came back to their 
families in autumn. This was almost the only way to provide the people with cash 
money - otherwise the poor families would have faced problems during the winter.



> Obviously there was always work to be
> found in the cities but that work was available year round and would not
> have led to seasonal employment. If someone went, he would have stayed and
> became more or less an immigrant rather than a seasonal worker or
> Hollandgänger.
>

The brick factories were not in the cities but in even small villages (there 
were almost no "cities" at all). It is true, that some of the brick workers 
stayed in Friesland and Ostfriesland, but most of them went back every fall.


BTW: Before the Wanderziegler there were harvest workers and peat diggers who 
went to Holland and Ostfriesland every year, but when the mechanization of 
agriculture started (harvest machines did the job then), there was no longer a 
chance to get money. The brickworkers were the descendants of the harvest and 
peat workers. The lippische Wanderziegler were rather famous probably because 
they were specialists and well-educated regarding their job. 

Regards,

Gerd


Sender: Cornelius5(a)...