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Heinrich XVIII Prinz Reuss zu Köstritz

1847–1911

Born
14 May 1847, Leipzig
Country of birth
Kingdom of Saxony, today Germany
Died
15 Aug 1911, Schweinfurt
facts
7
sources
1
images and files
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Facts and their sources

Tap a fact to see where it comes from.

A life in time

  1. Born · Leipzig

    Birth, Leipzig

  2. Died · Schweinfurt

    Death, Schweinfurt

What was it like?

The world around Leipzig, 1847: who ruled, who else was alive, how people lived. This is general history, not a record about the family, and every item shows where it comes from.

Heinrich was born around the same time as Rudolf Christoph Eucken, Karl Ferdinand Braun, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Born around the same time

  • Rudolf Christoph Eucken

    1846 · (1846-1926) German philosopher

  • Karl Ferdinand Braun

    1850 · German physicist (1850–1918)

  • Robert Louis Stevenson

    1850 · Scottish novelist and poet (1850–1894)

  • Mihai Eminescu

    1850 · Romanian poet, novelist and journalist (1850-1889)

  • Otto Lilienthal

    1848 · German aviation pioneer (1848-1896)

  • W. G. Grace

    1848 · English amateur cricketer (1848-1915)

Fashion

Festive attire and heated ruffles

For feast days, women wore black cashmere or silk dresses with a white ruffle at the collar that was permanently set into waves using a heated iron.

Head-carried baskets with embroidered rings

Deliverers carried their goods in round white baskets called Mange on their heads, supported by embroidered cloth rings that served as both cushions and decorative accessories.

Music

Daily castle tower music in Königsberg

City tower musicians performed chorales daily from Königsberg's castle tower, such as 'Ich weiß mein Gott, daß all mein Tun' at 11 am and 'Nun ruhen alle Wälder' at 9 pm.

The noisy brummtopf folk instrument

The brummtopf was a peculiar noise-making instrument used by groups of young people during winter festivities; it was made of a small wooden barrel covered with calfskin and played by rubbing horsehair strands inserted into the skin with wet hands.

Getting around

Railways revolutionized travel speeds

The emergence of railways in the 1840s revolutionized travel, drastically reducing journey times compared to stagecoaches. For instance, the Cologne-Minden route, which previously took over 60 hours by coach, could be covered in 9 hours by train by 1847.

Around 1850–1860

Limitations of mail-coach travel

Before railways became dominant, mail-coaches reached speeds of 8 to 12.7 km/h, but their daily range was limited to around 100 kilometers due to frequent stops, meals, and border controls.

Daily life

Child labor and rudimentary schooling conditions

Children in rural areas were often tasked with labor, such as preparing and binding daily bundles of fuel for the household fire, a chore that frequently left their hands bleeding. Schooling was frequently held in the teacher's house, where the teacher was often a poorly paid local craftsman.

Homes heated by smoky, open hearths

Peasant homes often lacked chimneys, relying on open hearths that provided both light and heat while filling the living space with smoke. Small bundles of green pine brush, known as Kulelkes, were commonly used as fuel for these fires.

Food

Potatoes as the daily staple food

For many poor families, potatoes were the primary staple, often eaten two or three times a day, sometimes boiled in their skins without salt.

Daily wheat cake despite poverty

In some villages, even the poorest people ate wheat cake daily, fresh from the oven, which was criticized by doctors for supposedly damaging their digestion.

Prices and wages

Potato prices caused hunger and riots

In April 1847, the price of five pounds of potatoes rose to five silver groschen, which equaled half of a typical daily wage in Berlin.

Around 1852–1853

Survival budget for a rural family

In the early 1850s, a rural worker's family of five needed approximately 76 Thalers annually for basic survival. A typical male day laborer could earn about 8 Mariengroschen per day during peak harvest months.

Work

Common jobs in 19th-century Prussia

Common jobs included agricultural work, such as farm laborers and servants (Gesinde), as well as home-based textile work like weaving. Many also worked as day laborers in both rural and growing urban areas.

Hardship and low weaver wages

A weaver could earn 3.5 Gulden for completing 40 ells of fabric in 8 to 10 days, while a child spooling thread earned only 2 to 3 Kreuzer per spool. Families often slept on the floor without beds in huts where frost and rain penetrated the roof.

News and letters

Informal letter delivery and optical telegraphy

To send letters, people often relied on informal opportunities like acquaintances traveling to save money, as official postage was expensive and based on distance. For urgent official business, Prussia operated an optical semaphore telegraph line between Berlin and the Rhine from 1832 to 1849, which could transmit a signal across the entire line in minutes.

During their lifetime

  1. 1871

    The German Empire is proclaimed

    The German Empire was proclaimed in 1871, uniting various states under Kaiser Wilhelm I.

  2. 1873

    Economic crash triggers long crisis

    The Panic of 1873 began with a stock market crash, triggering a period of economic hardship known as the Great Depression.

  3. 1883

    First national health insurance introduced

    Germany became the first country to introduce a national social insurance system with the approval of a worker's health insurance plan.

  4. 1910

    Life expectancy rose to 47 years by 1910

    By 1910, advancements in medicine, hygiene, and infrastructure, such as improved water and sewage systems, increased the average life expectancy to 47 years, compared to 37 years in 1871.

Family

Parents

Spouses

Ancestors and children

Open the full tree

Four generations back to the right, the children to the left. The number beside a child counts the generations of descendants known after them.