Re: [Cz-L] Apropos religious marriage

Mimi,
  The statistics are difficult to follow but one thing is clear:
   Jews, far less than any other community , did not marry officially.
    They preferred the Rabbi to the registrar.
    And this in the freedom era of the Habsburgs, after the emancipation
    and Spring of Nations of 1848 in the most liberal regime in Europe.
     The Pravoslav, mostly rural population ,had a better record on
registration.
       Has this some meaning ?
Hardy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Taylor" <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>
To: "Peter R. Elbau" <peter_at_elbau.info>; "Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu"
<czernowitz-l_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Apropos religious marriage

I could not resist playing with the statistics provided by Peter.
Consider the implication:

Assume that the average lifespan in 1851was 55 years for all groups and that
all ages were equally represented in the population. Also assume that the
number of females and the number males was equal and that on the average
people married at the age of 20.
Then a group of 110 people would have included exactly one man and one woman
aged 20 who would have married in that year.

According to these assumptions there should have been 402 marriages among
the Roman and Greek Catholics. But there were 460 marriages. This could be
explained by widows and widowers marrying a second time.

Among Greek Orthodox there should have been 2861 marriages in 1851.
Actually there were 2537 marriages. We are led to assume that they either
married considerably later than at age 20, had a longer lifespan or that
many of them became monks and nuns.

Among the Protestants there should have been 66 marriages, but there were
only 63. Well, some people might have chosen not to get married.

Among Jews there should have been 133 marriages, but officially there were
8 (eight). Even though some couples might have decided to live "na viru"
(like in nature), it is hard to believe that 125 of 133 did so. Not in 1851!
They simply did not bother to register their rabbinical marriages officially
and their children were given their mothers' maiden names.
>From my father's school certificates I found that for many years he was
named Resch or Reisch, then at some point his name became Reifer.

Mimi

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Received on 2010-07-25 23:08:45