Study title

The contents of the present study at hand are data on the population of the territory of North Rhine-Westfalia and its government district, counties and urban counties, and the district-free cities as well for the period of the beginning of the official statistics in 1871 until to 1970 or 1980. The German Land North Rhine-Westfalia was founded in 1946. The particular value of this data compilation is the part of the data report for the North Rhine-Westphalian territory which includes the period of the German Empire and therefore the time period before the existence of this German Country. However, the counties and urban counties and communities of North Rhine-Westphalia exists already since the beginning of the 19th century and earlier (most of them since 1800), and have a history of about 200 years. Therefore, the use of historical documents and official historical statistics of these communities and counties allow the report of continuous and regional differentiated historical development of the North Rhine-Westphalian territory. The author Harald Klaudat used the historical demarcations of the counties and municipalities and their changes in the course of the history to develop an exact retrospective statistical history of population and workforce development for the period from 1871 until 1970 and partly until 1980. The author created with this comprehensive data manual the option of linking long historical time series with results of census data of the present. Due to the extensive area changes in the period of 120 years covered, the comments are of particular importance. Because of the considerable scope of the study description, the comments, above all on the changes to the territorial boundaries, are attached as downloadable PDF-document. An indication of additional studies: Further studies on the North Rhine-Westphalian population´s religious affiliation, Population in households by household size, and the population´s workforce by economical sectors...