page_title: Alteckendorf
section_title: The Alsatian agricultural world in crisis (1850-1950)
hierarchical_section_title: Alteckendorf / History / Alteckendorf during the 19th and 20th centuries / The Alsatian agricultural world in crisis (1850-1950)
caption_attribution_description: La famille Finitzer vers 1915. Photographie prise vers 1915 pour le père de famille Georges Finitzer (Alteckendorf, 1881-Alteckendorf, 1965), soldat du Deuxième Reich allemand sur le front russe. A droite, la mère du soldat Marie Catherine Burger (Kirrwiller, 1850- Bischwiller, 1942), est accompagnée de Marguerite Reinhardt (Alteckendorf, 1885- Alteckendorf, 1960) avec ses deux fils, Georges (Alteckendorf, 1909- Alteckendorf, 1984) et Michel.
context_page_description: Alteckendorf is a French commune in the Bas-Rhin department in the Grand Est region of northeastern France.
  The inhabitants of the commune are known as Alteckendorfois or Alteckendorfoises
context_section_description: The 1850s marked the beginning of a long crisis latent in the Alsatian agricultural world. According to geographer Etienne Juillard, the Alsatian countryside was not able to adapt to the industrial revolution and the urban explosion which followed. Agricultural and social structures inherited from 18th century prosperity were not able to modernize and compete with other French or European regions more responsive to the needs of the time. Alsatian rural areas then froze and remained characterized by the smallness of its farms, the smallness of its cultivated land, and a rural population attached to the land and its obsolete productive methods.
  This inability of rural Alsace to adapt to a new more competitive economic environment was accompanied by a rural exodus which continued until the end of the Second World War. Nevertheless, the Alsatian villages retained high population densities (between 75 and 150 people per square kilometre). While the neighbouring villages such Minversheim, Ettendorf, and Buswiller experienced a steady decline in population between 1831 and 1954, Alteckendorf was in a little better demographic situation. Until 1901 the population did not decrease at all but stabilised. The demographic crisis only occurred during the first fifty years of the 20th century. Between 1901 and 1954, the population dropped 23.28% from 786 inhabitants in 1901 to 603 in 1954. Even at the height of the exodus, however, Alteckendorf remained densely populated with 105 inhabitants per square kilometre.
  Another sign of this crisis in the Alsatian agricultural world was the departure of the rural population to the New World. This migration preoccupied the French royal and imperial authorities. Religious officials were charged with taking an inventory on these departures out of France. In 1856 there was a notice in the baptismal register that said that since 1828, for Alteckendorf, nearly a hundred people went to the Americas.
  During the 19th century the village community remained very homogeneous from a religious point of view. In 1861 734 people consisted of 725 Lutherans, 3 Catholics, and 6 dissidents. Five years later, in 1866, of 760 people surveyed, 748 were Protestants and the remaining 12 were sectarian. People counted as dissidents or sectarian were probably members of the Fröhlichianer religious movement, a new Anabaptist religion introduced in Alteckendorf by Sophie Abert, the daughter of the local Lutheran pastor from 1802 to 1841: Friedrich Christian Schneider.
  Philippe Auguste Kroh, a Lutheran pastor who served from 1855 to 1886, in one of his reports indicated that Alteckendorf was primarily an agricultural town. Few could properly be called poor; some relief funds are distributed to well-off people, the welfare office combines a portion of its revenue. Four cabarets in a commune of 760 souls do not promote morality nor economy among the youth.
caption: The Finitzer family of Alteckendorf circa 1915
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