This is one of my essays which lay out this odd phonenum of no census activity in Germany. So a brief history.
The first ever known episode of a census in Germany occurred in Nuremberg in 1471. This was strictly a local census and had one significant factor....they wanted to establish exactly how many locals existed in the Nuremberg region and how many folks (men) that they could depend upon, if there was a regional ''fight". One can be amused over the driving cause for this census but it was a legit reason and served the purpose of the local authority.
In the late 1600s....the Brandenburg region started a census which was to strictly determine how many people existed in the same region.
At some point in the mid-1700s....the Hapsburg Empire (Austria, to the south) tried to start a census, and quickly found that several groups were anti-census (oddly, the Catholic Church, and the regional royalty). For a brief dozen-year period, the census stumbled along and had hard resistance by the region. Then, enthusiasm just dried up and the census process stopped entirely for almost a hundred years.
As the Prussian confederation started up in the early part of the 1800s....they eventually turned to census efforts (1834) and were able to convince the local authorities that this would be in their best interest. Revenue sharing was the 'carrot' offered on the table to make this acceptable. Eventually by the end of the 1800s....the acceptance level had reached a point where it could be done every five years.
Then you come to 1915, where the war cancelled out the census effort in Prussia. Toward the beginning of 1917....the census returned but it wasn't exactly an accepted thing, and again....a 'carrot' was dangled (food-sharing was tied to the 1917 effort).
The census continued to work in the 1930s, although most people question the results and there is a suspicion that the data collected....because of Nazi goals, was 'fake'.
After the war (WW II), the US-Brit-French efforts to restart the census worked to some degree. There were census episodes occurring in 1950, 1956, 1961, and 1970....with marginal complaints.
As the census approached in the 1980s....the controlling authority expanded the questions and began to get public attention. Various questions were interpreted by the general public in West Germany as getting 'personal'. This got media attention and encouraged debate. So the process was stalled. The amusing side of this is that via public discussions and media attention, it was discussed that people ought to provide bogus answers to the census, or just shut the door to the census-takers.
So in 1983....the West German Constitutional Court finally got involved in the process. They actually stopped the whole census in its tracks, and conducted a review. What they basically said in the end was...questions would have to be re-written and 'watered-down'. The 1987 census was the result of the Constitutional Court involvement. It was the last real census conducted on German soil.
In a blunt way, the Court laid down the card that virtually all future census efforts would probably be dragged in and done only with their blessing.
Then we get to the 1991 census. It was the first one after the unification episode, bringing East and West Germany into one single nation.
Because of public negativity and the threat of court involvement, they made this odd decision. They would conduct a census but it would only be a sample of one-percent of the population. In a sense....it was a fake census but at least gave the government some numbers to work with....even if it was highly inaccurate and fake.
For the 2011 census? They gave up on the idea of a normal census. They collected data in various ways which meant as little involvement with the public as possible. One can laugh about this, but it was the only method left.
In the case of 2011....they could force home-owners and building-owners to comply with a questionnaire which came from a regional source. The Job-Center folks could collect data related to those employed. The social welfare operations could collect data related to welfare recipients. They went the route of avoiding the term census or having the census department invited into homes. Sampling would be the term to use.
The odds of a true census ever occurring in Germany ever again? Zero. It'll never happen.
Why so much resentment? The minute a stranger shows up in a German house and wants to stand there.....asking twenty-odd questions and it revolves around personal lifestyles, it hypes the typical German to get frustrated. Just asking if they are married, or having a gay-lifestyle, or if they are employed in a job for 40 hours a week....all get to the personal info level. I would suggest that one out of every three Germans has a serious problem in dealing with census-type questions..
The reliability of sampling? Most experts will say that it can be used but it'll have some faulty nature attached to it.
If a German mayor says his village has 1,288 people in it....how reliable is the data? Well, there is a German law which says that as you move into a home or apartment, you have to declare yourself at the local Rothaus (town-hall). It's a two-minute process to register you, your address, and your ID card. The computer system is built now into a national process where you get removed from the old location and put into the new location. So the mayor is probably 99-percent correct when he says the precise number. Homeless folks? They probably won't be listed.
Can you ask the German mayor....of the 1,288 people.....how many are married? Well....you can ask but he'll have no idea. Because of the lack of real census data....he can only guess via the sampling 'trick'.
That's the basic story to the German census efforts. This is the one culture that simply won't accept questions being asked of a personal nature.
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