I was sitting and reading over the history of my little village (roughly 4,000 people today)....just outside of Wiesbaden.
At some point around 1512, they hit some peak with eighteen families living in the valley. You can figure that probably amounted between forty and sixty people.
As 1600 rolled around....the Thirty Years War, the plague, and a fair amount of starvation occurred. Around 1640....the village was down to zero inhabitants.
Around 1644, with all the bad times ending....four families relocated back into the valley....reestablishing the existence of the village. Within a decade, they had near 88 people noted in the local community. Yes, it was totally deserted as a village, and then people started to drift back. Part of this story though....is that a fair number of migrants (from around Europe) were part of this repopulation effort. My wife's family connects back to Spain in the 1600s, and came in this period to the village.
The population 'boom'? It came after WW II and amounts to urbanization.....people wanting more a more quiet landscape compared to nearby Wiesbaden.
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