Note 256-5 — Chapter III

It is estimated that Frederick William I. spent 5,000,000 thalers in establishing colonists. Up to 1728, 20,000 new families were received into Prussia alone. Stenzel, Preuss. Gesch. III, 412 ff. Frederick the Great endeavored above all to retain in the country the strangers who came there periodically. Thus, the harvesters of Vogtland, in the neighborhood of Magdeburg, and the Vogtland masons in the suburbs of the capital (1752). Compare v. Lamotte Abhandlungen, 1793, 160 ff. He is said to have settled 42,600 families, mostly foreigners, in 539 villas and hamlets. Besides, the population of Prussia, between 1823 and 1840, increased by 751,749 immigrants, without any positive favors shown them (Hoffmann, Kleine Schriften, 5 ff.), and the greater part of these were not very poor.