AEMI

PAUL-HEINZ PAUSEBACK
ing. He never got rich and advised his
younger brother better to stay at home.
When he became older he gave up digging
and worked as a schoolmaster; he
never returned to Schleswig-Holstein.
On the other hand there were many
men, especially from the North-Frisian
islands, who wished to return, but
were not allowed to come back, because
they left the country without permission
before they served their time in
the Prussian armed forces. Emigration
and compulsory military service were
connected closely, and not only because
young men between seventeen
and twenty-seven are the most mobile
part of any population (Pauseback, Aufbruch,
317-33). The first law that was
enacted in the new Prussian province
Schleswig-Holstein in October 1866,
regulated the new military service of
three years for every able 21 year old
man. Compulsory military service was
unusual in Schleswig-Holstein, so there
was a general dislike for it, intensified
by the common fear regarding the strict
discipline in the Prussian army. This
was especially the case in the northern
Danish speaking parts of the Duchy of
Schleswig where Prussian rule was principally
rejected, and among the inhabitants
of the North-Frisian islands, who
according to old privileges had been exempted
from military service in times of
peace. In times of war they served in the
fleet, for the men mostly were sailors.
So from the very start the Prussian
administration in Schleswig-Holstein
suspected that many young man left the
country only to avoid military service
and sought for ways to prevent that. But
few things can stop a young man from
emigrating, if he has set his mind to it.
105
In 1880 it was believed by the authorities
that the returning migrants gave
them a starting point to act. This has
to be seen in relationship with the Bancroft
treaty from February 22nd 1868
between the North German Federation
and the United States of America
regarding the citizenship of emigrants. 9
It said that an emigrant from the area
of the North German Federation, who
had become a citizen of the United
States after a continuous residence of
five years, will be treated as an American
citizen when he returns. If he should
stay longer than two years it would be
regarded as an abandonment of the U.S.
citizenship. This regulation became
necessary because German (Prussian)
citizenship ceased only after a ten years
continuous residence outside Germany.
So the Bancroft treaty was designed to
avoid dual citizenship, and to make
possible shorter visits up to two years,
regardless of whether the emigrant had
been a soldier or not.This treaty seems
to give the young men the chance to
leave the country before they became liable
to military service, i.e. before their
seventeenth birthday, and return after
five years as American citizens – and the
Prussian authorities could do nothing
against it.
In the 1870s not many emigrants
came back and those who did were not
really controlled. Looking back, the
head of a local district on the island Föhr
wrote in 1891 that many had thought
that it would always stay that way, but
when visitors arrived in greater numbers
at the end of the 1870s, things began
to change. The authorities registered the
influence they had on the population at
home, spreading stories of success from