Extreme Upper Silesian urbanisation: a case study of Katowice, 1875-1910

A rapid acceleration in the pace of the Upper Silesian industrialization within the last decades of the 19th century led to
the emergence of entirely new cities that quickly took up the role of administrative, business and commercial centres.
The aim of this research is to provide a new insight into a largely unexplored topic of the occupational structure evolution
of a newly emerging urban industrial centre with a close up study on the dynamics of urbanisation in its most accelerated
phase. The introduction of civil marriage registration in Prussia in the 1870s offers an interesting look into the forming
urban population. As opposed to census data, the emerging structures can be observed through a close up examination
of a particular group - newlyweds. The underlying assumption is that this very social group, motivated, active, and keen
to work, can be largely seen as the driving force of city's economy and as such sets the tone for its development in the
decades to come. With the combination of the unique historical circumstances and high-resolution civil registration data, I
hope to observe path dependent effects of initial conditions in the development of an utterly new urban centre. The
process would be illustrated with a case study of Katowice. This is an extreme example of the Silesian urbanisation
phenomenon, as within a few decades Katowice evolved from a barely existing town, receiving municipal rights in 1865,
to gaining a status of an independent city.