The servants on the farms, the so-called Gesinde – farmhands and maids – usually came from the local community, sometimes from the neighborhood or family.
When the servants took up a new position, they usually brought a large chest or a wooden trunk with them. In it, they could store their laundry, work clothes, and a few other items, such as a hymn book. For the servants, work began early in life: even young children were, for example, tasked with herding geese.
The local job situation did not always allow people to stay in their home region and with their families.
This was also the case in Lippe: until the 1920s, many men from the Lippe region worked as migrant workers from spring to Christmas in brickworks in the Ruhr area and northwestern Germany, but also in the Netherlands, Denmark, Brandenburg, Saxony, and southern Germany.
Around 1910, about one-third of the male population of Lippe was employed as brickmakers. In summer, the population of many towns in Lippe therefore consisted mainly of elderly people, women, and children. All the work in the house and barn, fields, and garden had to be done by the brickmakers’ wives alone.
