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In 1940, almost two years into World War II, the book, Agrarverfassung und Bevolkerung in Litauen und Weisrussland (“Agrarian constitution and population in Lithuania and Belarus”), was published by Werner Conze, a young German historian. The analysis of the data led Conze to detect a difference between West and East. The comparison emphasised the cultural divide between the Germans and the Slavs to the East by postulating smaller family sizes throughout the western or German influenced part of historic Lithuania, and larger families with more complex structures throughout the Slavic parts of the country. Conze’s scientific insights remain present in today’s historical-demographic literature, and have become an essential building block of any argument in support of the validity and persistence of East-West differentials in family systems in East-Central Europe. Because of this study’s continued importance, it may prove useful to re-examine. Our critical assessment of some of Conze’s basic assumptions reveals serious shortcomings in his analysis, which resulted from making unwarranted inferences from non-representative and circumstantial evidence, and from his underlying motivation to search for German-Slavic differences. We will discuss the extent to which the pervading notion of East-West divide in historical East-Central Europe should be revised in response to these shortcomings. By uncovering the inadequacies of Conze’s contribution, we hope to pave the way for a better scientific understanding of familial characteristics of Eastern Europe, and to end the perpetuation of certain stereotypes of Slavic populations.

Historical family systems and the great European divide: the invention of the Slavic East