Siegen was better known for the quality of its iron than for the quantity . The high quality seems to have gone back to ancient times. A Welsh poem of the 12th century, written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, says that the home of the legendary Wieland the Smith of the times of Arthur was the "city" of Siegen. I put the word city in quotes because at the time it would have been a village.
There could not have been many large furnaces around Siegen, because of the limitation provided by the availability of charcoal. In all of the histories that I have read, it is implied that there were many furnaces and hammers. Then, of necessity, the furnaces must have been small. With limitations on the number of days that a furnace could run, and with the ownership in the furnaces split by the inheritances, no family could point to iron as a major part of their income. Of necessity, they had to adopt other occupations to provide the backbone of their income. Farming would have been a major activity.
In 1709, when so many Germans left their homes, the citizens around Siegen would have been subject to the same forces as the people in other regions. Iron did not provide a cushion; rather it was a small supplement which helped some people. And, again in 1713, there was no major change in the economic forces. Prospects in unknown America could have looked as bright as they did in Siegen.
B. C. Holtzclaw, in his writings, said that Nassau-Siegen was a prosperous country in the 1700's, with the iron industry as its backbone. If it had been a prosperous country, there would not have been so many people leaving in 1709. At a later time, I hope to explore conditions there in more depth.
Let's start looking at the political history of the region. There were Counts of Nassau centuries earlier, who, in 1266, divided the region they controlled between two brothers, Wolfram and Otto. Otto received the lands north and west of the Lahn River, and this included the region which eventually became known as Nassau-Siegen. Siegen was in the center of Otto's possessions.
Through advantageous marriage, the Ottonian Nassau gained control of large possessions, both in Germany and in the Netherlands. The Reformation was to have an enormous impact on the land. The religious leader who had a major influence was Huldreich Zwingli in Switzerland, who broke with the Roman Church in 1522. Other men who were strongly influenced by Zwingli were John Calvin and John Knox, who collectively contributed to Reformed thought. In the Palatinate, Frederick III established Heidelberg University as a center of religious thought that was especially friendly toward the Reformed group. The work spread to the Netherlands and came to the attention of the Nassau family. The Swiss-Rhineland religious-thought came to predominate in the areas controlled the Nassau family.
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