Population registration has figured only peripherally in histories of state formation in modern Europe. Although the registries never fully shed their original security function, the emergence of the interventionist state transformed the personal data or information collected by the registries into a central element of state administrative power. However, the ways in which this information could be used by both the civilian administration and the police to govern individuals and populations were limited by the use of paper as a means of data storage and transmission and by the information processing technologies available at the time. Rather than viewing the population registries and, later, the National Registry (Volkskartei) primarily as instruments of the Holocaust, this article embeds them in a longer, alternative history, which explores the relationship between population registration, information, information processing, and state formation between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century.

人口登记仅在近代欧洲国家形成的历史中起作用。尽管注册管理机构从未完全摆脱其原始的安全功能，但干预主义国家的出现将注册管理机构收集的个人数据或信息转变为国家行政权力的核心要素。但是，由于使用纸张作为数据存储和传输的手段以及当时可用的信息处理技术，民政部门和警察可以使用此信息来管理个人和人口，这种方式受到了限制。与其将人口登记册以及后来的国家登记册（Volkskartei）主要视为大屠杀的工具，不如将其纳入更长的替代历史中，