They have thrived on a type of extensive, large-scale farming and a staple crop economy that would be neither profitable nor possible in the fertile, overcrowded valleys of the west. Rye, wheat, oats, barley, and potatoes, all hardy staples and all capable of mass production by relatively unskilled labor, were the crops best suited to the sandy soil, freezing winters, and short, hot summers east of the Elbe. They were also precisely the crops that are cultivated extensively, in large holdings, all over the world.
The geographical position of the region assured the Junkers of an abundant supply of cheap labor. From this status the peasants did not win legal emancipation until late in the nineteenth century. When they did, and began to drift westward into industrial employment, the absence of any natural frontiers facilitated the constant immigration of cheap Polish labor to replace them on the great estates.
Thus the Junkers, who from time immemorial based their claim to privilege on the grounds that they were necessary to guard the dikes against a Slavic infiltration of German soil, became the very instruments of that infiltration. All of these conditions played into the hands of an aristocracy that measured its wealth as well as its influence at court by the size of its landed property.
Even today estates of from to acres are common in the realm of the Junkers, and of the agricultural estates in the entire Reich larger than acres, lie east of the Elbe, for the most part in northern Brandenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia. Size, of course, is no indication of prosperity, either for the owners and managers of the estates or for the region in which they are found.
If anything, it is probably the reverse: witness the fact that East Elbian Germany has suffered more acutely from the recent agricultural depression than any other part of Germany. Figures published by the German Central Agricultural Bank for show that the farms of this region, both medium and large, were twice as heavily indebted as those in the west.
The whole history of the region during the past half century, and especially since the First World War, is one of desperate, though futile, efforts to bolster up the rickety economic structure that had once been the principal asset of the Junkers and had now become their principal liability. Whereas Frederick the Great had protected, and increased, their estates as a means of ensuring himself of their services as generals and ministers of state, they now used their political and military offices as a means of preserving their estates.
Ends and means became hopelessly confused as they struggled behind the scenes in the Weimar Government and in the Reichswehr to save their economic skins.
Some of the estates were efficient and prosperous. But in general their size meant a steady aggrandizement at the expense of small farmers forced to sell out for lack of capital, a steady influx of Polish labor to take their places, and no real prosperity or independence for either.
Nothing demonstrates both the survival and the anachronism of the Junkers so well as the economic policies of which they have been conspicuous supporters and beneficiaries.
The entailment of estates, which was abolished in the United States soon after the Revolution and in most of western Germany by the code Napoleon, still persists in East E1- bian Germany to this very day. Not only does it persist, but it has recently been given a new lease on life by hypocritical Nazi legislation purporting to abolish it. The practice of entailing estates, that is, settling them inalienably on a man and his heirs, stems straight from the middle ages.
Frederick the Great made extensive use of it to create new Junker ministers for his government and generals for his army. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though voices were repeatedly raised and laws proposed against it, the practice continued and the entailed estates Fideikommisse of Eastern Germany actually increased, both in number and in total acreage.
In there were 2, in the Reich, most of them east of the Elbe, comprising a total area of over eight million acres. The next year a law went into effect which prohibited the creation of new entailed estates and in the Nazis promulgated their own hereditary freehold law Reichserbhofgesetz which was supposed finally to supersede them.
That it did not is proved by the facts that in there were still Fideikommisse with a total area of 3,, acres in existence and that the Nazis found it expedient in that year to pass a new edict expressly providing for their dissolution. Even this contained Junker loopholes. In the second place, the law dissolving the Fideikommisse discreetly provided that in exceptional cases estates larger than acres could also qualify as Erbhofet With the Junkers legally entitled to qualify their estates, somewhat larger than acres though they may be, as Erbhofe, it is scarcely necessary to look elsewhere for evidence of the survival of their influence.
The point stands out more glaringly in the light of what the sponsors of the new hereditary freehold law had to say of the Fideikommisse.
If the Reichserbhofgesetz is not a new lease on life for the Junkers, it is at very least no barrier to the continuation of their existence. More than that, it spreads their social influence more widely than ever by creating a legion of little Junkers in their own image.
About , of these had made the grade by , and it seems reasonable to assume that they will be no more progressive in politics and social outlook than the original models, whose manners they copy. The history of the German tariff on agricultural imports need not detain us long. It is comparable, in many respects, to our own. When, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Russian, Argentine, Australian, Canadian, and especially American grain began to invade Europe, the Junker grain producers allied themselves with the big industrialists of the Ruhr and turned to protectionism to save their domestic market.
A German farm bloc Bund der Landtvirte was formed under Junker leadership, and in the combined pressure of the two forces, Eisen und Roggen iron and rye forced Bismarck, himself a Junker, to institute an agricultural tariff.
All of the stock protectionist arguments were brought out, including military necessity, defense of the German wage scale and standard of living, maintenance of the rural population, et cetera, but as the tariffs rose, the prosperity of Eastern Germany declined. At the same time the full impact of the industrial revolution made itself felt in a prolonged flight from the land.
From to , while the total population of the Reich increased from 45,, to 65,,, the agricultural population declined from 15,, to 13,,, or from In this nation-wide decline of the agricultural population the share of East Elbian Germany was disproportionately high.
Hundreds of thousands of small peasant farmers migrated into the industrial centers of the west and thence, in a not much smaller stream, overseas, until the population density of the region, as we have already observed, sank well below that of the rest of the Reich.
In comparison with these figures the 74, new families that had been settled on the land 56, east of the Elbe up to were a handful of pebbles thrown in a mill race. The agricultural tariff, itself a symptom, was no remedy for these other effects of the industrial revolution.
None of them left the land. Every vacated peasant holding meant an annex to one of their estates. An inexhaustible supply of cheap Polish labor stood ready to hand, and their Pan-German scruples did not deter them from using it. They simply sat tight and let the winds blow, winds which brought no general good and much harm to East Elbian Germany but no immediate harm to them. For the time being the tariff sheltered them.
But not for long. Instead of taking advantage of the breathing spell to reorganize and modernize the economy of their region, they merely consolidated and tended their estates.
The tariff did not stop the flight from the land. It did not make Germany self-sufficient in foodstuffs. It did not promote the general prosperity of Eastern Germany. But it did help the Junkers to survive a few years longer.
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