 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
There have been several land reforms in Germany , also known by the German term Bodenreform.
Due to technological, medical and agricultural advances, the population of Germany rapidly grew and urbanized in the 19th century. In the 1830s, land reforms began to be discussed in Europe by various influential social economists such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein.
An early proponent of land reform in Germany was Hermann Gossen with his 1854 book Die Entwicklung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fließenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln. The Austrian Theodor Hertzka published the utopian novel Freiland, ein soziales Zukunftsbild [1] (Freeland - A Social Anticipation) [2] in 1889, promoting emigration to the "empty" new world. In opposition to this, Franz Oppenheimer published Freiland in Deutschland (Freiland in Germany) in 1894, arguing for cooperative-based settlements in Germany. Both agreed that it was possible to overcome capitalism not through political conquest but by cooperative economic subversion which would naturally lead to social justice. [3] Although critical of their theories, Freiland can be seen in the tradition of Owenism and Fourierism, and it paralleled the opinions of Marx and Engels. It was also highly influential towards the founding document of Zionism, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), authored by Theodor Herzl in 1896. He also published a direct reply to Oppenheimer in his 1902 Altneuland (The Old New Land). In 1911 they were tasked with the creation of Merhavia by the Zionist Congress, which later became a successful Moshav and Kibbutz.
Inspired by the reform theories, the late 19th century also featured the parallel development of hundreds [4] of ideologically motivated [5] settlements which were sometimes funded cooperatively or by the government.
In 1886 the Prussian Settlement Commission was created in West Prussia and Posen motivated by racist beliefs to increase the Germanization of former Polish territories. [6] In 1914 there were 29,053 such settlements with 174,000 inhabitants, but only 7,089 of these were settlements of agriculture workers. [7]
In the early 20th century, the Commission oversaw developing administrative infrastructure for interior colonization in the German Reich such as centers of counseling, pension banks, cooperatives and private settlement companies like the Pommersche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft(1903) and Ostpreußische Landgesellschaft(1905). Dense city centers were untangled through the use of suburbs, allotment gardens and garden cities. Related publications were collected in the Archiv für innere Kolonisation [8] beginning in 1908.
At the beginning of the First World War, ideas originated for the accommodation of soldiers returning from war, such as settlements for war invalids, soldiers' homesteads[ clarification needed ] and peace-cities[ clarification needed ], as well as interior colonisation on a larger scale.[ clarification needed ] [9]
The Reichssiedlunggesetz ("Imperial Settlement Act") was passed in 1919. This law transformed around 16,172 ha (about 62 sq miles) of marshes and wasteland into 1,761 new settlements between 1919 and 1928. [10] To hasten the resettlement of refugees from Poland the Flüchtlingssiedlungsgesetz ("Refugee Settlement Act") was passed in 1923, leading to the relocation of about 2,500 refugees.
Although settlements had been discussed as means to relieve urban poverty since 1918, results were "sobering". [9] Only 26,343 new settlements were created between 1919 and 1928; and 21,602 of these were in Prussia. This meant that only 25% of the intended area (Landlieferungssoll) of 1,413,706 ha (about 5,500 sq miles) was achieved.
In 1931 three new laws were passed to create 100,000 new settlements. [11] But the cabinet was overturned in May 1932 due to accusations of "Settlement Bolshevism".
The land reforms in both East and West Germany had three main goals:
The communist Bodenreform in East Germany nationalised all private property exceeding an area of 100 hectares (247 acres), and redistributed it to publicly owned estates. [15]
Since 1990, after German reunification, some Junkers tried to regain their former estates through civil lawsuits, but the German courts have upheld the land reforms and rebuffed all claims for compensation. [16]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) p. 6
A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright, or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
Johann Silvio Gesell was a German-Argentine economist, merchant, and the founder of Freiwirtschaft, an economic model for market socialism. In 1900 he founded the magazine Geld-und Bodenreform, but it soon closed for financial reasons. During one of his stays in Argentina, where he lived in a vegetarian commune, Gesell started the magazine Der Physiokrat together with Georg Blumenthal. In 1914, it closed due to censorship.
Freiwirtschaft is an economic idea founded by Silvio Gesell in 1916. He called it Natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung. In 1932, a group of Swiss businessmen used his ideas to found the WIR Bank (WIR).
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.
South Prussia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1793 to 1807.
The emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign (1855–1881) of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.
The term serf, in the sense of an unfree peasant of tsarist Russia, meant an unfree person who, unlike a slave, historically could be sold only together with the land to which they were "attached". However, this stopped being a requirement by the 19th century, and serfs were practically indistinguishable from slaves. Contemporary legal documents, such as Russkaya Pravda, distinguished several degrees of feudal dependency of peasants. While another form of slavery in Russia, kholopstvo, was ended by Peter I in 1723, the serfdom was abolished only by Alexander II's emancipation reform of 1861; nevertheless, in times past, the state allowed peasants to sue for release from serfdom under certain conditions, and also took measures against abuses of landlord power.
Victor Aimé Huber was a German social reformer, travel writer and a literature historian.
Cotter, cottier, cottar, Kosatter or Kötter is the German or Scots term for a peasant farmer. Cotters occupied cottages and cultivated small land lots. The word cotter is often employed to translate the cotarius recorded in the Domesday Book, a social class whose exact status has been the subject of some discussion among historians, and is still a matter of doubt. According to Domesday, the cotarii were comparatively few, numbering fewer than seven thousand people. They were scattered unevenly throughout England, located principally in the counties of Southern England. They either cultivated a small plot of land or worked on the holdings of the villani. Like the villani, among whom they were frequently classed, their economic condition may be described as free in relation to everyone except their lord.
Courland Governorate, also known as the Province of Courland or Governorate of Kurland, and known from 1795 to 1796 as the Viceroyalty of Courland, was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) and one of the Baltic governorates of the Russian Empire. Its area roughly corresponded to parts of modern-day Latvia.
The Serfdom Patent of 1 November 1781 aimed to abolish aspects of the traditional serfdom system of the Habsburg monarchy through the establishment of basic civil liberties for the serfs.
Starostwo of Draheim or Drahim was a starostwo of the Polish kingdom from the 15th century, seated in Draheim. Pawned to Brandenburg-Prussia in 1657, it was directly incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia in 1772 as Amt Draheim and the Town of Tempelburg.
Sławniowice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Głuchołazy, within Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It is approximately 8 kilometres (5 mi) west of Głuchołazy, 17 km (11 mi) south of Nysa, and 60 km (37 mi) south-west of the regional capital Opole, on the border with the Czech Republic. Until 1742 it and the Czech village of Velké Kunětice were a single settlement; from 1996 to 2007 it was a border crossing point. Its population was 548 in 2011.
The Prussian Reform Movement was a series of constitutional, administrative, social, and economic reforms early in 19th-century Prussia. They are sometimes known as the Stein–Hardenberg Reforms, for Karl Freiherr vom Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg, their main initiators. German historians, such as Heinrich von Treitschke, saw the reforms as the first steps towards the unification of Germany and the foundation of the German Empire before the First World War.
Abolition of serfdom in Poland occurred over a period of time. At the end of 18th century a reform movement in Poland resulted in the Constitution of May 3, 1791 which took the peasantry under protection of state. Full abolishment of serfdom was enacted by the Proclamation of Połaniec on 7 May 1794, but it was also short-lived as Poland got partitioned by her neighbours in 1795, beginning first 12 years of Polish inexistence as an independent state (1795-1807) and later another 103 years (1815-1918). In the 19th century various reforms on Polish territories were taking place. Namely in all three of the Austrian partition, Prussian partition and the Russian partition. Serfdom was abolished in Prussia in 1807, in Austria in 1848, in Russia in 1861. Despite these facts 7 May 1794 remains the date serfdom was abolished in Poland.
East Elbia was an informal denotation for those parts of the German Reich until World War II that lay east of the river Elbe.
Serfdom has a long history that dates to ancient times.
State peasants were a special social estate (class) of peasantry in 18th–19th century Russia, the number of which in some periods reached half of the agricultural population. In contrast to private serfs, state peasants were considered personally free, although their freedom of movement was restricted.
The Frankish colonisation refers to the colonisation of regions in present-day Germany by the Franks from the 5th to the 8th centuries. It marked the end of the Migration Period in this region, because it resulted in the establishment of largely stable political and social systems.