Association of farmers

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The Federation of Farmers ( BDL or BdL ) was an interest organization for agriculture in the German Reich founded on February 18, 1893 , which was merged into the Reichslandbund in 1921 .

The inner board of the Association of Farmers around 1900, on the left Dr. Diederich Hahn, middle Conrad Frhr. v. Wangenheim , right Dr. Gustav Roesicke

organization

The federal government came into being in connection with the agricultural crisis of the early 1890s and the farmers' protests against the less protectionist agricultural policy of Chancellor Leo von Caprivi .

After the Reichstag was dissolved in 1878 because it did not want to accept Bismarck's Socialist Law , the Chancellor was able to rely on a much broader agrarian-conservative majority in the newly elected Reichstag and shout out to agriculture: “The state owes the same attention to agriculture as to industry; if the two do not go hand in hand, neither will be strong enough to help each other without the other. "

In 1882 German agriculture employed almost as many people as trade and industry combined; in 1895 it was behind industry by almost two million workers. Industry and banks were booming.

This is how agriculture felt after Bismarck's fall in 1890, with increasing rural exodus and at the same time rapidly falling grain prices, threatened by Bismarck's successor Leo von Caprivi, a Prussian general who was far removed from agriculture and who still boasted that he was “without a hand or a stalk”.

Caprivi's trade treaties, which he concluded with Russia and Austria and which were very beneficial for industry and trade, were viewed by agriculture as a threat to their viability.

Hans-Peter Ullmann calls it the type of pressure group that had never existed before in the German Empire. For the development of agricultural interest groups before it was founded, see Development of organized associations before the German farmers' association was founded .

The Association of Farmers was brought into being at a sensational founding meeting attended by ten thousand people in the halls of the Berlin Tivoli Brewery . Its members came from most of the Protestant areas of the empire. The strongholds were in northern and central Germany and especially in Prussia . Already in May 1893, only three months after the founding of the BDL, it was able to intervene in the upcoming Reichstag election campaign and on July 13, 1893 with the Economic Association under Wilhelm von Kardorff , Berthold von Ploetz and Diederich Hahn , 140 members, i.e. about one Third of Parliament, commit to its interests. The federal government was tightly and centrally organized. The approximately 30,000 local associations formed the basis of approximately 600 district departments, which in turn were combined into 250 constituency departments. above that stood the federal management in Berlin, for which more than 350 employees worked in the main administration alone.

As early as 1893, the BDL had 200,000 members, in 1913 there were as many as 330,000. Only one percent of them were large landowners, 26% were full farmers, 75% were small farmers and about two percent were rural artisans. The leading positions were, however, taken by the east Elbe landowners, including the Pomeranian landowner and national-conservative politician Conrad Freiherr von Wangenheim as chairman from 1898 to 1920 . The organization's course was also essentially geared towards its interests. The association was organized in a modern way and employed a number of mostly civil association officials. The founders of the federal government, with all the distance between them, expressly orientated themselves to the methods of the Social Democrats as the strongest mass movement at the time, as the appeal of the general tenant Ruprecht-Ransern made clear in December 1892: “ I propose nothing more and nothing less than that we go under the Social Democrats and seriously oppose the government (...) and let them feel our power (...) We have to stop complaining (...). We have to scream so that the whole country can hear it, we have to scream so that it can penetrate into the halls of parliament and the ministries - we have to scream that it can be heard up to the steps of the throne (...) But we have to, so that our screams do not go unnoticed again, act at the same time (...) We have to (...) pursue politics and interest politics; (...) because only by engaging in ruthless and unvarnished interest politics can the livelihoods of today's farmers be saved. “ Diederich Hahn , elected on June 21, 1897 by the Federal Committee of the BDL as economic and political director in the three-person executive committee, had a strong influence on the structure of the organization. The federal government had various of its own publication organs and employed special traveling speakers for agitation, who spoke in the villages especially during the less labor-intensive winter months. The federal government also had its own electoral department to coordinate the selection of its own candidates. During the election campaigns, the department ensured uniform propaganda. A special parliamentary office in the headquarters was responsible for looking after the parliamentarians close to the federal government. A number of subsidiary organizations, such as purchasing cooperatives, offered members economic advantages and ensured that membership numbers were stabilized. In 1913, there were more than 350 employees in the main administration and around 400 in other administrative offices in various regions.

Association ideology

The federal program contained many generalities and empty formulas to make the association interesting for the largest possible part of the rural population and to give the federal government the greatest possible scope for action. The demands can still be divided into five ideological cores.

  • The Federation of Farmers saw itself as a representative of the whole of agriculture, regardless of the size and ownership of the farms. He repeatedly invoked solidarity between large landowners in the East Elbe and small farmers in southern and western Germany regardless of their respective direction of production.
  • He propagated the view that the agricultural sector must have priority over all other branches of the economy, as it is irreplaceable for the common good. With this justification, subsidies were requested.
  • It presented itself as a conservative, monarchist, Christian, extremely nationalist, anti-social and anti-liberal organization. This was due on the one hand to the basic political convictions of the members of the federal executive board and on the other hand corresponded to the tactical calculation to offer themselves to the “state-supporting forces” as an alliance partner against the growing liberalism and social democracy of that time.
  • The federal government saw itself as the actual core of the middle class movement and propagated its unity around, quite successfully, to find allies for its demands within the middle class.
  • He was a representative of militant anti-Semitism . In doing so, he took up the hostility towards Jews that was latent in the country and filled it with new content.

Policy and goals

The aim of the federal government was to maintain the leading position of agriculture in business and politics. In one of the founding documents it says: “ German agriculture is the first and most important trade, the firmest pillar of the Reich and the individual states. Protecting and strengthening it is our first and most serious task, because the prosperity of all professions is secured through the flourishing and prospering of agriculture . "

Further goals of the federal government were the defense of the corner shops against large-scale department store chains, the safeguarding of the interests of the rural and small-town middle class, the clerks , the rural workers, the boatmen and fishermen and the small wine growers.

The central demands - referred to by the federal government as the " great means " - were:

  • the introduction of a state grain trading monopoly for foreign grain with guaranteed minimum prices (for domestically produced grain)
  • the introduction of a bimetallic currency : in addition to gold coins, there should be silver coins again . The federal government hoped that the associated inflationary effects would ease the burden on rural debtors
  • a stock exchange reform, especially with the aim of abolishing grain futures trading and product exchanges .

Then there were the so-called small funds. These included tightening disease controls on meat imports, the ban on yellowing margarine and other things. Finally, the focus was on the demand for an increase in protective tariffs. When this was successful in 1902, the BDL defended the Bülow tariffs.

An ideological framework was created around these objectives from various set pieces. In addition to emphasizing the unified interests of large and small property, the federal government was decidedly monarchical, anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic, with a populist color, nationalistic, anti-socialist and also an opponent of liberalism. The BDL was one of the most important anti-Semitic organizations of the 1890s. He took up the aversion to trading Jews widespread in rural society, who as "money lenders" were often creditors of the often highly indebted rural population, reformed these prejudices in a racist sense and intensified them.

Above all, anti-Semitism had a unifying function within the BDL: The leading forces within the federal government needed the support of the small farmers in order to be able to represent their interests as a mass movement. However, since the political and economic interests of the East Elbe large landowners differed greatly from those of the small farmers in Hesse, the common political anti-Semitism was an important factor that created unity. In its anti-Semitic agitation, the BDL was supported by activists from the anti-Semitic associations of German students and by anti-Semitic parliamentarians and party leaders.

One difference to other interest organizations was that the BDL not only tried to gain a hearing from governments, parties and parliaments, but also took action in the election campaigns and tried to get candidates who would meet the goals of the federal government. He succeeded in mobilizing a considerable part of the electorate in many Protestant rural constituencies. Nipperdey even describes the BDL as a great "voting machine."

To achieve this goal, the organization worked closely with the German Conservative Party . For this dignitary party, the federal government's ability to mobilize became increasingly important for the defense of the conservative positions in parliaments. However, the party thus became dependent on the BdL and has changed its character in this context. The old conservatism lost weight. The defense of the "throne and altar" became less important, while the commitment to higher income for the farmers became more important. In the event of conflicts between the federal government and the party, the BDL withdrew its support from the conservative candidates and at times successfully advocated anti-Semite parties. However, trying to act independently of the Conservative Party has not always worked. In the Reichstag elections of 1903, for example, the Federation's own candidates were drawn up, but only four of them were able to enter the Reichstag. After this failure, the Conservatives and the Bund were reconciled. This continued to exert considerable influence on the party.

Especially in areas where the conservatives were only weakly represented, such as in the province of Hanover , Hesse or the Palatinate , the federal government worked with the right wing of the National Liberals. After all, before the Reichstag election of 1907 , the federal government was able to swear around 60% of the National Liberal MPs to its program. In parts of the south-west German states, the federal government acted as a land or farmers' union politically independently.

During the Caprivi government in 1894, the BDL opposed the lowering of grain tariffs and advocated a protective tariff policy. However, it failed several times when attempting to achieve strict state regulation of the grain trade. The BDL was successful in other areas, such as the question of new railway tariffs, legislation on the production of margarine, sugar and brandy and other areas of interest. Politically, the federal government was in favor of maintaining three-class suffrage in Prussia. In 1909, it was not least the joint resistance of the conservatives and the BDL against the planned financial reform that led to the overthrow of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow .

The BDL had a very successful lobbying policy inside and outside parliament. Before the elections, the federal government questioned the various candidates and only supported those who had committed themselves in writing to the BDL's program. Contemporaries had already criticized this as an unconstitutional imperative mandate, but without this having had any consequences. The federal government was represented in the bourgeois parliamentary groups under the name of Economic Association . Up to 100 MPs were members of the BDL or were otherwise close to it in almost every legislative period. In the Prussian House of Representatives , he could always rely on about a third of the representatives. During the First World War , the BDL represented expansive war aims. At the beginning of the Weimar Republic , it merged with the German Land Association to form the German Reich Land Association (1921), which became part of the Reichsnährstand after 1933 .

literature

  • Wolfram Fischer: State administration and interest groups in the German Reich . In: Ders .: Economy and Society in the Age of Industrialization. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, ISBN 3-525-35951-9 , pp. 194-213.
  • Hannelore Horn: The struggle to build the Mittelland Canal. A political analysis of the role of an economic interest group in the Prussian Wilhelms II. Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne and Opladen 1964.
  • Werner Jochmann : Structure and function of German anti-Semitism 1878-1914 , In: Wolfgang Benz & Werner Bergmann (ed.): Prejudice and genocide. Development lines of anti-Semitism, Bonn 1997, pp. 177–218.
  • Otto von Kiesenwetter: 25 years of economic and political struggle. Historical representation of the Federation of Farmers . Berlin 1918.
  • Rüdiger von Treskow: From Café Milani to the Association of Farmers. The collecting movement of the Prussian large agrarians 1848–1893. In: Democracy in Germany. Opportunities and threats in the 19th and 20th centuries. Edited by Wolther von Kieseritzky and Klaus-Peter Sick, Munich 1999, pp. 50–70.
  • Elke Kimmel: Methods of anti-Semitic propaganda in World War I: The press of the Federation of Farmers. Metropol, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-932482-40-9 .
  • Thomas Nipperdey: German History 1866-1918. Vol. 2: Power state before democracy . Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44038-X , pp. 583-588.
  • Hans-Jürgen Puhle : The Federation of Farmers in the Wilhelminian Empire. Structure, ideology and political effectiveness of an interest group in the constitutional monarchy 1893–1914, In: On the sociological theory and analysis of the 19th century. Edited by W. Ruegg & O. Neuloh, Göttingen 1971, pp. 145–162.
    • dsb .: Agrarian interest policy and Prussian conservatism. A contribution to the analysis of nationalism in Germany using the example of the Federation of Farmers and the German Conservative Party . Verlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, Hannover 1967; 2. verb. Aufl. Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1975 ISBN 3878310617 (Diss. Phil. FU Berlin , June 10, 1965).
  • Cornelius Torp: The Challenge of Globalization. Economy and politics in Germany 1860-1914. Göttingen 2005.
  • Hans-Peter Ullmann : The German Empire 1871-1918 . Darmstadt 1997, p. 129.
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society vol. 3: From the German double revolution to the beginning of the First World War. 1849-1914. Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-406-57872-4 , pp. 855 f.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b v. Kiesenwetter, p. 14.
  2. ↑ a b c Hans-Peter Ullmann : The mobilization of agricultural interests: Founding and politics of the “Federation of Farmers” in interest groups in Germany (Edition Suhrkamp; Vol. 283: New historical library), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-518- 11283-X , p. 88 f.
  3. ↑ Puhle 1975, p. 34.
  4. ↑ Puhle 1975, p. 35; Torp, p. 196.
  5. ↑ cit. according to Fischer, interest groups, p. 200.
  6. ↑ cf. official history of the association from 1918 partly printed in: Gerhard A. Ritter (Hrsg.): Historisches Lesebuch 2: 1871-1914. Frankfurt 1967, pp. 162-165; Nipperdey, p. 584.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Hans-Peter Ullmann: The mobilization of agricultural interests: Founding and politics of the “Federation of Farmers” in interest groups in Germany (Edition Suhrkamp; Vol. 283: New historical library ), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3- 518-11283-X , p. 91 f.
  8. ↑ cit. after: Wilhelm Mommsen : German party programs. From March to the present . Munich, 1951, p. 28.
  9. ↑ Puhle 1971.
  10. ↑ For the context of these demands see Walter Pinner: The grain futures trading in Germany before and since the Reichsbörsengesetzgebung , Julius Springer Verlag 1914, p. 2 ff. ( Online at Archive.org ).
  11. ^ Nipperdey, p. 585.
  12. ↑ a b Nipperdey, p. 586.
  13. ↑ Nipperdey, p. 586 f.
  14. ^ Nipperdey, p. 587.