Hunsrück Farmers' Association
The Hunsrück Farmers' Association was an early regional interest group for smallholder agriculture in the Hunsrück . He had holdings from 1892 to 1920, was then merged under the same name with competing organizations and 1933 into line . Some of his local groups and the institutions he initiated still exist today.
founding
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen gave the cooperative idea a great boost in the 1850s. Independent developments in the agricultural sector were only made possible by the Prussian reforms at the beginning of the century. In 1882 the Rhenish Farmers' Association , a Catholic-dominated association mainly made up of smallholders, was founded. In 1889 the Catholic priest and later member of the Center, Friedrich Dasbach, founded the Trier Farmers' Association, which was naturally dominated by Catholics and was close to the center . In this situation of departure, the theology student Richard Oertel , from the well-known Hunsrück family of pastors, founded his father Georg Friedrich Hugo from 1883 to 1907 superintendent of the Simmern church district and director of the smithies , his grandfather was the pastor and writer WO von Horn (Friedrich Wilhelm Philipp Oertel), the Hunsrück Farmers' Association in 1892. The initiator was immediately elected chairman, an office that he retained until 1921 after his appointment as pastor in Neuerkirch (from 1896).
Organization and direction
Even the directors of the board consisted only of Protestant pastors, but one must bear in mind that at that time the peasantry on the Hunsrück was not yet able to represent their cause themselves; that was only to be taken over by a generation that was just growing up. A legal protection department, a tax and economic consultancy, purchasing cooperatives and agricultural central warehouses, where one could buy the necessities for the farm well and cheaply, were founded and organized in quick succession. To this end, numerous local associations were founded, for example as early as 1894 by pastor Albert Hackenberg in Hottenbach , who then further founded a Raiffeisen association (1896) and a dairy (1898) for his local association . The development was similar across the whole of the Hunsrück. Oertel was able to win over 5000 members for his association.
Politically, the farmer association and its leadership of the right-wing parties and the 1893 established in connection with the agricultural crisis of the early 1890s and by the standing big landowners dominated Federation of farmers close. But since the national conservatives could not get their candidate through, Oertel swung to the camp of the National Liberal Party , for which he sat in the Prussian House of Representatives from 1912 to 1918 as Hackenberg's successor . After the First World War he became a member of the German People's Party (DVP), for which he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly for constituency 21 (Koblenz-Trier) from January 1919 to June 1920 and a member of the first Weimar Parliament from June 1920 to May 1924 Republic was. Younger graduates of the Simmern Agricultural School , an agricultural winter school that Oertel had co-founded, opposed this and joined the conservative Association of Farmers.
After the First World War , in which the political differences appeared less important, Oertel's initiative led to the merger with the “Bundlers” and the newly added “Free Farmers” under the old name of the Hunsrück Farmers' Association. Oertel wanted to resign. The new board consisted only of farmers, including many former agricultural students. On Oertel's recommendation, the war-damaged farmer Wilhelm Hetzel from Fronhofen became chairman, and the second chairman of the "Bündner" Heinrich Weihrich from Nannhausen , on whose memories the article is largely based.
resolution
The end of 1933 it came to the DC circuit of all associations and institutions in agriculture Reich with its subdivisions to the local federation under a local peasant leader . The previous chairman of the association was appointed district farmer leader of the district of Simmern .
literature
- Andreas Nikolay: Pastor Richard Oertel (1860–1932) and the Hunsrück Farmers' Association. A socio-historical-biographical study ; Series of publications by the Hunsrück History Association, 32; Mengiffer: Hunsrück History Association, 2001; ISBN 3-9804416-9-5 ; also: Mainz, university dissertation, 2001
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Walter Göhl (Ed.): A farmer in the Hunsrück, memories and thoughts of the Hunsrück farmer Heinrich Weihrich ; Simmern, Pandion Verlag, 2000; P. 48–63: The struggle of the Hunsrück farmers for their political and economic independence (Hunsrück farmers 'association versus the farmers' union)