East Elbe
As Ostelbien were in the period before the Second World War, the territories east of the Elbe called, all the way to East Prussia . It was flat land that enabled large-scale estate management and on which agriculture was a dominant branch of the economy even after the start of the industrial revolution in Germany . Most of the landowners were nobles , Protestant and politically conservative .
The area designation was renewed by Max Weber around 1892 and is revived by James Hawes .
geography
The term Ostelbien did not have a strictly geographical meaning, but was meant more as a critical term and identification of the political and social conditions of a larger region. These conditions were also found in the Altmark west of the Elbe, for example . Eastern Elbe comprised the regions east of the Elbe, which were also Slavic settled before the 8th century and whose inhabitants were assimilated from around 1150 mainly by adopting the German language ( Germania Slavica ). At that time, the Elbe was considered to be the border river to the predominantly Slavic settlements on the east side of the Elbe. With the by Charlemagne associated Christian missionary work in the north and north-east of Germany, to various conflicts that from about 1147, in the oriented from west to east were turning crusade culminated. This crusade was part of the Second Crusade. Not only because of the religious denomination there were supra-regional disputes with Danes, with Ranen and also with the House of Griffins about the obligation to pay tribute.
Today's city of Havelberg can be seen as a central location in historical East Elbe, which due to its central location on the Elbe and Havel should not only have been a historical trading center across the waterways, but also because Otto I founded the Diocese of Brandenburg and the Diocese of Havelberg . (HRR) , also got a bishopric.
The states of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , Mecklenburg-Strelitz and parts of Anhalt as well as the Prussian areas of Mark Brandenburg , the regions of Altmark and Jerichower Land belonging to the province of Saxony and the areas between Elster and Elbe in the east, Pomerania , Posen , West Prussia and the Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia , Silesia and East Prussia, partly also Schleswig-Holstein .
Political and cultural imprint
Until 1945, what was known as the "East Elbian" region was shaped by agriculture , large estates , the predominantly Protestant denomination and political conservatism among the population. Berlin and the Hanseatic cities on the Baltic Sea as well as the early industrialized parts of Silesia were not counted as part of the “actual” East Elbe because of their urbanity. The term "Ostelbien" also refers to the German eastern settlement (Germania Slavica). Above all, the areas that have only belonged to Prussia / Germany since the three Polish partitions do not belong to East Elbia in the narrower sense, because they lacked the mark of linguistic assimilation. Even during the Prussian (-German) rule , ethnic Poles formed the majority of the population in them. The ethnic component between the ruler and the ruled was an essential prerequisite for the ethnic- nationalistic devaluation of Slavs , especially Poles, as " subhumans ".
The large landowners in this area carried the colloquial name Ostelbier or Junker and played a decisive role in everyday life. Often they also dominated the area politically and, as the former ruling elite of Prussia, helped determine large parts of all-German politics. In the more than 10,000 manor districts , which made up a significant part of the area of East Elbia and existed until the end of the 1920s, there were no municipal interest groups as in the other municipalities . The term "East Elbe Junker" referred to a certain class of noble landowners and was often used in the sense of "reactionary".
History of the territory designation
The term "Ostelbien" as a collective term for the areas east of the Elbe goes back historically to the time of Charlemagne , when this region was almost exclusively inhabited by Slavs. Until the early 19th century , it was not decisive for the choice of words whether or from when an area belonged to the Holy Roman Empire , but there are parallels of meaning and terminology with regard to the geographical concept of East Elbia, which is oriented towards one cardinal point. B. already have in the Saxon Ostmark and could roughly coincide geographically with the area of Eastern Elbe. With regard to so-called heathen areas , one cannot avoid the religious question of the time, which was shaped by the Roman Catholic Church; This is particularly not the case in northeast Germany.
The disappearance of "East Elbia"
There are various reasons for the disappearance of the structures that separated "East Elbe" from the parts of Germany southwest of the Elbe until 1945:
1. The transformation of the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) and later the GDR within the meaning of communism : It was soon in the Soviet Zone under the slogan: a "Junker land into farmers' hands!" Land reform carried out by the landowners their property lost. At the same time, as so-called “ class enemies ” , they lost all political influence. After a phase of cultivation of land by small farmers, agricultural production cooperatives took the place of agricultural goods . In the time of the GDR, as in all modern industrial countries, the agricultural sector lost more and more importance, also due to the fact that "East Elbian" regions were deliberately "post-industrialized", which was also necessary because of the separation from the industrial locations to the west. The Protestant Church lost its decisive role due to anti-church policies by the SED and increasing secularization , which continues to this day.
2. The establishment of the Oder-Neisse border in 1945: The eastern Prussian territories of the German Reich , which lay east of this border, came under the administration of the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union in 1945 and were in fact annexed as a result of World War II. At the end of World War II, the allied victorious powers also had legislative power for the historical area of "East Elbia" and passed the so-called Control Council laws . On February 25, 1947, for example, the Control Council Act No. 46 to dissolve the State of Prussia was passed. Almost the entire population including the "Junkers" was expelled and replaced by Poles or citizens of the Soviet Union. The reduction in East Elbe by around 70 percent considerably reduced its socio-political significance in Germany.
3. In Schleswig-Holstein , where large estates were already relatively weak and belonged to the western Trizone , there were no controlled, targeted expropriation or disempowerment measures. Accelerated modernization and democratization have led to the fact that those landowners who could cope with the competitive pressure became owners of companies that are in principle subject to the laws of the market economy, which also means that employees are no longer treated “like the landlord ” can. Their political influence has also decreased significantly.
4. Today there are (in addition to Schleswig-Holstein, which is one of the founding states of the Federal Republic of Germany) of the part of the former East Elbe that belonged to the GDR until 1990, the state of Brandenburg , Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , the Altmark, which belongs to Saxony-Anhalt , the part of Saxony-Anhalt east of the Elbe and parts of the former Lower Silesian, but now part of the Free State of Saxony, districts of Görlitz and Bautzen on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. Today the area name Ostelbien is used almost exclusively for historical facts.
5. The final regulation with regard to the Oder-Neisse border (as the German eastern border after World War II) was decided in the so-called Two-Plus-Four Treaty and came into force on March 15, 1991 in accordance with international law.
literature
- Patrick Wagner : farmers, junkers and civil servants. Local rule and participation in Eastern Elbe in the 19th century (= modern times. Volume 9). Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-946-5 , p. 12 (Habilitation thesis University of Freiburg im Breisgau 2003, 623 pages).
- Heinz Reif : East Elbian agricultural society in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic: Agricultural crisis - Junk interest politics - modernization strategies. Akademie-verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-05-002431-3 .
- Scott M. Eddie: Landownership in Eastern Germany before the Great War: a quantitative analysis. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York, NY 2008.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Max Weber: Development tendencies in the situation of the East Elbe farm workers
- ↑ James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany , 2017 ISBN 9781910400418 .
- ↑ Rudolf Heberle : Rural population and National Socialism. A sociological study of the political will formation in Schleswig-Holstein 1918-1932 . de Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 1963, ISBN 978-3-486-70378-8 , p. 37.