Public property
The nationally owned property (abbreviated: VEG ) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) corresponded to the sovkhos in the Soviet Union . In contrast to the Agricultural Production Cooperative (LPG), these were state-owned farms, which had often emerged from former private agricultural goods or domains as a result of the land reform decided in the Potsdam Agreement in 1945 through expropriation of the owners without compensation or through the cancellation of long-term leases . Designations for such establishments were first state property or provincial property from 1945 (in what was then the province of Saxony ), then state property and only from August 1949 national property or nationally owned property.
Each VEG was directly integrated into the state economic planning. They were either central (e.g. German Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin, VVB Saat- und Pflanzgut, VVB Tierzucht) or regional (regional association of publicly owned enterprises / GVVG ; University goods directorate, goods directorate of the federal states until 1952, the districts from 1952, a district or . a place) subordinated.
A state-owned property was public property and an agricultural counterpart to the state- owned enterprise (VEB). They were managed according to the principle of individual management by an operations manager, and from 1956 a director. In contrast to the LPG, the farm workers employed there did not hold any shares in the business. The remuneration of workers and employees was regulated by the framework collective agreement (RKV) for nationally owned goods and its facilities.
In the beginning, the VEG was mainly used for animal and plant breeding as well as seed propagation for the provision of all agriculture.
In 1960 the approximately 690 VEG farmed around 6.3 percent of the agricultural area in the GDR. In the course of the general concentration and specialization in agriculture, however, their number fell to 385 by 1980.
In the area of nationally owned goods, as with the LPG, a politically motivated separation of livestock and arable farming began in the late 1960s. VEG plant production (P) and animal production (T) emerged. However, these were combined into larger units at the same time, so that their total number decreased from 511 in 1970 to 385 in 1980, but rose again to 465 by 1985, while the agricultural area cultivated by the VEG remained almost constant at around 440,000 hectares .
Compared to the LPG, the VEG often received better care, as they functioned as so-called bases of the preferred working class in the countryside. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular, they were supposed to demonstrate the superiority of the “socialist mode of production” and later also assume a progressive function, which they could not always do justice to.
After reunification in 1990 , the assets of the VEG were transferred to the administration by the Treuhandanstalt .
In Poland , the state farms ( Państwowe gospodarstwo rolne , PGR) complied with the VEG.
literature
- Klaus Schmidt (Ed.): Agriculture in the GDR - VEG, LPG and cooperations; how they became, what they were, what has become of them . Agrimedia GmbH & Co. KG, Clenze 2009.
- Arnd Bauerkämper : Rural Society in the Communist Dictatorship - Forced Modernization and Tradition in Brandenburg 1945-1963. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-412-16101-2 .
- Ilona Buchsteiner : Land reform and agriculture in the GDR. Research study. In: Landtag Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Hrsg.): On the work of the study commission “Life in the GDR, Life after 1989” - reappraisal and reconciliation. Volume V. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Parliament, Schwerin 1997, ISBN 3-932447-00-X , pp. 9–61.
- Michael Heinz: Of combine harvesters and model villages. Industrialization of GDR agriculture and the change in rural life using the example of the northern districts. Metropol , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940938-90-9 .
- Jens Schöne : Spring in the country? The collectivization of GDR agriculture. Ch.links, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86153-360-X .
- Ernst-Walter Paasch and Dieter Staevie: From land reform to trust. Lexicon of nationally owned goods and their directors in the Magdeburg district. Dr. Ziethen Verlag, Oschersleben 2005, ISBN 3-938380-07-1 (214 pages).
