Westphalian farmers' union

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Westphalian Farmers' Union was an organization of rural lower classes - primarily of hiring people / köttern , small farmers , tenants and new settlers - in Westphalia during the Weimar Republic .

Once through the revolution of 1918 , the class franchise was released, the rural lower classes urged the country with power in the municipal parliaments that had been largely reserved for farmers. They also called for settler positions on wasteland , more rights for the tenants and servants and better social security. In order to assert their interests, the largely unexplored, central tenant and settler association was founded in Westphalia , which was soon renamed the Westphalian tenant and smallholder association and then in 1927 the Westphalian farmers association . The reason was the merger with the "West German farmers' union". The association arose from the "Coesfeld Lease Protection Association" founded in Coesfeld in 1919 by the later Prussian MdL Ernst Meincke (DDP / SPD), which quickly grew to 400 members and expanded into the Borken district . After expanding to other districts in the Münsterland, including through the merger with similar organizations, at the end of June 1920 it changed its name to the "Lease Protection Association Münsterland" and relocated the association's headquarters to Münster . In 1925 it had around 5,000 members, and it was particularly popular in the Münster administrative district and the Warburg, Höxter, Büren, Soest, Paderborn and Lippstadt districts. The Roman Catholic clergyman Dr. Ferdinand Vorholt (1878–1954) from Mecklenbeck near Münster, who replaced the Nordwalder August Münsterweg. In 1933 the Westphalian Farmers 'Union was dissolved like the other small farmers' associations. Johannes Brockmann from Rinkerode , member of the central state parliament and chairman of the Westphalian Windthorst Association , was active on the board and as a promotional speaker for the small farmers' association . Previously known managing directors of the association were Dr. Ignaz Lünenborg (1927) and Dr. H. Stracke (1930).

Cooperation with other smallholder associations

The "Westphalian Pächter- and small farmer federation" founded with two other near-center small farmers and Heuerleute associations, the Emsland Association of Christian Heuerleute and the Association of Rural small businesses from South Oldenburg, and the Social Democratic Nordwestdeutsche Heuerleute Association in May 1922 in Hannover with other small farmers' associations as from Silesia to Reich Association of Small Agricultural Enterprises (from 1925: “Reich Association of Small and Medium-Sized Agricultural Enterprises”), which was supposed to represent the interests of small farmers, tenants and hirers politically. Heinrich Lübke , who later became Federal President, became the managing director , with whom Chairman Vorholt, for example, kept in frequent contact. During his studies in Münster in 1920/21, Lübke had worked in the smallholder association's office on the side. In 1927 the small farmers and laborers' organization joined the republican-democratically oriented “ German peasantry ”. This smallholder federation was vigorously opposed by the “ Westphalian Farmers' Association ”, which is run by the aristocrats, and the “ Reichslandbund ”, which is hostile to democracy .

Association body

The organ of the association was called “Westdeutscher Bauer”, has apparently appeared monthly since January 1926 and was produced in Münster. It is said to have had a circulation of around 15,000 copies in 1927. There have been several renaming. The paper was launched in 1920 under the title “Der Lächter. Specialist newspaper for tenants and hirers in the Münsterland ". By 1924 at the latest, the name was “West German Landwacht. Journal for the interests of agricultural smallholders, tenants, hirers, allotment gardeners and settlers ”, until it finally ends up being“ West German farmer. Official organ of the West German peasantry, the Westphalian Farmers' Union ”(1930).

literature

  • Heinrich Dartmann: The rural labor conditions in Westphalia before and after the war in economic and social terms, Diss. Phil. Giessen 1932, p. 71.
  • Bernd Robben / Helmut Lensing: “When the farmer whistles, then the hirers have to come!” - Considerations and research on hiring in north-west Germany, Haselünne 2015, 3rd expanded edition, pp. 227–234.
  • Burkhard Theine: Westphalian agriculture in the Weimar Republic. Economic situation, forms of production and interest politics (publications of the Provincial Institute for Westphalian State and People's Research of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe, vol. 28), Paderborn 1999, pp. 121–122.