Restitutors

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Resettlers are farmers in the former GDR who, after the political change in 1989/1990 , reclaimed and received the land they had brought into the agricultural production cooperative in order to start a new beginning as farmers. Resettlers can be former LPG farmers who are once again farming the land that once belonged to them as their main occupation or as a part-time business , here partly as retirees on the family field of a few hectares. Resettlers could also be former heads of agricultural production cooperatives if they or their families had brought property into the LPG in the course of collectivization. For example, 158 of the total restitutors and newfitters in Thuringia were managers of the agricultural production cooperatives. A distinction must be made between “new installers”. These were (mostly younger) farmers who managed newly established farms with leased land and newly acquired technology. Thirdly, it was also possible that resettlers or newfitters were not previously resident in the GDR, but "immigrated" from the West German federal states and from Holland and took over newly established or inherited businesses. In Thuringia, for example, 187 of the total of 1,043 fitters came from the old federal states and in 1995 managed 54,800 hectares, which is around 26% of the area that the fitters in Thuringia managed in total (213,700 hectares).

Legal basis

The basis for the re-establishment of farms was the Agriculture Adjustment Act (LwAnpG or "LAG"), which was passed in June 1990 by the freely elected People's Chamber . His full title was "Law on the Structural Adaptation of Agriculture to the Social and Ecological Market Economy in the German Democratic Republic". By promoting private property and equal opportunities for all types of farms, a diverse agricultural structure should be created in which cooperatives and family farms complement each other. The equality of opportunity for all types of business was stipulated in Paragraph 2 of the LAG.

In addition to the areas organized as a cooperative in the course of collectivization , there were areas expropriated through land reform . To handle the re- privatization of these expropriated areas, among other things, the state trust agency was created or its legal successor, Bodenverwertungs- und -verwaltungs GmbH . The previous owners, expropriated by 1949, did not get back their land that had been expropriated under occupation law. Only recognized refugees could register a claim for compensation through the burden sharing. For those expropriated on the basis of occupation sovereignty, the Compensation and Compensation Act (EALG) was passed in 1994 (in the exact wording "Law on Compensation according to the Act to Regulate Open Property Issues and State Compensation for Expropriations on the Basis of Occupation Law or Occupation Authority of September 27, 1994 ( BGBl. I 2624) ").

Areas, businesses and employees affected by the transformation of the GDR structures as a whole

The total of around 5.8 million hectares of agricultural land in the GDR, 850,000 employees and over 4,000 farms were affected by the structural change . These were legally separated into LPG (plant production) and LPG (animal production). In 1988 there were 1,159 LPG (P) and 2,696 LPG (T) in the GDR, which were organized together in so-called "cooperations". The LPG (P) cultivate an average of 4,500 ha of agricultural land. For comparison: The average per farm in the old federal states was only 35 ha. In addition to the agricultural production cooperatives, there were also state-owned goods. In 1988 that was 79 VEG (P) and 311 VEG (T). In 1989 these went to the Treuhandanstalt for privatization.

In 1990 the Treuhandanstalt acquired around 1.95 million hectares of agricultural land. 1.5 million hectares of which were cultivated by the LPG and 450,000 hectares by the VEG. Of the 1.95 million hectares, 0.6 million hectares were to be returned to federal states, municipalities and previous owners who had been expropriated after 1949 and were therefore entitled to return under the Act on Unresolved Property Issues. The remaining 1.3 million hectares of land were to be privatized.

Problems

In practice, the structural adjustment of the east German agricultural landscape to the social market economy was not without friction and injustice. In particular, the transformation of the LPG into registered cooperatives and other legal forms often proved to be a source of conflict. The management of the successor companies was mostly taken over by former LPG chairmen or GDR agricultural officials, who were given a considerable head start by their good training, their close networking in business, administration and politics as well as their experience. At the beginning of the privatization there were often systematic falsification of the balance sheet in which the value of machines, buildings, livestock and other inventory of the LPG in question was calculated down. The members of the LPG only received a fraction of their share when they left, while the actual assets disappeared as capital stock in the successor companies.

Four out of five people employed in agriculture lost their jobs by 1993. The number of businesses, on the other hand, rose continuously. Only a few former cooperative farmers dared to go into self-employment, as the specialized milkers , animal keepers or tractor drivers often lacked extensive agricultural knowledge. Many instead leased or sold the land to other interested parties.

To this day, favoring high-tech large-scale agriculture in the allocation of agricultural land is a problem for medium-sized family-owned farms and smaller farming systems.

To the structural developments since 1990

In contrast to western Germany, large-scale corporate forms still characterize the eastern German agricultural structure, especially in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg , where large estates dominated the eastern Elbe manors before 1945 and the share of trust land was correspondingly high from 1990 onwards.

In 2010 there were around 24,800 farms in the new federal states with an average size of 226 hectares. In the old federal states, however, the average size was 40 hectares. In 2010, there were around 3,500 legal entities in the new federal states who cultivated 2,848,500 hectares, as well as 3,200 partnerships who cultivated 1,240,400 hectares, along with 7,700 full-time businesses that cultivate 1,157,800 hectares. This means that the full-time farms as potential restorers and new builders make up 79% of the farms in the new federal states, but only manage about 20% of the area.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katrin Kuester: The East German farmers and the turn. (PDF) Kassel 2002, ISBN 3-933146-96-8 , p. 240.
  2. ↑ Katrin Kuester: The East German farmers and the turn. (PDF) Kassel 2002, ISBN 3-933146-96-8 , pp. 217 and 239.
  3. ↑ a b Konrad Scherf et al .: GDR. Economic and Social Geography. Gotha 1990, ISBN 3-7301-0882-4 , p. 209.
  4. ↑ Manfred Lückemeyer: The privatization of the agricultural "nationally owned" assets in the new federal states. In: Reports on Agriculture. 70, 1992, pp. 387-395.
  5. ↑ a b c d mdr.de: The Agriculture Adaptation Act and its consequences ( Memento of the original of August 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 20, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de
  6. ↑ Agricultural Report of the Federal Government 2011: bmel.de (PDF), p. 69.