KEYWORDS

Agri­cul­ture

Land reform

Agra­rian reform

Redis­tri­bu­tion

Farmers

New farmers

Small-scale farmers

Large-scale land ownership

Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone

GDR / DDR

THE LAND TO THOSE WHO WORK IT

From Land Reform to Socialist Agriculture in the DDR

Within just 45 years, the condi­ti­ons in the East German coun­try­side chan­ged funda­men­tally. This trans­for­ma­tion took place in seve­ral stages.

The first stage (1945–1948) insti­tu­ted a land reform that broke up the centu­ries-old land owner­ship struc­tures in the coun­try­side. This process of demo­cra­tis­a­tion crea­ted the first frame­work for new rela­ti­ons of produc­tion based on coope­ra­tion. The second stage (1952–1960) was charac­te­ri­sed by the Genos­sen­schafts­be­we­gung (the coope­ra­tive move­ment), which was able to resolve the contra­dic­tions between modern tech­no­logy and small-scale produc­tion in the inte­rests of farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers, without ruining, displa­cing, or subor­di­na­ting them to the inte­rests of big busi­ness, as occurs under capi­ta­lism. By the same token, the agri­cul­tu­ral coope­ra­ti­ves also provi­ded the rural popu­la­tion with previously unat­tai­ned social and cultu­ral rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties. The third and final stage (1970s–1980s), built on this foun­da­tion and saw the deve­lo­p­ment of large agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion comple­xes and deepe­ning coope­ra­tive rela­ti­onships between the various stages of produc­tion, from primary produc­tion to proces­sing and distribution.

Of all the chan­ges in East Germany’s forty-year socia­list history, the most revo­lu­tio­nary deve­lo­p­ments occur­red in agri­cul­ture, as they were the most comprehensive.

Table of contents 

Introduction

The state of contem­po­rary global agri­cul­ture and food produc­tion urgen­tly begs for alter­na­ti­ves. If the global food supply were distri­bu­ted fairly and equally, no one would have to go hungry. Yet, in 2023, up to 757 million people world­wide – one out of eleven – went hungry.[1] Prices are further infla­ted through finan­cial specu­la­tion on food­s­tuffs, raw mate­ri­als, and land, perver­sely ensu­ring that profits are made not only off people’s basic need for susten­ance but also off the growing hunger of others as these rising commo­dity prices them­sel­ves become targets of specu­la­tive trading.[2]

While just over one third of the world’s food conti­nues to be produ­ced by small farmers,✱ huge agri­cul­tu­ral corpo­ra­ti­ons such as the so-called ABCD Group – Archer Dani­els Midland, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Drey­fus – domi­nate global food culti­va­tion, proces­sing, marke­ting, and distri­bu­tion.[3] The result is that compa­nies like those in the ABCD Group have a near mono­poly over advan­ced agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­logy and incre­asing control over globally centra­li­sed produc­tion and proces­sing chains. This concen­tra­tion of land owner­ship and the means of food produc­tion rein­forces patterns estab­lished during the colo­nial era, driving mono­cul­tures, one-sided trade rela­ti­ons, and land evic­tions. These dyna­mics, in turn, exacer­bate small-scale subsis­tence farming, extreme explo­ita­tion of agri­cul­tu­ral workers, poverty, hunger, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, and rural malde­ve­lo­p­ment. Further, the deve­lo­p­ment of capi­ta­list rela­ti­ons in not only agri­cul­tu­ral tech­no­lo­gies but in agri­cul­tu­ral science has unleas­hed signi­fi­cant poten­tial for food produc­tion. Yet, to this day, all this poten­tial has clearly not been used to satisfy people’s most basic need for food, let alone solve the enorm­ous problems and contra­dic­tions in agri­cul­ture more broadly. This calls for compre­hen­sive answers. To find them, we might look to the revo­lu­tio­nary chan­ges that took place in the DDR in its rela­tively short existence.

In only forty-five years, the condi­ti­ons in rural East Germany chan­ged funda­men­tally – first in the post-war Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone (SOZ) and then in the DDR (foun­ded in 1949). This change took place in three stages. The first stage (1945–1948) insti­tu­ted a land reform that broke up the centu­ries-old land owner­ship struc­tures in the coun­try­side. This process of demo­cra­tis­a­tion crea­ted the first frame­work for new rela­ti­ons of produc­tion based on coope­ra­tion. The second stage (1952–1960) was charac­te­ri­sed by the Genos­sen­schafts­be­we­gung (the coope­ra­tive move­ment), which was able to resolve the contra­dic­tions between modern tech­no­logy and small-scale produc­tion in the inte­rests of farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers, without ruining, displa­cing, or subor­di­na­ting them to the inte­rests of big busi­ness, as occurs under capi­ta­lism. By the same token, the agri­cul­tu­ral coope­ra­ti­ves also provi­ded the rural popu­la­tion with previously unat­tai­ned social and cultu­ral rights and oppor­tu­ni­ties. The third and final stage (1970s–1980s, built on this foun­da­tion and saw the deve­lo­p­ment of large agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion comple­xes and deepe­ning coope­ra­tive rela­ti­onships between the various stages of produc­tion, from primary produc­tion to proces­sing and distribution.

Of all the chan­ges in East Germany’s forty-year socia­list history, the most revo­lu­tio­nary deve­lo­p­ments occur­red in agri­cul­ture, as they were the most compre­hen­sive. Start­ing from a situa­tion still simi­lar to feudal working and living condi­ti­ons, econo­mic and poli­ti­cal subor­di­na­tion, and cultu­ral depri­va­tion, the DDR’s peas­an­try emer­ged as a confi­dent, demo­cra­tic, and cultu­rally vibrant commu­nity. A highly produc­tive, indus­trial-like agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion deve­lo­ped and, with the progress of social and cultu­ral infra­struc­ture in the villa­ges, a tendency towards conver­ging living condi­ti­ons between urban and rural areas. If milli­ons of farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers had not ques­tio­ned deeply inter­na­li­sed expe­ri­en­ces and time-hono­u­red tradi­ti­ons and actively parti­ci­pa­ted in the reori­en­ta­tion of agri­cul­ture and village life, these chan­ges would not have been possi­ble. Delving into this contra­dic­tory history thoroughly dispro­ves the prevai­ling narra­tive of a Socia­list Unity Party of Germany (Sozia­lis­ti­sche Einheits­par­tei Deutsch­lands, SED) that ruled through coer­cion and violence. The decisive start­ing point for this trans­for­ma­tion was the shift in the balance of power in East Germany after the Second World War. In this study, we explore the new rela­ti­onship between farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers✱ on one hand and the new rela­ti­onship between farmers and the poli­ti­cal leader­ship on the other.

Every coun­try and region has its own history and speci­fic condi­ti­ons that need to be carefully analy­sed and for which speci­fic solu­ti­ons must be found. The decis­i­ons made in the DDR’s agri­cul­tu­ral sector nevert­hel­ess offer prac­ti­cal insights into an alter­na­tive to capi­ta­list market compe­ti­tion and profit-seeking. The follo­wing study aims to contri­bute to contem­po­rary deba­tes on the pros­pects of socia­list agri­cul­ture by exami­ning the histo­ri­cal process that funda­men­tally chan­ged the social struc­tures and ways of working and thin­king in the East German coun­try­side. It is not possi­ble to cover all aspects of the DDR’s agri­cul­ture in this study; important ques­ti­ons around forestry, ecology, agri­sci­ence, inter­na­tio­na­lism, and the inner workings of the Demo­cra­tic Farmers’ Party (Demo­kra­ti­sche Bauern­par­tei Deutsch­lands, DBD) could only be touched upon in passing and certainly deserve further study in the future.

The study is struc­tu­red chro­no­lo­gi­cally, follo­wing the concrete histo­ri­cal deve­lo­p­ment of agri­cul­ture in Germany: from the centu­ries-old feudal yoke impo­sed on Germany’s peas­an­try to the explo­sive years of the land reform and the subse­quent tran­si­tion to a coope­ra­tive orga­ni­sa­tion of agri­cul­ture and the asso­cia­ted ques­ti­ons of large-scale indus­trial-like agri­cul­tu­ral production.

The Prussian Path to Capitalist Agriculture and the Rise of Fascism

Compared to deve­lo­p­ments in count­ries such as England or France, the tran­si­tion from feudal to bour­geois-capi­ta­list condi­ti­ons in Germany’s agri­cul­ture took place rela­tively late, during the nine­te­enth century.✱ Even then, it only occur­red very gradu­ally and without a radi­cal over­throw of the feudal aris­to­cracy, who retai­ned their hold over the land. The unifi­ca­tion of Germany into a modern bour­geois nation-state was not brought about by popu­lar revolt from below but from above – by the poli­ti­cal mano­eu­vring and warmon­ge­ring of the Prus­sian ruling class led by Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I.

During this period – refer­red to in Marxist lite­ra­ture as the ‘Prus­sian path to capi­ta­lism’ – the emer­gence of the capi­ta­list mode of produc­tion was tightly bound to rela­ti­ons of feudal subor­di­na­tion. The living and legal condi­ti­ons of the various peasant working masses chan­ged, but their econo­mic and social depen­dency on the landed nobi­lity remained. A class of ‘free’ small and medium peasants emer­ged, most of whom were heavily indeb­ted to the land­lords. Servants and share­crop­pers – who used to be land­less farm­hands for the lord of the manor – now crys­ta­li­sed as a new class of agri­cul­tu­ral workers. The feudal land­lord hims­elf became an owner of a sort of proto-agribusiness.

Village life contin­ued to be shaped by the large landow­ners, who main­tai­ned an econo­mic­ally and poli­ti­cally domi­nant role that was upheld by laws, customs, tradi­ti­ons, and the new capi­ta­list depen­dency rela­ti­ons well into the twen­tieth century. Back­wards, almost medieval-era condi­ti­ons thus prevai­led in the countryside.

Feudal laws, which had osten­si­bly been abolished in 1919 after the fall of the German monar­chy, remained a de facto reality for agri­cul­tu­ral workers and servants, who were prohi­bi­ted from orga­ni­s­ing poli­ti­cally or in trade unions, such as in the German Agri­cul­tu­ral Workers’ Asso­cia­tion (Deut­scher Land­ar­bei­ter­ver­band, DLV) that was foun­ded in 1909. Excerpts from the Prus­sian Servants’ Regu­la­ti­ons reveal how labou­rers were still depri­ved of basic rights:

Para­graph 77: ‘If the servants provoke the lord’s anger through impro­per beha­viour and are trea­ted by him in return with insul­ting words or petty abuse, the servants may not seek legal redress for this’.

 

Para­graph 79: ‘Except in cases where the life and health of the servant is in present and unavo­ida­ble danger due to maltre­at­ment by the lord­ship, he is not permit­ted to actively resist the lord’.

 

Para­graph 74: ‘Without prior know­ledge and permis­sion of the lord­ship, servants may not leave the house, even for their own affairs’.

 

Para­graph 76: ‘The servants are to accept the orders of the lord­ship and their repri­mands with defe­rence and mode­sty’.[4]

From the early nine­te­enth century to the twen­tieth, Germany’s econo­mic base under­went a funda­men­tal shift from an agro-indus­trial to an indus­trial economy. The popu­la­tion nearly tripled, from around 18 million in 1800 to over 52 million in 1900.[5] While most Germans lived in the coun­try­side in the early nine­te­enth century, after the urba­ni­sa­tion that accom­pa­nied capi­ta­list deve­lo­p­ment the percen­tage of the popu­la­tion living in cities rose from 36% in 1871 to 60% by 1910.[6] At the same time, the share of workers enga­ged in agri­cul­ture and forestry drop­ped from 42.5% in 1882 to just 28.6% by 1907. A large class of land­less agri­cul­tu­ral workers soon outn­um­be­red the owners and tenants of farms in rural areas. In 1907, large estates (grea­ter than 100 hecta­res) employed an average of fifty-one labou­rers. One-third of the 9.5 million people working in agri­cul­ture were wage labou­rers.[7] Agri­cul­tu­ral wage labou­rers were concen­tra­ted in the areas east of the Elbe, where large agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses were most wide­spread. Foreign seaso­nal workers, espe­ci­ally from the Polish regi­ons, were parti­cu­larly exploi­ted. In the mid-nine­te­enth century, there was a signi­fi­cant concen­tra­tion of land owner­ship: less than 1% of landow­ners held more than 40% of arable land, while around 80% of farmers owned less than 12%, with their indi­vi­dual plots being less than 7.5 hecta­res in size.[8]

Condi­ti­ons in the coun­try­side deve­lo­ped unevenly across Germany throug­hout the nine­te­enth century because of the country’s terri­to­rial frag­men­ta­tion into many small states. West of the Rhine, serf­dom and inden­tu­red servi­tude had been swept away with the French Revo­lu­tion of 1789. In central and southern Germany, between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers, small and medium-sized farmers worked parcels of land with leases to large landow­ners. In the areas east of the Elbe (which would later make up much of the DDR’s terri­tory), the aboli­tion of serf­dom led to exten­sive land trans­fers to Prussia’s landed nobi­lity, the so-called Junkers (landed nobi­lity with immense property holdings who had held signi­fi­cant power in the Prus­sian-German mili­tary); the term deri­ved from Middle High German Juncherre, meaning ‘young noble­man’ or ‘young lord’. The alre­ady greatly unequal distri­bu­tion of arable land inten­si­fied as a result: peasants had to pay 1.8 billion marks and give up 425,169 hecta­res of land in total for their eman­ci­pa­tion from feudal obli­ga­ti­ons and duties; this compen­sa­tion forma­li­sed the Junkers legal title to the land.[9] This gave rise to the large, landed estates that shaped the East German coun­try­side prior to 1945. Fried­rich Engels provi­des precise insight into the poli­ti­cal and econo­mic role of the Junkers in Prus­sian Germany:

“The actual semi-servi­tude of the East-Elbe rural workers is the main basis of the domi­na­tion of Prus­sian Junker­dom and thus of Prussia’s speci­fic over­lord­ship in Germany… The power of these Junkers is groun­ded on the fact that within the compact terri­tory of the seven old Prus­sian provin­ces – that is, appro­xi­m­ately one-third of the entire terri­tory of the [German] Reich – they have at their dispo­sal the landed property, which here brings with it both social and poli­ti­cal power. And not only the landed property but, through their beet-sugar refi­ne­ries and liquor distil­le­ries, also the most important indus­tries of this area. Neither the big landow­ners of the rest of Germany nor the big indus­tria­lists are in a simi­larly favoura­ble posi­tion. Neither of them has a compact king­dom at their dispo­sal. … But the econo­mic foun­da­tion of this domi­na­tion of the Prus­sian Junkers is steadily dete­rio­ra­ting. Here, too, indeb­ted­ness and impo­ve­rish­ment are spre­a­ding irre­sis­ti­bly, despite all state assis­tance (and since Frede­rick II, this item is included in every regu­lar Junker budget). Only the actual semi-serf­dom sanc­tioned by law and custom and the resul­ting possi­bi­lity of the unli­mi­ted explo­ita­tion of the rural workers, still barely keep the drow­ning Junkers above water. Sow the seed of Social-Demo­cracy among these workers, give them the courage and cohe­sion to insist upon their rights, and the glory of the Junkers will be put to an end. The great reac­tion­ary power, which to Germany repres­ents the same barba­rous, preda­tory element as Russian tsar­dom does to the whole of Europe, will collapse like a pricked bubble.”[10]

The domi­nant role of the large landow­ners and the rela­ti­ons of depen­dency they held over rural popu­la­ti­ons made it diffi­cult for revo­lu­tio­nary social demo­cracy to win over the rural prole­ta­riat and peasants. The Junkers east of the Elbe, on the other hand, were a central pillar of the reac­tion­ary-mili­ta­ristic Prus­sian state and, along­side influ­en­tial indus­trial mono­po­lists, would later become the faci­li­ta­tors of Hitler’s fascism. Histo­rian Sieg­fried Kunt­sche points out that the aris­to­cra­tic Junker class used the key posi­ti­ons it retai­ned in Germany’s mili­tary and state bureau­cracy to openly support reac­tion­ary forces during the Weimar era (1919–1933):

“Most landow­ners trea­ted the bour­geois repu­blic [estab­lished in 1919] with the hosti­lity of tradi­tio­nal conser­va­tism. Support for the [coun­ter­re­vo­lu­tio­nary] Kapp Putsch [in 1920] did not remain margi­nal. Many estates became rally­ing points for [the proto-fascist] Frei­korps, troops of the Black Reichs­wehr, and also nume­rous, armed right-wing extre­mist groups… Begin­ning at the end of the 1920s, repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of seve­ral long-estab­lished noble fami­lies joined the Nazi move­ment.”[11]

In the region of Meck­len­burg, one of the heart­lands of the large landed estates, a quar­ter of all landow­ners became members of the Nazi party.[12] Half of the gene­rals in the high command of the fascist Wehr­macht (armed forces) came from nobi­lity.[13] During the war, Junkers used their alre­ady domi­nant role in village social life to propa­gate the chau­vi­ni­stic aims of land theft from Eastern Europe under the slogan Volk ohne Raum (‘A people without space’).✱ This idea was plan­ted in the minds of many peasants and agri­cul­tu­ral workers, even though it was in reality the Junkers who had been appro­pria­ting their land for generations.

German fascism (1933–1945) pursued a policy of complete subju­ga­tion of the peasants and rural popu­la­tion to enable the impe­ria­list war policy. Orga­ni­sa­ti­ons and unions of agri­cul­tu­ral labou­rers were banned. Ever­yone invol­ved in the produc­tion, proces­sing, and trade of agri­cul­tu­ral produce was forced to become a member of the Nazi Reichs­nähr­stand (Reich Food Estate), which stood under the leader­ship of large landow­ners. A total deli­very obli­ga­tion was enforced during the war, meaning that certain produce was seized by the state. Peasant’s savings and credit balan­ces were confis­ca­ted to ‘finance the burdens of war’. The fascist state compen­sa­ted for the rapid decline in crop yields during the war years by impo­sed deli­very quotas on produce from occu­p­ied count­ries in Eastern Europe and a merci­less star­va­tion policy against local popu­la­ti­ons. Only through the barba­ric explo­ita­tion of milli­ons of forced labou­rers were the fascists able to keep German agri­cul­ture afloat.

Nazi Germany’s wartime poli­cies crea­ted a major setback to the country’s agri­cul­tu­ral deve­lo­p­ment. As early as the mid-1930s, the war economy was prio­ri­ti­sed over agri­cul­ture. ‘If neces­sary, we will be able to cope without butter, but never without cannons’, as Nazi propa­ganda minis­ter Joseph Goeb­bels put it in 1936.[14] The damage incur­red by the war left machi­nery and large tracts of land in ruin, while live­stock was deci­ma­ted. This was espe­ci­ally true in East Germany, where the fascists sought to ensure nothing could be left behind for the Red Army and procee­ded to syste­ma­ti­cally slaugh­ter live­stock and raze the soil – what SED agri­cul­ture secre­tary from 1960 to 1981, Gerhard Grüne­berg, descri­bed as the conti­nua­tion of the Nazis’ ‘crimi­nal scor­ched-earth policy’.[15]

The Land Reform: “Junkers’ Lands in Peasants’ Hands”

Post-War Destruction and Hunger

East Germany was the main Euro­pean front for the final batt­les of the Second World War. Large areas of agri­cul­tu­ral land were rava­ged and made unwor­kable. Agri­cul­tu­ral faci­li­ties and proces­sing plants were left in ruin and means of trans­port were prac­ti­cally non-exis­tent. Produc­tion capa­ci­ties were set back by deca­des. Many Junkers fled from the Red Army to West Germany, often taking their live­stock, tech­ni­cal equip­ment, and other private posses­si­ons with them and thus further worsening the supply situa­tion. Swine live­stock was redu­ced to 20% of its pre-war levels, cattle to 66%, and poul­try to 25%.[16] As a result of all these factors, the dome­stic food indus­try collap­sed comple­tely in 1945.

Image 1. Farmers remove debris and stones from a field in the village of Podel­zig, which was almost enti­rely destroyed in the final days of the Second World War (1945).

After the war, Germany was divi­ded into four mili­tary occu­pa­tion zones, with the Eastern Zone under Soviet autho­rity and the Western Zones control­led by the United States, the United King­dom, and France. Berlin, which was loca­ted in the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone, as it was known, was simi­larly divi­ded among the four allied powers. In the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone, a German Admi­nis­tra­tion for Agri­cul­ture and Forestry (Deut­sche Verwal­tung für Land- und Forst­wirt­schaft) was set up to deal with the urgent task of secu­ring the first post-war harvest. The total deli­very obli­ga­tion that had been impo­sed by German fascism was abolished on 18 June 1945 when the Soviet Mili­tary Admi­nis­tra­tion (SMA) passed Order No. 40, which estab­lished deli­very targets for grain, pota­toes, vege­ta­bles, and oilseeds (Order No. 18 from 29 July 1945 addres­sed the compul­sory deli­very of live­stock products). This was one of the first measu­res that was imple­men­ted for a demo­cra­tic agri­cul­tu­ral policy, helping to stimu­late inte­rest in incre­asing produc­tion among the peas­an­try. A two-price system was estab­lished: a lower price for produce that was manda­ted to be deli­vered and a higher price for surplus produce, which farmers could sell freely. Admi­nis­tra­tive bodies, trade unions, and the newly permit­ted parties – which were united in the so-called anti-fascist demo­cra­tic bloc consis­ting of the Social Demo­cra­tic Party of Germany (Sozi­al­de­mo­kra­ti­sche Partei Deutsch­lands, SPD), the Commu­nist Party of Germany (Kommu­nis­ti­sche Partei Deutsch­lands, KPD), the Chris­tian Demo­cra­tic Union of Germany (Christ­lich Demo­kra­ti­sche Union Deutsch­lands, CDU), and the Libe­ral Demo­cra­tic Party of Germany (Libe­ral Demo­kra­ti­sche Partei Deutsch­lands, LDPD) – called on the popu­la­tion to help with the harvest. Engi­neers and indus­trial workers formed repair crews to work on harve­s­t­ing machi­nery, town­speo­ple went into the fields to help with the harvest, and peasant commit­tees were formed in the villa­ges to coor­di­nate the work and combat hoar­ding to ensure that the popu­la­tion could receive their food rations.

The Programme for Land Reform

While exiled in the Soviet Union during the war, German commu­nists had been deve­lo­ping a programme for land reform in post-war Germany. Edwin Hoernle, an agri­cul­tu­ral expert and commu­nist parlia­men­ta­rian during the Weimar era, played a key role in this process. His programme greatly influen­ced discus­sions around land reform in the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone. The programme propo­sed a well-thought-out and viable agri­cul­tu­ral programme to the working masses, which gained the KPD popu­lar support in the imme­diate after­math of the war. Hoernle, who retur­ned to Germany from Moscow in May 1945, took over as presi­dent of the Admi­nis­tra­tion for Agri­cul­ture and Forestry, the main admi­nis­tra­tive posi­tion for agri­cul­ture and forestry in the newly crea­ted German Econo­mic Commis­sion (Deut­sche Wirt­schafts­kom­mis­sion), where he was instru­men­tal in advan­cing the land reform.

In June 1945, the KPD issued a public appeal for a ‘demo­cra­tic land reform’ under the slogan Junker­land in Bauern­hand! (Junkers’ lands in peasants’ hands!) and campai­gned for a swift deli­be­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion by the four-party bloc. On 22 August 1945, the Central Commit­tee of the KPD adopted a concrete propo­sal for the imple­men­ta­tion of a land reform programme by the end of the year. Its central points were:

  1. Expro­pria­tion without compen­sa­tion of large private estates over 100 hecta­res in size.
  2. Expro­pria­tion without compen­sa­tion of all property belon­ging to Nazi func­tio­n­a­ries and war crimi­nals, regard­less of size.
  3. Crea­tion of a state land fund from the expro­pria­ted compa­nies and state-owned domains.
  4. Allo­ca­tion of the largest part of the land fund as private property, wher­eby the new farming plots should be five hecta­res in size for good and medium quality soil and eight to ten hecta­res for poor and very poor soil.
  5. Distri­bu­tion of live­stock and basic produc­tion equip­ment to new farmers.
  6. Trans­fer of trac­tors and large agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery as well as work­shops and agri­cul­tu­ral proces­sing plants to mutual peasants’ aid commit­tees to be set up for joint use.[17]
  7.  
Image 2. On 11 Septem­ber 1945, three muni­ci­pa­li­ties near Dres­den expro­pria­ted and divi­ded up the former ‘Royal Manor’. The sign in front reads: ‘Free farmer on free soil’. The one in the back trans­la­tes to: ‘The master’s time is up’.

Promo­ted via radio, in the press, through the church, and by party commit­tees, the land reform initia­tive found incre­asing reso­nance among the popu­la­tion. The CDU and LDPD initi­ally oppo­sed the propo­sal for expro­pria­tion without compen­sa­tion. Hoernle and the KPD argued that compen­sa­tion would require either farmers or the gene­ral public to bear the finan­cial burden, both of which would be irre­spon­si­ble in view of the supply shorta­ges and gene­ral econo­mic desti­tu­tion. The large estate owners, on the other hand, would by no means be redu­ced to beggars if their estates were expro­pria­ted without compen­sa­tion, as they still retai­ned their private belon­gings and accu­mu­la­ted wealth. Addi­tio­nally, it was conside­red an appro­priate punish­ment for war crimes and an act of histo­ri­cal justice.[18] After leng­thy nego­tia­ti­ons, legal ordi­nan­ces calling for expro­pria­tion without compen­sa­tion were ulti­m­ately passed by the five state govern­ments of the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone in early Septem­ber 1945. The objec­ti­ves of the land reform were in accordance with the ‘Four Ds’ that had been set out in the Pots­dam Agree­ment signed by the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union in August 1945: demo­cra­tis­a­tion, decen­tra­li­sa­tion, demi­li­ta­ri­sa­tion, and dena­zi­fi­ca­tion. As such, land reform in post-war Germany was both poli­ti­cally and legally justi­fied and necessary.

Image 3. A 1945 poster from the Central Commit­tee of the KPD. It reads: ‘Away with Junker rule. Ther­e­fore: Junkers’ lands in peasants’ hands’.

Popu­lar pres­sure and the appr­oval of a land reform in East Germany in early Septem­ber 1945 prompted the US and British mili­tary admi­nis­tra­ti­ons in the West to draw up legal propo­sals for land reforms in their own zones. Yet the legal provi­si­ons they draf­ted offe­red poli­ti­ci­ans and large landow­ners enough leeway to ulti­m­ately prevent redis­tri­bu­tion measu­res or to delay them until the balance of poli­ti­cal power had shifted in their favour. The bour­geois parties forming in Western Germany at this time sought to ensure that the old private capi­ta­list owner­ship rela­ti­ons were preser­ved, despite popu­lar refe­renda deman­ding the demo­cra­tis­a­tion of the economy through the natio­na­li­sa­tion of indus­try and other measu­res. In the West German region of Hessen, for exam­ple, the Social Demo­crats and Commu­nists held a majo­rity in the state govern­ment and had draf­ted a consti­tu­tion in which Article 41 outlined plans to socia­lise key indus­tries and place the banking sector under public admi­nis­tra­tion. Although this article in no way viola­ted the prin­ci­ples of the Pots­dam Agree­ment, the US mili­tary admi­nis­tra­tion (Office of Mili­tary Govern­ment, United States, OMGUS) wanted it remo­ved from the consti­tu­tion. A public refe­ren­dum on Article 41 in Decem­ber 1946 showed that 72% of voters were in favour, but US Gene­ral Lucius Clay nevert­hel­ess prohi­bi­ted its imple­men­ta­tion. A plan­ned land reform was simi­larly preven­ted in the other parts of the US Occu­pa­tion Zone. In the British Occu­pa­tion Zone, after many delays, a limi­ted land reform was initia­ted in 1947 but left exis­ting agri­cul­tu­ral struc­tures largely untouched. The new land reform laws being draf­ted in West Germany were indi­ca­tive of the rural population’s desire for change. Ulti­m­ately, howe­ver, they were left disap­poin­ted, as the few measu­res that were enac­ted in the West were not enough to effect a real change, as they covered only 5% of the total arable land. By contrast, between 1945 and 1952, 3.2 million hecta­res were expro­pria­ted and redis­tri­bu­ted in the DDR (four­teen times as much land as was redis­tri­bu­ted in West Germany).[19] 

Political and Economic Background of the Land Reform

On one hand, the land reform was deeply poli­ti­cal; it repre­sen­ted the fulfilm­ent of the peasants’ deca­des-old demand for a demo­cra­tic trans­for­ma­tion of rural life. On the other, the reform was a very prac­ti­cal policy to address the dire econo­mic situa­tion in Germany after the war.

For the first seven years after 1945, neither the Soviet Mili­tary Admi­nis­tra­tion nor the German commu­nists directly pursued the goal of socia­list cons­truc­tion in East Germany. Their expli­cit objec­tive was to foster a radi­cal anti-fascist, demo­cra­tic trans­for­ma­tion of the whole coun­try: German impe­ria­lism and mili­ta­rism were to be elimi­na­ted and post-war Germany was to remain non-aligned in the inter­na­tio­nal rivalry between the capi­ta­list and socia­list states.✱ It was belie­ved that a parlia­men­tary repu­blic could be crea­ted out of the four occu­pa­tion zones and, over time, the workers’ move­ment would be able to campaign for socia­lism and win over the masses in compe­ti­tion with bour­geois parties in this new repu­blic. As such, the land reform – i.e., the parcel­la­tion of land as private property – cannot be seen as a policy of the DDR’s socia­list cons­truc­tion, which was first initia­ted in 1952, seven years after the war. Nevert­hel­ess, the land reform was a decisive step that later enab­led the even­tual tran­si­tion to socia­lism. The demo­cra­tis­a­tion of the coun­try­side and the encou­ra­ge­ment of mutual coope­ra­tion amongst the peas­an­try laid the socio-econo­mic foun­da­ti­ons for the even­tual crea­tion of socia­list rela­ti­ons in agri­cul­ture. This policy was first and fore­most the fulfilm­ent of the peasants’ demand for the redis­tri­bu­tion of land and an end to feudal oppres­sion. Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the Socia­list Unity Party of Germany (Sozia­lis­ti­sche Einheits­par­tei Deutsch­lands, SED) that emer­ged out of a merger between the KPD and SPD in April 1946, summed up this connec­tion at a party confe­rence in 1947:

“We have openly declared that we are not in favour of any coll­ec­ti­vi­sa­tion measu­res or socia­li­sa­tion in agri­cul­ture. On the contrary, the peasants were given land, new private property was crea­ted, but at the same time soli­da­rity between the new farmers and the old farmers was foste­red on a new basis. To be frank, some people asked us at the begin­ning of the land reform: What kind of socia­lists are you? You’re not even in favour of the ‘coll­ec­ti­vi­sa­tion of farm­land’. We respon­ded to them: That might suit you, gentle­men, keeping the large estates toge­ther so that they could later be easily retur­ned to their former owners! No, our course is diffe­rent: we are acting to ensure that the large estates are comple­tely divi­ded up, so that the large landow­ners in Germany can never again reclaim this land. […]

 

It is correct what the self-gover­ning bodies in areas like Saxon, the Thurin­gian and the Bran­den­burg have done. They went so far as to destroy the old land regis­ters. Yes, not even the old land regis­ters, not a single piece of paper from the former land­hol­dings may survive. We are convin­ced that if fascist and reac­tion­ary forces still have hope of somehow regai­ning their posi­ti­ons in unified Germany, the working class, the peas­an­try, and the progres­sive intel­li­gent­sia will jointly defend what they have fought for by all means neces­sary.”[20]

The German unity that Ulbricht refers to here reflects the stra­te­gic aim of the commu­nists at the time. In all four of the post-war occu­pa­tion zones, the commu­nists were strugg­ling for a unified, demo­cra­tic, and neutral Germany. In accordance with this stra­tegy, the land reform was a decisive blow against the tradi­tio­nal property and power rela­ti­ons in the coun­try­side; it was the final removal of the remnants of the feudal order. As the so-called ‘reuni­fi­ca­tion’ of Germany in 1990 would demons­trate, the commu­nists had been right all along in their well-thought-out dismant­ling of the large estates. The parcel­ling up of the land through the reform preven­ted, at least parti­ally, a resto­ra­tion of former property rela­ti­ons and thus secu­red the libe­ra­tion of the peasants.

In addi­tion to this poli­ti­cal aspect, the reform was also crucial econo­mic­ally. After the cata­stro­phic destruc­tion wrought by the war and growing hosti­lity from the West, the task at hand was to secure the supply of food. The tech­ni­cal condi­ti­ons for large-scale agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion simply did not exist. Having alre­ady repla­ced the total deli­very obli­ga­tion by one of partial deli­very (so that farmers could sell surplu­ses at prices better for them­sel­ves), the land reform succee­ded in moti­vat­ing peasants to increase produc­tion through small-scale private farming. Edwin Hoernle summa­ri­sed the main reasons for land reform under these speci­fic conditions:

“The great agra­rian reform is above all a decisive means for the complete eradi­ca­tion of Prus­sian mili­ta­rism, whose main supporter was the Junker caste. Econo­mic­ally, the handing over of the land to the self-employed peasant is also urgen­tly needed. In light of the current ruin of agri­cul­ture and the enorm­ous lack of tech­ni­cal equip­ment, only prover­bial peasant dili­gence, the fana­ti­cism with which the small farmer clings to his land, can bring about a rapid increase in agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion.”[21]

An addi­tio­nal issue confron­ting the autho­ri­ties in East Germany was the massive influx of refu­gees and the need to house them: 4.4 million refu­gees of German origin came to the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone, accoun­ting for over 24% of the popu­la­tion.[22] They had been forci­bly ousted from Eastern Europe by the retrea­ting Wehr­macht or local popu­la­ti­ons and govern­ments as the regi­ons were libe­ra­ted from fascist occu­pa­tion. Indus­try and resi­den­tial areas in the cities had largely been destroyed in the war, so barns and farm­hou­ses were often conver­ted into living spaces to house refu­gees. With the collap­sed food supply, small-scale agri­cul­ture also offe­red them the oppor­tu­nity for self-sufficiency.

For new farm­steads, the size of the allot­ted agri­cul­tu­ral land and the limi­ted avai­la­bi­lity of equip­ment often proved to be an objec­tive limi­ting factor towards gene­ra­ting a yield that went beyond the strict compul­sory levy requi­re­ments and the farmers’ perso­nal consump­tion. It was clear from the outset that the small-scale farming faci­li­ta­ted by the land reform would not be able to meet the incre­asing demands of food produc­tion in the long term. Howe­ver, for the time being, the struc­tures crea­ted by the land reform were able to signi­fi­cantly improve the supply situa­tion, both for the indi­vi­dual farmers and the whole country.

Implementation and Impact of the Land Reform

In public village assem­blies in Septem­ber 1945, agri­cul­tu­ral workers, land­less and small-scale peasants as well as refu­gees elec­ted members from their own ranks for land reform commis­si­ons. These commis­si­ons were tasked with coor­di­na­ting the imple­men­ta­tion of the reform within a frame­work of legal provi­si­ons. The commis­si­ons deter­mi­ned which land was to be expro­pria­ted; docu­men­ted and secu­red an inven­tory of asso­cia­ted buil­dings and stocks; drew up lists of small-scale and land­less peasants, agri­cul­tu­ral workers, and refu­gees; and asses­sed land allo­ca­tion appli­ca­ti­ons submit­ted by indi­vi­dual peasants. Redis­tri­bu­tion plans were discus­sed and deci­ded on in public meetings where all appli­cants for land parti­ci­pa­ted. In order to avoid discri­mi­na­tion, the allo­ca­tion of plots, stock, and inven­tory was ulti­m­ately deci­ded by drawing lots. The land reform commis­si­ons were also respon­si­ble for the forma­tion of the first commit­tees for mutual peasants’ aid. First estab­lished in the autumn of 1945, these commit­tees ensu­red the ratio­nal utili­sa­tion of agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery and foste­red mutual aid among new farmers. Soli­da­rity was to replace compe­ti­tion or obedience in the countryside.

Image 4. Members of a land reform commis­sion measure a parcel of land in Septem­ber 1945.

More than 52,000 members parti­ci­pa­ted in the 9,500 land reform commis­si­ons. Thirty-eight percent of members were agri­cul­tu­ral workers, 35% were small-scale and tenant farmers, and 12% were resett­led refu­gees. The remai­ning 15% were indus­trial workers and village craft­smen.✱ The respon­si­bi­lity for imple­men­ting the land reform was thus placed in the hands of the social forces that had the most vested inte­rest in the reor­ga­ni­sa­tion of land owner­ship. The execu­tive boards of the commis­si­ons, consis­ting of five to seven members, were usually chai­red by the district’s mayor. By the end of 1945, most of the land marked for indi­vi­dual real­lo­ca­tion had been divi­ded up. The former landed nobi­lity was gene­rally expel­led from the districts. Since the imple­men­ta­tion of the land reform had been over­seen by the local popu­la­tion itself, the commis­si­ons came to act as schools of demo­cracy. The hando­ver of the title deeds for allo­ca­ted land was marked by a day of cele­bra­tion in the villa­ges. Local party member Hermann Wesemann’s account of a public meeting in Toris­dorf, Schön­berg county, draws a vivid picture of how the land reform was a form of class struggle:

“Toris­dorf was an estate of around 400 hecta­res. It belon­ged to Junker Axel Bunger, a staunch mili­ta­rist who let ‘his people’ address him as ‘Lord Capi­tan’. There were some class-conscious workers in the village who helped us prepare a village meeting. It took place on the 3 or 4 Octo­ber at seven in the morning… Ever­yone was there, inclu­ding the re-sett­led refu­gees. Some farm workers nervously tried to give the impres­sion that they had just come across the meeting by chance. They held buckets of water or milk cans in their hands and stood at the back. This was no doubt because of [their fear of] the ‘Lord Capi­tan’, who kept tabs on ever­y­thing in the village. As a spea­ker, I talked about the neces­sity and importance of the land reform and explai­ned the legal provi­si­ons. In the ensuing discus­sion, the diffe­rent points of view and uncer­tain­ties of those gathe­red became appa­rent. The class-conscious agri­cul­tu­ral workers […] were the first to speak. They deman­ded that an end be put to land­lor­dism and that the land­lord be expro­pria­ted imme­dia­tely and remo­ved from the village. Some farm workers were still hemming and hawing with opini­ons: ‘Who knows what will happen, the lord is still here, and he may come back. Then it’ll be our neck on the line’. Others said: ‘How should we manage harve­sts if ever­yone is busy working for them­sel­ves? We won’t gain anything’. Opini­ons went back and forth for a while until, finally, ever­yone agreed to divide up the estate. A land commis­sion was formed and was to be headed by an agri­cul­tu­ral worker. But now the landow­ner had to be offi­ci­ally infor­med of the meeting’s decis­ion. When we went to see him, he was alre­ady shou­ting and swea­ring at us. I told him briefly about the decis­ion and asked him to hand over the keys and all estate docu­ments to the land commis­sion imme­dia­tely, to stay in his room until further notice and to refrain from any inter­fe­rence. He initi­ally tried to inti­mi­date us, decla­ring that the meeting did not have the autho­rity and that he would not reco­g­nise oral decrees at all. In response to the ques­tion of autho­rity, I asked him whether he thought this was a ques­tion of poli­ti­cal power. For in this regard, he was too late: it had alre­ady been deci­ded in favour of the working people. He and his peers had been outplayed. We kept him under constant watch until the estate was divi­ded up, which happened soon after­wards, and preven­ted him from sending commu­ni­ca­ti­ons.”[23]

Image 5. Young people help dismantle an old estate house to obtain buil­ding mate­ri­als for new farmhouses.

As part of the land reform in the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone, some 3.3 million hecta­res of land – around one third of the agri­cul­tu­ral and forestry land – as well as 14,000 buil­dings were expro­pria­ted without compen­sa­tion. Seventy-six percent of the expro­pria­ted land came from 7,160 private estates, i.e. farms with more than 100 hecta­res of usable land; another 4% was taken from 4,537 farms owned by active Nazis and war crimi­nals with less than 100 hecta­res of land. The remai­ning 20% of the expro­pria­ted land was state property and Nazi party property.[24]

Of the 3.3 million expro­pria­ted hecta­res, 2.2 million were trans­fer­red to a central land fund, which was then distri­bu­ted to private appli­cants by land reform commis­si­ons. The remai­ning expro­pria­ted land (appro­xi­m­ately 1.1 million hecta­res) was not redis­tri­bu­ted in the form of private property and became state property or was trans­fer­red to muni­ci­pa­li­ties. In this process, 500 state-owned estates were crea­ted.[25] As part of the post-war repa­ra­ti­ons to the Soviet Union, these estates initi­ally served as supply farms for the Red Army. Later, they were succes­si­vely conver­ted into Publicly Owned Estates (Volks­ei­gene Güter, VEG). They were used prima­rily to support other agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses: as seed and animal bree­ding farms, trai­ning and educa­tio­nal farms, or farms for expe­ri­men­tal and rese­arch purpo­ses. FEDWIN­They also supported econo­mic­ally weak farmers in an advi­sory capa­city. The VEGs played a pionee­ring role in the intro­duc­tion of new farming methods.

The expro­pria­ted land was distri­bu­ted as private, but ‘boun­ded’ property: it could be passed down within a family, but the reci­pi­ent family members had to use the land. It could not be sold, leased, or mortga­ged. The land became the property of the reci­pi­ent wholly free of debt. Forty-three percent of the land to be allo­ca­ted was distri­bu­ted to agri­cul­tu­ral workers and land­less peasants, while 35% went to refu­gees.[26] As a result of the land reform, the share of agri­cul­tu­ral land culti­va­ted by small-scale farmers doubled.

In early 1946, it was deci­ded to turn the orga­ni­cally deve­lo­ped peasant mutual aid commit­tees into offi­cial admi­nis­tra­tive bodies in the coun­try­side. That spring, elec­tions were held to elect local commis­si­ons for the Peasants’ Mutual Aid Asso­cia­tion (Verei­ni­gung der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, VdgB). These commis­si­ons were tasked with estab­li­shing machine-lending stati­ons (Maschi­nen-Ausleih-Statio­nen, MASs), where peasants could rent agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery and equip­ment. The VdgB were also respon­si­ble for setting up busi­nesses for proces­sing agri­cul­tu­ral products and cons­truc­ting repair work­shops and cattle rearing centres.

Various measu­res were imple­men­ted to improve the situa­tion of the new farmers and conso­li­date the newly crea­ted busi­nesses. These included flexi­ble deli­very quotas, supplies of seed and live­stock, loans, the promo­tion of mutual coope­ra­tion and harvest aid, and a cons­truc­tion program issued on the orders of the Soviet Mili­tary Admi­nis­tra­tion under which around 95,000 houses, 104,300 stables, and 38,470 barns were built by 1953.[27] Due to the gene­ral lack of labour, agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery, and draft animals, it was important and neces­sary to ensure coope­ra­tion between the peasants and the local autho­ri­ties, orga­ni­sa­ti­ons, and busi­nesses. For exam­ple, the urban popu­la­tion was rallied to help new farmers harvest their yields.

Image 6. Cele­bra­tion of the 100th trac­tor built in the Bran­den­burg trac­tor factory in Octo­ber 1949. The mural reads: ‘Peace nouris­hes – war destroys’. The sign below reads: ‘Fight­ing for peace is fight­ing for Germany’s future’.

The land reform was a histo­ric turning point in the demo­cra­tis­a­tion of agra­rian rela­ti­ons in Germany. It radi­cally chan­ged the living condi­ti­ons of the rural popu­la­tion in East Germany. The econo­mic and poli­ti­cal power of the landed nobi­lity was finally broken. Freed from the feudal yoke, the peasants and agri­cul­tu­ral workers incre­asingly deve­lo­ped into self-confi­dent and soci­ally influ­en­tial clas­ses. They began to actively shape society through the new demo­cra­tic struc­tures such as the Land Reform Commis­sion, the VdgB, and the Demo­cra­tic Farmers’ Party of Germany (Demo­kra­ti­sche Bauern­par­tei Deutsch­lands, DBD) foun­ded in 1948. The DBD was foun­ded to streng­then the poli­ti­cal invol­vement and repre­sen­ta­tion of farmers in the DDR. With a fixed parlia­men­tary faction, it remained an inte­gral part of the DDR’s parlia­ment, the Volks­kam­mer (People’s Cham­ber), and played an active role in the countryside.

Coope­ra­tion and parti­ci­pa­tion in decis­ion-making proces­ses became central features of the peasants’ lives. As the first-hand accounts reveal, the land reform brought the ques­tion of power in the village to the fore. The old, landed class often bitterly resis­ted its expro­pria­tion and loss of influence. This was a new begin­ning, unchar­ted terri­tory for a peas­an­try that had known only centu­ries of feudal oppres­sion and then twelve years of fascist warmon­ge­ring. The fervour but also comple­xity of this change in the lives and conscious­ness of the rural masses was immense. Bruno Kies­ler, long-time head of the SED Central Committee’s Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment, explai­ned the stra­te­gic signi­fi­cance of land reform:

“The demo­cra­tic land reform was a stra­te­gi­cally correct decis­ion, although its initia­tors were aware that large-scale produc­tion was ulti­m­ately supe­rior to a frag­men­ted, small-scale economy in agri­cul­ture. It was neces­sary to take the rural masses along this path and to not impose [the idea of large-scale produc­tion] on them. They first had to find their own footing and gain trust in the poli­ti­cal leader­ship. Through their daily working of the land, they would gradu­ally come to reco­g­nise that commu­nal, coope­ra­tive work was more effec­tive.”[28]

The Building of Cooperatives: ‘From Me to We’

Private or Cooperative Large-Scale Production: A Strategic Decision

In 1950, there were 32,621 state-owned farms and agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses and a total of 617,886 priva­tely owned agri­cul­tu­ral farms of at least one hectare in the DDR. Toge­ther, these private farms culti­va­ted around 88% of all agri­cul­tu­ral land (5.7 million hecta­res).[29] As a result of the land reform and the many men who died during the war, 40,000 farms were run inde­pendently by women farmers in 1948.[30] With an average size of 9.3 hecta­res, the priva­tely-owned farms were divi­ded as follows:

At the time, almost two million of the nearly eight million people employed in the DDR worked in agri­cul­ture. About one quar­ter were agri­cul­tu­ral workers (workers with contracts) and another quar­ter were farmers (self-employed owner or tenant of a farm). The other half consis­ted virtually enti­rely of family workers (the family of the owner or tenant working without contract, social secu­rity, or income tax), which were almost exclu­si­vely women.[31] Of the appro­xi­m­ately 500,000 farmers, appro­xi­m­ately 210,000 were ‘new farmers’, i.e. former agri­cul­tu­ral workers, land­less peasants, or refu­gees that had now recei­ved land through the reform.✱

The econo­mic pres­sure to over­come small-scale agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion increased at the begin­ning of the 1950s with the increased heigh­tened demand for agri­cul­tu­ral products, both as raw mate­ri­als for indus­try and as food stuffs for the popu­la­tion. At the same time, there were signs of stagna­tion in agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion and labour produc­ti­vity.[32] During that same period, the diffi­cult econo­mic situa­tion led to farm closures, espe­ci­ally amongst new farmers. The conti­nuing lack of resi­den­tial and farm buil­dings, shortage of equip­ment and machi­nery, low numbers of draught animals, unfa­voura­ble weather condi­ti­ons, and the gene­rally diffi­cult post-war econo­mic situa­tion, made it diffi­cult to conso­li­date the new farm­steads. Sanc­tions and acts of sabo­tage from the West and other oppon­ents of the revo­lu­tio­nary deve­lo­p­ments in the DDR further exacer­ba­ted the situa­tion. Just prior to the begin­ning of the coope­ra­tive move­ment in 1952, some 30,000 new farmers had aban­do­ned their farms.[33] These were often diffi­cult-to-farm areas with poor soil. Such fallow land was tempo­r­a­rily mana­ged by the state through so-called local agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses (Örtli­che Land­wirt­schafts­be­triebe, ÖLB).

Parcel­led agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion on small private farms hinde­red the ratio­nal distri­bu­tion of labour and made it diffi­cult to effi­ci­ently use agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery, which was alre­ady scar­cely available. Manual labour remained predo­mi­nant. In 1950, the 514 machine-trac­tor stati­ons (Maschi­nen-Trak­to­ren-Station, MTS) in the DDR had just 10,834 trac­tors and 675 trucks for the entire coun­try.[34]

Image 7. Cour­ty­ard of an MTS in Obhau­sen, Saxony-Anhalt (1950).

Since the start of the land reform, a certain number of wealt­hier medium-sized farmers, inclu­ding new farmers, had begun to grow into ‘large-scale farms’. These farms were defi­ned as those of at least 20 to 50 hecta­res and medium soil quality, and included large capi­ta­list farms that exploi­ted the labour of local or refu­gee workers and sought to acquire more land and tech­no­logy and increase their live­stock numbers.[35] In contrast to the Soviet-aligned People’s Repu­blics in Eastern Europe, the owner­ship struc­ture in the DDR was frozen at the level of 1948. The back­ground to this was the still unre­sol­ved issue of German unity. At that time, indus­trial enter­pri­ses, banks, and the trans­port sector had alre­ady been natio­na­li­sed to a large extent. Agri­cul­tu­ral produc­ti­vity, howe­ver, was decisi­vely hampe­red by the limi­ta­ti­ons of small and medium-sized private farms. The socia­list histo­rian Kurt Goss­wei­ler descri­bed the incre­asing neces­sity to make a stra­te­gic decision:

“In face of the urgent need to increase the agri­cul­tu­ral yield, the DDR’s leader­ship had to decide how to open the way to large-scale agri­cul­ture: either along capi­ta­list or socia­list lines. For this reason, the discus­sion about the cons­truc­tion of socia­lism in the DDR was prima­rily a discus­sion about whether the forma­tion of agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion coope­ra­ti­ves would be appro­ved.”[36]

A policy orien­ted toward coope­ra­tive agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion would have a profound impact on labour and property rela­ti­ons in rural life. It was a far-reaching decis­ion that could not be resol­ved until the natio­nal ques­tion in Germany had been sett­led. In 1949, when the DDR was foun­ded as an anti-fascist, demo­cra­tic state in reac­tion to the foun­ding of the Fede­ral Repu­blic of Germany (Bundes­re­pu­blik Deutsch­land, BRD), the decis­ion to begin the path of socia­list cons­truc­tion had not been made. The Soviet Union, as well as the commu­nists in West and East Germany, contin­ued to pursue the stra­te­gic goal of a unified, non-aligned German repu­blic in which the ‘Four Ds’ of the 1945 Pots­dam Agree­ment would be implemented.

The poli­cies of the Western Allies and the West German govern­ment incre­asingly thwar­ted this inten­tion. Poli­ti­cally and econo­mic­ally, the western zones were formed into a sepa­ra­tist state in 1949 by the United States, Great Britain, and France. The popu­lar move­ment, which reso­lut­ely campai­gned for dena­zi­fi­ca­tion and to expro­priate the property of war crimi­nals, was massi­vely suppres­sed in the West and unable to gain the neces­sary strength to reverse the tide. At the begin­ning of the 1950s, West Germany began to remi­li­ta­rize. The Soviet Union made a final attempt to promote a diffe­rent deve­lo­p­ment in Germany with the so-called ‘Stalin Note’ in March 1952, which propo­sed a unitary Germany that would retain its own natio­nal armed forces for defence but would abstain from coali­ti­ons or mili­tary alli­ances direc­ted against any state from the anti-Hitler coali­tion. The note went unans­we­red by the West. Thus, the pros­pect of a unified, demo­cra­tic, and non-aligned Germany had collap­sed. The DDR needed to advance and safe­guard a sove­reign econo­mic and secu­rity policy inde­pen­dent of the West. At the time, although peasants were alre­ady start­ing to deve­lop forms of coope­ra­tive produc­tion, the subjec­tive and objec­tive condi­ti­ons for agri­cul­tu­ral coope­ra­ti­ves were still not suffi­ci­ently developed.

In light of these poli­ti­cal deve­lo­p­ments, the SED and USSR reco­g­nised the neces­sity of shif­ting stra­te­gies. At the SED’s Second Party Confe­rence in July 1952, it was defi­ni­tively deci­ded to begin with the cons­truc­tion of socia­lism. This meant first and fore­most the forma­tion of agri­cul­tu­ral coope­ra­ti­ves. Walter Ulbricht, gene­ral secre­tary of the SED, stres­sed the need for farmers to join coope­ra­ti­ves on a volun­t­ary basis:

“I consider it neces­sary to expli­citly empha­sise from the podium of this confe­rence the prin­ci­ple of abso­lute volun­t­a­ri­ness in the orga­ni­sa­tion of such coope­ra­ti­ves and to point out the inad­mis­si­bi­lity of apply­ing any kind of coer­cion towards the peasants in this regard. Comrade Lenin hims­elf had stres­sed that commu­nal agri­cul­ture cannot be intro­du­ced by decrees and laws.”[37]

Image 8. SED agita­tion poster from the 1950’s. It reads: ‘The future belongs to socia­lism. Indi­vi­dual farmers, join the LPG’.

Developing the Subjective and Objective Conditions for Cooperatives

The poli­ti­cal aim of forming coope­ra­ti­ves was a response to great econo­mic pres­sure to rapidly deve­lop and increase agri­cul­tu­ral output. At the same time, in many respects the subjec­tive and objec­tive condi­ti­ons for large-scale coope­ra­tive produc­tion had not yet suffi­ci­ently matu­red and would first have to be created.

For centu­ries, the idea of the ‘free farmer on his own land’ had been deeply engrai­ned in the minds of the peas­an­try: the old peasants were firmly atta­ched to their land and live­stock. The agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery and infra­struc­ture needed for large-scale produc­tion were also scar­cely available. What is more, this ambi­tious effort to trans­form rural rela­ti­ons took place within the context of the fierce syste­mic rivalry between socia­lism and capi­ta­lism. In the 1950s, the West’s attempts to torpedo socia­list cons­truc­tion were in full swing, as the borders between the two German states remained open.  Econo­mic sabo­tage, inclu­ding the destruc­tion of harve­sts and food supplies, poaching of skil­led workers and much more, placed addi­tio­nal strain on the diffi­cult years of recon­s­truc­tion in agri­cul­ture and on the DDR as a whole. 

In view of the econo­mic neces­sity of deve­lo­ping the struc­tures for large-scale agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion, the DDR was faced with the problem of brin­ging about a huge change in the peasants’ way of working, living, and thin­king in the shor­test time possi­ble. Respon­si­ble poli­ti­cal forces at times disre­garded the prin­ci­ple of volun­t­a­ri­ness. Howe­ver, viewed as a whole, this process would not have been achie­va­ble without the active parti­ci­pa­tion of the peasant masses. How was the DDR able to deve­lop the neces­sary conscious­ness and confi­dence among the peasants under such circumstances?

In some cases, the peasants them­sel­ves had pushed for concrete steps towards joint produc­tion. This is what led to the crea­tion of the first Agri­cul­tu­ral Produc­tion Coope­ra­tive (Land­wirt­schaft­li­che Produ­ku­ti­ons­ge­nos­sen­schaft, LPG) in Thurin­gia. Some farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers were in favour of LPGs because they either saw them as a neces­sary response to the diffi­cult econo­mic situa­tion on their own land or because they knew of coope­ra­tive agri­cul­ture in the Soviet Union and were convin­ced of socia­lism. Such peasants had in fact urged the SED to support the foun­ding of coope­ra­ti­ves, even before the party’s decis­ion to do so in July 1952. Yet, for the vast majo­rity of peasants – espe­ci­ally amongst long-estab­lished medium and large-scale farmers – the thought of giving up indi­vi­dual farming was still incon­ceiva­ble in 1952. Many were dismis­sive, while others took a wait-and-see approach. The long-term pros­pects of the DDR and socia­list cons­truc­tion seemed just as uncer­tain to them as the promise of higher produc­ti­vity in coope­ra­tive agriculture.

Image 9. In Janu­ary 1953 nine farmers from the muni­ci­pa­lity of Bloch­witz, in the district of Gros­sen­hain, foun­ded an agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion coope­ra­tive. With her signa­ture, a farmer named Godzina regis­ters as a member of an LPG.

In the initial phase, small and new farmers, who mana­ged econo­mic­ally weak farms of all sizes, were the main driving force behind the coope­ra­tive move­ment.[38] Large-scale farmers were initi­ally excluded from LPG member­ship until 1955 in order to ensure that those peasants with closer links to the working class played the decisive role in the coope­ra­ti­ves from the outset.[39] Gene­rally, the small-scale farmers,  agri­cul­tu­ral workers, and new farmers were easily recrui­ted to join LPGs because they usually faced the grea­test econo­mic diffi­cul­ties and were less atta­ched to their land.

In the begin­ning, poor produc­tion condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding poor soil quality, lack of farm buil­dings, small work­forces, and lack of expe­ri­ence gene­rally caused considera­ble diffi­cul­ties for the young LPGs. The fact that it was mostly econo­mic­ally depri­ved peasants that joined forces meant that, on the one hand, the need for econo­mic deve­lo­p­ment was high, but, on the other, there was a lack of expe­ri­ence in orga­ni­s­ing large-scale coll­ec­tive production.

The process was made even more diffi­cult by the fact that farmers often joined the coope­ra­ti­ves one by one and the requi­re­ments for inte­gra­tion as well as the incor­po­ra­tion of new areas of produc­tion was a constant chall­enge. Crop rota­ti­ons and the orga­ni­sa­tion of produc­tion had to be constantly adjus­ted. Expe­ri­ence showed that, depen­ding on the initial situa­tion, it usually took five to ten years to estab­lish solid struc­tures and conti­nuous opera­ting proce­du­res in LPGs.[40]

Many peasants clung to tradi­tio­nal ideas of private family farming and had diffi­culty getting used to a coope­ra­tive way of working, with active parti­ci­pa­tion in the manage­ment of the coope­ra­tive and renu­me­ra­tion based on services perfor­med. They also had little expe­ri­ence with large-scale agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion. An unpre­ce­den­ted re-orien­ta­tion was neces­sary: Vom Ich, zum Wir (‘From Me to We’), as the effort to promote a more coll­ec­tive way of thin­king and working came to be known. Grüne­berg summa­ri­sed some of the major diffi­cul­ties in this process:

“Member­ship of the LPG requi­res peasants and agri­cul­tu­ral workers to think on a larger scale. It was easier for the peasant to super­vise the small homes­tead. Now he has to make infor­med decis­i­ons about the inte­rests of a large farm. Coope­ra­tive work makes it neces­sary to become a member of a coll­ec­tive. Previously, the peasant hims­elf deci­ded how to orga­nise his work. Now he recei­ves instruc­tions or, if he beco­mes head of a brigade, for exam­ple, he must orga­nise the work for many people. Former indi­vi­dual peasants and former agri­cul­tu­ral workers must learn to over­come certain preju­di­ces and respect each other as equal coope­ra­tive members.”[41]

By 1952, the first coope­ra­ti­ves were alre­ady opera­ting an average of around 114 hecta­res of agri­cul­tu­ral land.[42] This meant that the mate­rial prere­qui­si­tes for large-scale produc­tion, such as new agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery and tech­no­logy and funds to cons­truct barns, stables, and other farm buil­dings, had to be secu­red as quickly as possi­ble. Even though manu­fac­tu­ring of agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery was acce­le­ra­ted in 1952, there was still a lack of suffi­ci­ent tech­ni­cal equip­ment. In addi­tion to the deve­lo­p­ment of tech­ni­cal means of produc­tion, trai­ning and specia­li­sa­tion for coope­ra­tive farmers was also neces­sary. To this end, incre­asingly large-scale and wide­spread trai­ning capa­ci­ties had to be crea­ted at univer­si­ties, tech­ni­cal colleges, and through evening cour­ses. All of this deman­ded further econo­mic strains on the natio­nal economy.

Image 10. On 19 May 1954, the Freie Erde (Free Soil) LPG in Magde­burg-Salbke buil­ding a large, central farmy­ard. The coope­ra­tive farmers laid the foun­da­tion stone toge­ther with workers from neigh­bou­ring indus­trial enter­pri­ses. The sign reads: ‘How we work today is how we will live tomorrow!’

In order to make the tran­si­tion to coope­ra­ti­ves more gradual and as acces­si­ble as possi­ble, three diffe­rent types of LPGs were drawn up, which diffe­red in the degree of socia­li­sa­tion of the means of produc­tion, the extent of requi­red parti­ci­pa­tion in commu­nal work, and the regu­la­ti­ons for income distri­bu­tion. In all three types, the land brought into the LPG by the peasants remained their own property and was conside­red when wages were distri­bu­ted, thus diffe­ring from the Soviet Union’s kolk­hoz✱ system. In Type I LPGs, arable land, machi­nery, equip­ment, and draught animals were brought in while produc­tive and bree­ding live­stock remained the property of the farmers. In Type II LPGs, trac­tors, draught animals, machi­nery, and equip­ment were also trans­fer­red to the LPG. Type III LPGs exis­ted as inde­pen­dent enter­pri­ses. Except for private house­hold farming, the farmers’ entire homes­tead (arable land, grass­land, wood­land, live­stock, trac­tors, machi­nery, equip­ment, farm buil­dings) was trans­fer­red to the coope­ra­tive. The higher the tier, the less the land contri­bu­ted by the farmers was taken into account for remuneration.

Image 11. The LPG cons­truc­tion brigade buil­ding a feed house on 19 Octo­ber 1955. Between April and Octo­ber of that year, the cons­truc­tion brigade comple­ted three new stables. By 1960, the brigade had built a pig combine, a cattle combine, farro­wing pens, and a poul­try combine. All these major cons­truc­tion projects were comple­ted with the help of volun­teer cons­truc­tion workers.

In 1949, the machine-lending stati­ons (MASs), which had been orga­nised in the context of the land reform by the Peasants’ Mutual Aid Asso­cia­tion, VdgB, to share exis­ting machi­nes between farmers, were trans­for­med into state-owned machine trac­tor stati­ons (MTSs). This change reflec­ted the growing supply of trac­tors and agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery. The MTSs played a leading role in the forma­tion and stabi­li­sa­tion of coope­ra­ti­ves. Larger tech­ni­cal equip­ment, trucks, and machine systems could not be purcha­sed priva­tely by the peasants. In the MTSs, they could be used accor­ding to a tariff system that favou­red small over large-scale farmers and coope­ra­ti­ves over indi­vi­dual farms. As the tech­ni­cal base of the MTSs and their advi­sory service on crop produc­tion and soil condi­ti­ons were conti­nu­ally expan­ded by the state, they effec­tively deter­mi­ned the direc­tion of deve­lo­p­ment towards large-scale indus­trial style agri­cul­tu­ral production.

In addi­tion to their econo­mic tasks, the MTSs also played a central role in the poli­ti­cal and cultu­ral deve­lo­p­ment of the villa­ges. Cultu­ral annex buil­dings were atta­ched to the MTSs, where further trai­ning for farmers, agro­che­mi­cal and zootech­ni­cal consul­ta­ti­ons, film scree­nings, theatre trips, music and dance groups, libra­ries and sports clubs, and much more were orga­nised by the MTSs. These cultu­ral houses became an essen­tial hub for agri­cul­tu­ral deve­lo­p­ment, social and cultu­ral inter­ac­tion, and demo­cra­tic empower­ment. The SED conside­red the MTSs support hubs for the working class in rural areas. Mecha­nics, trac­tor drivers, and other workers at the MTSs had direct cont­act with the indi­vi­dual peasants and played an important role in convin­cing them to join cooperatives.

Image 12. Villa­gers brow­sing through the library in the commu­nity of Krien, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

At no time had the state adopted a passive atti­tude towards the deve­lo­p­ment of coope­ra­ti­ves but now it crea­ted active deve­lo­p­ment incen­ti­ves and subsi­di­sed the young LPGs. The East German agri­cul­tu­ral histo­rian Sigfried Kunt­sche summa­ri­sed some of these measures:

“A large number of bene­fits were promi­sed for the coope­ra­tive merger: reduc­tion of tax arre­ars and tax debts as well as remis­sion of land reform contri­bu­ti­ons, assess­ment of LPGs accor­ding to the prefe­ren­tial stan­dards of indi­vi­dual farmers in the 5–10 hecta­res size group, prio­rity use of MTS tech­no­logy at prefe­ren­tial rates, free agro­no­mic and zootech­ni­cal advice, prefe­ren­tial supply of quality seed and mine­ral ferti­li­ser, and advan­ta­ge­ous loans.”[43]

Image 13. A cultu­ral annex buil­ding built in Kruge-Gers­dorf, Bran­den­burg, in the early 1950s.

Class Struggle and Policy Disputes: Between Retreat and Advance

The possi­bi­li­ties, contra­dic­tions, and requi­re­ments for the progress of the coope­ra­tive move­ment did not only depend on the DDR itself but were also signi­fi­cantly influen­ced by the poli­ti­cal condi­ti­ons across Europe in the 1950s. In the DDR and Eastern Europe, the deve­lo­p­ment of socia­lism was still in its infancy. At the same time, the hybrid ‘Cold War’ waged by the US and its Western allies against the socia­list camp on an inter­na­tio­nal level inten­si­fied. There were many attempts to exploit the uncer­tain­ties and gaps in the poli­ti­cal leader­ships of the socia­list count­ries, espe­ci­ally follo­wing the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. The violent poli­ti­cal crises and anti-govern­ment protests in, among others, the DDR in 1953, Poland in 1956, and Hungary that same year, can be unders­tood in this context.

As late as March 1952, Hein­rich von Bren­tano, then foreign minis­ter of West Germany, openly stated his inten­ti­ons to regain control of East Germany: ‘We will do anything and ever­y­thing, and I say expli­citly: anything and ever­y­thing, to get the Soviet Occu­pa­tion Zone back.’[44] In parti­cu­lar, the open border between West and East Berlin offe­red the West a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ties for disrup­tive actions, inclu­ding espio­nage, sabo­tage, and estab­li­shing terro­rist orga­ni­sa­ti­ons. Exis­ting chal­lenges and discon­tent in the DDR, which mainly stem­med from the population’s struggle to over­come the conse­quen­ces of the war, were deli­bera­tely seized upon by the West and weapo­nised against its govern­ment. Seeing how tense the poli­ti­cal situa­tion was beco­ming at the begin­ning of June 1953, the DDR leader­ship imple­men­ted compre­hen­sive relief measu­res for the popu­la­tion. Nevert­hel­ess, protests broke out weeks later on 17 June 1953, which were inci­ted into a coun­ter­re­vo­lu­tio­nary coup attempt with the help of the West.

In the after­math, the SED leader­ship reflec­ted criti­cally and publicly on policy mista­kes, which also pertai­ned to the coope­ra­tive move­ment that had begun only one year earlier. In a news­pa­per article the SED Central Commit­tee wrote:

“The Party, which had taken the right course towards buil­ding the foun­da­ti­ons of socia­lism in the DDR, took the wrong path of acce­le­ra­ting the solu­tion of this task without taking into account the real inter­nal and exter­nal condi­ti­ons. This led to an exag­ge­ra­ted pace of deve­lo­p­ment of the economy, espe­ci­ally in heavy manu­fac­tu­ring, to false attempts to displace and liqui­date the urban middle and petty bour­geoi­sie and the large peas­an­try in the coun­try­side, which had detri­men­tal conse­quen­ces for the population’s food supply and to a certain extent led to the disrup­tion of proper rela­ti­ons between the Party and the working masses. Admi­nis­tra­tive methods were employed where broad and pati­ent educa­tio­nal work amongst the masses should have taken place.

 

It was right for the party orga­ni­sa­ti­ons to support the move­ment for the forma­tion of agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion coope­ra­ti­ves that emer­ged in the DDR follo­wing the initia­tive of working farmers. Howe­ver, in some circles, Party orga­ni­sa­ti­ons tole­ra­ted the viola­tion of the strict prin­ci­ple of volun­t­a­ri­ness and tried to increase the number of coope­ra­ti­ves without devo­ting the neces­sary atten­tion to the orga­ni­sa­tio­nal and econo­mic conso­li­da­tion of the exis­ting coope­ra­ti­ves, which is the main task of the Party when advan­cing the deve­lo­p­ment of coope­ra­ti­ves in the villa­ges.”[45]

State efforts to actively form new coope­ra­ti­ves were curbed. The focus remained on promo­ting LPGs, but private farms were now also supported by the state.

In 1956, simi­lar anti-govern­ment protests were seen in Poland and Hungary, which revi­ved agita­tion against socia­list agri­cul­tu­ral deve­lo­p­ment in the DDR. The West Berlin radio station, Rund­funk im ameri­ka­ni­schen Sektor (RIAS, or Broad­cas­ting in the Ameri­can Sector), used mani­pu­la­tive, nega­tive report­ing to increase farmers’ doubts about the pros­pects of the socia­list perspec­tive.[46] Walter Ulbricht, gene­ral secre­tary of the SED, expli­citly iden­ti­fied this context:

“In connec­tion with the coun­ter­re­vo­lu­tio­nary events in Hungary and the events in Poland, we are seeing grea­ter acti­vity by capi­ta­list forces in agri­cul­tu­ral circles, grea­ter pres­sure against agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion coope­ra­ti­ves, and also incre­asing acts of sabo­tage.”[47]

At this time, there was a rene­wed debate about the future of agri­cul­ture. At the 8th Plenum of the Polish United Workers’ Party in 1956, Władysław Gomułka was elec­ted as the party’s new secre­tary gene­ral and declared:

“Agri­cul­tu­ral policy requi­res certain correc­tions. As far as coope­ra­ti­ves are concer­ned, only the healthy ones should be helped with repa­ya­ble invest­ment loans, and all kinds of state subsi­dies should be abolished.”[48]

The debate in the DDR also revol­ved around the extent to which the state should conti­nue to promote coope­ra­ti­ves consciously and actively. In the mid-1950s, most coope­ra­ti­ves were still less produc­tive than medium and large-scale farms and had to be supported by state subsi­dies. Some poli­ti­ci­ans and analysts used this as an oppor­tu­nity to campaign against the promo­tion of ‘unpro­duc­tive’ coope­ra­ti­ves and for streng­thening private indi­vi­dual farmers. These propo­sals were shar­ply rejec­ted by the SED leader­ship under Walter Ulbricht, who declared in 1957 at a confe­rence of the Central Committee:

“It is being said that the orderly deve­lo­p­ment of agri­cul­ture and the syste­ma­tic promo­tion of socia­list agri­cul­ture should be aban­do­ned, and the MTS abolished. Influence on the deve­lo­p­ment of agri­cul­ture is suppo­sed to only be exer­ted through a certain regu­la­tion of prices for agri­cul­tu­ral products, the setting of taxes, and the appli­ca­tion of the credit system. Prio­rity, they say, should be given to the deve­lo­p­ment of family farms, by which we mean all farms that operate essen­ti­ally without outside help. … This propo­sal paves the path back to a capi­ta­list economy, wher­eby the large farmers would become the main econo­mic force in the village.”[49]

These dispu­tes reveal that throug­hout the entire period of the coope­ra­tive move­ment there were deep conflicts and deba­tes about how the rela­ti­onship between volun­t­a­ri­ness and the active and deter­mi­ned promo­tion of coope­ra­ti­ves by the state had to be balan­ced. On the one hand, admi­nis­tra­tive exag­ge­ra­ti­ons by govern­ment agen­cies and poli­ti­cal leaders that viola­ted the prin­ci­ple of volun­t­a­ri­ness were criti­ci­zed and oppo­sed. On the other, ideas of a self-perpe­tua­ting process that assi­gned the state a passive role towards the farmers were rejec­ted. In addi­tion, there was a struggle against the forces that actively sabo­ta­ged the deve­lo­p­ment towards socia­list agri­cul­ture; for exam­ple, by calling for a streng­thening of the private farming sector. The socia­list histo­rian Kurt Goss­wei­ler explains why the state had to actively support the forma­tion of cooperatives:

“If, as is deman­ded by some, the state no longer provi­des subsi­dies and the MTSs are requi­red to operate profi­ta­bly, this will mean that the coope­ra­tive no longer offers the poorer farmers any pros­pects. If at the same time ‘the feeling of owner­ship’ is streng­the­ned by giving the rich farmers the oppor­tu­nity to buy up the land of the weak farmers, then it goes without saying that no middle peasant will think of joining the coope­ra­tive. The peasants will not come to the socia­list form of agri­cul­ture on their own, spon­ta­neously. They need the leader­ship of the working class.”[50]

Socialist Springtime: The Cooperative Movement is Completed

Start­ing in 1958, the coope­ra­tive move­ment ente­red another dyna­mic deve­lo­p­ment phase. A gradual conso­li­da­tion of the exis­ting LPGs had taken place, even though state support remained neces­sary in most cases. The econo­mic measu­res alre­ady descri­bed to streng­then the mate­rial and tech­ni­cal basis of agri­cul­ture began to take effect. The number of machi­nes increased, and the medium and large-scale farmers who had hitherto held reser­va­tions began to see the considera­ble produc­ti­vity of LPGs.

Image 14. Indus­trial workers help with the potato harvest. Coope­ra­ti­ves were assi­gned indus­trial enter­pri­ses at an early stage to provide support and workers helped with the harvest and repairs.

In the long term, the coexis­tence of diffe­rent socio-econo­mic struc­tures in agri­cul­ture – both coope­ra­tive produc­tion and private indi­vi­dual farming – was bound to have an inhi­bi­ting effect on the further deve­lo­p­ment of produc­ti­vity. At the same time, the contin­ued exis­tence of private enter­pri­ses in the coun­try­side provi­ded constant poli­ti­cal points of attack against socia­list cons­truc­tion and a mate­rial basis for the poli­ti­cal conflicts that repea­tedly flared up. The pres­sure on the DDR to bring the coope­ra­tive move­ment to a conclu­sion increased. The poli­ti­cal and econo­mic condi­ti­ons in the coun­try were incre­asingly geared towards the work of LPGs. The primacy of the coope­ra­ti­ves, parti­cu­larly in their use of tech­no­logy from the MTSs, limi­ted the private sector’s deve­lo­p­ment opportunities.

Exten­sive efforts were mobi­li­sed in the first quar­ter of 1960 to convince indi­vi­dual farmers to join the coope­ra­ti­ves. Groups from the bloc parties✱ and mass orga­ni­sa­ti­ons went into the villa­ges toge­ther to discuss issues with the farmers. The Demo­cra­tic Farmers’ Party of Germany (DBD), the VdgB, and the MTSs played an important role, as they were most fami­liar with the farmers’ expe­ri­en­ces and the young LPGs.

Karl Mewis, who was the first secre­tary of the SED regio­nal leader­ship in Meck­len­burg and respon­si­ble for the coope­ra­tive move­ment in the north of the DDR at the time, argues that the compen­sa­ti­ons paid to farmers to join coope­ra­ti­ves were likely the decisive factor:

“The govern­ment had made a decis­ion that those who agreed [to join coope­ra­ti­ves], whether they were small, medium or large-scale farmers, would receive great bene­fits. And the large-scale farmers recei­ved money for their machi­nes, equip­ment, and live­stock. The sever­ance pay was such that some people with tens of thou­sands of marks in their pockets wonde­red after­wards whether they should still work at all. But then they got used to working again.”[51]

During this final phase of the coope­ra­tive move­ment, women farmers in parti­cu­lar became an important driving force in the process. They were the ones who objec­tively stood to gain the most from joining LPGs. Tradi­tio­nally, they had worked in animal husbandry, which was deman­ding both physi­cally and in terms of work time, and had to manage their house­holds and child­care as well. The vast majo­rity of farmers who were still working priva­tely finally agreed to join LPGs, although in some cases they only came to truly appre­ciate the bene­fits of coope­ra­tive produc­tion in the years that follo­wed. With hind­sight, the farmer Elli I. reflec­ted on her scep­ti­cism towards the cooperative:

“As indi­vi­dual farmers, we had to work from dawn to dusk. In 1957, my daugh­ter was born prema­tu­rely because I had helped my husband load thirty sacks of ferti­li­zer. In the coope­ra­tive, we no longer had to worry about such things. We had joined the coope­ra­tive quite late and, after years, I thought to myself, my good­ness, how stupid had we been? You can’t live any better than here. The work got easier. We had medi­cal care, every woman could go to the doctor, we had house­kee­ping days, and vaca­ti­ons. When I think back, I didn’t join the coope­ra­tive out of my own voli­tion, but those were my best years.”[52]

In the spring of 1960, except for a few negli­gi­ble private farms remai­ning in the DDR, there was a wave of new LPG forma­ti­ons. From over 850,000 indi­vi­dual farms with an average agri­cul­tu­ral area of around 7.6 hecta­res in 1950, over 19,000 LPGs with an average farm size of around 280 hecta­res had been estab­lished in 1960. Eighty-four percent of all agri­cul­tu­ral land was now farmed coope­ra­tively.[53]

Socialist Relations in the Countryside

Integrating the Cooperatives into the Planned Economy

Coope­ra­tive farmers’ asso­cia­ti­ons had exis­ted in Germany prior to the DDR. These were asso­cia­ti­ons of agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses that offe­red bank loans to farmers and orga­nised purcha­ses (of seed, ferti­li­ser, etc.) and sales. Junkers and large-scale farmers held leading posi­ti­ons in the asso­cia­ti­ons and were thus able to streng­then their domi­nance over small and medium-sized farms. By 1950, these orga­ni­sa­tio­nal units had been restruc­tu­red and inte­gra­ted into the VdgB as the Farmers’ Trade Coope­ra­tive (Bäuer­li­che Handels­ge­nos­sen­schaft, BHG). Coope­ra­ti­ves under capi­ta­list condi­ti­ons differ signi­fi­cantly and funda­men­tally from the LPGs of the DDR. The LPGs opera­ted as a single econo­mic unit, not as an amal­ga­ma­tion of other­wise inde­pen­dent econo­mic units. LPGs had a broad social func­tion to carry out econo­mic, social, and cultu­ral tasks. It was only through its purpose, its mode of opera­tion and, above all, its firmly inte­gra­ted role within the DDR’s poli­ti­cal and econo­mic struc­tures that the socia­list charac­ter of coope­ra­tive produc­tion was established.

The first LPG law was passed in 1959 and included a compre­hen­sive defi­ni­tion of the social role and task of coope­ra­ti­ves. The 1982 version of the law stated as follows:

§1 Prin­ci­ples.

 

(1) Agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion coope­ra­ti­ves (herein­af­ter refer­red to as LPGs) are volun­t­ary asso­cia­ti­ons of farmers, garden­ers, and other citi­zens for joint socia­list produc­tion, to improve their ability to meet their mate­rial and cultu­ral needs, and for conti­nuously impro­ving the supply of the popu­la­tion with produce and of the indus­tries with raw mate­ri­als. The LPGs ensure a signi­fi­cant increase in output and high effi­ci­ency in agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion by constantly impro­ving the ratio of input to output.

 

(2) In the LPGs, coope­ra­tive farmers orga­nize their joint work and their social rela­ti­ons accor­ding to the prin­ci­ples of coope­ra­tive demo­cracy and socia­list busi­ness manage­ment in accordance with the prin­ci­ples of equa­lity, comra­dely coope­ra­tion, and mutual assis­tance. Farmers jointly decide over coope­ra­tive property and share in the econo­mic gains of their LPG accor­ding to coope­ra­tive prin­ci­ples of distri­bu­tion.[54]

At the Fifth Party Congress in 1958, in an effort to become inde­pen­dent from imports from capi­ta­list count­ries, the SED set the goal of ensu­ring that the popu­la­tion would be suffi­ci­ently provi­ded with agri­cul­tu­ral products and that the agri­cul­tu­ral indus­try had access to adequate raw mate­ri­als by the end of 1962. Apart from products that could not be grown in the DDR due to climate and envi­ron­men­tal condi­ti­ons (e.g. tropi­cal fruits, coffee, cocoa, etc.), self-suffi­ci­ency was there­af­ter largely achie­ved.✱ In order to plan and deve­lop the natio­nal economy as a whole, coope­ra­tive agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion had to be inte­gra­ted into the DDR’s centrally plan­ned econo­mic system. The central instru­ment for plan­ning agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion – the Plan of State Produc­tion Volume of Agri­cul­tu­ral Products – was worked out through a complex process of assess­ments and discussions.

First, the demand for agri­cul­tu­ral goods and products was deter­mi­ned at a central level, by the State Plan­ning Commis­sion toge­ther with the Minis­try of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry and the Central State Office for the Regis­tra­tion and Purchase of Agri­cul­tu­ral Products. This included prio­ri­ties for the deve­lo­p­ment of produc­tion and cultu­ral and social progress. The rough figu­res set out in this draft plan were then discus­sed at the district and muni­ci­pal levels as well as in the indi­vi­dual LPGs and the other socia­list agri­cul­tu­ral enter­pri­ses. In the top-down direc­tion – from the central to local level – the figu­res and their feasi­bi­lity were discus­sed, further broken down, and adapted for the lower admi­nis­tra­tive levels, with propo­sals for amend­ments deve­lo­ped along the way. In the bottom-up direc­tion, the results of these discus­sions were first conso­li­da­ted at the level of the LPGs, then at the muni­ci­pal and district coun­cils, and finally summa­ri­sed at the central level before being adopted by the People’s Cham­ber of the DDR. Only then, based on the annual plan, did indi­vi­dual LPGs draw up their final opera­ting plans in coope­ra­tion with the muni­ci­pal coun­cils. Fulfilm­ent of the plan was then moni­to­red by the municipality’s coun­cil or mayor.

The most important body for the demo­cra­tic orga­ni­sa­tion of the LPGs was the Gene­ral Assem­bly. All central decis­i­ons were made at these meetings, which took place at least once a year. The Gene­ral Assem­bly elec­ted a board of direc­tors, a chair­per­son, and leaders of various work briga­des. During the deli­be­ra­ti­ons, work units were discus­sed and appro­ved, produc­tion plans were deba­ted and fina­li­sed, and decis­i­ons about the use of the LPG’s finan­cial resour­ces were made in consul­ta­tion with the muni­ci­pal council.

Ever­y­day work was orga­nised in briga­des, just as in the DDR’s state-owned enter­pri­ses. In the LPGs, work was divi­ded into field cons­truc­tion briga­des, trac­tor briga­des, live­stock briga­des, horti­cul­tu­ral briga­des, and others. There were also perma­nent work groups for buil­ders, trans­por­ta­tion workers, and yard or storage workers. These briga­des usually orga­nised their own monthly meetings where they discus­sed annual plans and their imple­men­ta­tion. For exam­ple, the work units requi­red the use of seeds and commer­cial ferti­li­sers, etc.

All work in the LPGs was valued on a scale of 0.8 to 1.6 work units (WUs). The work unit func­tioned as a conver­sion key to clas­sify the various tasks accor­ding to their importance, diffi­culty, and the quali­fi­ca­ti­ons requi­red to complete them. Compli­ca­ted work was remu­ne­ra­ted with more units than simp­ler work. On average, 1.2 to 1.8 WUs were achie­va­ble in a normal eight-hour work­day. A work unit corre­spon­ded to a mone­tary value which was calcu­la­ted from the total sum of the gene­ra­ted funds available for distri­bu­tion to the members and the number of WUs perfor­med in the LPG. A mini­mum value of seven marks (the East German mark was the offi­cial currency of the DDR) per work unit was guaran­teed by the state. As the exact value of the WUs was only deter­mi­ned after the end of the year, a certain advance per work unit was paid out during the year. In gene­ral, this amoun­ted to 70% of the plan­ned value of the work unit.[55] Solv­eig Leo, a long-stan­ding chair­wo­man of a coope­ra­tive, remem­be­red dispu­tes about the work units:

“In the evening, they usually asses­sed the day’s perfor­mance. There was a table drawn up on the black­board in the LPG and the work units were ente­red there: 1.1 or 1.2 work units per day for each name or so. This meant that every coope­ra­tive farmer was able see how many work units his colle­ague had been awarded. And of course there were discus­sions, if someone disagreed and thought they had worked much more dili­gently than what their number showed, then of course they asked: Why do I have only 1.1 and he has 1.3? Then the chief briga­dier had to explain why.”[56]

Image 15. LPG book­kee­ping was a diffi­cult and often unpo­pu­lar but neces­sary task. Agro­no­mist Reisig (left) from the VdgB supports the farmer Aar (right) in this work in Neubre­de­rs­dorf in Octo­ber 1954, which she has taken on for the LPG, while some of the other members check the results. 

An LPG’s reve­nue was allo­ca­ted to various funds. The diffe­rent funds can be roughly divi­ded into a consump­tion reserve and an invest­ment reserve, i.e. into funds for the simple and exten­ded repro­duc­tion of the LPG. Speci­fi­cally, a distinc­tion was made between a basic fund (farm buil­dings, machi­nery, and equip­ment with a long service life, member­ship initia­tion fees from coope­ra­tive members, etc.), a working capi­tal fund, an invest­ment fund, a remu­ne­ra­tion fund, a cultu­ral and social fund, and others. The allo­ca­tion of resour­ces to the various funds was coor­di­na­ted with the muni­ci­pal coun­cil when the produc­tion plan was drawn up.

Image 16. During the monthly cash audit, senior accoun­tant of the Schö­ne­mark LPG Anne-Margret Mielke works toge­ther with the Insti­tute for Agro-econo­mics at the German Academy of Agri­cul­tu­ral Scien­ces in Berlin.
Image 17. Although the coope­ra­tive farmers of the Vorwärts LPG in Groß Beuchow were not requi­red to deli­ver any table pota­toes, 100 addi­tio­nal tonnes of table pota­toes were commit­ted to better supply the popu­la­tion. Thirty-two female coope­ra­tive farmers harve­s­ted pota­toes, which were imme­dia­tely taken to nearby shops (Septem­ber 1961).

The dual-price system, which was intro­du­ced after 1945 to stimu­late agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion, was gradu­ally repla­ced by stan­dar­di­sed prices start­ing in 1964. Previously, a low price was char­ged for agri­cul­tu­ral products deli­vered as part of state-manda­ted quotas and a higher price was paid for any surplus produ­ced beyond those quotas. The signi­fi­cant increase in produc­tion levels after 1945 meant that the deli­very quotas were reached early in the year and high reve­nues were gene­ra­ted from the surplus. The moti­va­tion to further increase produc­ti­vity decli­ned. The newly intro­du­ced fixed prices for agri­cul­tu­ral products were set at a high level. At the same time, the coope­ra­ti­ves incur­red higher costs (for exam­ple, as they became inde­pendently respon­si­ble for purcha­sing and main­tai­ning tech­ni­cal equipment).

Image 18. In 1961, the Freund­schaft (Friend­ship) milking brigade of the LPG in Neßdorf produ­ced more than 80,000 kilo­grams of milk, excee­ding the plan for the year.
Image 19. Annual Gene­ral Assem­bly of the Priborn LPG discus­sing high crop yields and effi­ci­ent use of tech­no­logy. The members of the field crew listen atten­tively (Janu­ary 1973).

Further chan­ges charac­te­ri­sed the econo­mic acti­vi­ties of the LPGs. Previously, agri­cul­tu­ral goods were purcha­sed from the coope­ra­ti­ves by the publicly owned Acqui­si­tion and Purcha­sing Orga­ni­sa­tion (Volks­ei­ge­ner Erfas­sungs und Aufkauf­be­trieb, VEAB). Except for grain and legu­mes, the coope­ra­ti­ves now ente­red into direct contracts with larger-scale proces­sors without the inter­ven­tion of another state organisation.

As was also the case in other areas of produc­tion in the DDR, intra- and inter-coope­ra­tive as well as supra-regio­nal compe­ti­ti­ons were orga­nised along­side the annual plans and ever­y­day brigade work in order to further foster produc­tion. The aim was to mobi­lise addi­tio­nal reser­ves, draw public atten­tion to the importance of agri­cul­ture, and raise aware­ness about the coll­ec­tive results of the work. An excerpt from a book published in 2015 by Thomas Kupfer­mann on the history and ever­y­day life of agri­cul­ture in the DDR exem­pli­fies how much public atten­tion was paid to these activities:

“The mecha­nised harve­s­t­ing of crops on a large scale – propa­ga­ted by the press, but also ironi­cally adopted into common parlance – was known as the ‘battle of the harvest’. The hard-working men – and women – who drove their combine harves­ters across the large LPG fields and took their machi­nes to the next job on the roads, much to the chag­rin of drivers, were the ‘harvest capta­ins’. Every year, the battle raged, and the media accom­pa­nied it with head­lines and success stories. ‘High acti­vity in the harvest fields’ was follo­wed by hectare and yield figu­res, up-to-date photo and text reports, and volun­t­ary commit­ments from the coope­ra­tive farmers. The coope­ra­ti­ves took part in district compe­ti­ti­ons, which were also repor­ted on, and at the end of the harvest battle there were awards for the winners and their pictures in the ‘Streets of the Best’ (black­boards to exhi­bit the best workers, author’s note). Every citi­zen of the DDR was suppo­sed to find out from news­pa­pers and news reports how many hecta­res of grain had been mown or how many tonnes of sugar beet had been harve­s­ted and knew slogans such as, ‘Agri­cul­tu­ral workers! Compete for high yields! More meat, milk, and grain for the Repu­blic!’ Trac­tor drivers were held in simi­larly high esteem to combine harves­ters, as they symbo­li­sed tech­ni­cal progress in socia­list agri­cul­ture.”[57]

Hans Luft, agro­no­mist and former employee of the DDR’s Minis­try of Agri­cul­ture, reflects on the cultu­ral trans­for­ma­tion brought about by the new produc­tion rela­ti­ons of the coope­ra­tive system:

“The joint work in the coope­ra­tive and the emer­ging problems such as the complex use of machi­nery to bring in the harvest as quickly as possi­ble, diffi­cul­ties with repairs and procu­ring spare parts for agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery, comple­tion of cons­truc­tion and irri­ga­tion systems, [and] epide­mic-free manage­ment of large live­stock quickly broke down gene­ra­ti­ons of enmity in the villa­ges. The farmers’ child­ren grew into the new forms of produc­tion, with new know­ledge, expe­ri­ence and, above all, higher levels of quali­fi­ca­tion.”[58]

Cooperatives Improve Social and Political Prospects

From the very begin­ning, the tasks of the LPGs were not limi­ted to agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion. LPGs deve­lo­ped into the central hubs of social, commu­nal, cultu­ral-poli­ti­cal, and econo­mic deve­lo­p­ments in rural commu­ni­ties. In coope­ra­tion with the muni­ci­pa­li­ties and urban enter­pri­ses, LPGs built apart­ments, cultu­ral centres, kinder­gar­tens, and sports faci­li­ties. They impro­ved roads and cons­truc­ted new ones, instal­led water pipes and sewage systems, dug drai­nage ditches, and opened stores and restau­rants. LPGs built on and expan­ded the cultu­ral work of MTSs. Perfor­man­ces by theatre groups, dance nights for the youth, sport­ing events, and film scree­nings brought a new level of cultu­ral life to the villages. 

LPGs also faci­li­ta­ted compre­hen­sive social change for the village popu­la­tion. Histo­rian Wolf­gang Mahlich exami­ned the compre­hen­sive impact of coope­ra­ti­ves on the rural population’s living conditions:

“With the trans­fer of indi­vi­dual farmers into LPGs, the physi­cal strain on farmers, espe­ci­ally women farmers, was redu­ced – in the fields, barns, and warehou­ses through commu­nal work, but above all through the use of machi­nery and entire machine systems.”[59]

Mahlich listed important social achie­ve­ments that came with the cooperatives:

  • Equal pay for equal work, regard­less of age and gender.
  • Special remu­ne­ra­tion for work on Sundays and public holi­days and sick pay in the event of illness.
  • Child bene­fits for coope­ra­tive farmers with children.
  • Paid vaca­tion, with the option of spen­ding it in LPG-owned vaca­tion site.
  • Regu­lar work hours, except during the harvest months.
  • Inclu­sion of all coope­ra­tive farmers in a uniform social insu­rance system.
  • Access to rural outpa­ti­ent clinics for free medi­cal care, open to all rural residents.
  • Equa­lity of LPG members with workers and employees in the social, health, and insu­rance systems.
  • ‘Exemp­tion’ of LPG members from income tax contri­bu­ti­ons.[60]
Image 20. Two kinder­gar­ten teachers and an educa­tio­nal assistant look after 47 child­ren in the kinder­gar­ten of the LPG Walter Ulbricht in Jahna, foun­ded in 1952 by 64 farmers with 254 hecta­res (it had 240 members in 1958 when the picture was taken). In addi­tion to farm buil­dings, many social and cultu­ral faci­li­ties were built. The muni­ci­pa­lity also has a nursery and an after-school care centre. 

Finally, child labour, which had been a common prac­tice on family-run farms, disap­peared with the coope­ra­tive way of working. Central schools repla­ced the single-class schools in the villa­ges. Child­ren and young people had access to the DDR’s poly­tech­nic educa­tion system, which enab­led them to choose an inde­pen­dent career and provi­ded a foun­da­tion for agri­cul­tu­ral studies. Compre­hen­sive educa­tion and trai­ning oppor­tu­ni­ties were crea­ted for coope­ra­tive farmers, from which female farmers bene­fi­ted signi­fi­cantly. They were able to gain profes­sio­nal quali­fi­ca­ti­ons and take on mana­ge­rial roles in the coope­ra­tive farms.

Image 21. The VdgB Women Farmers’ Commis­sion in the Stoll­berg district follo­wed the reso­lu­ti­ons of the Farmers’ Congress to support women farmers and girls in their conti­nuing educa­tion by offe­ring special trai­ning cour­ses. For fifteen weeks, forty-eight women and girls came to the district town for further trai­ning. There were lectures, semi­nars, prac­ti­cal exer­ci­ses, and field trips. The focus was on cattle bree­ding and husbandry because most of the parti­ci­pants worked in this field (Febru­ary 1962).

The agro­no­mist and SED poli­ti­cian, Marga­rete Müller, repor­ted on the gradual progress coll­ec­tively achie­ved by her village:

“I have lived in Kote­low since 1960. Back then, at the age of 29, I was elec­ted LPG chair­wo­man. When we star­ted, there were no paved roads and our boots got stuck in the deep mud. Bit by bit, we civi­li­sed this village and brought it forward. We were happy about every new house, every new stable, every new barn, the dairy farm and the pigsties that we built toge­ther. We cele­bra­ted toge­ther and also got frus­tra­ted toge­ther when things didn’t go the way we wanted them to. We were a commu­nity. Even in the summer, farmers could go on holi­day, and the child­ren quali­fied at univer­si­ties and tech­ni­cal colleges and some­ti­mes came back because they saw pros­pects for them­sel­ves and their fami­lies in little Kote­low.”[61]

Image 22. Anne­liese Hart­mann, a mecha­ni­sa­tion expert from the W. I. Lenin LPG in Ötters­dorf in June 1978. Hart­mann opera­ted a wide range of large-scale agri­cul­tu­ral equip­ment. Here, she is direc­ting her swather over the green fodder areas.

Between 1960 and 1990, the propor­tion of female members in coope­ra­ti­ves fluc­tua­ted roughly around 40–45%.[62] In 1963, the propor­tion of people working in socia­list agri­cul­ture who had comple­ted a degree or voca­tio­nal trai­ning was 18.1%, while only 8.5% of women working in agri­cul­ture had a degree or trai­ning. By 1984, the figure was 90.2% in total and 88.6% of all women working in agri­cul­ture.[63] This number was unri­val­led inter­na­tio­nally.[64] The signi­fi­cant increase in the level of educa­tion of the rural popu­la­tion, espe­ci­ally throug­hout the 1960s and their guaran­teed right to voca­tio­nal trai­ning and higher educa­tion is descri­bed by contem­po­rary witnesses as an educa­tio­nal revo­lu­tion of the coun­try­side.[65]

In 1966, 26% of all board members of the LPGs were women; howe­ver, only 0.9% of all coope­ra­ti­ves were run by women.[66] Concrete struc­tures such as the Women’s Commit­tees and Women’s Deve­lo­p­ment Plans were set up compre­hen­si­vely in the LPGs and inten­ded to streng­then the role of women, advo­cate for their inte­rests, and increase their leader­ship posi­ti­ons. In the follo­wing years, the propor­tion of women in leader­ship posi­ti­ons increased noti­ce­ably and reached 35% in 1978, partly due to the increase in their profes­sio­nal and educa­tio­nal quali­fi­ca­ti­ons. Yet women still very rarely became LPG chairs.[67] In 1987, there were only 125 women chairs.[68] Despite their under­re­pre­sen­ta­tion in leader­ship posi­ti­ons, equal and inde­pen­dent member­ship in coope­ra­ti­ves repre­sen­ted a histo­ric and funda­men­tal deve­lo­p­ment for women farmers.

There was also a tendency towards a gradual conver­gence of living condi­ti­ons between urban and rural areas. The coope­ra­tive farmers had a firm place in the DDR’s poli­ti­cal and demo­cra­tic struc­tures. The Demo­cra­tic Farmers’ Party (DBD), as the poli­ti­cal body of the rural popu­la­tion, and the Peasants’ Mutual Aid Asso­cia­tion (VdgB), their mass orga­ni­sa­tion, were firmly inte­gra­ted into the DDR’s demo­cra­tic system. They had seats in both the Natio­nal Front and the People’s Cham­ber of the DDR.✱ LPG advi­sory boards and regu­lar farmers’ congres­ses at the muni­ci­pal coun­cil level ensu­red a conti­nuous and direct exch­ange in order to discuss the current situa­tion and further deve­lop agri­cul­ture and life in the coun­try­side. In this way, a complex network of struc­tures and bodies was crea­ted that enab­led farmers and the rural popu­la­tion to actively parti­ci­pate in the DDR’s poli­ti­cal, social, and econo­mic system and firmly connec­ted the rural popu­la­tion with the urban working popu­la­tion. The isola­tion of the rural popu­la­tion and the poli­ti­cal domi­nance of the city over the coun­try­side were broken up.

Anti-Impe­ria­list Soli­da­rity in Agriculture

On 1 Septem­ber 1960, the Insti­tute of Tropi­cal Agri­cul­ture was foun­ded at Karl Marx Univer­sity in Leip­zig. Why was such an insti­tute foun­ded in Germany, a coun­try in a cool-tempe­rate climate zone? The last insti­tute with a simi­lar remit in Germany had been the Colo­nial and Foreign Agri­cul­ture Insti­tute, which was dissol­ved after Germany was forced to aban­don its colo­nies after the First World War. There was no longer any inte­rest in rese­arch and educa­tion on tropi­cal agri­cul­ture. This chan­ged in the DDR, but for a wholly diffe­rent purpose. The new states emer­ging from anti-colo­nial strug­gles were to be actively supported on their path to econo­mic libe­ra­tion. Thou­sands of students from over sixty count­ries in the Global South were trai­ned at the Leip­zig Insti­tute and a handful of other trai­ning centres, such as the Agri­cul­tu­ral Engi­nee­ring School for Tropi­cal Agri­cul­ture in Alten­burg and the state-owned Enter­prise for Inter­na­tio­nal Agri­cul­tu­ral Coope­ra­tion (VEB Inter­agrar­ko­ope­ra­tion), for the deve­lo­p­ment of agri­cul­ture in their home countries.

These assign­ments were wide-ranging: whether pig specia­lists trying to combine the ferti­lity of the Viet­na­mese pot-bellied pig with the fattening ability of German breeds in Viet­nam; a tropi­cal farmer who, toge­ther with local offi­ci­als, carried out the first thorough statis­ti­cal surveys of live­stock produc­tion in the People’s Demo­cra­tic Repu­blic of Yemen; or a group of thirty-eight DDR specia­lists who, on the basis of a friend­ship treaty between the DDR and Mozam­bi­que, helped to set up a state-owned farm in coope­ra­tion with locals, despite violent attacks by coun­ter-revo­lu­tio­nary forces that also clai­med the lives of eight DDR advi­sors in 1984.[69]

The DDR also supported large-scale projects, such as the deve­lo­p­ment of the first coffee-growing areas in Dac Lac, Viet­nam with 32 million roubles.✱ It was on the basis of this project that Viet­nam became the second largest coffee produ­cer in the world.[70] Dona­ti­ons from DDR citi­zens finan­ced ship­ments of agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery and the estab­lish­ment of repair work­shops in the Global South. In their LPGs, thou­sands of DDR farmers orga­nised soli­da­rity acti­vi­ties and supported campaigns such as the ‘Farmers Help the Farmers of Viet­nam’ campaign that sent spray­ing equip­ment to Viet­nam to reha­bi­li­tate crops poiso­ned by the US chemi­cal attacks.

Image 23. On the harvest field, the coope­ra­tive farmers of the Oskar Schnel­ler LPG in Mans­feld express their soli­da­rity and friend­ship with the Viet­na­mese people in the presence of Bui Tru, the second secre­tary of the embassy of the Demo­cra­tic Repu­blic of Viet­nam in the DDR (July 1972).

Collaboration, Specialisation, and Intensification: The Path to Large-Scale Production

After the land reform and the coope­ra­tive move­ment, a third central phase of agri­cul­tu­ral deve­lo­p­ment began in the late 1960s. This phase defi­ned the stra­te­gic goals that would guide agri­cul­tu­ral plan­ning until the begin­ning of the 1980s: concen­tra­tion, specia­li­sa­tion, and colla­bo­ra­tion as prere­qui­si­tes for large-scale indus­trial-like produc­tion in the coun­try­side. On the basis of incre­asing invest­ment capa­ci­ties and solid expe­ri­ence with coope­ra­tive style produc­tion, all LPGs gradu­ally deve­lo­ped into Type III LPGs (the most advan­ced coope­ra­tive struc­ture, where farmers brought their entire land and homes­tead into the coope­ra­tive, which func­tioned as an inde­pen­dent enter­prise). Through a 1963 decree of the Coun­cil of Minis­ters, MTS machi­nery was largely handed over to the Type III LPGs free of charge while the Type I and Type II LPGs were able to purchase it at a low price and in inst­al­ments. Trac­tors and machi­nes worth around 1.8 billion marks were trans­fer­red to the LPGs.[71] Many MTS workers, trac­tor drivers, and tech­ni­ci­ans became members of coope­ra­ti­ves. This meant that the use of tech­no­logy could be coor­di­na­ted more effec­tively and inte­gra­ted into the work of LPGs. Finally, LPGs also merged to form larger ‘joint LPGs’. The total number of coope­ra­ti­ves decreased, while the agri­cul­tu­ral area farmed by each coope­ra­tive increased. Where previously there were 19,313 coope­ra­ti­ves working roughly 5.4 million hecta­res of land in 1960, in 1988 only 3,855 worked the same amount of land.[72] In addi­tion to their members, LPGs employed non-member manual workers and admi­nis­tra­tive employees, some­ti­mes on a seaso­nal basis. The need for labour was coor­di­na­ted with the muni­ci­pa­li­ties and laid out in econo­mic plans.

The increase in agri­cul­tu­ral produc­ti­vity was neces­sary to meet the growing demand for food and raw agri­cul­tu­ral mate­ri­als for the popu­la­tion and indus­try. Raw agri­cul­tu­ral mate­ri­als were an important produc­tion basis for many non-food indus­tries, such as the textile, leather and fur, pulp and paper, chemi­cal and phar­maceu­ti­cal, wood­wor­king, and cultu­ral indus­tries. Almost 65% of the DDR’s primary raw mate­ri­als were produ­ced in agri­cul­ture.[73] Finally, an increase in agri­cul­tu­ral produc­ti­vity promi­sed the possi­bi­lity of free­ing up labour that could be deployed to other sectors of the economy. In addi­tion to the conti­nuous advance­ment of agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery, the sharp rise in the level of trai­ning that farmers and agri­cul­tu­ral workers recei­ved was both an important driving force for incre­asing produc­ti­vity and a neces­sary foun­da­tion for further concen­tra­tion and coope­ra­tion in the struc­ture of agriculture.

Since the begin­ning of the coope­ra­tive move­ment, part­ner­ship agree­ments had been estab­lished between the emer­ging LPGs on the one hand and larger indus­trial enter­pri­ses or state and scien­ti­fic insti­tu­ti­ons on the other. These agree­ments were inten­ded to promote and conso­li­date the deve­lo­p­ment of the coope­ra­ti­ves such as through orga­nised support for inten­sive harvest peri­ods or cons­truc­tion projects. Poli­ti­cally, the aim was to bring workers from the cities and farmers closer toge­ther. Throug­hout the 1960s, howe­ver, the connec­tion had been spora­dic and rela­tively loose. The aim now was to improve coor­di­na­tion of the agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion process and the proces­sing of raw agri­cul­tu­ral goods into food and other finis­hed products. From the early 1970s onwards, inter­re­la­ti­onships and coope­ra­tion on the hori­zon­tal level, i.e. between farms at the same stage of produc­tion, and on the verti­cal level, i.e. between farms at diffe­rent stages in the chain up to the consu­mer (primary produc­tion, proces­sing, and trade), were estab­lished and expanded.

This did not entail the fusing of LPGs with state-owned indus­trial enter­pri­ses; both contin­ued to operate inde­pendently from one another in legal and econo­mic terms. Instead, part­ner­ships and joint faci­li­ties were set up between LPGs and state-owned facto­ries. Examp­les included agro­che­mi­cal centres, which focu­sed on ferti­li­sa­tion and crop protec­tion; land impro­ve­ment coope­ra­ti­ves, which orga­nised the cons­truc­tion of irri­ga­tion and drai­nage systems; and repair and tech­no­logy stati­ons, which became the succes­sors of MTSs.

Image 24. Specia­lists Klaus Ulrich and Franz Mally check compu­ter-control­led irri­ga­tion system in an LPG in Dambeck.

In agri­cul­tu­ral plan­ning, too, the upstream and down­stream areas of produc­tion were incre­asingly inter­lin­ked at the central, local, and farm levels. For LPGs, which had up until then been rela­tively self-contai­ned, this meant an incre­asingly profound inte­gra­tion into the over­all social plan­ning and manage­ment of the DDR economy. The Agri­cul­tu­ral-Indus­trial Asso­cia­ti­ons (Agrar-Indus­trie-Verei­ni­gun­gen, AIVs) that emer­ged in the mid-1970s were the culmi­na­tion of this process. AIVs were an insti­tu­tio­na­li­sed form of compre­hen­sive coope­ra­tion between various LPGs, Publicly Owned Estates (VEGs), joint faci­li­ties, and the upstream and down­stream enter­pri­ses in the service, proces­sing, and manu­fac­tu­ring sectors. Fixed orga­ni­sa­tio­nal and manage­ment struc­tures linked the indi­vi­dual units toge­ther. Thir­teen such produc­tion comple­xes were formed in the DDR before 1989, and toge­ther they farmed 6.6% of the DDR’s total agri­cul­tu­ral land.[74] Hans Reichelt, long-time minis­ter of agri­cul­ture, defends the path to indus­trial-like agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion under the condi­ti­ons of a socia­list society:

“This was the path towards crea­ting larger econo­mic units in agri­cul­ture – small-scale farming is as inef­fec­tive as keeping live­stock in small stables. Some may object here: ‘Yikes, large-scale live­stock farming!’ But indus­try-like produc­tion in agri­cul­ture is not bad per se. It is objec­tively neces­sary to feed huma­nity – this is not possi­ble with nine­te­enth century produc­tion methods. What is bad is when all moral and ethi­cal rules, inclu­ding animal welfare, are igno­red for the sake of profit. Howe­ver, this stems from the charac­ter of the society. When corpo­rate whole­sale buyers force farmers to sell their produce below the produc­tion price, and when share­hol­ders and banks specu­late with food on the stock exch­an­ges, this inevi­ta­bly has an impact on produc­tion.”[75]

Image 25. Grain harvest with the combine harves­ter in a coope­ra­tive in Werben.

Concrete problems arising from the trend towards specia­li­sa­tion and exces­ses in large-scale produc­tion led to course correc­tions and deba­tes at the begin­ning of the 1980s. The specia­li­sa­tion and sepa­ra­tion of plant and animal produc­tion disrupted the direct exch­ange of natu­ral ferti­li­ser and animal feed and led to logi­sti­cal diffi­cul­ties. Incre­asing trans­port expen­dit­ures and costs on large estates put a strain on produc­tion. In animal produc­tion, the effort requi­red for vete­ri­nary hygiene and dise­ase preven­tion increased noti­ce­ably. Ecolo­gi­cal issues, due to exag­ge­ra­ted usage of mine­ral ferti­li­sers while negle­c­ting orga­nic opti­ons, were correc­ted over time. Energy-inten­sive machine systems were suscep­ti­ble to energy price spikes on the global market, which affec­ted the DDR, espe­ci­ally in the begin­ning of the 1980s. Finally, the ques­tion of the limits of the scien­ti­fic regu­la­tion of agri­cul­ture, as an area neces­s­a­rily depen­dent on envi­ron­men­tal and biolo­gi­cal condi­ti­ons, was controversial.

Although the trend towards ever-stron­ger coope­ra­tion between the various farms and inte­gra­tion into the over­all social plan­ning was promo­ted, there were no plans in the DDR to aban­don the coope­ra­tive model of the LPGs in favour of VEGs. This was clearly explai­ned in an offi­cial infor­ma­tion brochure on agri­cul­ture published expli­citly for foreigners:

“Time and again, visi­tors to our repu­blic ask if and when land will be natio­na­li­sed. This ques­tion is not on the table, because nobody is thin­king of chan­ging the forms of property in the coun­try­side. Most of the land is the perso­nal property of the farmers. Its coope­ra­tive use, the distri­bu­tion of its yield to the LPG members accor­ding to their share of the work perfor­med, crea­tes every oppor­tu­nity to further advance the [DDR’s] deve­lo­ped socia­list society.”[76]

The title to a piece of land could be sold in the DDR, provi­ded it was not acqui­red during the land reform of 1945. In these cases, the state retai­ned the pre-emptive right to buy the land before it was offe­red to private indi­vi­du­als. Land that had been gran­ted through the land reform could only be inhe­ri­ted. If this did not occur, the land would be retur­ned to the state land fund. The state then handed it over to the respec­tive LPG for use. These regu­la­ti­ons tended to slowly but steadily increase the propor­tion of natio­nally owned land. The fixed and growing inte­gra­tion of the LPGs into the unitary struc­tures of econo­mic plan­ning and demo­cracy in the DDR preven­ted private land owner­ship from deve­lo­ping any econo­mic or poli­ti­cal signi­fi­cance. Howe­ver, certain issues suggest that private owner­ship had an influence on the conscious­ness of indi­vi­dual farmers. This could be seen in the ques­tion of trans­forming the LPGs into VEGs, which would have emer­ged natu­rally out of the deve­lo­p­ment of socia­li­sed agri­cul­ture. Towards the end of the DDR, this dyna­mic was reflec­ted in conflicts over the compe­ten­cies of large agri­cul­tu­ral units, such as the AIVs, and state bodies, as Klaus Schmidt, former direc­tor of the DDR’s Insti­tute for Agroe­co­no­mics points out:

“Parti­cu­larly where the AIVs mana­ged the terri­tory of an entire muni­ci­pa­lity or where their sphere of influence even exten­ded beyond the municipality’s boun­da­ries, there was a tendency for them to incre­asingly take on the offi­cial duties that had hitherto been mana­ged by state organs. A funda­men­tal problem that arose with the deve­lo­p­ment of the AIVs was the ques­tion of the pros­pects and oppor­tu­ni­ties of indi­vi­dual units within the AIV: to what extent they could main­tain their inde­pen­dence.”[77]

It was such contra­dic­tions and problems, as well as the misgui­ded sepa­ra­tion of plant and animal produc­tion in the 1970s, that should have resul­ted in lively debate about the future of agri­cul­ture. The issue of balan­cing land owner­ship and inde­pen­dence with further inte­gra­tion and centra­li­sa­tion of the LPGs would certainly have remained the subject of poli­ti­cal debate had the DDR contin­ued to exist. Navi­ga­ting such contra­dic­tions and advan­cing socia­list agri­cul­ture would have requi­red an agile, self-criti­cal, and proac­tive effort by the SED and the wide-ranging demo­cra­tic struc­tures in the coun­try­side, from the agri­cul­tu­ral coun­cils at all poli­ti­cal levels of the DDR (muni­ci­pa­li­ties, districts, and central level) to the farmers’ orga­ni­sa­ti­ons (e.g., the Farmers’ Congress, the Demo­cra­tic Farmers’ Party, and the Peasants’ Mutual Aid Asso­cia­tion), the nume­rous scien­ti­fic insti­tu­ti­ons, espe­ci­ally the Academy of Agri­cul­tu­ral Scien­ces, and the nume­rous agri­cul­ture publi­ca­ti­ons of the time.

Return to Capitalism

With the disso­lu­tion of the DDR in Octo­ber 1990, the deve­lo­p­ment of socia­list agri­cul­tu­ral rela­ti­ons was brought to an abrupt end. The liqui­da­tion of the LPGs was the central trend in agri­cul­ture after 1990.[78] The LPGs gave way to the private family farming model that prevai­led in West Germany. Only 55% of the land culti­va­ted by the LPGs was owned by indi­vi­dual LPG members and 28% of the land they farmed was state property. The remai­ning 17% was owned by non-members, which was given to the LPGs for use. This 45% of land was gradu­ally priva­tised after 1990.[79] This was a decisive lever for brea­king up and dismant­ling the LPG infra­struc­ture. Howe­ver, the fact that a large part of the land contin­ued to be the private property of the farmers in the LPGs meant that they retai­ned the possi­bi­lity of main­tai­ning at least elements of the LPG model under the capi­ta­list system. The struc­tu­ral chan­ges that were impo­sed imme­dia­tely after 1990, at breakneck speed, led to a veri­ta­ble rural exodus. Of the former 923,000 agri­cul­tu­ral workers in the DDR, 743,900 were laid off by 1993 and four out of five had to leave the coun­try­side.[80] The social and cultu­ral infra­struc­ture was destroyed. Young and quali­fied workers in parti­cu­lar left the villa­ges. Although the results of the land reform were legally protec­ted by the so-called reuni­fi­ca­tion trea­ties signed by the last DDR govern­ment, former pre-1945 landow­ners used loopho­les to reclaim parts of their expro­pria­ted land. Impres­si­ons from Dieter Wolff, agri­cul­tu­ral engi­neer and econo­mist, provide an exam­ple of how this trans­for­ma­tion was commonly perceived:

“Of course, the unrest and tensi­ons in 1989 did not pass our LPG by. Like all former DDR citi­zens, I was outra­ged to learn of the mista­kes made by the party and state leader­ship. At the same time, howe­ver, it was incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me how all the good aspects of the DDR expe­ri­ence were now being gene­ra­li­sed as bad or wrong. […] A lot of what we learnt and prac­ti­sed in the socia­list coope­ra­tive over the deca­des bene­fits us today. And the diffe­rence to the past? Back then, we were often annoyed by the constant attempts of higher-level manage­ment to inter­fere in the work of the coope­ra­tive, but today only one body really has a say: the bank.”[81]

Despite the radi­cal capi­ta­list turn­around, the history of the DDR has left a visi­ble mark on agri­cul­tu­ral struc­tures to this day. On average, farms in East Germany culti­vate much larger areas than those in West Germany. While 68% of agri­cul­tu­ral land in the East is mana­ged on farms with more than 500 hecta­res, this figure is only 2% in the West.[82] Former LPGs, which have main­tai­ned elements of their former struc­tures under the new legal cate­go­ries of the market economy, are being put under further pres­sure by land specu­la­tion, which has long since taken hold in the East. Rising tenancy fees are also threa­tening to conti­nu­ally disin­te­grate agri­cul­tu­ral structures.

Conclusion

In a short period of less than fifty years, revo­lu­tio­nary ruptures in the living and econo­mic rela­ti­ons of the coun­try­side were seen in East Germany: from the remnants of a semi-feudal, hier­ar­chi­cal social and property order to a coll­ec­tive way of working and living based on coope­ra­tion and finally back to a private capi­ta­list economy. This history illus­tra­tes how property and power rela­ti­ons deter­mine the way people live and work toge­ther. While this expe­ri­ence does not provide a blue­print for rural trans­for­ma­tion in other regi­ons of the world where there are very diffe­rent poli­ti­cal and econo­mic condi­ti­ons, it is possi­ble to iden­tify basic dyna­mics that can be infor­ma­tive points of refe­rence for under­stan­ding contem­po­rary deve­lo­p­ments and formu­la­ting poli­ti­cal strategies.

The land reform that began in 1945 crea­ted an indis­pensable prere­qui­site for any funda­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the coun­try­side. The poli­ti­cal and econo­mic mono­poly of the landow­ning clas­ses was dismant­led. Only by ending their rule was it possi­ble to estab­lish and deve­lop new econo­mic and social rela­ti­ons in East Germany. The land reform ended the domi­nance of the feudal aris­to­cracy and agra­rian capi­ta­list clas­ses with the expro­pria­tion of the large Junker estates and, with it, their soci­ally domi­nant role. Agri­cul­tu­ral workers, land­less and small peasants, and the gene­ral village popu­la­tion were libe­ra­ted from the system of econo­mic explo­ita­tion and semi-feudal disen­fran­chise­ment. The oppres­sed became active shapers of agri­cul­ture and village life. Prior to this, the poli­ti­cal leader­ship of bour­geois-capi­ta­list Germany had not been willing or able to bring about this far-reaching trans­for­ma­tion of the coun­try­side. It was only under the leader­ship of the parties of the workers’ move­ment and under the reality of Soviet occu­pa­tion that the land reform – ulti­m­ately a bour­geois-demo­cra­tic land reform that eman­ci­pa­ted small farmers through private landow­ner­ship – was achie­ved in this part of Germany. At the same time, the reform took a clear side in favour of working and land­less peasants, preven­ting the re-emer­gence of large landow­ners and promo­ting coll­ec­tive, coope­ra­tive forms of work and life. By anti­ci­pa­ting and keeping pace with deve­lo­p­ments in wider society, the reform process alre­ady went beyond its formal bour­geois-capi­ta­list framework.

The subse­quent phase of coope­ra­ti­ves is a lesson in the comple­xity and contra­dic­tory nature of an over­all social deve­lo­p­ment process in which a change in the thin­king and actions of those invol­ved is crucial to its success. The SED had to conti­nuously balance the rela­ti­onship between the stra­te­gic goals of socia­list cons­truc­tion and the contra­dic­tory start­ing condi­ti­ons – mista­kes and hard­ships were inevi­ta­ble. Volun­t­a­rism, on the one hand, and passi­vity of the state, on the other, embo­died the dangers of either losing sight of social reali­ties or giving up the neces­sary and active role in shaping them. Exter­nal and inter­nal condi­ti­ons, the hostile acti­vi­ties of the impe­ria­list states, the peasantry’s level of conscious­ness, and the neces­si­ties and pros­pects of econo­mic deve­lo­p­ment had to be constantly reas­ses­sed in order to deter­mine the speed and leading role of the SED in this compre­hen­sive deve­lo­p­ment process. The comple­xity of the path to socia­lism, the protra­c­ted nature of some proces­ses, espe­ci­ally in people’s thin­king, and the influence and sabo­tage of poli­ti­cal oppon­ents had to be taken into account and coun­ter­ac­ted. This requi­red agility and clarity of purpose, but also the ability to be self-criti­cal, which the poli­ti­cal leader­ship gene­rally demons­tra­ted over long peri­ods of time.

While social hard­ship and indi­vi­dual cases of inju­s­tice are not to be denied, it is neces­sary to under­stand these failings in the contra­dic­tory and complex context of post-war East Germany. Compared to the gene­ral deve­lo­p­ment of agri­cul­ture, they also repre­sent excep­ti­ons, not the rule. Without the proac­tive and driving role of the peas­an­try, the tran­si­tion towards coope­ra­ti­ves would have simply failed. Narra­ti­ves of ‘forced coll­ec­ti­vi­sa­tion’, which domi­nate the public discourse in Germany today, do not aim to under­stand the proces­ses in the DDR, but rather encou­rage anti-commu­nist preju­di­ces. Natu­rally, from the bour­geois perspec­tive, the tran­si­tion away from the domi­nance of private property is to be condem­ned on prin­ci­ple. Indi­vi­dual fates, in which there were also tragic conflicts and entan­gle­ments, are used to obscure the view of the broa­der deve­lo­p­ment and prevent a serious exami­na­tion based on histo­ri­cal facts. This method of framing can be seen over and over in narra­ti­ves around the socia­list states.

The exis­ten­tial finan­cial angst, which is a neces­sary side of the ‘free­dom’ of private property and compe­ti­tion, was over­come in the DDR through mutual assis­tance amongst peasants and their inte­gra­tion into state plan­ning. Coope­ra­tive forms of agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion were a corner­stone of socia­list produc­tion rela­ti­ons in East Germany and a decisive buil­ding block for the progres­sive deve­lo­p­ment of the DDR as a socia­list state. While some see the contin­ued exis­tence of coope­ra­tive owner­ship (private property) along­side state owner­ship (public property) as a major obsta­cle to the deepe­ning of plan­ned econo­mic rela­ti­ons, the deve­lo­p­ments of the DDR do not confirm this assess­ment. The expe­ri­en­ces of the AIVs certainly poin­ted to contra­dic­tions between the diffe­rent forms of owner­ship that needed to be resol­ved, but the coope­ra­ti­ves were alre­ady deeply inte­gra­ted into the over­all econo­mic proces­ses of the DDR through jointly deve­lo­ped plans and thus binding agree­ments on the distri­bu­tion of funds as well as the fixed price system. Econo­mic inde­pen­dence exis­ted to a certain extent with regard to the inter­nal concerns of the LPGs, but this auto­nomy could not have any signi­fi­cant effect on the wider economy.

The coope­ra­tive way of working and living demo­cra­tised the villa­ges by eroding social diffe­ren­ces, expan­ding the leisure time of the village popu­la­tion, and promo­ting exten­sive oppor­tu­ni­ties for cultu­ral, sport­ing, and social acti­vi­ties. Cultu­ral centres, kinder­gar­tens, village stores, cafe­te­rias, compre­hen­sive medi­cal care, conti­nuing educa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, vaca­tion sites, sports teams, music groups, and much more were an inte­gral part of village and commu­nity infra­struc­ture. It was the rural popu­la­tion itself that played a key role in buil­ding these struc­tures and sustai­ning them.

The DDR had largely been able to produce its own agri­cul­tu­ral products within its parti­cu­lar geogra­phic and clima­tic condi­ti­ons, which excluded, for exam­ple, tropi­cal fruits or coffee. Hunger and poverty became things of the past. Today, in view of the omni­pre­sent over­ex­plo­ita­tion of nature and the market domi­nance of agri­cul­tu­ral multi­na­tio­nals, some poli­ti­cal move­ments seek the solu­tion in small-scale produc­tion. The DDR follo­wed a diffe­rent path, which, while avoi­ding the nega­tive effects of capi­ta­list farming, was able to achieve incre­asing yields with a decre­asing work­force by indus­tria­li­sing large-scale agri­cul­tu­ral produc­tion on the basis of socia­list relations.

The abrupt termi­na­tion of this deve­lo­p­ment in 1990 clearly demons­tra­tes the essen­tial charac­te­ristics of capi­ta­list trans­for­ma­tion: priva­tis­a­tion, the dismant­ling of ‘unpro­fi­ta­ble’ social and cultu­ral infra­struc­ture, land specu­la­tion, and rural exodus. After 1990, the farmers were once again on their own: diffi­culty finding buyers, falling prices, and market compe­ti­tion brought back exis­ten­tial concerns. The dismant­ling of infra­struc­ture in the coun­try­side streng­the­ned the tendency towards isola­tion of the rural popu­la­tion. The return of the domi­nance of private property might have brought more free­dom of choice to one’s own farm – but it is a free­dom that is always limi­ted by the cons­traints of the market and comes at the expense of one’s role as a co-crea­tor of society. Farmers had and still have to fight their own way through the chaos of liqui­da­tion, priva­tis­a­tion, and fierce compe­ti­tion. Today, quite a few of them are once again being driven into oppo­si­tion to the prevai­ling policy, which cannot deve­lop a secure perspec­tive for their farms. With the capi­ta­list resto­ra­tion also came the ‘cheap’, mostly migrant harvest workers and farm labou­rers. Land often lies fallow as an object of specu­la­tion instead of produ­cing food. Profit has become the deter­mi­ning factor in agri­cul­ture. Thus, while the condi­ti­ons differ greatly from those in 1945, the slogan ‘The land to those who work it’ is yet again on the agenda in East Germany, as it is in many parts of the world.

Image Credits

Images 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 24, and 25: Unknown photo­graph­ers, in Coll­ec­tive of authors, Früchte des Bünd­nis­ses – Werden und Wach­sen der sozia­lis­ti­schen Land­wirt­schaft der DDR [Fruits of the Alli­ance – The Deve­lo­p­ment and Growth of Socia­list Agri­cul­ture in the DDR]. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985.

 

Image 1: Donath, Otto. ADN-ZB / Donath, Podel­zig, 1945. N.d. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183-N0816-313 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 2: Höhne, Erich and Pohl, Erich. Land Reform in the SBZ. 11 Septem­ber 1945. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–32584-0002 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 3: Unknown. Poster published by the Central Commit­tee of the KPD (Commu­nist Party of Germany). 1945. Poster.

 

Image 4: Unknown. SLUB / Deut­sche Foto­thek. N.d. Photo­graph. Free access – rights reser­ved 1.0.

 

Image 8: SED Publi­shing House for Agita­tion and Instruc­tional Mate­ri­als. Dem Sozia­lis­mus gehört die Zukunft. Werk­tä­tige Einzel­bau­ern werdet Mitglie­der der LPG [The Future Belongs to Socia­lism. Working Indi­vi­dual Farmers Become Members of the LPG]. C. 1979. Poster. 

 

Image 9: Unknown. LPG Bloch­witz, Cerem­ony of Entry into LPG Zentra­li­mage. 26 Janu­ary 1953. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–18079-0002 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 10: Biscan, Wilhelm. LPG Sabke, Laying of the Foun­da­tion Stone. 19 May 1954. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–24684-000 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 11: Klein. LPG Schön­fließ, View of the Buil­ding Site. 19 Octo­ber 1955. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–33546-0003 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 15: Pietsch. LPG Neubre­de­rs­dorf, Accoun­ting. Octo­ber 1954. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–16767-0001 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 16: Klein. LPG Schö­ne­mark, Berlin, Cash Audit. 16 Octo­ber 1956. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–42037-0009 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 17: Leske, Peter. LPG Groß Beuchow, Women Harve­s­t­ing Pota­toes. 15 Septem­ber 1961. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–86381-0001 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 18: Unknown. LPG Neßdorf, Milking Brigade. 21 Septem­ber 1961. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–86543-0001 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 19: Barto­cha, Benno. LPG Priborn, Annual Gene­ral Meeting. 9 Janu­ary 1973. Photo­graph. German Fede­ral Archive, image 183-M0109-0030 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 20: Löwe. LPG Jahna, Play­ground of the Kinder­gar­ten. 11 August 1958. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–57461-0015 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 21: Gahl­beck, Fried­rich. Stoll­berg, Trai­ning for female farmers. 2 Febru­ary 1962. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183–90211-0001 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 22: Liebers, Peter. LPG Ötters­dorf, Mecha­niser. 8 June 1978. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183-T0608-0003 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

 

Image 23: Schaar, Helmut. LPG Mans­feld, Expres­sion of soli­da­rity with Viet­nam. 26 July 1972. Photo­graph. Wiki­me­dia Commons / German Fede­ral Archive, image 183-L0725-0030 / CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Foot­no­tes
  1. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, und WHO, The State of Food Secu­rity and Nutri­tion in the World 2024 – Finan­cing to End Hunger, Food Inse­cu­rity and Malnu­tri­tion in All Its Forms (Rome: FAO, 2024), https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/ebe19244-9611–443c-a2a6-25cec697b361, 3.[↩]
  2. FIAN Switz­er­land, Fact Sheet Nahrungs­mit­tel­spe­ku­la­tion [Fact Sheet on Food Specu­la­tion], acces­sed 12 April 2023, https://fian-ch.org/content/uploads/Fact_Sheet_Nahrungsmittelspekulation.pdf.[↩]
  3. Sarah K. Lowder, Marco V. Sánchez and Raffaele Bertini, Which Farms Feed the World and Has Farm­land Become More Concen­tra­ted?, World Deve­lo­p­ment, 142, 1 June 2021: 105455, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105455; Roman Herre, Fünf Agrar­kon­zerne beherr­schen den Welt­markt, Hein­rich Böll Stif­tung, 10. Januar 2017, acces­sed 12. April 2023, https://www.boell.de/de/2017/01/10/fuenf-agrarkonzerne-beherrschen-den-weltmarkt.[↩]
  4. Hermann Matern, ‘10 Jahre Boden­re­form’ [10 Years of Land Reform], Neues Deutsch­land, 3 Septem­ber 1955, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  5. Aaron O’Neill, Popu­la­tion of Germany 1800–2020, Statista, acces­sed 17. June 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066918/population-germany-historical/.[↩]
  6. Muni­ci­pa­li­ties with more than 2,000 inha­bi­tants were conside­red cities. Volker Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men zur sozia­lis­ti­schen Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR [From Bour­geois Agra­rian Reforms to Socia­list Agri­cul­ture in the DDR], (VEB Deut­scher Land­wirt­schafts­ver­lag: Berlin, 1985), 55.[↩]
  7. Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men, 55, 33, 75, 76.[↩]
  8. Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men, 33.[↩]
  9. Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men, 30.[↩]
  10. Fried­rich Engels, ‘The Peasant Ques­tion in France and Germany’, in Karl Marx and Fried­rich Engels Selec­ted Works in Three Volu­mes, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 475, https://archive.org/details/marx-karl-engels-friedrich.-selected-works.-vol.-iii/page/475/mode/2up?q=East-Elbe.[↩]
  11. Sieg­fried Kunt­sche, ‘Boden­re­form in einem Kern­land des Groß­grund­be­sit­zes’ [Land Reform in the Core of Large-Scale Land Owner­ship], in Junker­land in Bauern­hand: Die deut­sche Boden­re­form und ihre Folgen [Junker lands in Farmers’ Hands: The German Land Reform and Its Conse­quen­ces], edited by Hans Modrow and Hans Watzek (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2005), 110, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  12. Kunt­sche, ‘Boden­re­form’, 101.[↩]
  13. Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men, 142.[↩]
  14. Speech by Joseph Goeb­bels in Janu­ary 1936, quoted from Kurt Bauer, Natio­nal­so­zia­lis­mus: Ursprünge, Anfänge, Aufstieg und Fall [Natio­nal Socia­lism: Orig­ins, Begin­nings, Rise, and Fall] (Vienna: UTB, 2008), 306, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  15. Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe zur sozia­lis­ti­schen Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR [From Mutual Peasants’ Aid to Socia­list Agri­cul­ture in the DDR] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1965), 11, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  16. Klemm et al., Von den bürger­li­chen Agrar­re­for­men, 163.[↩]
  17. Hans Watzek, ‘Der Streit um die Reform’ [The Dispute Over the Reform], in Junker­land in Bauern­hand [Junker­land in Farmers‘ Hands] (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2005), 16.[↩]
  18. Frank Schuh­mann, ‘Edwin Hoernle (1883–1952)’, in Hans Modrow and Hans Watzek, Junker­land in Bauern­hand [Junker­land in Farmers’ Hands] (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2005), 75.[↩]
  19. Gerhard Henkel, ‘Boden­re­form­sied­lun­gen des 20. Jahr­hun­derts in West­fa­len’ [Land Reform Sett­le­ments of the Twen­tieth Century in West­pha­lia], in West­fa­len Regio­nal, vol. 35, edited by H. Hein­eberg (Müns­ter: Aschen­dorff, 2007), 108–109, acces­sed 12 April 2023, https://www.lwl.org/westfalen-regional-download/PDF/S108_Bodenreformsiedlungen.pdf.[↩]
  20. Walter Ulbricht, Bren­nende Fragen des Neuauf­baus Deutsch­lands [Burning Ques­ti­ons of the Recon­s­truc­tion of Germany] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1947), 57, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  21. Edwin Hoernle, quoted from Frank Schu­mann, ‘Edwin Hoernle (1883–1952)’, in Hans Modrow and Hans Watzek, Junker­land in Bauern­hand [Junker­land in Farmers Hands] (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2005), 71f.[↩]
  22. Hart­mut Koschyk and Vincent Regente, eds., Vertrie­bene in SBZ und DDR [Expel­lees in the SBZ and DDR], (Berlin-Bran­den­burg: Be.bra wissen­schaft verlag GmbH, 2021), 31.[↩]
  23. Joachim Piskol, Chris­tel Nehrig, and Paul Trixa, Anti­fa­schis­tisch-demo­kra­ti­sche Umwäl­zung auf dem Lande [Anti-Fascist-Demo­cra­tic Uphe­aval in the Coun­try­side] (Berlin: VEB Deut­scher Land­wirt­schafts­ver­lag, 1984), 52, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  24. Coll­ec­tive of authors, Früchte des Bünd­nis­ses – Werden und Wach­sen der sozia­lis­ti­schen Land­wirt­schaft der DDR [Fruits of the Alli­ance – The Deve­lo­p­ment and Growth of Socia­list Agri­cul­ture in the DDR] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1985), 170; Axel Wolz, ‘The Orga­ni­sa­tion of Agri­cul­tu­ral Produc­tion in East Germany since World War II: Histo­ri­cal Roots and Present Situa­tion’, Discus­sion Paper, no. 139 (Halle, Saale: Leib­niz Insti­tute of Agri­cul­tu­ral Deve­lo­p­ment in Central and Eastern Europe, 2013), https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:gbv:3:2–27321.[↩]
  25. Klaus Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR: VEG, LPG und Koope­ra­tio­nen; Wie sie wurden, was sie waren, was aus ihnen gewor­den ist [Agri­cul­ture in the DDR: VEG, LPG, and Co-opera­ti­ons; How They Came to be, What They Were, What They Have Become], (Clenze: Agri­Me­dia, 2009), 16.[↩]
  26. Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR, 16.[↩]
  27. Coll­ec­tive of authors, Früchte des Bünd­nis­ses, 45.[↩]
  28. Bruno Kies­ler, ‘Ein soli­des Konzept’ [A Solid Concept], in Junker­land in Bauern­hand [Junker­land in Farmers Hands], edited by Hans Modrow and Hans Watzek (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2005), 57, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  29. Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR, 131; State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1956 [Statis­ti­cal Year­book of the DDR 1956] (Berlin: VEB Deut­scher Zentral­ver­lag, 1957), 350.[↩]
  30. Women’s Secre­ta­riat of the SED, ‘Frau­en­ar­beit in Stadt und Land’ [Women’s Work in the City and Coun­try­side], Neues Deutsch­land, 27 Febru­ary 1948, 2.[↩]
  31. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1955, 26.[↩]
  32. Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, 63.[↩]
  33. Sieg­fried Kunt­sche, Beiträge zur Agrar­ge­schichte der DDR [Contri­bu­ti­ons to the Agri­cul­tu­ral History of the DDR] (Diek­hof: Van Derner, 2015), 144.[↩]
  34. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1955, 198.[↩]
  35. Walter Ulbricht quoted from Wolf­gang Mahlich, Die Heraus­bil­dung der Land­wirt­schaft­li­chen Produk­ti­ons­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten in der DDR, darge­stellt an der Entwick­lung des Krei­ses Haldens­le­ben, Bezirk Magde­burg (1952 bis 1960) [The Deve­lo­p­ment of Agri­cul­tu­ral Produc­tion Coope­ra­ti­ves in the DDR, Illus­tra­ted by the Deve­lo­p­ment of the District of Haldens­le­ben, Magde­burg District (1952 to 1960)] (Docto­ral disser­ta­tion, Humboldt-Univer­si­tät Berlin, 1999), 93; Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, 64[↩]
  36. Kurt Goss­wei­ler, ‘Benja­min Baum­gar­ten und die “Stalin-Note ”’ [Benja­min Baum­gar­ten and the ‘Stalin Note’), in Streit­ba­rer Mate­ria­lis­mus, no. 22 (May 1998), 61–74,  acces­sed 12 May 2023, https://kurt-gossweiler.de/benjamin-baumgarten-und-die-stalin-note-mai-1998/.[↩]
  37. Walter Ulbricht,  Refe­rat und Schluß­wort auf der II. Partei­kon­fe­renz der SED Berlin, 9. bis 12. Juli 1952 [Speech and closing remarks at the Second Party Confe­rence of the SED Berlin, 9 to 12 July 1952] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1952), own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  38. Kunt­sche, Beiträge zur Agrar­ge­schichte der DDR, 144.[↩]
  39. Reso­lu­tion of the III LPG Confe­rence in Decem­ber 1954. See Mahlich, Die Heraus­bil­dung der Land­wirt­schaft­li­chen Produk­ti­ons­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten in der DDR [The Forma­tion of Agri­cul­tu­ral Produc­tion Coope­ra­ti­ves in the DDR], 107.[↩]
  40. Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, 71.[↩]
  41. Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, 70, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  42. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1955 [Statis­ti­cal Year­book of the DDR, 1955], 197.[↩]
  43. Kunt­sche, Beiträge zur Agrar­ge­schichte der DDR [Contri­bu­ti­ons to the Agri­cul­tu­ral History of the DDR], 143, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  44. Insti­tute for Marxism-Leni­nism at the Central Commit­tee of the SED, Geschichte der deut­schen Arbei­ter­be­we­gung, Band 7 [History of the German Labour Move­ment, Volume 7] (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1966), 226, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  45. Central Commit­tee of the SED, ‘Der neue Kurs und die Aufga­ben der Partei’ [The New Course and the Party’s Tasks], in Neues Deutsch­land, 28 July 1953, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  46. Sieg­fried Kunt­sche, Beiträge zur Agrar­ge­schichte der DDR [Contri­bu­ti­ons to the Agri­cul­tu­ral History of the DDR], 322.[↩]
  47. Walter Ulbricht, ‘Zur konter­re­vo­lu­tio­nä­ren Konzep­tion View­egs’ [Vieweg’s Coun­ter-Revo­lu­tio­nary Concep­tion], speech at the 30th meeting of the Central Commit­tee of the SED, 30 Janu­ary to 1 Febru­ary 1957, in Walter Ulbricht, Die Bauern­be­frei­ung in der Deut­schen Demo­kra­ti­schen Repu­blik [The Libe­ra­tion of Farmers in the German Demo­cra­tic Repu­blic], vol. 1, Febru­ary 1945–June 1958, (Berlin: Dietz Verlag), 1961, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  48. Goss­wei­ler, Die Tauben­fuß-Chro­nik oder Die Chruschtschowiade1953 bis 1964. Doku­mente, Kommen­tare, Analy­sen, Briefe. Band I: 1953 bis 1957 [The Dove­foot Chro­nicle or The Khrush­che­viad 1953 to 1964. Docu­ments, Comm­ents, Analy­ses, Letters. Volume I: 1953 to 1957] (Munich: Verlag zur Förde­rung der wissen­schaft­li­chen Welt­an­schau­ung, 2002), 138, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  49. Ulbricht, ‘Zur konter­re­vo­lu­tio­nä­ren Konzep­tion’, 601, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  50. Goss­wei­ler, Die Tauben­fuß-Chro­nik , 129, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  51. Karl Mewis, ‘Staat­li­che Film­do­ku­men­ta­tion beim Staat­li­chen Film­ar­chiv der DDR SFD’ [State Film Docu­men­ta­tion at the State Film Archive of the DDR SFD], 1973, acces­sed 10 June 2025, TC 42:30, https://digitaler-lesesaal.bundesarchiv.de/video/248665/672354, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  52. Kunt­sche, Beiträge zur Agrar­ge­schichte der DDR, 333, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  53. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1960/61 [Statis­ti­cal Year­book of the DDR1960/61) (Berlin: VEB Deut­scher Zentral­ver­lag, 1962), 419.[↩]
  54. Law on Agri­cul­tu­ral Produc­tion Coope­ra­ti­ves, 2 July 1982, acces­sed 5 Decem­ber 2023, https://www.verfassungen.de/ddr/lpggesetz82.htm.[↩]
  55. Coll­ec­tive of authors under the direc­tion of Gerhard Grüne­berg, Von der gegen­sei­ti­gen Bauern­hilfe, 76.[↩]
  56. Solv­eig Leo, Pay, Plan, and Demo­cracy in the LPG, inter­view with the IFDDR, Febru­ary 2024, acces­sed 2 Septem­ber 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg6WLA8UaEc, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  57. Thomas Kupfer­mann (ed.), Ernte­ka­pi­täne, Plan­soll und Genos­sen­schaft [Harvest Capta­ins, Plan Objec­ti­ves, and Coope­ra­tive] (Augs­burg: Welt­bild Detail GmbH, 2015), 69, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  58. Hans Luft, Agrar­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten – gestern, heute und morgen [Agri­cul­tu­ral Coope­ra­ti­ves – Yester­day, Today, and Tomor­row] (Berlin: Helle Panke e.V., 1998), 43, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  59. Mahlich, ‘Die Heraus­bil­dung der Land­wirt­schaft­li­chen Produk­ti­ons­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten in der DDR’, 445, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  60. Mahlich, ‘Die Heraus­bil­dung der Land­wirt­schaft­li­chen Produk­ti­ons­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten in der DDR’, 445–446, own trans­la­tion[↩]
  61. Müller Marga­rete, ‘So war es’ [As it was], in Ernte­ka­pi­täne, Plan­soll und Genos­sen­schaft, 58, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  62. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1989 [Statis­ti­cal Year­book of the DDR 1989] (Berlin: VEB Deut­scher Zentral­ver­lag, 1990), 182f. [↩]
  63. Coll­ec­tive of authors from the Minis­try of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry, and Food Indus­try, 40 Jahre erfolg­rei­che Entwick­lung zu einer leis­tungs­fä­hi­gen sozia­lis­ti­schen Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR [40 Years of Successful Deve­lo­p­ment Towards Effi­ci­ent Socia­list Agri­cul­ture in the DDR] (Eggers­dorf: agra­buch, 1989), 66.[↩]
  64. Aus erster Hand, Bauern mit Zukunft: über die Land­wirt­schaft der DDR [Farmers With a Future: About Agri­cul­ture in the DDR] (Berlin: Panorama DDR, 1988), 28.[↩]
  65. Luft, Agrar­ge­nos­sen­schaf­ten, 32.[↩]
  66. Eleo­nore Körner, Unter­su­chun­gen zum Einsatz von Genos­sen­schafts­bäue­rin­nen in der Leitungs­funk­tion der LPG [Studies on the Deploy­ment of Female Coope­ra­tive Farmers in the Leader­ship Posi­tion of the LPG] (Berlin: Self-published, 1969), 57, acce­sed 14 July 2024, https://www.digitales-deutsches-frauenarchiv.de/meta-objekt/untersuchungen-zum-einsatz-von-genossenschaftsbaeuerinnen-in-der-leitungsfunktion-der-lpg–thesen-zur-dissertation/3244genderbib#?id=3244genderbib_1&open=&c=&m=&s=&cv=1&xywh=0%2C-411%2C5010%2C4329.[↩]
  67. Helga Kuhrig and Wulf­ram Speig­ner, Zur gesell­schaft­li­chen Stel­lung der Frau in der DDR [The Social Status of Women in the DDR] (Leip­zig: Verlag für die Frau, 1978), 169.[↩]
  68. Aus erster Hand, Bauern mit Zukunft, 18.[↩]
  69. Monika Smardz, Bis zum jenem Tag im Dezem­ber – Eine Farm mitten in der Savanne [Until that day in Decem­ber – A farm in the middle of the savan­nah], in Matthias Vos, Wir haben Spuren hinter­las­sen! [We have left our mark!] (Müns­ter: LIT Verlag, 2005), 277.[↩]
  70. Ralf Böhme, Entwick­lungs­hilfe-Projekte der DDR: Hallen­ser sorgt für Kaffee-Boom in Viet­nam [Deve­lo­p­ment aid projects of the GDR: Halle resi­dent sparks coffee boom in Viet­nam], Mittel­deut­sche Zeitung, 18 Novem­ber 2015, acces­sed 22 May 2025, https://www.mz.de/mitteldeutschland/entwicklungshilfe-projekte-der-ddr-hallenser-sorgt-fur-kaffee-boom-in-vietnam-3158247.[↩]
  71. Various authors, Früchte des Bünd­nis­ses, 170.[↩]
  72. State Central Admi­nis­tra­tion for Statis­tics, Statis­ti­sches Jahr­buch der DDR 1989, 181.[↩]
  73. Klaus Schmidt and Vassi­lij Boew, Verflech­tung im volks­wirt­schaft­li­chen Agrar-Indus­trie-Komplex der DDR und der UdSSR [Inter­de­pen­dence in the Natio­nal Econo­mic Agro-Indus­trial Complex of the DDR and the USSR] (Berlin: VEB Deut­scher Land­wirt­schafts­ver­lag, 1988), 14.[↩]
  74. Klaus Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR [Agri­cul­ture in the DDR], (Agri­me­dia, 2009), 293.[↩]
  75. Hans Reichelt, ‘Das Dorf lieferte die Vorlage’ [The Village Provi­ded the Temp­late], in Junge­Welt, 22 June 2013, acces­sed 12 May 2023, https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/203007.das-dorf-lieferte-die-vorlage.html?sstr=%7CJuni, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  76. PANORAMA DDR Foreign Press Agency (ed.), Die Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR [Agri­cul­ture in the DDR] (Dres­den: Verlag Zeit im Bild, 1979), 29, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  77. Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR, 294, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  78. Halvor Jochim­sen, ‘20 Jahre Grüner Aufbau Ost’ [20 Years of Green Recon­s­truc­tion East], in Berichte über Land­wirt­schaft: Zeit­schrift Agrar­po­li­tik und Land­wirt­schaft [Reports on Agri­cul­ture: Jour­nal for Agri­cul­tu­ral Policy and Agri­cul­ture], vol. 88 issue 2, edited by the Minis­try of Food, Agri­cul­ture, and Consu­mer Protec­tion (Berlin: BMELV, 2010), 213.[↩]
  79. Schmidt, Land­wirt­schaft in der DDR, 320.[↩]
  80. Jochim­sen, ‘20 Jahre Grüner Aufbau Ost’, 233.[↩]
  81. Dieter Wolff, ‘Das muss einmal deut­lich gesagt werden!’ [This Needs to be Said Clearly!], in Ernte­ka­pi­täne, Plan­soll und Genos­sen­schaft, 110, own trans­la­tion.[↩]
  82. Jochim­sen, ‘20 Jahre Grüner Aufbau Ost’, in Berichte über Land­wirt­schaft, 232.[↩]