Rural Colonization as Structural Policy: The Development in Germany in a Comparison between East and West from 1945 to the End of the Fifties

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to put out the important role of rural colonization within the context of the situation of the rural areas in the post-war period. Instead of the fact, that both German states were parts of different political systems, rural colonization should solve the same problems in due course. After a land reform, new villages and farmsteads should secure the food supply and give refugees a new home. Experts, both in West and East, could fall back on concepts and research from the pre-war period. This paper describes the different development in both countries and seeks to understand breaks and continuities. One of the most important traditions was the develop- ment of a more intensive agriculture, based on small rural households. A big number of these farmsteads should produce more food on the same given area as a smaller number of bigger farms. The great break then happened in the East in 1952, when the collectivisation started. In the West it was a more continuous process which caused the fact that one cannot find any farmers in many villages in the rural areas of the former Bundesrepublik.The aim of this paper is to put out the important role of rural colonization within the context of the situation of the rural areas in the post-war period. Instead of the fact, that both German states were parts of different political systems, rural colonization should solve the same problems in due course. After a land reform, new villages and farmsteads should secure the food supply and give refugees a new home. Experts, both in West and East, could fall back on concepts and research from the pre-war period. This paper describes the different development in both countries and seeks to understand breaks and continuities. One of the most important traditions was the develop- ment of a more intensive agriculture, based on small rural households. A big number of these farmsteads should produce more food on the same given area as a smaller number of bigger farms. The great break then happened in the East in 1952, when the collectivisation started. In the West it was a more continuous process which caused the fact that one cannot find any farmers in many villages in the rural areas of the former Bundesrepublik