From State Agri-Food Market Regulation to the Construction of Rural Socialism in East Germany, 1945-1960

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Other Title
  • 農業・食糧統制から社会主義建設へ
  • 農業・食糧統制から社会主義建設へ : 東ドイツ農業の戦後史
  • ノウギョウ ・ ショクリョウ トウセイ カラ シャカイ シュギ ケンセツ エ : ヒガシドイツ ノウギョウ ノ センゴシ
  • 東ドイツ農業の戦後史

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to explain how agricultural and food regulations of post-war East Germany were formed in the face of serious food shortages after 1945 by focusing on the reorganization of agricultural associations. In addition, we showed the landscape images of socialist "model villages" drawn by rural planners in order to discuss the construction concept of rural socialism in East Germany. We found so-called "self-sufficiency reaction" of people to the post-war food crisis, as was observed in the cultivation of small personal gardens. Even land reform after 1945 had a feature of the settlement policy for refugee farmers from former German territories, which was one of the factors that caused farm management difficulties by the Neubauern (new farmers) afterward. At the beginning of the occupation, Soviet Military Government revived former German agricultural cooperative "Raiffeisen" as an instrument of agricultural food control. But it was soon consolidated with VdgB (Peasants Mutual Aid Association) into VdgB-BHG (Peasant Trade Cooperative) in 1950 and controlled under the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany). Simultaneously, we found that other centralized agriculture-related organizations such as MAS (machine rental station), DBB (German farmers bank), and VEAB (state-owned purchase organization) were founded around 1949. This meant that the socialist agricultural control system had been established before agricultural collectivization. On the construction concept of rural socialism by rural planners in the 1950s -who had been often engaged in the operation of Nazi rural settlement policy in the occupied region- we found that the subject of rural planning had changed from the design of new farm houses in land reform to the design of the "central village" in the model village project. In the case of the "Mestlin" project in Mecklenburg, rural planners put importance on the "Kulturhaus" and MAS/MTS as symbols of new age rural socialism, while the peasant elements of land reform disappeared in planning. It seems to resemble a “rural city concept” based on the separation of work and life.

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