State Hegemony in Transforming the Rural Landscapes of Eastern Germany: 1945–1994

Abstract

The West German state has transformed the collectivized agriculture of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) since reunification in 1990. The government's reprivatization of land, based on Soviet land reforms during their World-War-II occupation of eastern Germany, has required GDR cooperative farms (LPGs) to reorganize themselves or be dissolved and encouraged the establishment of individual private farms. These hegemonic changes have transformed the rural landscapes in eastern Germany, adding new farms, re-establishing previous farms, abandoning cooperative farm buildings, and resulting in smaller fields. Yet, the landscape impress of earlier State hegemonies persists. The centrally planned economy of the GDR gradually consolidated individual farms and fields (which had been largely established by the Soviets in the northern half of the GDR) and added barns, apartments, and social services to the villages. Reprivatization has produced profound changes in land use, farm management, and farmland ownership changes, yet the large-scale corporate farms that now dominate agricultural production continue to work the large formerly collectivized fields. Despite the privatization of farmland and farming, the GDR's imprint on the landscape in eastern Germany is likely to continue. The efficiency of these new corporate farms threatens the small-scale farms in western Germany.

Key Words:

• collective agriculture
• eastern Germany
• farmland privatization
• field patterns
• German Democratic Republic
• landscape transformations
• State hegemony