A German Revolution by Stephen C. MacDonald

Author:Stephen C. MacDonald [MacDonald, Stephen C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Germany, General
ISBN: 9781000008210
Google: CZqfDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-28T01:36:26+00:00

The Practice of Domestic Colonization in the Kassel District

The settlements created by the domestic colonization program after the war fell into two broad categories: new settlements [Neusiedlungen] and adjoining settlements [Anliegersiedlungen]. These two categories were intended to distinguish between that settlement land used to found new farms and that employed in enlarging existing holdings. The terms were not entirely accurate, however, because among the small plots of land—usually under 1/2 ha.—counted as adjoining settlements were plots sold or rented to persons who previously had neither owned land nor farmed rented property. In such cases an adjoining settlement constituted, strictly speaking, a new settlement. It must be understood, then, that the term Anliegersiedlungen refers both to the enlarging of old farms and—less typically—to the creation of very small new plots for persons not primarily engaged in agriculture. The term Neusiedlungen refers to newly created holdings over 1 ha. in size which were meant as homesteads for full-time farmers.

42Information on the origins, structure, and finances of Hessian Home from Hessische Heimat Siedlungsgesellschaft m.b.H., Hessische Heimat (Kassel, 1969), pp. 69–78, and Ed. Becker, Achtzig Jahre kommunaler Selbstverwaltung im Regierungs-Bezirk Kassel 1867–1947 (Kassel, 1949), pp. 119–120.

The creation of new agricultural settlements met with almost no success in the Kassel district. There were certainly enough interested applicants; Hessian Settlement Co. reported urgent requests for settlement land from demobilized soldiers and refugees from the lost eastern provinces,43 and Hessian Home noted that by mid-1920 it had received over 350 appeals from those seeking land for new farms.44 The call for new farms was heard especially among natives of the district who lived in the Rhineland and Westphalia and who saw in domestic colonization a chance to return both to the life style and the province they had left behind. But given the already crowded conditions in the district’s countryside, the shortage of suitable arable, and the profusion of existing small holdings which cried out for enlargement, there was little room for new farms short of the break up of the area’s relatively few large estates or the clearing of substantial tracts of state forest. The unsuitability of Hesse-Nassau to the founding of new settlements had been recognized by the head of the general commission in the district before the revolution.45 Difficult economic conditions after November 1918 made the prospects even more dim. In May 1919 Otto Braun told the settlement companies throughout Prussia:

For now and for the foreseeable future the construction of buildings is going to involve extraordinary difficulties. The creation of new agricultural settlements, which is now so urgently necessary, consequently will be hindered and in large measure made impossible.46

43Hessische Siedlungs-Gesellschaft m.b.H., “Jahresbericht 1.4.1919–31.3.1920,” Archiv für Innere Kolonisation, XIII (Sonderheft II, 1920–1921), p. 96.

44Siedlungsgesellschaft Hessische Heimat G.m.b.H., “Jahresbericht 1.4.1919–31.3.1920,” ibid., p. 90.

45See speech by the head of the general commission in the province delivered in Wiesbaden on July 2, 1918. Copy in StAM, 150/1164.

46Copy of letter in StAM, 180 Hünfeld/2684.

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