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Self-Help and the State: Rural Cooperatives in Imperial Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

David Peal
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Extract

The consolidation of territorial states in Central Europe undermined the local customs and institutions that had shaped village life since the Middle Ages. By the end of the eighteenth century unitary law codes overrode rural customs. By distinguishing between public and private law, these codes stripped the organized village community of legal substance. Police and judicial functions once performed within the community were assumed by bureaucrats, and the state meddled with the use of local resources by liberalizing marriage and residence laws. Deprived of political autonomy, the village did remain the core economic and social unit in rural life, controlling access to communal forests and enforcing the rules of three-field agriculture. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century this limited autonomy was undermined as well. Freedom of contract, security of individual property, free transmission of property between generations, and commercialization of landed property struck at the ability of villages to control their material world in customary ways.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 244 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1988

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References

“Self-Help and the State” is a revised and expanded version of a paper given at the 1987 American Historical Association Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. I would like to thank Robert Berdahl, Hermann Rebel, Peter Taylor, and John Theibault for their support and suggestions.

1. For a summary of the historiographical issues, with a focus on eastern Germany, Wunder, Heide, Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1986)Google Scholar; for a case study of state-village relations in a crucial period, Theibault, John, “Coping with the Thirty Years' War: Villages and Villagers in Hessen-Kassel, 1600–1680” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins, 1986)Google Scholar; on peasants' response to increasing demands from above, Hagen, William W., “The Junkers' Faithless Servants: Peasant Insubordination and the Breakdown of Serfdom in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1763–1811,” in Evans, Richard J., ed., The German Peasantry (New York, 1986), 71–101Google Scholar; in general, Sabean, David, “Die Dorfgemeinde als Basis der Bauernaufstände in Westeuropa bis zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Schulze, Winfried, ed., Europäische Bauernrevolten der frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1982), 191–205Google Scholar; Blickle, Peter, Deutsche Untertanen: Ein Widerspruch (Munich, 1981).Google Scholar

2. Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, vol. 1 (1868; reprint Graz, 1954)Google Scholar, §§55–57. On Gierke: Lewis, John, The Genossenschaft-Theory of Otto von Gierke: A Study in Political Thought (Madison, 1935)Google Scholar, which includes a translation of Gierke's important corporative tract, “Das Wesen des menschlichen Verbandes” (1902); Wolf, Erik, “Otto Gierke”Google Scholar in Wolf, E., Grosse deutsche Rechtsdenker, 4th ed. (Tübingen, 1963), 669–712Google Scholar; Wieacker, Franz, “Das Sozialmodell der klassischen Privatrechtsgesetzbücher und die Entwicklung der modernen Gesellschaft,” in his Industriegesellschaft und Privatrechtsordnung (Frankfurt, 1974), 9–35Google Scholar; Dilcher, Gerhard, “Genossenschaftstheorie und Sozialrecht: Ein ‘Juristensozialismus’ Otto v. Gierkes?,” in Quademi Fiorentini per la Storia del Pensiero Giuridico Moderno 3–4 (1974–1975); 319–65Google Scholar. Gierke cited the writings of Raiffeisen and Huber in Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht but drew most heavily on Schulze-Delitzsch, whose cooperative system was the most advanced in 1868.

3. There is no good recent study of Raiffeisen. Valuable older works include Fassben-der, Martin, F.W. Raiffeisen in seinem Leben, Denken, und Wirken (Berlin, 1902)Google Scholar; Lemcke, Ernst, Die Entwicklung der Raiffeisen-Organisation in der Neuzeit (Karlsruhe, 1913)Google Scholar; Seelmann-Eggebert, Erich L., Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen: Sein Lebensgang und seingenossenschaftliches Werk (Stuttgart, 1928).Google Scholar

4. Other observers, as noted, devised cooperative solutions to the problems of particular classes during the heyday of liberal capitalism (1850s and 1860s). See Hindelang, Sabine, Konservatismus und soziale Frage: Viktor Aimé Hubers Beitrag zum sozialkonservativen Denken im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, Bern, New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Aldenhoff, Rita, Schulze-Delitzsch: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Liberalismus zwischen Revolution und Reichsgründung (Baden-Baden, 1984).Google Scholar

5. Die Darlehnskassenvereine in Verbindung mit …. (subsequent lengthy subtitle varied from edition to edition); Raiffeisen revised his book in 1872, 1881, 1883, and 1887. Gierke cited the firstedition in Genossenschaftsrecht. On Raiffeisen's ambivalence toward Jews, see my “Anti-semitism by Other Means? The Rural Cooperative Movement in Late 19th-Century Germany,” Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute 32 (1987).Google Scholar

6. The following discussion is based on the analysis in my “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation in Kurhessen: The Rise and Fall of the Böckel Movement” (Columbia Univ. Ph.D. diss., 1985), 273ff.

7. Blickle, Deutsche Untertanen, 129.

8. Lemcke, Entwicklung der Raiffeisen-Organisation, 7.

9. Accounts of the early history of the Raiffeisen organization can be found in each of the volumes cited in n. 3. See also Faust, Helmut, Geschichte der Genossenschaftsbewegung, 3d ed. (Frankfurt, 1977), chap. 19.Google Scholar

10. Maxeiner, Rudolf, Vertmuen in die eigene Kraft: Wilhelm Haas, sein Leben und Wirken (Wiesbaden, 1976).Google Scholar

11. Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 263–64.

12. Staatsarchiv Marburg (StAM) 180/Hersfeld, 6131, 6162; Meyenschein, Adam, Raiffeisen in Hessen: Festgabe zum Verbandsjubiläum (Kassel, 1907).Google Scholar

13. Lemcke, Entwicklung, 15ff.

14. Ibid., 38.

15. Local sources in Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 329–30.

16. Crüger, Hans and Parisius, Ludwig, Reichsgesetz betreffend die Erwerbs- und Wirtschaftsgenossenschaften, 17th ed. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1924).Google Scholar

17. On cooperatives and populism, see my “The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American South in the 1890s,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 340–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for sources and discussion of the state's role, cf. my “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” chap. 5; Fassbender, Martin, Die Bauemvereine und die Lage der Landwirtschaft (Paderborn, 1888)Google Scholar; on Prussia's initial wariness but eventual support of the Haas organization, see the official correspondence in StAM 150/1173–74.

18. Busche, Manfred, “Zur Gründungsgeschichte der Preussischen Zentralgenossenschaftskasse,” Tradition 13 (1968): 81–89.Google Scholar

19. Broich, , Sozialreform und Genossenschaftswesen, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1890)Google Scholar; flyers and correspondence may be found in StAM 150/1173; cf. the comments of Faust, Geschichte, 545, and Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 323–24.

20. Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preussischen Hauses der Abgeordneten (Sten. Ber), 1895, 77th leg. per., 2410; ibid., 84th leg. per., 2624, 2627, passim; Rexerodt, Georg, Aus den Anfängen des Kurhessischen Raiffeisentums (Kassel, 1943), 251Google Scholar (“second BdL”).

21. Adam Meyenschein, cited in Crüger, Hans, “Der Staat und die Genossenschaften,” schmlolers Jahrbuch 36 (1912): 305–6.Google Scholar

22. Eislebeuer Zeitung, 3 Aug. 1895, Zentrales Staatsarchiv, Potsdam, Pressearchiv des Reichslandbunds (hereafter PA, RLB), Wirtschaftliche Genossenschaften, no. 765. The Pressearchiv is a rich source of clippings on the Preussenkasse and the cooperative movement. The Reichslandbund was the post-1918 successor of the Bund der Landwirte.

23. On the workings of the Preussenkasse, Cahill, J. R., Agricultural Credit and Cooperation in Germany (Washington, D.C., 1913), 292–307Google Scholar; Wygodzinsky, Willy, Das Genossenschaftswesen in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1911), 177–86.Google Scholar

24. Lemcke, Entwicklung, 42–44.

25. Jahresbericht des Generalverbands ländlicher Genossenschaften für Deutschland e. V. für 1914, 13 (Raiffeisen); Jahrbuch des Reichsverbandes derdeutschen landwirtschaftlichen Genossenschaften für 1914, 33 (Haas); cf. Petersilie, Alwin, Die Entwicklung der eingetragenen Genossenschaften in Preussen während des letzten Jahrzehnts (Berlin, 1906), 5*–6*, 53, 63ff.Google Scholar

26. Lemcke, Entwicklung, provides the most acute analysis of the tension between credit and commodity business and between centralization and decentralization as organizing principles.

27. Raiffeisen, , Die Darlehnskassenvereine, 3d ed. (Neuwied, 1881), 103ff.Google Scholar

28. Scherer, Adolf, Raiffeisen in Kurhessen, 1 (Kassel, 1951): 121ffGoogle Scholar. A thousand copies of Kurhessen's Raiffeisenbote-Cassel were distributed when it began publication in 1896; in 1913, there were 35,600 subscriptions, representing 65% of the area's 54,000 Raiffeisen members. Jahrbuch … des Verbandes ländlicher Genossenschaften Raiffeisenscher Organisation für Hessen, 1913, 25.

29. Sten. Ber., Landtag-Haus, 1904, 4331–32 (Meyenschein).

30. In 1901, 24% of the LZK's profit was accounted for by the commodity business, in 1907 47%; in the same period the organization's profits increased from 281,000 to 807,000 Mk. Lemcke, 96.

31. Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 9 09. 1904, 263 (Kurhessen); cf. Lemcke, 48–49. Between 1897 and 1913 the value of commodity purchases (Warenbezüge) in the Raiffeisen system increased from 7.2 to 61 million Mk. Jahresbericht des Generalverbandes, 1914, 13.

32. Lemcke, 58ff.

33. Raiffeisen, , Die Darlehnskassenvereine, 2d ed. (Neuwied, 1872), 265–78Google Scholar; Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 337–38.

34. Considering that 30% of Raiffeisen members in Kurhessen owned less than 1 hectare, average fertilizer consumption among full-time farmers (with at least 2 hectares) must have exceeded 75 Mk. In Marburg, to choose one Kurhessian county of middling prosperity, average income among all farmers was 1300 Mk. in 1902. Preussische Statistik, vol. 191, part 1, second half, 962–63 (debt).Google Scholar In Kurhessen, the amount of commodity debts (Ausstehende Forderungen aus Konsumbezügen) quadrupled in the decade after 1901, according to the annual statistics published in the Jahrbuch …. des Verbandes ländlicher Genossenschaften Raiffeisenscher Organisation für Hessen (compare the 1902 yearbook, 28–29, to the 1913 yearbook, unnumbered tables).

35. On contemporary views and definitions of usury, see my “Antisemitism by Other Means,” 136–41.

36. Jahresbericht des Generalverbandes, 1914, 36 (membership in Betriebsgenossenschaften); Faust, Genossenschaftsbewegung, 374–75; Wegener, Leo, “Zeitfragen im ländlichen Genossenschaftswesen,” Schmollers Jahrbuch 36 (1912): 331ffGoogle Scholar. In Kurhessen Georg Rexerodt singlehandedly directed the credit filial, the commodity bank, and the Verband; he also served on the LZK's Aufsichtsrat. See his Aus den Anfängen (Kassel, 1943)Google Scholar. On the agricultural prosperity, Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 318–21, 409–10, xliv–xlviii (statistical appendices).

37. Lemcke, Entwicklung, 99–101; cf. the incisive, highly critical article by a Preussenkasse official, Jost, Hugo, “Probleme der genossenschaftlichen Kreditorganisationen: Genossenschaftliche Zentral kassen,” Schmollers Jahrbuch 37 (1913), 355ff.Google Scholar; on the failure of granaries, Abel, Wilhelm, Die Trager des deutschen Getreidehandels (Univ. Kiel diss., 1929), 110–34.Google Scholar

38. On Betriebsgenossenschaften in general, Lemcke, 106–36; on Kurhessen, Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 340–43 and the sources cited there, esp. König, Adolf, Der Warenverkehr bei der Raiffeisenorganisation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse im Regierungsbezirk Cassel (Univ. Marburg diss., 1922)Google Scholar. For data on credit and commodity cooperatives' relative need for bank capital, see Pawlicki, Wladislaus, Zur Entwicklung des Genossenschaftswesens in der Provinz Posen (Leipzig, 1912), 71–73.Google Scholar

39. Thomas meal was a by-product of iron manufacturing. Faust, Genossenschaftsbewegung, 375–76; Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 23 Jan. 1904 (“40%”). Concrete data on market shares is not available for the prewar period. For statistics on the much changed period after 1945, Abel, Wilhelm, “Der Landwarenhandel in der deutschen Volkswirtschaft,” in Abel, et al. , Der deutsche Landwarenhandel (Hanover, 1960), 113–221.Google Scholar

40. Liquidity data: Jost, “Probleme der genossenschaftlichen Kreditorganisationen,” 393 (LZK); “Die Banken des Dorfes,” Frankfurter Zeitung, 28 May 1913 (LZK and Berlin banks), PA, RLB, Preussenkasse, no. 1639; Sten. Ber., Landtag-Haus, 1909, 4601 (liquidity of Preussen-kasse). The flow of cooperative savings from west to east needs to be more closely studied.

41. Lemcke, 108ff; Peal, “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 344–58; Meyenschein, “Raiffeisen im Kampf anno 05,” Raiffeisen Bibliothek, no. 12 (n.d.; 1906 speech). The booklets in this series were frequently reprinted and often undated.

42. For background and printed sources on the 1905 Interessengemeinschaft, see the LZK's polemical Landwirtschaftliche Zentral-Darlehnskasse und Preussische Centralgenossenschaft: Eine Aus-einandersetzung (Neuwied, 1912)Google Scholar. Written after the pact's annulment, this book includes documentation of the conflict and a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal of the Preussenkasse document denouncing LZK policies.

43. Sten. Ber., Landtag-Haus, 1904, 4330–31.

44. Crüger once clarified his position in a way he knew the Conservatives would appreciate: he cited Gierke on the importance of preserving the voluntary character of the economic cooperative, and limiting the interference of the state. Ibid., 1908, 1915 (quote from Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, vol. 1, p. 1040).Google Scholar

45. Cf. Crüger's comments during the debates over increasing the Preussenkasse's budget in Sten. Ber., 1909, 4641ff. On allegations of attempted political manipulation, ibid., 1909, 1667 (Heydweiller), 4668 (Kreth); 1911, 4670ff. (Stull); 1913, 12,739f (Liebknecht); Crüger, “Der Staat und die Genossenschaften.”

46. Lemcke, Entwicklung, 80–86.

47. Sten. Ber, Landtag-Haus, 1911, 4666–68 (Meyenschein); for the details of the split, Landwirtschaftliche Zentral-Darlehnskasse und Preussische Centralgenossenschaft.

48. Cf. “Das Unglück von Nieder-Modau,” Frankfurter Zeitung, 18 July 1912. PA, RLB, Wirtschaftliche Genossenschaften, no. 773.

49. Fassbender, Sten. Ber., Landtag-Haus, 1912, 2884 (Nachtrag). Fassbender was an associate and biographer of Raiffeisen, a partner in Raiffeisen & Associates, and an early proponent of decentralization and closer relations with the Preussenkasse. Schulze-Delitzsch cooperatives also worked with the Dresdner Bank. In 1924 the Raiffeisen Bank, nearly bankrupt, resumed relations with the Preussenkasse. Faust, Geschichte, 378–81.

50. “Die Darlehnskassen-Vereine in ihrer wirtschaftlichen, sozialen, und sittlichen Bedeutung,” Raiffeisen Bibliothek, no. 3, 8.

51. 1898 and 1905 were high points in the conflict between cooperative and noncooperative enterprise. Peal, “Anti-Semitism by Other Means” idem., “Anti-Semitism and Rural Transformation,” 368–70. A Pastor named Kempf wrote in 1906:” ‘Antisemitismus’ darf ich nicht sagen, ohne auch mit meinem eigenen Empfinden in Widerspruch zu geraten. So will ich wenigstens das eine sagen, dass ich in Raiffeisen-Kreisen heranblühen sehen möchte eine vollauf berechtigte Scheu vor Handelsgeschäften mit den Mitgliedern einer einzigen, ausschliesslich Handel treiben-den Nation, die vor 2000 Jahren durch die Militärgewaltakte…. zu unseren grössten Leidwesen ihr ursprüngliches Vaterland eingebüsst hat.” “Tugenden eines Raiffeisen-Mannes,” Raiffeisen Bibliothek, no. 13 (Neuwied, 1906), 10Google Scholar. This series, meant for consumption by the rank and file, bristles with anti-Semitic codewords.

52. Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 9 July 1901; Raiffeisen Bibliothek, no. 7.

53. Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 5 May and 9 Oct. 1901.

54. Ibid., 23 April 1911; Stenographische Berichte der Verhandlungen des … Verbandtages der Darlehnskassenvereine … Raiffeisenscher Organisation für den Regierungsbezirk Cassel, 1914, 26ff. From the beginning the largest farmers in many communities would not join a cooperative because of their reluctance to incur unlimited liability.

55. On the preponderance of pastors in Hesse's Raiffeisen organization, Schlau, Wilfried, “Die bäuerliche Führungsschicht in Hessen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” in Franz, Gunther, ed., Bauernschaft und Bauernstand, 1500–1700 (Limburg/Lahn, 1975), 273Google Scholar; Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 9 Feb. 1906 (“family”).

56. Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 9 May 1911; Gierke, , Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, vol. 1, p. 1032Google Scholar; Rexerodt, Aus den Anfängen, 120 (the cooperative was perceived as “completely new” and, for that reason, at first resisted by the rural population).

57. Raiffeisenbote-Cassel, 10 Sept. 1899; Sten. Ber., Landtag-Haus: 1906, 1031 (Kreth: the cooperative “muss dahin gehen, der Dorfgemeinde wieder ihren wirtschaftlichen Inhalt, die Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft zu geben”); 1908, 1888 (Meyenschein: cooperative as “Gemeindeinstitut”); 1909, 4663–64 (Kreth), etc.; Jahrbuch … des Verbandes ländlicher Genossenschaften Raiffeisenscher Organisation für Hessen, 1908, 18–19.

58. Peal, , “Anti-Semitism by Other Means” Adam Meyenschein, Raiffeisen und das deutsche Dorf (Berlin, 1917), 63.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 35.

60. “Raiffeisen und der Staat.” MS in possession of Raiffeisenverband Kurhessen e. V., Kassel, which generously allowed me to use its private holdings.

61. On the economic inadequacies of cooperation and the nonrational aspects of the cooperative ideology, Abel, Wilhelm, Träger des deutschen Getreidehandels, 50, 122ff, 133–34, passim.Google Scholar