Reichslandbund

(Agrarian League)

   a pressure group founded in 1893 as Bund der Landwirte. United in January 1921 with the newly instituted Deutscher Landbund, it was thereafter known as the Reichslandbund (techni-cally, "National Rural League"). A Spitzenverband, it embraced thirty regional associations and had about five million members by 1928. Led by Konrad von Wangenheim and Martin Schiele,* veterans of the Kapp* Putsch, it claimed to represent all German farmers*; however, it spoke chiefly for Prussia's* reac-tionary landowners, focusing its attacks on governmental tariff and financial policies that threatened the power base of the Junkers.* Such activity was by no means new; in 1894 the old Bund had helped bring down the proindustry government of Chancellor Caprivi. In 1929 it opposed efforts to revise repara-tions* (see Young Plan) and then participated in the 1931 Harzburg* rally. Its impetus is captured by the 1932 claim that German farmers were being exploited "by the omnipotent money-bag interests of internationally minded export in-dustries.

   Although the Bund endorsed conservatism and monarchism* and attached itself to the DNVP, it often surrendered principle to economics. When the DNVP left Hans Luther s* cabinet in 1925, members felt themselves disenfranchised. Its demands for state intervention on behalf of agriculture also strained its re-lationship with industry and threatened the tenuous alliance of "iron and rye (a coalition of industry and agriculture). That alliance collapsed in 1929-1930 when the Bund broke with the DNVP over policies that favored industry at agriculture s expense.

   Internal discord plagued the Bund throughout the Weimar era. The Christ-lichnationale Bauernpartei (Christian-National Peasants Party), founded in March 1928 by renegade members of the DNVP, was aligned with Bund posi-tions, but the German Peasants Party, rooted in the liberal German Peasants League (Deutscher Bauernbund), was founded in 1928 to oppose the protec-tionist policies of big agriculture. The formation of such splinter groups testifies to growing frustration as Germany s agricultural crisis deepened. In March 1929 Schiele vainly tried to unite agricultural interests by forming the Grune Front (Green Front). Over the next three years the NSDAP infiltrated the Bund, and then finally absorbed it into the Reichsnahrstand in December 1933.

   REFERENCES:David Abraham, Collapse of the Weimar Republic; Angress, "Political Role of the Peasantry"; Gessner, Agrarverbande; James Hunt, " 'Egalitarianism' "; Larry Jones, "Crisis and Realignment"; Leopold, Alfred Hugenberg.