Peasants into farmers: Agriculture and democracy in West Germany

My research focuses on the relationship between agriculture and democracy in modern Germany. Since the late nineteenth century, enormous structural and economic changes took place that altered rural life and work. German peasants have often been described as conservative and resistant to change. Gathered under a reactionary agrarian interest group in the 1920s, peasants are considered to be partly responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic and the success of the Nazi Party in the early 1930s. After 1945, the agricultural population faced revolutionary changes but reacted very differently. Farmers did not reject the democratic republic as their forebears had, despite the fact that thousands of small family farms had to be given up, traditional village bonds were destroyed and agriculture lost its place as the most significant economic sector. Instead, farmers were successfully reconciled with the industrial society and democratic government of postwar West Germany. My study will help to understand the factors that contributed to this enormous political success. Agricultural politics eased the adaptation, while the booming economy offered plentiful opportunities for peasants who had to give up farming. New national priorities determined how agricultural and industrial interests were balanced in the new West German state. My research is part of considerable scholarly interest in political behavior, state-building and the nature of German society in the twentieth century. My dissertation is also part of current efforts to rewrite the history of the first two decades of the Federal Republic of Germany, a time of economic "miracles," cold war separations and yearnings for a new normality.