Rural property restitution in Germany's New Bundesländer: the case of Bergholz

Abstract

Property restitution has been a widespread fact of life in Germany's New Bundesländer—the former German Democratic Republic or East Germany—since unification in 1990. It has widely been viewed as essentially an urban issue, but restitution has been widespread in rural areas as well, though on a smaller scale than in the major towns and cities. This paper uses the evidence from the statistics published by the Offices for the Settlement of Disputed Property Claims, together with the results of a detailed case study in the village of Bergholz in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Land in the far northeast of the New Bundesländer, to reveal the impact of property restitution on change in the rural landscape. By way of background, the paper also explains the different political contexts of restitution, including the expropriations of the Nazi era from 1933 to 1945, the land reform under the Soviet occupation between 1945 and 1949, and the expropriations of the GDR régime between 1949 and 1990. There is also a discussion of the inherent conflicts and contradictions of restitution and an explanation of how the administrative process is organised. It appears that property restitution has been absorbed with much less economic and social disruption in rural as opposed to urban areas, and that in some respects it has even provided a vehicle for confronting and laying to rest some of the more uncomfortable aspects of Germany's 20th century past.