The Deutscher Bauernverband from 1945 to 1990: From Uncompromising Stance to Rescue through Europe

Abstract

Kiran Klaus Patel The Deutscher Bauernverband from 1945 to 1990 From Uncompromising Stance to Rescue through Europe Introduction The Deutscher Bauernverband (the German Farmers’ Association, DBV) was one of the most important pressure groups in the “old” Federal Republic. In recent years too, rivalry with the Bundesverband Deutscher Milchviehhalter (Federal Dairy Farmers’ Association) and fluctuations in agricultural prices resulting from globalization have kept the DBV in the news. Yet historians have yet to reach a consensus about its role. Many general surveys of West German history since 1945 have simply ignored it or touched on it only briefly in a sweeping requiem for the rural world.1 Other studies, in contrast, have argued that even though the DBV certainly helped stabilize democracy, it was not able to assert its agrarian policy interests with much force. Christoph Kleßmann, for instance, warns against overestimating the “actual and enduring successes of the agrarian lobby.”2 According to Gesine Gerhard, on the other hand, the DBV proved capable of exerting enormous influence on agricultural policy, but it did little or nothing to affirm democracy. At least in the 1950s, Gerhard also claims, it resorted to “traditional and radical right-wing ideologies of rural life” to “support its goals.”3 Drawing on hitherto unused archival sources, this article reassesses the history of the DBV, situating it within a longer-term perspective on agrarian pressure groups as well as a broader European context. It argues that the DBV played Translation by Paul Bowman. 1 See for example Eckart Conze, Die Suche nach Sicherheit. Eine Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis in die Gegenwart, Munich 2009; Edgar Wolfrum, Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Gebhardt Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, vol. 23, 10th ed.), Stuttgart 2005, and Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Nach der Katastrophe. Eine Geschichte des geteilten Deutschland, Berlin 2000. 2 Christoph Kleßmann, Zwei Staaten, eine Nation. Deutsche Geschichte 1955–1970, 2nd ed., Bonn 1997, p. 134. 3 Gesine Gerhard, Zwischen Systemkonformität und -opposition. Der Deutsche Bauernverband und die politische Eingliederung der Bauernschaft in die Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 13 (2002), pp. 129–38, here p. 130. 84 Kiran Klaus Patel a paradoxical role in three respects. First, it was astonishingly successful in asserting its policy interests into the early 1950s, and it was able to push through vital interests in many fields even later. This success, however, often proved to be more detrimental than beneficial to the majority of its clientele. Second, despite flirting with right-wing ideas, particularly in the early days of West Germany, the DBV actually contributed significantly to stabilizing the political order. Third, although the DBV initially eyed European integration with obstinate skepticism, it was precisely the European Economic Community (EEC) that helped to secure the association’s influence. Adopting an Uncompromising Attitude and Affirming Democracy from 1945 to 1964 The DBV’s later successes were by no means a foregone conclusion. Founded in September 1945, the first pressure group to represent agrarian interests on a supra-regional level was immediately abolished by the Allied Control Council. Over the next few years, agrarian associations were organized at the regional level, but things were sometimes makeshift and improvised. In Lower Saxony, for example, a regional branch had to make do with a “single borrowed room” and a “bench under a copper beech” served as the “meeting hall.” The Deutscher Bauernverband did not emerge from these difficult beginnings until 1948 – the first unified, voluntary organization in the history of agricultural interest groups in Germany. In contrast to the pre-1933 situation, there was no longer an array of coexisting associations representing divergent political, denominational, regional, and socio-economic positions. The situation in Germany also differed from that of other European countries, such as Italy, Belgium and France, where a plurality of organizations continued to exist after 1945.4 4 Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hannover (henceforth: NLA), VVP 38/323, Sonnemann to Rehwinkel, September 5, 1960; see also Deutscher Bauernverband (ed.; henceforth: DBV), Der Deutsche Bauernverband. Seine Mitglieder und andere landwirtschaftliche Organisationen, Bonn 1987; Edmund Rehwinkel, Gegen den Strom. Erinnerungen eines niedersächsischen, deutschen und europäischen Bauernführers, Dorheim, no year given (ca. 1973), pp. 34–38...