German Countryside Research Articles

Becoming Active Agents Through Practices of Volunteering: Immigrants’ Experiences in Rural Germany

Volunteering is an important way to include immigrants at a local scale, especially in small towns and municipalities with limited arrival infrastructure. With the recent increase in immigrants, including in rural areas, volunteering practices for this target group have been much discussed, albeit with an emphasis on immigrants as vulnerable beneficiaries. There are few studies that focus on immigrants’ volunteering practices, or their function for the individual and receiving community, while empirical evidence for rural areas is explicitly lacking. In this article, we address immigrants as active agents with recourse to the concept of agency and unravel, firstly, the meanings they attribute to volunteering and reasons for their mobilisation; secondly, their access to volunteering in the German countryside; and thirdly their reflecting, practising, and sharing of agency through volunteering with an impact on themselves and their rural communities. Drawing on a qualitative, biographical‐narrative study of 72 immigrants in rural Germany, we show how cultures of volunteering—or how it is practised in different contexts—inform immigrants’ current activities, ranging from leisure practices to neighbourly help and supporting the inclusion of new arrivals. We illustrate the importance of opportunity structures and social networks for accessing volunteering and reveal individual and altruistic reasons for doing it, such as facilitating language acquisition and enhancing one’s participation, showing solidarity with immigrants, or gratitude towards the receiving society, often coinciding with expected outcomes. Volunteering allows immigrants to “perform agency” and fosters both belonging and responsibility taking for the dwelling place.

«Американская лихорадка»: попытка массовой эмиграции немецкого населения из Советского Союза в конце 1920-х годов

The article examines the case of the mass emigration of Germans from the Soviet Union to Europe and America in the late 1920s, referred to as the “American fever”. Based on unpublished archival materials from the collections of RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Social-Political History) and GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), as well as documentary collections, German periodicals of the era, and contemporary research, the study presents a comprehensive account of the alterations in the conditions of departure from the USSR for Soviet citizens of German nationality, encompassing both reunification with relatives and resettlement for permanent residence in Germany, Canada, and other countries. Throughout the first half of the 1920s, Germans were granted relatively unrestricted travel as a means of eliminating “internal enemies” and “declassified elements”. Later, the Soviet government made decisions to restrict and ultimately prohibit mass emigration from the USSR. The underlying factors and reasons for the expulsion of the German-speaking Mennonite community from the USSR, which possessed a prominent anti-Bolshevik stance, and the subsequent prohibitions on their emigration are scrutinized. The primary factors that sparked emigration sentiments in the German countryside were collectivization, the struggle against religion, hunger, and oppression. The aforementioned “American fever” garnered significant international attention and resonance in the Western media. In response, the Soviet leadership implemented “preventative measures” to eradicate the emigration movement. A flurry of raids, arrests and repression swept through German villages and the Sovietization of the German countryside intensified. German peasants who had gathered near Moscow were forcibly evicted back. Only 5,671 German nationals were able to leave the USSR, while most of the emigrants were forcibly returned, and all of them were placed under supervision, or detained by the OGPU. The Soviet government was unprepared for mass emigration from the USSR as a non-violent form of resistance. The mass nature of the emigration movement as well as the appeal of the Germans to a foreign state, in this case to Germany, for help, clearly showed the Bolshevik government a low degree of loyalty, both of the refugees themselves and their local supporters.

Encountering Ghosts of the Capitalocene on Northern German Walkways

Walking is a two-fold practice of both transcendence reflecting capitalist conformity as well as of potential for resistance. Applying the theory on walking traditionally associated with the subject in the modern city (Benjamin 1999) to today's Northern German countryside, I will argue that the dominant structures of feeling reflected in the walking culture and rural people's engagement with the land today is characterized by a sense of capitalist realism (Fisher 2009) and informed by the feeling of alienation leading to the fetishization of landscape. I, too want to explore walking's potential to step out of capitalist conformity. When intentionally walking to meet ghosts in the ruins of the Capitalocene (Tsing et al. 2017), the practice of walking can become an act of resistance challenging capitalist realism, revealing the structures that oppress both people and land and empowering people to imagine life beyond capitalism as well as reworking our relationship to the land toward a more authentic one.

Deutschlands Ölfelder: Eine Stoffgeschichte der Kulturpflanze Raps (1897–2017)

Deutschlands Ölfelder: Eine Stoffgeschichte der Kulturpflanze Raps (1897–2017)

Aussteigen um 1900: Imaginationen in der Literatur der Moderne ed. by Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer and Paul Michael Lützeler

Reviewed by: Aussteigen um 1900: Imaginationen in der Literatur der Moderne ed. by Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer and Paul Michael Lützeler Raymond L. Burt Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer and Paul Michael Lützeler, eds., Aussteigen um 1900: Imaginationen in der Literatur der Moderne. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2021. 588 pp. In Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea, the protagonist is told, "Civilization is terrible, but don't imagine that you can ever escape it." This volume, inspired by Monte Verità, one of the most influential free-thinker colonies at the beginning of the twentieth century, proves that many succeeded and, indeed, had a lasting effect on Western civilization. In one of the essays, Astrid Dröse and Friedrich Vollhardt provide a succinct assertion: "'Aussteiger' sind ein signifikantes, sozialhistorisches Phänomen der 'Modernitätskrise um 1900'" (332). [End Page 107] The thematic coherence and interdisciplinary approach of this volume provide a useful resource for a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. While the title of this volume indicates a focus on literature, the scope is much greater. The essays are organized into three sections of approximately the same length. The first covers music, dance, medicine, lifestyle, and experimental communities under the topic of cultural phenomena. The second covers literature, and the third is on the author Hermann Broch. Paul Michael Lützeler's opening essay bridges all three sections by providing information about the founding of Monte Verità, the major figures of the movement, the force of inspiration provided by Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, the major writers influenced by the ideals of the colony, and Broch. Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer's 89-page essay documents the near-scriptural stature that Zarathustra exerted on the assortment of "influencers" in fin-desiècle Germany, Austria, and Switzerland who rejected the social norms of the age. Among these are Gusto Gräser, who withdrew from society to live in a cave, clothed himself as an ancient prophet, lived on alms, and wandered the German countryside preaching pacifism and alternative lifestyles. Perhaps most influential were Ida Hofmann and Henri Oedenkoven, the founders of the Monte Verità community near Ascona, Switzerland, which existed from 1900 to 1920 and provided a center for a variety of reform movements, including vegetarianism, nudism, theosophy, and homeopathic medicine. In 1913, Rudolf von Labin, a pioneer in modern dance, propagated his theories of self-realization and liberation through dance by setting up a dance school at Monte Verità, influencing expressionist dancers like Mary Wigman and Nina Hard. The other essays in this section flesh out the breadth of this spirit of reform and the rejection of the status quo, articulating its manifestation in music, medicinal practices, and experimental alternatives to city planning, as exemplified by the "Gartenstadt" Hellerau, near Dresden. Given the title of the second section, "Aussteigen in der Literatur der klassischen Moderne," one might expect treatments of Wiener Moderne writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and perhaps even Peter Altenberg. Surprisingly, these essays examine the literary influence of the "Aussteiger" phenomenon in the works by later writers: Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil, and Max Frisch. Of particular interest is Irmgard Wirtz's essay, which introduces the hundreds of letters of Emmy Hennings of Dadaism fame as a fruitful source in understanding her literary work that also provides [End Page 108] unique insight into the life of this multifaceted artist. The essay gives special attention to her extensive correspondence with Hermann Hesse. The essay mentioned earlier by Dröse and Vollhardt casts a critical eye on Christian Kracht's 2012 novel Imperium stirred up twenty-first century sensibilities with its depiction of the most extreme of the radical reform movements, August Engelhardt's coconut utopia in the South Seas. The third section, "Aussteigen bei Hermann Broch," deviates from the concept of the Aussteiger articulated in the first two-thirds of this volume. Lützeler poses the question: "Was haben die Lebensreformer auf dem Monte Verità im frühen 20. Jahrhundert mit Hermann Broch zu tun?" (33). Broch did not visit Monte Verità, nor did he withdraw from society voluntarily. Lützeler, a Broch scholar and biographer, points instead to Broch's conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and to his two...

Square-eyed Farmers and Gloomy Ethnographers: The Advent of Television in the West German Village

During the 1950s and 1960s, television arrived in the West German countryside. All across Westphalia, elderly villagers recorded how their lives changed because of it. Their reports, solicited by ethnographers at a Münster folklore archive, allow unprecedented insight into TV’s impact on daily schedules, family routines, living rooms, neighbourly networks, local associations and church activities. This rare body of sources allows us to test the claims of media researchers about television’s early phase. It confirms that television accelerated the ongoing modernization, nationalization and politicization of rural society, rapidly reshaping village life. Only the patriarchal family – the decline of which contemporary ethnographers were most worried about – emerged unscathed.

What He Saw

“A story my father likes to tell on late fall evenings. His brown, Jewish, thumbtack eyes pin you with the details. The German countryside. A simple inn. A summer day. A band playing. Laughter.

She leaves, he stays? Sex-selective migration in rural East Germany

Rural regions in East Germany have been characterized by strong age- and sex-selective outmigration since 1990, which has resulted in unbalanced sex ratios in the age group 18–35 with pronounced surpluses of men. The East German countryside is unique in Europe in two respects: (1) the spatial and numerical extent of the overrepresentation of young men and (2) the missing equalization of sex ratio imbalances for groups in the age of forming a family. An analysis of statistical data shows that structural conditions, especially the situation on the labor market are important determinants of unbalanced sex ratios and sex-selective migration. However, in order to understand why rural East Germany stands out with an especially high surplus of young men, it is necessary to take the specific historical context – the legacy of the German Democratic Republic and the gendered and economic consequences of unification into account, notably the continuously high work orientation of East German women in an economically difficult environment.

Keeping Up with the Dutch

Elizabeth B. Jones is Associate Professor of German and European history at Colorado State University. Her recent publications explore state-led initiatives to ‘improve’ the German countryside with special emphasis on peat bog reclamation and colonization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how poor rural Germans embraced, adapted, or rejected these endeavors. Previous publications include Gender and Rural Modernity: Farm Women and the Politics of Labor in Germany, 1871–1933 (Ashgate, 2009) and articles on gender and generational conflicts and agrarian politics in Imperial and Weimar Germany. In 2010–2011, she was a Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich and in 2015–2016, she will be on research leave in Berlin. E-mail: elizabeth.jones@colostate.edu

Bombing and Rural Society in Württemberg

The Allied bombing of the German countryside was much less frequent and less damaging than the bombing of German towns and cities. Yet bombs did fall on rural areas, causing death and destruction. Before 1944, most of the bombing of the countryside was inadvertent, but nonetheless fatal for individuals - including foreign workers and urban evacuees - and destructive of land, buildings, and animals. Villages might suffer collateral damage when a nearby town was targeted, or they might be the recipients of jettisoned bombs from aircraft returning to base. There was also intentional bombing. Some villages were forced to play host to a decoy installation which became a target, and some were a target as the location of a communications link or the relocation of an industrial concern. In 1944 and 1945, villages, which tended to have neither anti-aircraft defences nor air-raid shelters, increasingly became easy targets. Thus agricultural work was disrupted, with the killing of farm workers and damage to fields, farm buildings, and animals.

Clashing Gears: Jewish Cattle Traders, Farmers, and Nazis in Conflict, 1926–35

This article seeks to explore how the Nazi policy of excluding Jews from the German economy was challenged in the German countryside by small towns, farmers and Jewish traders. This phenomenon becomes very obvious when we study the cattle dealing business, a predominantly Jewish domain. The essay argues that the antisemitic Nazi policies were threatened in some rural areas by the existing strong business ties between farmers and their Jewish cattle traders. Further, it demonstrates how small towns promoted their cattle markets and how Nazi agitators endangered them with violent attacks against Jewish cattle traders from the late 1920s on.

To Risk Immanence/To Read Schizo-Analytically: Deleuze, Guattari, and the Kleistian War-Machine

To Risk Immanence/To Read Schizo-AnalyticallyDeleuze, Guattari, and the Kleistian War-Machine Adrian Switzer What a wide array of narrative arcs are inscribed in Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas: the story is a Baroque, textual architecture overlaid with the tight coils of a horse’s braided mane; the cuneiform lettering of illuminated scripture; the swath of destruction Kohlhaas cuts across the German countryside; finally, the last arc inscribed in the story is the broad parabolic sweep of the executioner’s axe: “Kohlhaas aber [. . .] wandte sich zu dem Schafott, wo sein Haupt unter dem Beil des Scharfrichters fiel. Hier endigt die Geschichte vom Kohlhaas” (Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas 103) [Kohlhaas, however . . . turned to the scaffold where his head fell under the axe of the executioner. Here ends the story of Kohlhaas]. Yet, as attested in the language with which Kleist reports Kohlhaas’s execution, each narrative arc is figured in distinctly textual terms; again, the swing of the executioner’s axe “endigt die Geschichte vom Kohlhaas” [ends the story of Kohlhaas]. As Clayton Koelb points out the story is overall coherent despite its turn from an initial realism, centering on the provincial horse-dealer who suffers injustice at the hands of the Prussian government, to the fantastic character of its conclusion where an old gypsy woman’s prophecy is deciphered to reveal the end of a royal line. The horses whose abuse seems to trigger Kohlhaas’s vengeful wrath, “come into play mainly as stand-ins (that is, as collateral) for a missing document.” It is not the horses per se that are at issue; rather, Koelb rightly argues, it is “Kohlhaas’s lack of a ‘permit [Paßschein]’ that starts all the trouble” (Koelb 1099). Consider in this regard the following exchange between Kohlhaas and an officer at the border between Brandenburg and Saxony: Der Burgvogt, indem er sich noch eine Weste über seinen weitläufigen Leib zuknüpfte, kam, und fragte, schief gegen die Witterung gestellt, nach dem Paßschein. -Kohlhaas fragte: der Paßschein? Er sagte, ein wenig betreten, daß er, soviel er wisse, keinen habe; daß man ihm aber nur beschreiben möchte, was dies für ein Ding des Herrn sei: so werde er vielleicht zufälligerweise damit versehen sein. (Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas 10) (The warden, still fastening a waistcoat across his capacious body, came up and, bracing himself against the wind and rain, demanded the horse-dealer’s permit. [End Page 153] “My permit?” asked Kohlhaas and added, a little disconcerted, that so far as he knew he did not possess one, but that if the warden would kindly explain what on earth such a thing was he just might possibly have one with him.) To Kohlhaas’s dismissive comments concerning his documentation—if only he knew what it was, perhaps he would have it after all—the Junker Wenzel von Tronka replies that without a state permit a dealer bringing horses could not be allowed across the border. All of Kohlhaas’s subsequent travels—across the border into the Electorate of Saxony, and his return to the Brandenburg Mark—are figured in this missing permit: “In Dresden [. . .] begab er sich, gleich nach seiner Ankunft, auf die Geheimschreiberei, wo er von den Räten, deren er einige kannte, erfuhr, was ihm allerdings sein erster Glaube schon gesagt hatte, daß die Geschichte von dem Paßschein ein Märchen sei” [In Dresden . . . [Kohlhaas] went immediately upon arrival to the Chancellery, where from the officials—some of whom he knew—he learned what he all along had been inclined to believe, that the story about the pass was a fiction]. Despite the misgivings of the officials, Kohlhaas acquires from them a written certificate attesting to the lie of the Junker’s story. No pass is, indeed, required to cross the border to traffic in horse-trade (13). Kohlhaas later files official papers against the Junker in the court at Dresden (21). The court of Saxony, however, returns no official decision on Kohlhaas’s “statement.” Then, in reply to “a private letter” written to his advocate, Kohlhaas learns that the case has been dismissed: the Junker von Tronka has high-placed relatives in the Elector’s...

Deutschland und die deutschen Lande im Spiegel einer lateinischen Spruchsammlung

The Vatican codex Borgh. 200 contains the earliest medieval collection of proverbs and sentences systematically dealing with German regions and territories. The compiler, an anonymous writer of the thirteenth century, is arranging and organizing the descriptions of each German countryside as a circle. Clockwise he is explaining moral characteristics and behavioural qualities of the inhabitants. As a consequence of such a mental cartography, he is drawing a profile of the slowly emerging German nation composed by different regional cultures. The article presents a critical edition and a literary evaluation of the poem.

“Only united can we escape certain ruin”: Rural Protest at the Close of the Weimar Republic

AbstractThe level of rural unrest in the late Weimar Republic was much higher than has previously been assumed and did not simply decline after peaking in 1928. The agricultural crisis and Great Depression triggered a second wave of protest in the northern German countryside that continued from the autumn of 1931 until early 1933. Banding together, farmers established organisations to prevent compulsory tax and debt collection, and thwarted bailiffs and bidders at confiscations and compulsory auctions of farms and farm property with demonstrations, boycott measures and violence. The article focuses on these developments in Germany's northernmost province, Schleswig-Holstein, but also presents evidence revealing that the level of rural unrest has almost certainly been underestimated in other regions as well. The rural protest of this period was particularly significant for the involvement of parties of both political extremes which sought to win farmers' approval. Ultimately it was the Nazi Party that successfully exploited the second wave of rural unrest to promote its dynamic and activist profile and secure support in the countryside.

Commerce and Community in the Countryside: The Social Ambiguity of Market-Oriented Farming in Pre-Industrial Northern South-West Germany (c.1770–1860)

In the mainstream literature on the socio-political history of the German countryside in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the south-west areas of partible inheritance are often stereotypically contrasted with the regions of impartible inheritance in the north and north-west. While the latter were dominated by the antagonism between large peasants and tenant-labourers, it is claimed, the far more homogenous village societies in the south-west were primarily marked by conflicts with external powers such as the state and nobility. This dichotomic model, however, fails to account for major differences in political culture within the south-west, which in many cases cannot simply be explained with reference to divergent social structures, such as property distribution, either. In the following article it is argued that specific forms of agricultural market-integration and their effects on rural status groups had a crucial impact on collective solidarities and local cohesion. This hypothesis is empirically tested by comparatively analysing demographic development, access to land and, most extensively, modes of commercialisation in four exemplary regions on the northern upper Rhine. In the last section, these observations are tentatively related to distinctive forms of political mobilisation.

Campagnes et naturalité : la redéfinition d'un rapport à la nature dans les espaces ruraux des nouveaux Lànder.

The countryside and nature: Redefining the relation to nature in rural areas in the new German Lander German reunification in 1990 entailed a first-order change in politics and society in the new Lander. Ambitious projects for protecting up to nearly 10% of the former German Democratic Republic's surface area have significantly changed policies related to nature conservation. This ecological program, very strict at times, has caused friction among local actors about the question of which areas to protect. An ecological duty was thrust upon rural areas that had just recovered local autonomy and democracy - areas with development projects that might be far from compatible with conservation. Apart from conflict, creating parks has set off a debate about the German countryside's new identity and the inevitable integration of environmental concerns in rural development policies. Some participatory forces, catalyzed by these national parks, are evidence of a growing convergence in perceptions of the territoru.

Migrant Labour in the German Countryside: Agency and Protest, 1890–1923

This article concerns social relations in the estate villages of northern Germany between 1890 and 1923. It focuses primarily on the strategies adopted by seasonal labourers from Russian Poland in their relations with estate managements. Using police and union reports, and the letters and accounts of the migrants themselves, it argues that seasonal workers cannot simply be viewed as exploited, passive victims of this phase of agricultural modernization. This is evident, above all, in the practice of job-switching, which, although criminalized, was a widespread phenomenon both before 1914 and during the war, when the Poles were kept back as forced labour. Escaping estates to which they had been contracted, many workers outsmarted the system of registration by carrying multiple sets of identity papers. But such ‘contract breaking’ was also greatly facilitated by the endemic shortage of labour in the countryside; there were always some owners prepared to hire illegal fugitives. Examining the post-war years, the article also argues for a more nuanced understanding of relations between foreign and local workers. While most contemporary and historical accounts concentrate on social distance and mutual hostility between Germans and Poles, evidence from a number of different villages in the Mecklenburgs indicate that amicable relations and mutual cooperation were not uncommon.

On Armor (review)

Reviewed by: On Armor John Daley On Armor. By Bruce I. Gudmundsson. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004. ISBN 0-275-95020-4. Photographs. Figures. Notes. Bibliographic note. Index. Pp. ix, 234. $26.95. Anyone who has followed the recent debate over the U.S. Army's Medium Brigades and the ideal armored vehicle with which they should be equipped will appreciate the timing and approach of this latest addition to Praeger's Military Profession series. The inclusion of the tank's less-studied cousins, including armored cars, infantry carriers, assault guns, and combat engineer vehicles, has aided series editor Gudmundsson in highlighting the sustainability versus combat power conundrum throughout the history of armored forces. He divides the history of armored warfare into three phases. Until 1944, the trucks, armored cars, and light tanks that could move soldiers to the battlefield faster developed separately from the heavier tanks, whose crews could inflict more damage once there. During the last two years of World War II, these two tracks merged in the up-gunned variants of the Sherman and T-34: prototype main battle tanks (MBT) expected to perform both infantry support and exploitation/pursuit missions. Throughout most of this second phase, as both sides in the Cold War trained and equipped to fight World War III in the German countryside, the MBT concept and its operative philosophies—engaging at the maximum effective range of one's weapons and scoring first-round kills—prevailed. But if the idea of the one-size-fits-all [End Page 555] tank held sway in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, design priorities diverged. While the heavier weight of Western MBTs stemmed from increased interest in crew protection, the Soviets favored lighter types that could be moved to battle and maintained more easily. With the conclusion of the Cold War and first Gulf War has come the third phase, in which new missions demanding enhanced strategic and operational mobility of Western armies have caused armored fighting vehicle development to diverge back into separate tracks. Gudmundsson's projection of an operationally mobile automotive system employing special purpose turrets that can be interchanged in the field fits logically into his broader historical picture; one in which geography plays a crucial role in the design of vehicles as well as armies. By drawing on the entire range of ground forces mechanization for insights on technology, organization, tactics, and governing principles, the author not only provides a broader context in which to consider the main battle tank, but establishes with a few well-chosen examples what technocentric histories generally have not: that the other armored vehicles have been, and will be, far more than cheap ersatz tanks. The assault gun was not only less expensive than the Panther, but far more survivable in combat on the Eastern Front and a more successful tank killer when employed with "fire brigades" such as the Grossdeutschland Division. Its employment with the infantry did indeed free tanks for more concentrated operations on the Eastern Front, but Erich von Manstein's wish for one assault gun battalion per infantry division was never realized. Gudmundsson's brief look at the field expedient origins of the "Kangaroo" heavy armored personnel carrier provides an even clearer example of misplaced design and production priorities. Although it provided far better armor protection than the halftrack, this gun carriage without the gun was available only in small numbers for temporary attachment to British and Canadian divisions after mid-1944. Not only do recent developments in Iraq indicate that a long term fixation on the tank has left foot soldiers in built-up areas short of armor protection but, as Gudmundsson argues, the future heavy tank may, like its 1916 ancestor, serve primarily in an infantry support role. Similarly insightful treatments of France's interwar emphasis on armored cars, in part a function of that nation's contemporary road building program, and Israel's development of sniper tanks, an effort to avoid collateral damage during the Water Battles of 1965, place technology and tactics in a context sufficiently broad for general readers, and with relatively jargon-free prose. At the same time, specialists will appreciate that Gudmundsson addresses neither armor's accomplishments nor...

Ageing in rural areas of East and West Germany: increasing similarities and remaining differences.

Since unification in 1990, living conditions in Germany's "New Länder" have slowly converged to the conditions in the "Old Länder". One can assume, however, that West-East differences persist more strongly in remote rural areas neglected by economic development. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate and compare the living conditions of older adults in rural areas in East and West Germany with respect to personal and environmental resources which are important preconditions for autonomy and well-being in old age. These conditions were examined in a survey conducted in urban and rural regions of five European countries in 2000. The German rural study was carried out in the districts of Jerichow (Saxony-Anhalt) and Vogelsberg (Hesse), and included 762 men and women aged 55years or older, randomly chosen in villages of at most 5,000 inhabitants. East-West comparison showed both similarities and differences. Similarities arose in human conditions such as subjective health, parenthood and network variety, and in environmental conditions such as home-ownership, attachment to one's home, length of residence in the same neighbourhood, and satisfaction with mobility options. Differences were found in socio-demographic conditions (e.g. education, income, household composition), basic neighbourhood features, and patterns of social and leisure activities. Regression analysis showed the differing impact of single predictor variables on life satisfaction in the East and West: satisfaction with financial situation and functional health contributes far more to older people's life satisfaction in the West German rural area, whereas mobility-related aspects affect elders' life satisfaction more strongly in the East German countryside. The findings reflect, on the one hand, continuing structural East-West differences and, on the other, diverging socio-cultural habits.

On the Campaign Trail: State Planning and Eigen-Sinn in a Communist Campaign to Transform the East German Countryside

Throughout its history, the East German Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, hereafter SED) organized campaigns to overcome the economic and political challenges facing it and to launch new program initiatives. Whether the aim was to increase factory safety, beautify a village, or raise standards of living, the party and the East German government used mass mobilizations to shape society, or at least certain social groups. Communist campaigns were directed attempts to improve diverse sectors of society by concentrating resources on arenas marked as economically deficient and socially resistant. By directing their efforts at revolutionizing narrowly defined critical areas, Communist leaders felt that they could enact overarching societal changes. Campaigns thus served as a means to initiate new policies and to correct problems that developed later. They were an essential part both of the state planning so prevalent in Communist systems, and of the often hectic short-term initiatives endemic in such economies. These mobilization efforts were so critical to the regime that one scholar has declared that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) possessed a campaign, rather than a command economy.