The research in this article was supported by grants from the University of Michigan, the German Academic Exchange Service, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. It was originally presented as a paper at a meeting of the German Studies Association held in St. Louis on 18 October 1987. The author is grateful to Robert Moeller for his critique of the original paper, and Larry Eugene Jones and Douglas Unfug for their detailed critique of the draft article.

1. On the context of this revival see Eley, Geoff, “Possibilities of Reform in Britain and Germany,” in Blackbourn, David and Eley, Geoff, eds., The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar On Bassermann's role see Heckart, Beverly, From Bassermann to Bebel: The Grand Bloc's Quest for Reform in the Kaiserreich, 1900–1914 (New Haven, 1974), 37–43.Google Scholar

2. A probable reason for this neglect is that the DBB's archive has not survived. Taken over by the Reich Food Estate in 1933, portions were lost in a basement flood in 1934 and the remainder are thought to have been casualties of the Second World War. The sole extended treatment of the German Peasant League is Müller, Gerhard and Schwab, Herbert, “Deutscher Bauernbund,” Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte 2 (Berlin, 1984): 33–41.Google Scholar Two dissertations address the DBB in part: Vascik, George, “Rural Politics and Sugar in Germany: A·Comparative Study of the National Liberal Party in Hannover and Prussian Saxony, 1871–1914,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1988)Google Scholar, and Mundle, George, “The German National Liberal Party, 1900–1914. Political Revival and Resistance to Change,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1975).Google Scholar

3. The contemporary literature on the BdL is quite rich. von Kiesenwetter, Otto, Fünfundzwanzig Jahre wirtschaftspolitischen Kampfes. Geschichtliche Darstellung des Bundes der Landwirte (Berlin, 1918)Google Scholar, provides the perspective of an Agrarian League functionary, while Dix, Arthur, Der Bund der Landwirte. Entstehung, Wesen und politische Tätigkeit (Berlin, 1909)Google Scholar provides that of a National Liberal, and Bürger, C., Die Agrardemagogie in Deutschland (Berlin, 1911) a Social Democratic view.Google Scholar The secondary work on the Agrarian League is less extensive than one would imagine. The standard works are Puhle, Hans-Jürgen, Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preussischer Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich 1893–1914 (Hanover, 1967)Google Scholar, and Tirrell, Sarah, German Agrarian Politics after Bismarck's Fall (New York, 1951).Google ScholarPeck, Abraham, Radicals and Reactionaries: The Crisis of Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany (Washington, 1978), is particularly useful for the period 1912–1914.Google Scholar The best recent survey can be found in Retallack, James, Notables of the Right: The Conservative Party and Political Mobilization in Germany, 1876–1918 (Boston, 1988), 100–112.Google Scholar

4. See Blackbourn, David, “Peasants and Politics in Germany, 1871–1914,” European History Quarterly 14 (1984): 47–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The relevant literature is reviewed in Moeller, Robert, ed., Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany: Recent Studies in Agricultural History (Boston, 1986)Google Scholar, and Evans, Richard and Lee, William, The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (London, 1986).Google Scholar

5. Stresemann to Bassermann, 27 January 1912, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (PA), Nachlass (NL) Stresemann, 136/126315–126316.

6. Gerschenkron, Alexander, Bread and Democracy in Germany, 3rd ed., (Ithaca, 1989);Google ScholarRosenberg, Hans, Grosse Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa (Berlin, 1967);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, Probleme der deutschen Sozialgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1967).Google Scholar Charles Maier reviews the importance of this interpretation in the introduction to Gerschenkron.

7. On German liberalism generally see Sheehan, James, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978).Google ScholarWhite, Dan, The Splintered Party: National Liberalism in Hessen and the Reich, 1871–1918 (Cambridge, 1976),CrossRefGoogle Scholar demonstrates clearly how National Liberal notables sought to retain power by catering to regional economic interests.

8. See Bassermann's comments to a National Liberal party conference in Kassel at the time of the League's creation, 13. Allgemeiner Vertretertag der Nationalliberalen Partei. Protokolle auf Grund stenographischer Aufnahme (Berlin, 1909), 12.Google Scholar

9. Bräunche, Ernst, Parteien und Reichstagswahlen in der Rheinpfalz von der Reichsgründung 1871 bis zum Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges 1914 (Speyer, 1982), 105, 205–6.Google Scholar

10. On Hahn see Vascik, George, “Agrarian Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany: Diederich Hahn and the Agrarian League,” in Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack, eds., Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance. Forthcoming.Google Scholar

11. The results of the survey are published in Flathmann, Johannes, Die Landbevölkerung der Provinz Hannover und die Agrarzölle (Hanover, 1902).Google Scholar

12. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 22 October 1909. Wachhorst told a National Liberal assembly in the industrial suburb of Linden that the Peasant League had been necessary because many former National Liberals had “migrated” to the Agrarian League. Bundesarchiv (BA) Koblenz, Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung I/103, Deutsch–Hannoversche Partei Nr. 1999, “Deutscher Bauernbund,” (unpaginated), Niedersächsisches Wochenblatt, 9 September 1909.

13. Eschenburg, Theodor, Das Kaiserreich am Scheideweg. Bassermann, Bülow und der Block (Berlin, 1927), 119–20.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., 120–21.

15. For more detail on the course of events in Posen, see Taschenbuch für nationalliberale Wähler (Berlin, 1911), 25–30, and the report by the governor (Oberpräsident) of Posen, BA Potsdam, Reichskanzlei, 1131/1–6Google Scholar, Versammlungsbericht über den allgemeinen Ansiedlertag von Gnessen am 17 March 1909 (Posen, 1909)Google Scholar, and Spickermann, Roland, “Germans among Poles: Ethnic Rivalry, Economic Change, and Political Mobilization in the Bromberg Administrative District, 1885–1914,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1992).Google Scholar On colonization see Hagen, William, Germans, Jews, and Poles: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar, and Barkin, Kenneth, The Controversy over German Industrialization, 1890–1902 (Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

16. For an outline of the imperial tax reform see Witt, Peter-Christian, Die Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1903 bis 1913 (Lübeck, 1970), 17–58, and on Bülow's proposed reform 199ff., also Heckart, From Bassermann to Bebel, 73–83.Google Scholar The agrarian standpoint on taxes—that agriculture already bore the brunt of taxation by the federal states–is often overlooked. For a corrective see Sossinka, Gunda, “Diederich Hahn. Direktor des Bundes der Landwirte. Sein Beitrag um die Agrarpolitik des wilhelminischen Reichesn,” (Ph.D. diss., Göttingen, 1974).Google Scholar The fiscal crisis of the modern German state predated 1909, as suggested in Vascik, George, “The Brussels Sugar Convention of 1902: Reevaluating the Roles of State and Industry in Wilhelmine Germany,” Essays in Economic and Business History 7 (1989): 91–100.Google Scholar

17. Bülow's failure to keep the bloc united behind the finance reform is a matter of some speculation. Lermann, Katherine, The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Bülow and the Governance of Germany, 1900–1909 (Cambridge, 1990),Google Scholar claims that the negotiations failed because Bülow was distracted by foreign affairs. For a collection of telegrams, letters, and petitions sent to party leader Bassermann supporting the party's stand, see “Sitzungen der Reichstagsfraktion, 3 November 1908–1913 July 1909,” BA Koblenz, R 45 I/9/165–545 (with interruptions). Bassermann had clearly reassessed the value of the Bauernbund project as a result of the failed finance reform. He wrote to his wife on 28 June (Eschenburg, Das Kaiserreich am Scheideweg, 266) that a turning point in the relationship between the party and the BdL had been reached.

18. Stresemann to Bassermann, 16 September 1909, BA Koblenz, NL Stresemann, 136/126545, and Wachhorst de Wente to Stresemann, 14 September 1909, cited by Mielke, Siegfried, Der Hansa-Bund für Gewerbe, Handel und Industrie 1909–1914 (Göttingen, 1976), 294.Google Scholar Even before the Hansabund's formal creation, its future director, Jakob Riesser, met with League business manager Karl Böhme to arrange cooperation between the two groups.

19. Böhme, Karl, Der Bauemstand in Knechtschaft und Freiheit (Berlin, 1924), 94.Google Scholar Most Free Conservatives, however, were more reluctant than Löscher to break permanently with the Agrarian League. See Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik, 201–2, and Kardorff, Siegfried, Wilhelm von Kardorff. Ein nationaler Parlamentarier im Zeitalter Bismarcks und Wilhelms II (Berlin, 1936), 342–48.Google Scholar

20. BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 8629/1.

21. BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 8629/1–11. Also Stenographischer Bericht über die Erste Bundesversammlung des Deutschen Bauembundes am 6. Juli 1909 in Gnesen (Berlin, 1909).Google Scholar

22. Böhme, Karl, Der Bauernstand, 93–94.Google Scholar

23. Niedersächsisches Wochenblatt, 9 September 1909, 1.

24. Germania, 4 July 1909, 1.

25. See Vorwärts, 4 July 1909, 1; and Lederer, E., “Sozialpolitische Chronik,” in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Berlin, 1913), 325.Google Scholar The limits of what the SPD was itself willing to offer the peasantry is explored in Maehl, William, “German Social Democratic Agrarian Policy, 1890–1895, Reconsidered,” Central European History 13 (1980): 121–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Hussain, Athar and Tribe, Keith, Marxism and the Agrarian Question (Atlantic Highlands, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Flemming, Jens, Landwirtschaftliche Interessen und Demokratie: Ländliche Gesellschaft, Agrarverbände und Staat, 1890–1925 (Bonn, 1978).Google Scholar

26. Flemming, Landwirtschaftliche Interessen, 51–52. For a fuller analysis of the Agrarian League response see Puhle, Agrarische Interessen, 145–46, and Vascik, “Rural Politics,” 371–73.

27. Post, 5 August 1909, 1. On the reasons for Free Conservative reticence see Böhme, Der Bauernstand, 96.

28. Berliner Tageblatt, 5 July 1909, 1, 4–5; and BA Koblenz, NL Gothein, 22/131–133. Also Böhme, Der Bauernstand, 96–98.

29. BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 8629/186.

30. On the League's structure see Müller and Schwab, “Deutscher Bauernbund,” 33. On the organization of political parties in this period see Nipperdey, Thomas, Die Organisation der deutschen Parteien vor 1918 (Düsseldorf, 1961).Google Scholar

31. Vascik, “Rural Politics,” 393. The Franconian situation can be followed in its particulars in Hundhammer, Alois, Geschichte des bayerischen Bauernbundes (Munich, 1924)Google Scholar, and the relevant issues of the Deutscher Bauernbund-Abteilung Bayern and the Neue Bayerische Landeszeitung. The Bavarian context generally is set forth lucidly in I. Farr, “Peasant Protest in the Empire: the Bavarian Example,” in Moeller, Peasants and Lords. The author is grateful to Ian Farr for help in locating these newspapers.

32. BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 8633/71.

33. Müller and Schwab, “Deutscher Bauernbund,” 41. Donald Schilling's forthcoming work, “Politics in a New Key: The Transformation of Politics in Northern Bavaria, 1880–1914,” will be very helpful in this regard.

34. Schwarz, Max, MdR. Biographisches Handbuch der Reichstage (Hanover, 1965).Google Scholar Also helpful was BA Koblenz: Kleine Erwerbung/Thieme, which Hartwig Thieme compiled for his work Nationaler Liberalismus in der Krise. Die nationalliberale Fraktion des preussischen Abgeordnetenhauses, 1914–1918 (Boppard, 1963).Google Scholar

35. Note the photographs in Harms, Paul, Die Nationalliberale Partei (Berlin, 1907).Google Scholar

36. On Wachhorst, see Ehrenfeuchter, B., “Politische Willensbildung in Niedersachsen zur Zeit des Kaiserreiches,” (Ph.D. diss., Göttingen, 1951), 196–97Google Scholar. It would be helpful if we had more biographical data on Wachhorst. Unfortunately he burned his private and political papers shortly before his death in 1941 because the Gestapo was conducting searches of former Hanoverian progressives' homes.

37. After the disastrous 1912 election campaign, Bassermann wrote to Stresemann that it was painful that he (Stresemann) and Wachhorst had not won seats in the new Reichstag, calling it an enormous handicap. Bassermann to Stresemann, undated, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126467. More work really needs to be done on Wachhorst's special duties as Bassermann's trusted aid. How far, for instance, did they extend beyond relations with the German Peasant League?

38. Kalkoff, Hermann, Nationalliberale Parlamentarier (Berlin, 1917), 60Google Scholar, and Frye, Bruce, Liberal Democrats in the Weimar Republic (Carbondale, 1985), 63.Google Scholar Böhme's private papers have heretofore not surfaced. It is reasonable to hope that Böhme might have taken them with him when he emigrated to Brazil, where Attila Chanaday has told the author Böhme shared a cattle ranch with Eric Koch-Weser, the erstwhile German Democratic party leader. Lacking these papers, Böhme's views can best be reconstructed from his numerous publications: Gutsherrlich-böuerliche Verhältnisse in Ostpreussen während der Reformzeit von 1770 bis 1830 (Leipzig, 1902);Google ScholarPfarrer Naumann ein nationaler Politiker? (Berlin, 1906);Google ScholarFinanzreform und Bauernstand (Würzburg, 1908);Google ScholarDeutsche Bauernpolitik. Eine Auseinanderset zung mit dem Bund der Landwirte (Würzburg, 1911);Google ScholarDer Deutsche Bauernbund (Berlin, 1911);Google ScholarLandwirtschaft und nationalliberale Partei (Berlin, 1916);Google ScholarDer Bauernstand in Knechtschaft und Freiheit (Berlin, 1924);Google Scholar and Zum Streit der landwirtschaftlichen Organisationen! Ein Wort zur Abwehr (Leipzig, 1928).Google Scholar

39. Böhme, Karl, Finanzreform und Bauernstand, 4–7.Google Scholar

40. Friedensburg, Ferdinand, Lebenserinnerungen (Frankfurt, 1969), 36Google Scholar, writes that his friend and fraternity brother Böhme was “neither anti-Semitic nor anticapitalist.” As an aide to Böhme in the postwar DBB, pp. 102–8, Friedensburg was in a position to know. Böhme's references to the anti-agrarianism of the big-city press (written in the bitter Zum Streit) were directed at the Berliner Tageblatt, with which he never got along. While such references carry with them anti-Semitic overtones, this in part reflects Böhme's deep personal and political disappointment over the course taken by the DDP and should not be read backwards into his earlier career. Peal, David, “Self-Help and the State: Rural Cooperatives in Imperial Germany,” Central European History 21 (1988): 244–66, once suggested to the author that Böhme's views seemed to change whenever someone new picked up the tab.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. von Gerlach, Hellmut, Von Rechts nach Links (Zurich, 1937), 68–69Google Scholar, and idem, Erinnerungen eines Junkers (Berlin, 1926), 107–18.Google Scholar

42. Böhme, Karl, Der Bauernstand in Knechtschaft und Freiheit, 87Google Scholar, characterizes Böckel's movement as a “true peasants' movement” that was “absolutely democratic in the good sense” and whose positive features must be remembered “despite its agitational excesses.”

43. Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik, 145–46.

44. Müller and Schwab, “Deutscher Bauernbund,” 33, 35.

45. Lederer, “Sozialpolitische Chronik,” 326.

46. Stresemann to Bassermann, 16 September 1909, BA Koblenz, NL Stresemann, 427/126542–126545. In his meeting with Stresemann, Böhme was already displaying his tendency to blame others for the League's financial woes, saying that the elderly Hermann Wamhoff expected a large salary as an executive committee member (7500 marks/annum, compared to Böhme's proposed 12,000 marks/annum). This inelegant character trait was present throughout Böhme's career. It was alleged that he more than doubled his yearly salary by sitting on corporate boards and that he embezzled League funds. As a comparison, the BdL's business manager Diederich Hahn earned 9000 marks/year, but this amount was more than doubled by Hahn's position as an editor of the Deutsche Tageszeitung.

47. Letter Stresemann to Bassermann, 7 January 1911, BA Koblenz, NL Stresemann, 427/126644, cited by Mielke, Der Hansa-Bund, 114.

48. Flemming, Landwirtschaftliche Interessen, 52, cites a letter from Stresemann to David Heilner of the Hansabund, 28 December 1909, “[Within the executive committee of the Bund der Industriellen] all are agreed that there is presently no more important question than underwriting the endeavors of the Peasant League … If it is possible to strengthen the Peasant League and make it into a power factor, then the one-sided domination of the Agrarian League will be shaken.”

49. Wachhorst de Wente to Bassermann, 20 August 1912, BA Koblenz, NL Stresemann, 136/126444. Reiss, Klaus Peter, Von Bassermann zu Stresemann. Die Sitzungen des nationalliberalen Zentralvorstandes 1912–1917, (Düsseldorf, 1967), 180Google Scholar, and Stegmann, Dirk, Die Erben Bismarcks. Parteien und Verbände in der Spätphase des wilhelminischen Deutschland, 1897–1918 (Cologne, 1970), 221Google Scholar, have both misread this letter. Wachhorst stated that he personally had incurred 5,000,000 marks of debt on behalf of the Peasant League. Wachhorst goes on to state that Böhme had also taken on a large personal debt (3,000,000 marks) to cover League expenses. Neither of these figures covers the corporate debt of the Peasant League. That appears to have been covered on a more or less monthly basis by the Hansabund. Still, in his letter, Wachhorst was pleading for sufficient aid to make it through August and September (1912).

50. Reiss, Von Bassermann zu Stresemann, 178–80, and Rieger, Isolde, Die wilhelminische Presse im Überblick (Munich, 1957), 119.Google Scholar

51. Böhme, Karl, Zum Streit, 10–11. As Martin Schumacher commented to the author, “Like Diederich Hahn, Böhme seems to have been a very difficult person to like.”Google Scholar

52. Der Deutsche Bauernbund, 14 February 1914, 1. Schumacher, Martin, Land und Politik. Eine Untersuchung über politische Parteien und agrarische Interessen (Düsseldorf, 1978), 437,Google Scholar sees the Electoral Fund as the means by which the German Democratic party cemented its relationship with the Peasant League in the early postwar period.

53. Bassermann to Stresemann, 28 August 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126454.

54. Bertram, Jürgen, Die Wahlen zum deutschen Reichstag vom Jahre 1912 (Düsseldorf, 1964), 64.Google Scholar

55. 12. Allgemeiner Vertretertag der Nationalliberalen Partei (Berlin, 1910), 22.Google Scholar

56. After the crushed expectation of 1912, Wachhorst was clearly eager to minimize that number, claiming only three independent candidatures. See Wachhorst's remarks before the National Liberal executive committee, 9 February 1913, in Reiss, Von Bassermann zu Stresemann, 178. Figures on employment are drawn from Ritter, Gerhard A., Wahlgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch. Materialien zur Statistik des Kaiserreichs 1871–1914 (Munich, 1958), 102.Google Scholar

57. Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik, 337.

58. “Die Reichstagswahlen,” Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv (NStA) Osnabrück, R 450 Mel/27, unpaginated, and “Die Reichstagswahlen im Jahre 1912,” R 450 Witt/26, unpaginated.

59. Böhme, Karl, Zum Streit, 11, claims that he chose Salzwedel so that he could be closer to his duties in Berlin.Google Scholar

60. Bertram, Die Wahlen, 188, and Puhle, Agrarische Interessen, 326.

61. See village results BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv 5128/9–10 and 8633/120a. According to Suval, Stanley, Electoral Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Chapel Hill, 1985), 131Google Scholar, the Hansabund had 2,000,000 marks at its disposal for the general election in 1912. Since each race cost 10–40,000 marks, this meant that the Hansabund could fully support candidates in from 50 to 200 (out of 498) contests.

62. Levy, Richard, The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Germany (New Haven, 1975), 245.Google ScholarMolt, Peter, Der Reichstag vor der improvisierten Revolution (Cologne, 1963), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, inaccurately states that Hestermann broke with the National Liberal party in 1913. Hestermann's actions were perceived at the time as a tactical distancing from the National Liberal caucus.

63. Mundle, “The National Liberal Party,” 214–15.

64. Stresemann to Bassermann, 27 January 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126315–126316.

65. Bassermann to Stresemann, 14 January 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126310.

66. Bassermann to Stresemann, 28 August 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126454.

67. See Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews, 278, “Whatever policy differences might arise between peasant/settlers and Junkers, the Junker-dominated BdL remained the central nexus of the rural economy in the Posen German community.” Also see Bertram, Die Wahlen, 98–99. Using 187 full-time and 118 part-time functionaries, the Agrarian League held 10,840 assemblies in 1910, an average of 66 a day in the winter months.

68. On the Trachtenberg mill incident see BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 8633/78.

69. Hundhammer, Alois, Die landwirtschaftliche Berufsvertretung in Bayern (Munich, 1926), 56–57.Google Scholar

70. Hunt, James, “Peasants, Grain Tariffs, and Meat Quotas: Imperial German Protectionism Reexamined,” Central European History 7 (1974): 311–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Bertram, Die Wahlen, 187–88. On Hahn's speakers' school see Sossinka, “Diederich Hahn,” 59.

72. This was the case with Wilhelm Dusche, a Peasant League organizer in Hanover. BA Potsdam, BdL-Pressearchiv, 86302/54.

73. See Bertram, Die Wahlen, 189.

74. “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg, R 87, 20560/46–47, and “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg, R 77, 64/370–379.

75. “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg, R 77, 64/379–382, 4 01, 4 04.

76. “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg, R 77, 64/390.

77. “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg, R 77, 64/398–399.

78. “Bund der Landwirte,” GSTA Merseburg. R 77, 64/391. For a more detailed recounting of Agrarian League harassment see Vascik, “Rural Politics,” 376–91.

79. Hunt, Peasants, 327.

80. For an overview of national liberal policy on the meat question see Reiss, Von Bassermann zu Stresemann, 182–85, and W. Mathews, “The Food Crisis of 1910–1911: Meat, Potatoes, and the Politics of Food,” unpublished paper presented at the German Studies Association conference, October 1989.

81. Lederer, “Sozialpolitische Chronik,” 324–25. Böhme was aware of the potential power of these issues. In Deutsche Bauernpolitik. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Bund der Landwirte (Würzburg, 1911),Google Scholar he identifies inner colonization and democratization along with finance reform as the three key issues separating the DBB from the BdL.

82. Stresemann to Bassermann, 7 November 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126660.

83. See Eley, Geoff, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven, 1980), 316–34.Google Scholar

84. Bassermann to Stresemann, 18 March 1912, PA, NL Stresemann, 136/126559.

85. After the war, the Peasant League executive committee concluded an electoral alliance with the German Democratic party, although Peasant League members became active in both the German Democratic party and the German Peoples party. The Bauernbund profited in the short-term from this alliance, particularly in the elections to the National Assembly. In the period after 1919, however, the League became tarred in many peasant eyes by its association—through the German Democratic party and against the wishes of its leading elements—with economic controls and socialization. Böhme broke with the Democrats in 1924 (ostensibly over the projected agricultural tariff) and took with him a significant portion of the League's central office functionaries. The League's membership and political profile continued to sink as its leaders fought among themselves, as the agricultural economy slumped, and as the Weimar system fell into disrepute. Finally in 1927, its leaders recognized the inevitable and dissolved the German Peasant League.