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The Junkers and the Prussian Administration from 1918 to 1939
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The Junkers, as popularly conceived today, are considered to have been die evil genius of the German people, prompting their authoritarianism, their statism and their militarism. The popular conception is faulty when it uses die term “Junker” to include all German or even all Prussian nobles and fails to recognize diat Junkers come only from the historic eastern provinces of Prussia. It comes nearer to die trudi in its political judgment. For there is no doubt that die Junkers, who were able to defend dieir reactionary principles of absolute monarchy through their traditional and substantial political influence at Court, in die army, in the civil administration and dirough party politics, were a prime politcal cause of Prussia's failure to reform its government along liberal and popular lines before 1918.
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References
1 The Junkers belonged to the lesser nobility as distinguished from the great nobles; they were the landed gentry of Prussia's eastern provinces. In general they owned only small estates and the work of directing their farms, combined with their meagre in comes, kept them-especially the eldest sons-at home. Younger sons sought a career in the Prussian Officers Corps, thereby making the Junkers a military as well as a farming aristocracy. Their deep Protestant faith added to their conviction that the existing order in East Elbia, where they were the ruling caste, was God-ordained. See my study. The Junker in the Prussian Administration under William II, 1888–1914 (Providence, R. I., 1944), pp. 34–40.Google Scholar
2 See inter alia, Halperin, S. William, Germany Tried Democracy, a Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933 (New York, 1946), pp. 432–33Google Scholar; Holt, John B.. German Agricultural Policy, 1918–1934 (Chapel Hill, 1936), pp. 158–59Google Scholar; Topf, Erwin, Die Gruene Front. Der Kampf um den deuischen Acker (Berlin, 1933), p. 125.Google Scholar
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29 The Junker in the Prussian Administration, Ch. V, passim.
30 The proportion of Junker officials in western Prussia even in the period from 1888 to 1914 was very small, seldom rising over 5%. See ibid.
31 The total figures for the five ministries where the Junkers had been most favored-the Praesidium of the Ministry of State, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance and the Kultusministerium-are as follows:
32 Vol. 127 of the Handbuch über den Preussischen Staat was published in March, 1918. The next volume did not appear until January, 1922. There were also no volumes issued between 1931 and 1934 (Vol. 138). The last number to reach this country, Vol. 141, was published early in 1939.
33 For a description of this office see The Junker in the Prussian Administration, pp. 160–63.Google Scholar
34 For a description of this office see ibid., pp. 167–70.
35 For a description of this office see The Junker in the Prussian Administration, pp. 175–84.Google Scholar
36 For a description of these offices see The Junker in the Prussian Administration, pp. 164–65; 171–73.Google Scholar
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38 But my investigations lead me to conclude-disagreeing with Topf, (op. cit., p. 68Google Scholar)—that it is an exaggeration to give credit for decisive political influence to Junker officials and their satellites, significant as their numbers may be.
39 Reichsgeselzblatt I, s. 175 (1933)Google Scholar. The edict gave three general classifications of officials who were to be dismissed or placed on the inactive list: 1) Officials appointed since 9 November, 1918, who had not ihe prescribed training, career or other necessary requirements; 2) Non-Aryans except those appointed before 1 August, 1914, or those who, or whose fathers or sons, had fought in the World War; 3) Officials who had not taken a stand in unqualified support of the national state.
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44 I visited two East Prussian Junker landowners—Countess Finckenstein and Count von der Groeben—in 1935 and learned diat they were Nazi supporters and had apparently lost no part of their property to die colonization project.
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