3 - Peasant Eyes: A Critique of the Agricultural Enlightenment

Summary

In 1831, Michael Irlbeck from Liebenstein near Kötzing in Bavaria (1786–1869) submitted a manuscript to the Bavarian Agricultural Association, the Landwirtschaftlicher Verein, with a request for its evaluation of his text. His inquiry was supported by the county court judge of Kötzing, with the association's commendation being intended to facilitate the printing of Irlbeck's debut work, a three-volume treatise on agriculture. His book was addressed to state officials as well as to farmers and, as Irlbeck proclaimed, was the ‘only one of its kind’, a reference to the quality and depth of his knowledge on the one hand, and to his social status on the other. He was neither a wealthy landlord nor a scholarly economist, and he had received no university education. As a matter of fact, Irlbeck had worked as a farm hand before taking over his parents’ farm, and his ability to write in a scholarly manner would later be recognized by reviewers as exceptional. Irlbeck, who as a Halbbauer possessed half of what was considered to be a full farm, sufficient to make him a member of his village's social elite, had temporarily been the village headman. Presumably, he farmed a minimum of 10 hectares of land, owned draft cattle, and had hired day labourers. For a time, Irlbeck experimented with seven-field as well as four-field rotations, but ultimately returned to a three-field system. His farm, which was at a high altitude and so cool, is reported to have been stony, with a clayey, sandy soil low in humus and not especially fertile, yielding four times the seed only in a good year. And yet Irlbeck was able to achieve remarkable economic success as a result of his intensive work and numerous improvements. Over 23 summers he brought barren land into cultivation, during which time he cleared trees and bushes, dug up two thousand cartloads (Fuhren) of stones, levelled hills, planted fruit trees to border the edges of his fields, drained swamps, and created artificially irrigated meadows on dry mountain slopes. It seems like no corner of his property remained untouched in the years of his activities. The Landwirtschaftlicher Verein (hereafter: Verein) had already honoured him for his many accomplishments.