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The Junkers and the Prussian Administration from 1918 to 1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Lysbeth W. Muncy
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1947 , pp. 482 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1947

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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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4 Morrow, , op. cit. p. 415.Google Scholar

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6 See, inter alia, Topf, , op. cit., pp. 67–68Google Scholar; von Oldenburg-Januschau, Elard, Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1936), pp. 218–19Google Scholar; Wheeler-Bennett, John W., Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History, 1914–1934 (New York, 1936), pp. 342, 365, 377.Google Scholar

7 Oldenburg-Januschau, , op. cit., p. 222Google Scholar; Wheeler-Bennett, , op. cit., p. 312.Google Scholar

8 Morrow, , op. cit., p. 320.Google Scholar

9 Topf, , op. cit., p. 257.Google Scholar

10 Braun, Otto, Von Weimar zu Hitler (New York, 1940), pp. 386–88.Google Scholar

11 Topf, . op. cit., p. 286.Google Scholar

12 See, inter alia, ibid., pp. 267–269; Halperin, , op. cit., p. 484Google Scholar, Braun, , op. cit., pp. 389–90.Google Scholar

13 Topf, , op. cit., pp. 290–91.Google Scholar

14 Oldenburg-Januschau, , op. cit., p. 217Google Scholar. For a full and well documented discussion of the general criticism of the Osthilfe early in 1933 see Morrow, , op. cit., pp. 410–413.Google Scholar

15 Grzesinski, Albert C., Inside Germany, tr. Lipschitz, A. S. (New York, 1939), pp. 79, 119Google Scholar.

16 Koch-Weser, Erich, Und dennoch AufToatris! Eime deuUche Nachkriegsbilanz (Berlin, c. 1933), p. 161.Google Scholar

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18 See also Braun, , op. cit., p. 240.Google Scholar

19 von Gerlach, Hellmuth, Von Rechts nach Links, ed. Ludwig, Emil (Zurich, 1937), p. 246Google Scholar. He mentions here how Republicans were kept from Landratsaemler by the old Geheimraisbuerokratie on the ground that there were other applicants on the list before them.

20 Braun, , op. cit., p. 58.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., pp. 48–58.

22 A long and costly period of training for the Prussian State administration also deterred men of the lower middle and working classes from entering this profession. I have estimated that even before 1914 it would take eight or nine years of study and apprenticeship and 15,000–25,000 marks to prepare oneself for the post of Regierungs Assasor. See my study. The Junker in the Prussian Administration, p. 101.Google Scholar

23 Schuecking, Lothar Engelbert, Die innere Demokratisierung Preussens (Munich, 1919), p. 7.Google Scholar

24 ibid., p. 7; Meyer, Oscar, Von Bismarck zu Hitler: Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen (New York, Verlag Friedrich Krause, 1944), pp.115–116Google Scholar; Kranold, A., “Die politischen Beamten im neuen Staate,” Die neue Zeil, Jg. 38 (1920), pp. 538–40Google Scholar; Braun, , op. cit., pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

25 Meyer, , op. cit., p. 122Google Scholar; Grzesinski, , op. cit., pp. 101–102Google Scholar; Winnig, August, Das Reich uls Republik, 1918–1928 (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1929), p. 199.Google Scholar

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27 See Meyer, , op. cit., pp. 117–118Google Scholar; Koch-Weser, , op. cit., p. 163.Google Scholar

28 The ute of the term “Junker” here is based on my definition of a Junker as given in note 1. The count of Junkers is based on the lists of officials in selected volumes of the Handbuch über den Preussischm Siaat, a publication of the Prussian State.

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

37 Von Gerlach, , op. cit., pp. 246–47.Google Scholar

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.

40 Seel, Hanns, “Erneuerung des Berufsbeamtentums,” Das Recht der nationalen Revolution, Heft 4 (Berlin, 1933) passim.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, Meyer, , op. cit., pp. 116–17Google Scholar; Koch-Weser, , op. cit., p. 162.Google Scholar

42 Brecht, Arnold, Prelude to Silence, the End of the German Republic (New York. 1944), pp. 110–11.Google Scholar

43 Meye, r, op. cit., p. 117.Google Scholar

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.

45 von Hassel, Ulrich, Vom anderen Deutschland. A as den nachgelassenen Tagebuechern, 1938–1944, von Ulrich von Hassel (Zurich, 1946), p. 91.Google Scholar

46 Gaevernitz, Gero von S., editor. They Almost Killed Hitler (New York, 1947), p. 128.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 139.

48 See Dulles, Allen Welsh. Germany's Underground (New York, 1947), Chapter 7.Google Scholar

49 Gaevernitz, (op. cit., p. 13) says Rundstedt was ready to use strong words against the Nazis but equally determined not to act and suffer the consequences.Google Scholar

50 Dulles, , op. cit., p. 179.Google Scholar

51 Meinecke, Friedrich, Die deuteche Kalastrophe, Beirachiungen und Errinerungen (Wiesbaden and Zurich. 1946), p. 149.Google Scholar