223px|thumb|alt=photo of seated| was born into a wealthy family.

The ( ; ) were members of the landed nobility in Prussia. They owned great estates that were maintained and worked by peasants with few rights. These estates often lay in the countryside outside of major cities or towns. They were an important factor in Prussian and, after1871, German military, political and diplomatic leadership. One of the most famous was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck|. Bismarck held power in Germany from 1871to 1890 as Chancellor of the German Empire; his resignation was forced by Kaiser Wilhelm II|.

Many lived in the eastern provinces that were annexed by either Poland or the Soviet Union after World WarII. fled or were expelled alongside other German-speaking populations by the incoming Polishand Soviet administrations, and their lands were confiscated. In western and southernGermany, the land was often owned by small independent farmers or a mixture of small farmers and estate owners, and this system was often contrasted with the dominance of the large estate owners of the east. Before World WarII, the dividing line was often drawn at the river, which was also roughly the western boundary of Slavic settlement by the Wends in the so-called Germania Slavica| prior to . The term for the -dominatedEast was thus , or . They played a prominent role in repressing the liberal movement in Germany, and were often described as reactionary.

Origins

is derived from Middle High German , meaning or otherwise (a derivation from and Herr (title)|), and originally was the title of members of the higher (immediate) nobility without or before the accolade. It evolved to a general denotation of a young or lesser noble, often poor and politically insignificant, understood as "country squire" ( 's disguise as "" at the; he would later mock King HenryVIII of England as ""). As part of the nobility, many families only had prepositions such as or Nobiliary particle| before their family names without further ranks. The abbreviation of the title is , most often placed before the given name and titles, for example: . The female equivalent () was used only sporadically. In some cases, the honorific was also used for (barons) and (counts).

A good number of poorer took up careers as soldiers (Fahnenjunker), mercenaries, and officials (, Kammerjunker) at the court of territorial princes. These families were mostly part of the German medieval and had carried on the colonisation and Christianisation of the northeastern European territories during the . Over the centuries, they had become influential commanders and landowners, especially in the lands east of the in the Kingdom of Prussia.

As landed aristocrats, the owned most of the arableland in Prussia. Being the bulwark of the ruling Houseof , the controlled the Prussian Army, leading in political influence and social status, and owning immense estates worked by tenants. These were located especially in the north-easternhalf of Germany (i.e. the Prussian provinces of Province of Brandenburg|, Pomerania, Silesia, West Prussia, East Prussia, and Province of Posen|). This was in contrast to the predominantly Catholic southern states such as the Kingdomof or the Grand Duchyof , where land was owned by small farms, or the mixed agriculture of the western states like the Grand Duchyof or even the Prussian Rhine and Westphalianprovinces.

formed a tightly-knit elite. Their challenge was how to retain their dominance in an emerging modern state with a growing middle and working class.

German and Prussian Empires

Supporting monarchism and militaristic traditions, were seen as reactionary, anti-democratic, and protectionist by liberals and socialists, as they had sided with the conservative and monarchist forces during the German revolutions of 1848–1849. Their political interests were served by the German Conservative Party in the Reichstag (German Empire)| and the extraparliamentary Agriculturists' League (). This political class held tremendous power over industrial classes and government alike, especially through the Prussian three-classfranchise. When German chancellor Leo von Caprivi| in the1890s reduced protective duties on imports of grain, these landed magnates demanded and obtained his dismissal; and in1902, they brought about a restoration of these higher duties on foodstuffs.

The held a virtual monopoly on all agriculture in the part of the German lying east of the River. Since the estates were necessarily inherited by the eldest son alone, younger sons, all well-educated and with a sense of noble ancestry, turned to the civil and military services, and dominated all higher civil offices, as well as the officer corps. Around1900 they modernised their farming operations to increase productivity. They sold off less-productive land, invested more heavily in new breeds of cattle and pigs, used new fertilisers, increased grain production, and improved productivity per worker. Their political influence achieved the imposition of high tariffs that reduced competition from imported grain andmeat.

Since the dawn of German Liberalism there had been a desire to see the Junkers abolished. Figures such as Friedrich Naumann and Max Weber believed the middle class and the proletariat would unite to abolish the Junkers and revered Britain as a model of this process.

Weimar Republic

The Junkers believed that their existence was inherently linked to the existence of the German Aristocracy and so they viewed the Communist November Revolution as a crushing defeat. One Junker, Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau testified that "I felt a world was collapsing and burying under its ruins everything that had been the content of my life". And while the trappings and terminology changed after the revolution, the basic existence of the Junkers remained mostly unchanged in the Weimar Republic: the structure of German agriculture didn't change and the Junkers received large government subsidies to survive.

Junkers continued to demand and receive more and more subsidies, which increased their wealth, resulting in increased political power by maintaining control over political offices. Junkers exploited a monopoly on grain by storing it to drive up the price. However, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke| formed the Circle as part of the resistance to Nazi rule, and as World WarII turned against Nazi Germany, several senior Junkers in the participated in Colonel 's 20 July plot. Fifty-eight of them either were executed when the plot failed, among them Erwin von Witzleben| and Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort|, or committed suicide like Henning von Tresckow|. During the advance of the Red Army in the closing months of the war, and subsequently, most had to flee from the eastern territories that were turned over to the re-established Republicof Poland with the implementation of the line according to the Agreement.

Modern History

thumb|alt=photo of plow sculpture|1985 memorial in [[Uckerland|, ]]

After World War II, during the communist (land reform) of September1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone, later East Germany, all private property exceeding an area of was expropriated, and then predominantly allocated to 'NewFarmers' on condition that they continued farming them. As most of these large estates, especially in and Western Pomerania, had belonged to , the Socialist Unity Party of Germany(SED) promoted their plans with East German President 's slogan (). The former owners were accused of war crimes and involvement in the Naziregime by the Soviet Military Administration and the SED, with many of them being arrested, brutally beaten and interned in NKVD special camps (), while their property was plundered and the manor houses demolished. Some were executed. Many women were raped. From1952 these individual farms were pressured by a variety of means to join together as collectives and incorporated into (, LPG) or nationalised as (, VEG).

After German reunification, some tried to regain their former estates through civil lawsuits, but the German courts have upheld the land reforms and rebuffed claims to full compensation, confirming the legal validity of the terms within the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Two Plus Four Agreement) (and incorporated into the Basic Law of the Federal Republic), by which expropriations of land under Soviet occupation were irreversible. The last decisive case was the unsuccessful lawsuit of Prince ofHanover in September2006, when the Federal Administrative Court decided that the prince had no right to compensation for the disseized estates of the House of Hanover around Castle in . Other families, however, have quietly purchased or leased back their ancestral homes from the current owners (often the German federal government in its role as trustee). A petition for official rehabilitation of the ousted landowners was rejected by the German in2008.

Reputation

thumb|340x340px|alt=black-and-white photo of manor house| , East Prussia (today [[Ogrodzieniec, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship|, Poland), presented to German President in 1928]]

During World War I, Irish nationalistMP Tom Kettle compared the Anglo-Irish landlordclass to the Prussian , saying, "England goes to fight for liberty in Europe and for dom in Ireland."

It was said that "if Prussia ruled Germany, the ruled Prussia, and through it the Empire itself". "" acquired its current and often pejorative sense during the 19th-century disputes over the domestic policies of the GermanEmpire. The term was used by sociologists such as and was even adopted by members of the landed class themselves. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck| was a noted , though his family hailed from the region west of the. The term was also applied to President Paul von Hindenburg|, lord of Ogrodzieniec, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship| in WestPrussia, and to the "" around him urging the appointment of as Chancellor of Germany—personified by men like 's son Oskar von Hindenburg| and his WestPrussian "neighbour" Elard von Oldenburg-Janushau who played central roles in the of1932/33.

Notable <span lang="de">Junkers</span>

See also

  • , the Dutch cognate and rough equivalent
  • Party, 19th-century Swedish political movement

References

Notes

Bibliography

  • Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. "Voter, Junker, Landrat, Priest: The Old Authorities and the New Franchise in Imperial Germany," American Historical Review (1993) 98#5 pp.&nbsp;1448–1474 in JSTOR
  • Carsten, Francis Ludwig. A history of the Prussian Junkers (1989).
  • Hagen, William W. Ordinary Prussians – Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500–1840 (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
  • MacDonogh, Giles, After the Reich, Basic Books, (2007) .
  • Ogg, Frederick Austin, The Governments of Europe, MacMillan Company, 1920.
  • Ogg, Frederic Austin. Economic Development of Modern Europe, Chap. IX (bibliography, pp.&nbsp;210–211).
  • Stienberg, Jonathan. Bismarck a Life, Oxford University Press, 2011
  • Torp, Cornelius. "The "Coalition of 'Rye and Iron'" under the Pressure of Globalization: A Reinterpretation of Germany's Political Economy before 1914," Central European History (2010) 43#3 pp 401–427
  • Weber, Max. "National Character and the Junkers," in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Routledge classics in sociology) (1991)[https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_pqZS5q72UC&pg=PA386]