by Bernd Mütter and Robert Meyer

Agriculture in the Duchy of Oldenburg underwent profound changes between 1871 and 1914. In the already market-orientated North Oldenburg, a process of growth and a change in export direction took place, while in central and southern Oldenburg the backward self-sufficiency economy was transformed into a livestock export economy producing for the market on a feed purchase basis. "Oldenburg pigs are in a class of their own on the wholesale markets in Westphalia," wrote Heinrich Krogmann, Oldenburg's Chief Agricultural Councillor, enthusiastically in 1930.

"Oldenburg's agriculture [developed] under our current sovereign, after previously passing through a period of imminent decline, in a hitherto undreamt-of manner. In most of its branches, but especially in animal husbandry, it reached a level of efficiency that has hardly been achieved in any other country in the world. At many a show within and outside the country, princes and peasants rejoiced in the splendid products of the local soil, especially the living ones." This was written by Friedrich Oetken, the first Secretary General of the Oldenburg Chamber of Agriculture, in an article from 1915.

High-quality agricultural products are available in abundance today. Younger contemporaries, who no longer experienced the supply problems of the two war and post-war periods directly, must find it difficult to imagine that there could once have been too little of it. And yet this was the case for most of history, and it is still the case in the Third World. How food shortages were overcome in Germany and how new problems have arisen as a result must be of particular interest to anyone who wants to look at food problems today on a global scale. The current agricultural problems in Germany, the EU and the western industrialised countries as a whole are also a consequence of agricultural modernisation, which has taken place in various stages since the 19th century. And so studying the history of agriculture remains useful for today's orientation. In regions such as Oldenburg, where industrialisation in the classic sense of textile and heavy industry only took place very selectively and cautiously (e.g. in Osternburg, Delmenhorst, Nordenham, Wilhelmshaven), agriculture still plays a role today that is far above the German average.

Agricultural or agricultural modernisation in the narrower sense refers to structural change processes that were triggered by the industrialisation of the economy as a whole. This includes, for example, the creation of new large market areas through the construction of roads and railways, which allowed a mass supply of mineral fertilisers and animal feed and thus immensely increased the productivity of agriculture and at the same time its sales opportunities in the newly emerging urban centres.

Originally, economic development processes such as industrialisation and agricultural modernisation were studied on the basis of overall national averages (the concept of "national integration"), until it was realised that this concealed important differences within national economies. The focus therefore shifted to concepts of regional differentiation and the interaction of economic growth processes (the concept of "regional differentiation" and "regional comparison"). However, it turned out that the regions were not unchanging parameters, but changed under the pressure of political or economic processes, for example. This observation necessitated a progression from inter- to intra-regional research and led to the concept of our project "The Modernisation of Agriculture in the Duchy of Oldenburg between the Founding of the German Empire and the First World War", which was funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture.

We restricted ourselves to two small regions in the duchy, which are, however, exemplary for the differences in development between the marshes and the Münsterland Geest. We chose the districts of Brake and Elsfleth (in the Wesermarsch) and the district of Cloppenburg (Münsterländische Geest). For both study areas, the initial situations, factors, mechanisms and results of agricultural structural change and growth spurts were analysed in a differentiated and comparative manner and, in addition to the description, explanations for the change were also developed.

If you take a closer look at the Duchy of Oldenburg during the decades of the German Empire from 1871 to 1914/18, you will make an interesting observation: it was only during these decades that the duchy between the Damme mountains and the island of Wangerooge developed into a relatively uniform livestock farming region with the residential city of Oldenburg as its clearly defined main centre. By contrast, around the middle of the 19th century, the duchy still consisted of a number of very different small regions, which (since 1815) were politically, but not economically and especially not agriculturally oriented towards the centre of Oldenburg. As a result of the very different starting points in the individual small regions, the change was by no means uniform.

The intra-regional differences in Oldenburg's agriculture between the marshes and the Geest, which until then had been accepted as quasi-natural, by no means disappeared completely during the modernisation process, but they were decisively reduced by the consistent development of a state-wide livestock farming region. This development took place due to impulses from within the state itself, but above all as a result of external factors.

Three groups of external factors can be distinguished: Firstly, there is the increased demand for agricultural products due to the strong population growth in the industrialising German economy as a whole, as well as the increase in real wages since the 1890s and the associated demand for foodstuffs such as meat and milk. There are also the direct impulses of industrialisation such as railway construction (since 1867 in Oldenburg) and mineral fertiliser imports (214,486 tonnes of fertiliser were imported into the duchy in 1913). Finally, there were the influences of the model modern agriculture of the Netherlands, England and the United States.

Even before modernisation, the Wesermarsch had been partly market- and export-oriented, while southern Oldenburg had had to convert its excess rye production into the more easily transportable brandy in a less profitable way. Against this background, it is immediately apparent that both the emergence of large urban agglomerations with growing purchasing power - which were also easily accessible for bulk goods thanks to the transport revolution of the construction of roads and railways - and, conversely, the opportunity created by the import of mineral fertilisers to economically mobilise huge previously unused land reserves, benefited the lagging southern Oldenburg Geestämter much more than the already relatively developed and efficient northern Oldenburg Marschämter.

Of the factors located in the state itself, the very important role of the state in Oldenburg (e.g. promotion of road and railway construction, peatland cultivation and agricultural education), the rural farming conditions and finally the agricultural associations and cooperatives were of particular importance. In 1914, 31% of all farmers in the Cloppenburg district were already organised in agricultural associations, compared to only 18% in the Wesermarsch.

The paths of harmonisation between the Wesermarsch and the Cloppenburg district are more complex than initially assumed. Pig farming also played a significant role in the Wesermarsch, which was primarily orientated towards cattle and dairy farming, and conversely cattle farming also played a significant role in the Geestamt Cloppenburg, which was strongly orientated towards grain farming and pig farming: 34,132 cattle were kept in the Wesermarsch in 1873, 50,325 in 1913 (+47.4 %), and 14,611 and 26,999 respectively (+84.4 %) in the Amt Cloppenburg. In contrast, the number of pigs literally exploded: in the Wesermarsch from 2,918 (1873) to 32,024 (1913), and in the Cloppenburg district from 5,286 to 93,812, which corresponds to an increase of 1674.7 %!

Nevertheless, the emphasis of modernisation was on different areas of agricultural production: in the Wesermarsch on the intensification of the already well-developed cattle breeding (in 1913, 78.5 % of its area consisted of meadows and pastures) and the development of a modern dairy industry with the centres of Rodenkirchen and Strückhausen, in Cloppenburg on pig breeding and fattening, which was largely independent of the area, while at the same time expanding the cultivated area and maintaining a considerable amount of grain cultivation. In 1913, arable land in the Cloppenburg district still accounted for 31.6 % of the total area, with a wasteland share of 40.5 %; in the Wesermarsch, by contrast, the wasteland share was only 6.7 % as early as 1866. However, pure agrarian monoculture, as it developed at the same time in the large fattening cattle farms of Hanover or the pure milking farms of the Ruhr area and among many large grain producers in the eastern Elbe, did not become dominant anywhere.

In this context, it is obvious that the agricultural development in the Wesermarsch, which was already well developed at the beginning of the period under study, did not stand still, while the offices of the Oldenburger Münsterland, which lagged far behind, embarked on the path of agricultural modernisation with force. The consequence of this is that the term "agricultural modernisation" in the Wesermarsch during the period under study covers very different circumstances than in Cloppenburg.

Harmonisation" of the study areas does not mean "congruence", but rather a "resounding tendency towards assimilation". For the first time in regional agricultural history, the fundamental gap between the marshes and the Geest is narrowing - instead of widening or even just stabilising. In terms of production, productivity, farming methods and socio-structural background, Wesermarsch agriculture still differed significantly from Cloppenburg Geest agriculture at the end of the period under study. Nevertheless, the trend towards medium-sized farms is unmistakable in both.

This tendency towards convergence only becomes visible in its full extent if one considers the Marsch-Geest difference, which for centuries seemed insurmountable, and also looks for the mechanisms of functional equivalents in the agricultural modernisation processes of both study units. It then emerges, for example, that the southern Oldenburg Geest was able to benefit much more than the Marsch from the improvement in transport conditions, the spread of mineral fertilisers and the possibility of importing inexpensive fodder (in 1913, 37,168 tonnes of fodder barley went to Cloppenburg, 13% of Oldenburg's total imports) due to its previously relatively useless land reserves in the form of moorland and heathland. The continuation of modernisation in the Wesermarsch, on the other hand, can easily be interpreted as a continuation of already existing conditions, while in the Geest, which had been left behind, there were truly structurally disruptive consequences, a radical transition from a hitherto dominant subsistence economy to a large-scale market orientation. For the first time, it was possible to equalise the natural differences in the land. In relative terms, poor southern Oldenburg benefited more from the practically unlimited availability of mineral fertiliser and - at least until the First World War - imports of feed grain. The Wesermarsch was unable and unwilling to utilise these opportunities to the same extent.

The Oldenburger Münsterland and with it the area of the former Amt Cloppenburg - in the development of its agriculture a hundred years ago far behind the Marsch - is today one of the most intensive agricultural regions in Europe. The restructuring of its agriculture, which began before the First World War, continued at breathtaking speed in the interwar period, but especially since the end of the Second World War. Today, the Oldenburg Münsterland's agricultural production and productivity lead over the Marsch is probably no less than the Marsch's lead over the Geest around 1870. Admittedly, the agricultural progress that almost exclusively benefited the backward South Oldenburg around 1900 has now reached its ecological and socially acceptable limits.

Sooner or later, the problems associated with ultra-modern industrialised livestock farming will have to lead to a reorientation, possibly a new modernisation of agriculture of a completely different kind. And it is not only the overproduction of manure, particularly in southern Oldenburg, with all its side effects that should be considered here: manure has now become a waste product and a first-class environmental burden - around 1900 it was a much sought-after commodity. The meat quality of pigs reared in agro-industrial mass farms has not necessarily improved either - another major difference to the agricultural modernisation of the last turn of the century.

The example of this limited project alone shows the results that inter- and intra-regional comparative economic history can lead to, especially in the field of agriculture. Future studies should deal with an office in the Oldenburgische Geest (offices of Westerstede and Wildeshausen) in order to work out a further variant of agricultural modernisation between the Marsch and Münsterländische Geest. Above all, however, it is now also a matter of an interregional comparison between the Duchy of Oldenburg and neighbouring regions with similar natural and locational characteristics, e.g. East Frisia and Bremen-Verden (Prussian administrative districts of Aurich and Stade). Only in such a direct comparison would it be possible to grasp precisely what role the state really played in the modernisation of agriculture in Oldenburg, in contrast and/or parallel to Prussia, whose agricultural policy was primarily oriented not to the interests of the north-west German peasant cattle breeders, but to those of the large-scale grain producers in eastern Oldenburg. The authors
Prof. Dr Bernd Mütter, born in 1938, teaches didactics of history at the Department of History. His areas of specialisation: History and theory of historical science and historical education, history and theory of historical didactics, agricultural modernisation in the age of industrialisation, historical adult education. Robert Meyer, born in 1960, studied history and English in Oldenburg. Today he is a scient. Today he is a research assistant and doctoral candidate in the research project "The modernisation of agriculture in the Duchy of Oldenburg between the foundation of the German Empire and the First World War".