In the past fifteen years,
the historiography of German agriculture has experienced a significant renaissance.
In the context of German reunification, scholars from both east and west
have pushed deeper into the primary sources, added social and cultural history
perspectives to their work, and built new organizations that have helped
reinvigorate the field. The result has been a revision of some basic assumptions
about the static antimodernism, political conservatism, and nationalism of
German agriculturists. Instead, many of the newer works reveal the complexities
of rural German society, and address the emergent agency of rural Germans
who shaped their agricultural production schemes as well as their economic,
social, and political relationships.
The essay surveys these trends in the literature of rural Germany from the
early modern era to the present, focusing on works published in English and
German since the mid-1980s.