31] THE FRAMEWORK OF RURAL LIFE 31

inalandconquered

by Germans from

Slavs. Withinfiftymiles ofthe Elbe he found islands ofSlavonic speech. In Posenand

West

Prussia he crossed broad stretches of

PoHsh

territory, recently taken over

by

Prussia, to pass into East Prussia, a countryconqueredcenturiesearlier,yetwritharural population predominantlySlavonicinbloodandlargelySlavonicinspeech.

Ifhe turned south into eastern and southern Silesia he

came

into a land of Slavonic place-names and Slavonic dialect.

Returning south-west, say

from

Breslau,and crossingAustrian territorythrough Bohemia, hevs^entoverabroadbeltof

German

speechinvs^estern SilesiaandtheRiesengebirgetoemerge,vs^ell

on the

Bohemian

side ofthe frontier,

among

the Czechsofthe Pragcountry, passinginto

Germans

again beforeheleft

Bohemia on

his

way

over the

Bohmerwald

to

Nuremberg

andtrue

Germany

once more.

If the travellerwere a trained agriculturist, certain outward signs impressed

by

history

on

the land

would

strike his eye as he

moved from

west to east and back again.

There

was no changeso sharpas thatof the agrarianfrontiernearDiisseldorf

.

Although isolated districts were to be found in the heart of

Germany where

thehamletorhomesteadreplacedthecompact

village,

and

otherdistrictsin

which

anindividualistic agriculture had developed, east and west alike were lands of villages and open fields. But villages

and

fields had pecuUarities which a trained eye might appreciate.

The

average western village

would

have

seemed

very famiHar to an eighteenth century traveller

from

England. It reproduced almost exactly an ^old- fashioned three-field village of his

own

^Midlands.

The

^fields were divided, as in England,into roughly rectangular sections, the

Enghsh

" furlong,""shot"or "

wong,"

the

German

Gewann.

The Gewanne were

^subdivided into the familiar ^strips, from a collection of which, in all the three fields, the cultivator's holding

was made

up.

So

lateas 1845,^this scattering ofstrips

compelled the peasantry of

Wiesbaden

to bring ploughs and

dung

carts to

and

fro across the

town

^{daily,to the} discomfort of residents

and

visitors. Wiesbaden, atthat time, was ceasing to beavillage,

and had

^{not yetlearnt tobeatown. But}

some

years earliereven^towns,

and

important towns,

had

their three^fields,

32

THE FRAMEWORK OF RURAL ^LIFE

^[ch.

with

some

of the resulting drawbacks.

BerKn

itself, to take a striking instance from outside western

Germany,

had its

Pankow

Field, its LichtenbergField, and itsMidfield in 1819.

During the next ten years the holdings were rearranged

and

provisionwas

made

for individual agriculture; butin 18 19 the scatteredholdings andthe

communal

routinewereintact.

Though

generalisation is difficult, it is safe to say that the

West German

open-fieldsystem,earlyinthenineteenth century, had changed^{lessthan thatof northern}Francesincethe middle ages. It is true that in the

German-Danish

provinces of Schleswig-Holsteinthere had been aninclosure

movement,

like v^hatof England,in theeighteenthcentury. In

Denmark

proper thegovernment^carriedouta regular policy of consolidationand inclosurebetween1770 and¹800.

Much

the

same

thingoccurred in southernSweden. In allthree countries, just as inEngland,

new

farmsteadswerebuiltoutsidethevillagesandthecountry- side lost itsprimitive aspect.

The

old framework ofvillage Ufa gave

way

before a deliberate attack

from

above. If

no

suchattack was made,itwas extraordinarilytoughandresisting.

The most

dangerous threat to it

came

fromthe growth oftowns and the solvent influence of theirneeds and

ways

ofthought.

Now,

as 'comparedwith France,

Germany

wasalmosttownless. In 181

5

thetotalpopulationofthetwelvetowns

which

in19 14werethe greatestofthe

German Empire

was about 750,000. Parisalone had

more

than 500,000; andthiscompact mass ofpeople tobe fed had long exercised an influence on the agriculture of the adjacent provinces, comparable with that which eighteenth century

London

exercised on the agriculture of the

home

counties. It stimulated progress and broke

down

old routines.

The German

towns had a similar influence, but it was

on

a

much

smallerscaleandasyetithad

shown

nosignsofextending.

Owing

tothe terrible sufferings ofthe seventeenth century the total

German

populationin 1800 was perhaps

no

greater than

it had been in 1600.

The

age of the Napoleonic wars was not favourable to

town

growth.

Most

towns still fitted easily into their medieval ramparts, and exercised an influence

much

the

same

innatureandextentastheyhadexercised

on

theday

when

Martin Luther wasborn. In theneighbourhood ofthe greater

ii]

THE FRAMEWORK OF RURAL LIFE

₃₃

towns specialised forms of agriculture were practised, as they,1

always

had

been,

and

the village routine

was

broken up. Oil- seeds, root crops, fibre crops, the dye-ware crops

—

^woad, madder,

and

so

on —

^were necessarily

grown

ⁱⁿ considerable quantities to satisfy urban industrial requirements; whereasin theunvaryingvillagelife,

which

beganagain almost withinsight ofthe high^roofs

and

steeples evenofthesegreatertowns,

what

industrial cropswere neededcouldbe

grown

on scraps ofland here

and

there, withoutbreakinginon theroutine of the three fields.

Connected with this industrial agricultureofthe actualtowiit^

radius,there

was

tobe foundin 1815in

many

partsoftheRhine valley

and

in

some

parts of the valleys of its chieftributaries, the Mosel,

Main and

Neckar, a free and varied agriculture carried

on

partly within the framework of the open fields

and

partly in vineyards,

hop

gardens, orchards, or ordinary arable fields

which

layoutsidethem.

The

agricultureofAlsace,whicj**

Arthur

Young had

so

much

admired, was ofthis type, only

by

political accident it chanced to be French. Maize, tobacco, potatoes

and

other crops

were grown

in free rotation with the ordinary grains. Vineyards, in these south-western

German

valleys, were often in the hands of large proprietors and were worked as capitalistic enterprises, though the peasant also had his vines.

There was

too

some

capitalistic agriculture carried

on by

landownersoutsidethevineyards. Butthe

compact

village,thescatteredpeasant holding,andthe

communal

routine of the

open

fields dominatedtherurallifeofwestern

Germany.

A

^travellercrossingthe rather indistinct boundary line

from

west to east might well have noticed changes inthe villages themselves.

The

usual westernvillage

was

ajumbleofhouses, lanes,

and

courtyards about the

Church —

primitive in its dis- order.

There

were important exceptions however.

The

chief were villages

which had

beensystematically created during the early middle ages in the marshes of the

Weser

and Elbe and along the Frisiancoast.

They

werethe

work

ofskilledcolonists from Holland.

The

^{houses lay in a line along the}

^main

^dyke whichkept out the water.

The

holdingswerelongstrips atright angles to the dyke, so ^that each house stood

on

the end of its

c. 3

34

THE FRAMEWORK OF RURAL ^LIFE

^[cH.

own

holding.

Such marsh

colonieswere alsovery

numerous

ⁱⁿ

eastern

Germany,

as a result of

German

colonisation eastward inthe late middle ages. All along the coast of

Mecklenburg

andPomerania, about Stettinand about Danzig,and over con- siderable areas

away

fromthesea,particularlyin

West and

East Prussia, marsh conditions had led tothe reproduction ofthese well-plannedsettlements,withtheir long straight villagestreets

runningalongthe

main

dyke.

Much

greater areas in the east were covered

by

another type ofplanned village, which

modern

writers have called the forestcolony.

The

patternofthese forest coloniesseemstohave been worked out in the west, andthento havebeen appliedin the east

—

^{again in thelate middleages. Inthewest they were}

to be foundinthe BlackForest, in the

Odenwald

betweenthe Neckar and the Main, andin a few other districts. But their greatextensionwasintheeast,inland colonised

from

theSlav.

Beginningonthe easternborders of theThuringianforest,they were found thickly spread over a broad belt of country into Saxony, across the mountains into Bohemia, over a large part ofSilesiaandso

away

eastwardintotheCarpathians,tomention only the chief locations. Like the village ofthe

marsh

colony thatoftheforestcolonywaslaidoutina thinline,usuallyalong the road by the stream in a valley bottom, for convenience of access tothewater. Againas inthe

marsh

colonies,each

home-

stead stood on the base ofits

own

holding, the holding con- sistingin a long stripreaching

from

the bottom tothe limitof the village lands on the heights above, where forest, waste mountain side, or in easier and thickly settled country the holdings of

some

adjacentvillageformedtheboundary line. All thisisinvery sharpcontrastwith the complicatedfield system ofthe typicalwestern village.

No amount

ofagricultural pro- gress

would make

the well thought-out

and

economicalground- planof thesemarsh andforest colonies obsolete.

The more

primitivevillagesofeastern

Germany showed what now

seemstobeevidenceoftheimposition ofonetype ofagrarian civilisationon another.

Many

placeswith Slavonic

names

were

distinctly smaller thanthe average western village and

showed

features which were presumably remains of Slavonic custom.