Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s Agrarpolitik presents agrarian policy as a systematic science of public action for the postwar German-speaking world. Its premise is that agriculture cannot be treated as a merely private occupation or isolated branch of production, because soil, settlement, food supply, labor, markets, and national culture are interdependent. The opening definition gives the work its broad scope:
Agrarpolitik im weitesten Sinne ist der Inbegriff aller jener Maßnahmen, die der Staat und andere öffentlich-rechtliche Körperschaften durchführen zu dem Zwecke, um die Bodenproduktion zum Besten der Volkswirtschaft und damit des Gesamtwohles zu regeln und zu heben.
English translation: Agrarian policy in the broadest sense is the sum total of all those measures which the state and other public-law bodies carry out for the purpose of regulating and elevating soil production for the benefit of the national economy and thereby of the general welfare.
From this basis Schullern rejects both doctrinaire laissez-faire and rigid statism. The state has economic duties, but they must be exercised with attention to historical conditions, technical knowledge, and the interdependence of sectors. Public measures are justified by their contribution to production, provisioning, social peace, and common welfare.
Die volkswirtschaftlichen Aufgaben des Staates müssen als gegeben, seine Pflicht, sie zu erfüllen, als unabweislich anerkannt bleiben.
English translation: The economic tasks of the state must be recognized as given, and its duty to fulfill them as inescapable.
The book moves from concepts and method to the condition of agriculture, the relation between agriculture and other branches of the economy, property and cultivation, labor, organization, credit, markets, price formation, and regulation. Across these topics Schullern treats agrarian policy as cultural policy as well as economic policy. The economy is not an autonomous end, but an instrument through which social and cultural development are sustained.
Die Volkswirtschaft ist demnach nicht Selbstzweck, sie ist vielmehr in erster Reihe ein Hilfsmittel des kulturellen Fortschrittes und hat von diesem Standpunkte aus behandelt und geleitet zu werden.
English translation: The national economy is accordingly not an end in itself; rather, it is in the first place an instrument of cultural progress, and must be treated and directed from this standpoint.
This perspective explains his emphasis on the self-cultivating proprietor. Schullern regards stable ownership, adequate capital, technical intelligence, and personal responsibility as the most desirable social foundation of rural life. The farmer who owns and works the land appears as both economic producer and civic type, joining property to duty and independence to service.
Der intelligente, mit dem erforderlichen Kapital ausgestaltete, seiner persönlichen, völkischen, staatlichen und sozialen Pflichten voll bewußte, den Boden selbst bebauende Bodeneigentümer ist die Idealgestalt des Staatsbürgers.
English translation: The intelligent landowner, equipped with the requisite capital, fully conscious of his personal, national, civic, and social duties, and himself cultivating the soil, is the ideal figure of the citizen.
Yet Agrarpolitik is not simply a defense of landed property. Schullern repeatedly insists that agrarian interests must be mediated with those of consumers, workers, industry, and trade. Rural policy cannot succeed through sectoral antagonism; agriculture needs industry and commerce, just as urban society requires a productive countryside. This logic also shapes his labor chapters, where wages, migration, education, living standards, and justice are treated as central agrarian questions.
His discussion of markets and prices carries the same balancing impulse. Commerce is necessary for distributing grain and coordinating supply and demand, but it is legitimate only insofar as it serves production and provisioning. Price policy should protect agriculture from ruinous instability without licensing speculative gain or burdening consumers beyond what production requires.
Unter Preiswucher verstehen wir jeden Akt, der die Bildung von Preisen verursacht, die das für die Aufrechterhaltung der Produktion und die Versorgung des Marktes erforderliche Maß überschreiten.
English translation: By price usury we understand every act which causes the formation of prices that exceed the measure required for maintaining production and supplying the market.
The treatise’s lasting interest lies in its synthesis of agrarian economics, state theory, and social ethics. Schullern writes in the language of his time, including national-cultural assumptions that mark the work as a product of postwar Central Europe, but his analytical design is broader: agriculture becomes the field in which property, labor, public authority, market order, and civic responsibility are tested together. Agrarpolitik argues for a historically adaptive, socially purposive agrarian policy that neither abandons rural production to market contingency nor dissolves it into administrative command.
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