[Rezension zu:] Carl Böhme, Deutsche Bauernpolitik. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Bund der Landwirte, 2. Auflage

Emil Lederer: Review of Carl Böhme’s Deutsche Bauernpolitik (1912)

Lederer’s brief review of Böhme’s second edition presents the pamphlet as an exposition of the German Bauernbund’s programme, distinguishing this democratically inclined farmers’ organization from the Bund der Landwirte. Böhme’s historical framing makes the latter’s tactics a continuation of aristocratic self-interest:

Im Vorwort weist er auf die in der Geschichte wiederholt zutage getretene egoistische Sonderpolitik des preußischen Adels hin, die in der Taktik des Bundes der Landwirte ihre Fortsetzung finde.

English translation: In the preface he points to the egoistic separate policy of the Prussian nobility, which has repeatedly come to light in history and which, he holds, finds its continuation in the tactics of the Agrarian League (Bund der Landwirte).

After noting its treatment of tariffs, inheritance taxation, Prussian electoral reform, and settlement, Lederer locates the pamphlet’s value less in its familiar positions than in its documentary evidence:

Der spezifische Wert der Broschüre besteht in reichlichem Quellenabdruck (Parlamentsreden, Zeitungsstimmen etc.), der es gestattet, die charakteristischen Momente der letzten parteipolitischen Entwicklung, die für die Agrarpolitik in Betracht kommen, aus dem Urmaterial heraus zu beurteilen — natürlich von dem Parteistandpunkt des Bauernbundes aus gesehen.

English translation: The specific value of the pamphlet consists in the abundant reprinting of sources (parliamentary speeches, press opinions, etc.), which makes it possible to judge from the original material the characteristic features of the most recent party-political development that come into consideration for agrarian policy — seen, of course, from the party standpoint of the Peasants' League.

The review thus separates political advocacy from evidentiary usefulness: the reproduced material illuminates agrarian party politics, while remaining framed by the Bauernbund’s partisan perspective.