Junker - Modern Influences

Modern Influences

The Junkers held a virtual monopoly on all agriculture in the East Elbian part of the German Reich. Since the Junker estates were necessarily inherited by the elder son alone, younger sons, all well educated and with a sense of noble ancestry, turned to the civil and military services, and dominated all higher civil offices, as well as the officer corps. Their political influence extended from the German Empire of 1871–1918 through the Weimar Republic of 1919–1933. It was said that "if Prussia ruled Germany, the Junkers ruled Prussia, and through it the Empire itself."

Supporting monarchism and military traditions, they were seen as reactionary, anti-democratic and protectionist by liberals and Social Democrats, as they had sided with the conservative monarchist forces during the Revolution of 1848. Their political interests were served by the German Conservative Party in the Reichstag and the extraparliamentary Agriculturists' League (Bund der Landwirte). This political class held tremendous power over industrial classes and government alike, especially by the Prussian three-class franchise. When the German chancellor Leo von Caprivi in the 1890s reduced the protective duties on imports of grain, these landed magnates demanded and obtained his dismissal; and in 1902, they brought about a restoration of such duties on foodstuffs as would keep the prices of their own products at a high level.

The expression descending from the disputes over the domestic policies of the German Empire was perpetuated as a general denotation by sociologists like Max Weber and even adopted by members of the landed class themselves. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was a noted Junker, though his family descended from the Altmark region west of the Elbe. After World War I many Prussian agriculturists gathered in the national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP), the term was also applied to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, lord at Neudeck in West Prussia, and to the "camarilla" around him urging the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor, personified by men like Hindenburg's son Oskar and his West Prussian "neighbour" Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, who played a vital role in the Eastern Aid (Osthilfe) scandal of 1932/33.

However, Hitler mostly ignored the Junkers as a whole during his time in power, taking no action against them and no action in their favour. Landowners like Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and the members of the Kreisau Circle were part of the German resistance. As World War II turned against Nazi Germany several senior Junkers in the Army participated in Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. Fifty-eight were executed when the plot failed, among them Erwin von Witzleben and Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff-Steinort, or committed suicide like Henning von Tresckow. During the advancement of the Red Army in the closing months of the war and subsequent, all Junkers had to flee from the eastern territories that were turned over to the re-established Republic of Poland with the implementation of the Oder-Neisse line according to the Potsdam Agreement.