Ostsiedlung - Ostsiedlung - Rural Development

Rural Development

Medieval West European agriculture saw some advances that were carried eastward in the course of the Ostsiedlung. These included:

• the three-field crop rotation, which replaced the lay farming previously common east in East Central Europe. According to estimates by Henryk Łowmiański, as cited by Jan Maria Piskorski, this reduced the area of cultivated land needed to feed a family from 35 to 100 hectares (86 to 250 acres) (lay farming) to 4 to 8 hectares (9.9 to 20 acres) (three-field system); furthermore the growth of both warm- and cool-season grain increased the likelihood of a good harvest.
• the mouldboard plough with an iron blade, which replaced the scratch plough. While this is stated by Jan Maria Piskorski in an 1997 essay summarizing the state of research, Paweł Zaremba in 1961 said that the moulboard plough existed already on these territories before the German arrival. However, scratch ploughs remained in use in Livonia until the 19th century and were used in France until that century as well.
• the harrow with iron spikes
• iron shovels, scythes and axes
• increased use of horses
• land amelioration techniques such as drainage and dike or levee construction. Sporadic use of fertilizers was likewise introduced.

With the introduction of these techniques, cereals became the primary nutrition, making up for an averaged 70% of the peoples' calorie intake. As a consequence, an abundance of barns and mills were built. Channels dug for the numerous new watermills marked the first large-scale human interference with the previously untouched water bodies in this area.

To the increase in crops per unit of area added an absolute increase of the total of cultivated land, especially through the clearance of forests. The extend of this increase differed by region: while for example in Poland, the area of arable land had doubled (16% of the total area by the beginning of the 11th century and 30% in the 16th century, with the highest increase rates in the 14th century), the area of arable land increased 7- to 20-fold in many Silesian regions during the Ostsiedlung.

The changes in agriculture went along with changes in farm layout and settlement structure based on the Hufenverfassung, a system to divide and classify land. Farmland was divided into Hufen (also Huben, mansi), much like English hides, with one Hufe (25 to 40 hectares depending on the region) plentifully supplying one farm. This led to new types of larger villages, replacing the previously dominant type of small villages consisting of four to eight farms. According to Piskorski (1999), this led to "a complete transformation of the previous settlement structure. The cultural landscape of East Central Europe formed by the medieval settlement processes essentially prevails until today."

Ostsiedlung also led to a rapid population growth throughout East Central Europe. During the 12th and 13th century, the population density in persons per square kilometer increased e.g. from two to 20–25 in the area of present-day Saxony, from six to fourteen in Bohemia, and from five to 8.5 in Poland (30 in the Cracow region). In his 1999 essay summarizing the state of research, Piskorski said that the increase was due to the influx of settlers on the one hand and an increase in indigenous populations after the colonization on the other hand: settlement was the primary reason for the increase e.g. in the areas east of the Oder, the Duchy of Pomerania, western Greater Poland, Silesia, Austria, Moravia, Prussia and Transylvania (Siebenbürgen), while in the larger part of Central and Eastern Europe indigenous populations were responsible for the growth. In an essay of 2007, the same Piskorski said that "insofar as it is possible to draw conclusions from the less than rich medieval source material, it appears that at least in some East Central European territories the population increased significantly. It is however possible to contest to what extent this was a direct result of migration and how far it was due to increased agricultural productivity and the gathering pace of urbanization." In contrast to Western Europe, this increased population was largely spared by the 14th-century Black Death pandemic.

With the Germans came also new systems of taxation. While the Wendish tithe was a fixed tax depending on village size, the German tithe depended on the actual crop, leading to higher taxes being collected from settlers than from the Wends, even though settlers were at least in part exempted from taxes in the first years after the settlement was established. This was a major reason for local rulers' keenness to invite settlers.