Agriculture has changed a lot due to industrialization.
(Photo: Mauritius Pictures/Cavan Images)
duesseldorf Rural farming has long been a proud enterprise in Germany. It includes self-sufficiency, livestock markets, and most importantly, heavy work. Most of it disappeared quickly in the second half of the last century, but it is still very quiet.
Ewald Frie brings this time back to life in “Ein Hof und elf Geschwister”, looking back without nostalgia. The main protagonists are eleven siblings born between 1944 and 1969. One of the siblings is Free. They have all been successful professionally, often with the help of a degree. Only one man has helped shape change in the rural world – the eldest.
The author is a historian and the third child. For this book, he interviewed all his siblings, delved into local community archives, read agricultural weekly magazines, and cross-checked his original findings with the scientific literature.
The result is an insightful and entertaining work about the transformation of family farms, and the fabric of society in general. Using meaningful scenarios and examples, the Tübingen professor shows how his parents’ world came to an end, how his siblings followed different life plans, and how social changes affected Münster. For his work, Fury deservedly won this year’s German Non-Fiction Prize.
A large part of Germany’s postwar history is reflected in these memories and reconstructions: family and agricultural society changes, work and celebrations, Catholicism and everyday religious beliefs, food, games and schools.
It’s about “real difficulty”
It’s about his father and his older siblings growing less confident: at first they’re convinced they’re the only free men in the Federal Republic. They live on their own land, do not have to adapt to their neighbors in terms of social behavior, make autonomous decisions about their lives and daily routines.
They undoubtedly work harder, longer, and dirtier than most other people. But they do not have to submit to complex structures based on the division of labor like “villagers” and especially “urban dwellers”.
It’s also about “really hard work,” the kind of work that no one really enjoyed doing before, and often really hurts. Father is serious, persistent and hardworking. He thinks his kids will learn by observation and practice and will follow in his footsteps. Explaining or even discussing is not his forte. Carelessness, slowness, and clumsiness were beyond his comprehension.
>> Read here: ‘Many farmers are struggling to survive’
But being a farmer is something no one can hide. Everyone can see how they plow, sow, harvest, raise cattle and sell them at the market. Many people can judge this way. According to a 1955 survey, milking cows was the fifth activity that a representative sample of respondents thought they could do: after cycling, making soup, swimming and knitting, but ahead of driving or typing.
Ewald Frie: One Farm and Eleven Siblings
Baker
Munich 2023
191 pages
23 euros
By the 1970s at the latest, industrialization had also spread to individual farms. Financial capital is needed. New challenges can no longer be solved from the farms that provided livelihoods for all previous generations. In the past, work was taken for granted, but in industrial agriculture, demands must be made.
The historian won the German Non-Fiction Prize for his book “Ein Hof und elf Geschwister” (One Court and Eleven Siblings).
(Photo: dpa)
Perhaps the greatest value of this wonderful book lies in the unasked question that runs like a red thread through nearly 200 pages: Who is actually better off when it comes to satisfaction and autonomous work? Farmer or city dweller?
Am I a climber because I traded my farm for a college and a career as a scientist? In the conclusion the author asks himself this and concludes that the decisive parameter describing the multitude of changes is not rise and fall, but worlds that are pushed towards each other and overlap.
Free weighs calmly between himself and his extended farming family in the past: Today his apartment is much smaller than the living area on his parents’ farm. He had no land, no house, no animals, no apple trees, and no fireplace. Instead of receiving the honorary credentials his father received as a cattle breeder, the author adorns himself with professorial titles and a list of publications. In the end, it amounts to a solid impasse when it comes to the goals of living a fulfilling life.
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