Die Deutsche Agrarpartei in Böhmen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg

Th e German Agrarian party was a late-comer, compared to its Czech counterpart: It was offi cially founded in 1905, its Moravian off -spring followed suit only in 1914. Th e German Agrarians remained wedded to the primarily economic lobbying groups that had fathered them and did not succeed in building a strong political organzation of their own. Partly for that reason, they never boasted of a leader comparable in stature to Svehla. Th e German Agrarians recruited their supporters in almost equal parts from ex-Liberals and ex-Pan Germans. Th ey retained a fairly close relationship with the great landowners. In the Vienna parliament they were instrumental in founding the Deutsche Nationalverband in 1907 as an umbrella organization of anti-clerical middle parties. Its fi ercest electoral enemies were Social Democrats and die-hard Pan Germans. From 1907–10 one of the party members also served as a Minister in Cabinet. The party generally followed a pro-governmental line, except on commercial policy. In Bohemian politics, the Agrarians helped banish the spectre of obstruction in 1905. In the pre-war years, they supported the much-debated Bohemian Compromise yet never broke with Sudeten German solidarity. During the war years, patriotic sentiment kept them from openly articulating the dissatisfaction of farmers with the government’s food policies that did not provide any incentives for increased production. As a result, the party changed labels after 1918 and was re-founded as the Federation of Farmers (Bund der Landwirte).