The ''Volkseigenes Gut'' (
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
for "People-Owned Property" or "Publicly Owned
Estate"; abbreviated VEG) was a state-owned
farm
A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...
in the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
(GDR), corresponding to the Soviet ''
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz ( rus, совхо́з, p=sɐfˈxos, a=ru-sovkhoz.ogg, abbreviated from ''советское хозяйство'', "sovetskoye khozyaystvo (sovkhoz)"; ) was a form of state-owned farm in the Soviet Union.
It is usually contrasted wit ...
'' and the ''
Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne
__NOTOC__
A State Agricultural Farm ( pl, Państwowe Gospodarstwo Rolne, PGR) was a form of collective farming in the People's Republic of Poland, similar to Soviet sovkhoz and to the East German Volkseigenes Gut.
They were created in 1949 as ...
'' in the
People's Republic of Poland
The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...
. In contrast to the ''
Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft
In East Germany, a Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft (LPG) (English: 'Agricultural Production Cooperative') was a large, collectivised farm in East Germany, corresponding to the Soviet kolkhoz.
In the agriculture of East Germany, ...
'' (LPG) or collective farm, another form of state agricultural enterprise, the VEGs were often the successors to former private farms which resulted from the land reform in the
Soviet sector of Germany mandated in the
Potsdam Agreement
The Potsdam Agreement (german: Potsdamer Abkommen) was the agreement between three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union on 1 August 1945. A product of the Potsdam Conference, it concerned th ...
of 1945.
Each VEG was directly integrated into
national economic planning
Indicative planning is a form of economic planning implemented by a state in an effort to solve the problem of imperfect information in market economies by coordination of private and public investment through forecasts and output targets. The res ...
. They were either central (formulated by the
national government) or subordinated to the district (''
Bezirk
The German term ''Bezirk'' (plural ''Bezirke'', derived from la, circulus, "circle") translated as "district" can refer to the following types of administrative divisions:
* '' Stadtbezirk'', a subdivision of a city in the sense of a borough (e ...
'').
A ''Volkseigenes Gut'' was
state property
State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownershi ...
and the agricultural counterpart to the
state-owned enterprise
A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a Government, government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn Profit (econom ...
, in the GDR ''
Volkseigener Betrieb
The Publicly Owned Enterprise (german: Volkseigener Betrieb; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. They were all publicly owned and were formed after Nationalisation#Germany, mass nationalisation between ...
''. They were run by a director according to the principle of individual management. Unlike the LPG, the workers employed on a VEG had no say in running it.
Initially, the VEGs predominantly raised animals and plants and propagated seed to supply LPGs.
In 1960, the approximately 690 VEGs had under cultivation approximately 6.3 percent of the available agricultural land in the GDR. However, in the course of the general concentration and specialisation in agriculture, by 1980 their number had fallen to 385.
As with the LPGs, so with the VEGs, in the late 1960s, a politically motivated separation of animal husbandry from arable farming was instituted. The VEB-P (for ''Pflanzenproduktion'', "plant production") and VEB-T (for ''Tierproduktion'', "animal production") classifications arose. However, these were simultaneously amalgamated into larger units, so that their total numbers declined from 511 in 1970 to 465 in 1985, while the agricultural land under cultivation by the VEGs remained almost constant at approximately 440,000
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
s.
Compared to the LPGs, in many cases the VEGs received preferential treatment, in the form of superior machinery and more capital investment, since they functioned as so-called pillars of the preferred
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
on the land. In particular in the 1950s and 1960s, they were expected to demonstrate the superiority of the "socialist model of production", and later also to take on a progressive role, which, however, they were not always able to perform adequately.
After
Germany was reunified in 1990, the assets of the VEGs were transferred to the government by the
Treuhand
The ("Trust agency"), colloquially referred to as , was an agency established by the government of the German Democratic Republic to reprivatise/privatise East German enterprises, Volkseigene Betriebe (VEBs), prior to German reunification. Cre ...
.
Sources
* Klaus Schmidt (ed.). ''Landwirtschaft in der DDR - VEG, LPG und Kooperationen; wie sie wurden, was sie waren, was aus ihnen geworden ist''. Clenze: Agrimedia, 2009
* Arnd Bauerkämper. ''Ländliche Gesellschaft in der kommunistischen Diktatur - Zwangsmodernisierung und Tradition in Brandenburg 1945-1963''. Cologne: Böhlau, 2002,
* Ilona Buchsteiner. "Bodenreform und Agrarwirtschaft der DDR. Forschungsstudie". In ''Zur Arbeit der Enquetekommission "Leben in der DDR, Leben nach 1989 – Aufarbeitung und Versöhnung"'', volume V Schwerin: Landtag Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 1997, , pp. 9–61
* Jens Schöne. ''Frühling auf dem Lande? - Die Kollektivierung der DDR-Landwirtschaft''. Berlin: Links, 2005,
{{Authority control
Economy of East Germany
Agriculture in Germany