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62-520: Pury or de Pury is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Members of the de Pury family, which was part of the Prussian nobility and Swiss nobility , include: Prussian nobility Many Junkers lived in the eastern provinces that were annexed by either Poland or the Soviet Union after World War II . Junkers fled or were expelled alongside other German-speaking populations by

124-525: A confiscation of ration cards. German is now the third official language of Belgium, along with French and Dutch (see German-Speaking Community of Belgium ). After the enlargement of the French occupation zone by the American withdrawal from the occupation (1919–1930) , the French encouraged the establishment of an independent Rhenish Republic by banking on traditional anti-Prussian resentments, especially in

186-586: A crossing of the river the day before the much anticipated Rhine crossings by the 21st Army Group ( First Canadian Army and the British Second Army ) under Field Marshal Montgomery in the third week of March 1945. Operation Varsity was a massive airborne operation in conjunction with Operation Plunder , the amphibious crossings. By early April, the Rhine had been crossed by all the Allied armies operating west of

248-872: A growing middle and working class. The Junkers held a virtual monopoly on all agriculture in the part of the German Reich lying east of the River Elbe. Since the Junker estates were necessarily inherited by the eldest 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. Around 1900 they modernised their farming operations to increase productivity. They sold off less productive land, invested more heavily in new breeds of cattle and pigs , used new fertilisers , increased grain production, and improved productivity per worker. Their political influence achieved

310-683: A monopoly on grain by storing it to drive up the price. As more money was profited, they were able to control political offices. Junkers were able to force people to continue paying more money for their product, while keeping who they wanted in office. Through the controlling of politics behind a veil, Junkers were able to influence politicians to create a law that prohibited collecting of debts from agrarians, thus pocketing even more money and strengthening their power. Defunct Defunct Supporting monarchism and military traditions, Junkers were seen as reactionary , anti-democratic , and protectionist by liberals and Socialists , as they had sided with

372-621: A plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to Germany. In fact, the last Allied troops left Germany five years early, in 1930, as a result of an agreement reached between Germany and the Allies in parallel with the Young Plan on German war reparations . Sections of the Rhineland, which had once belonged to the Habsburg Netherlands ' Duchy of Limburg , were annexed by Belgium according to

434-453: A quarter by agriculture. There was the University of Bonn , and elementary education was especially successful. For purposes of administration, the province was divided into the five districts ( Regierungsbezirke ) of Koblenz , Düsseldorf , Cologne , Aachen and Trier . Koblenz was the official capital, though Cologne was the largest and most important city. Being a frontier province,

496-553: A space of about 30,000 acres (120 km ), about half of which was in the valley of the Mosel , a third in that of the Rhine itself, and the rest mainly on the Nahe and the Ahr . In the hilly districts more than half the surface was sometimes occupied by forests, and large plantations of oak are formed for the use of the bark in tanning. Considerable herds of cattle were reared on the rich pastures of

558-631: The Armistice of 1918 , Allied forces occupied the Rhineland as far east as the river with some small bridgeheads on the east bank at places like Cologne . Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 the occupation was continued and the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission was set up to supervise affairs. The treaty specified three occupation zones, which were due to be evacuated by Allied troops five, ten and finally 15 years after

620-624: The Federal Administrative Court decided that the prince had no right to compensation for the disseized estates of the House of Hanover around Blankenburg Castle in Saxony-Anhalt . Other families, however, have quietly purchased or leased back their ancestral homes from the current owners (often the German federal government in its role as trustee). A petition for official rehabilitation of

682-723: The First United States Army fought a costly battle to capture the Hürtgen Forest . The heavily forested and ravined terrain of the Hürtgen negated Allied combined arms advantages (close air support, armor, artillery) and favoured German defenders. The U.S. Army lost 24,000 troops. The military necessity of their sacrifice has been debated by military historians. In early 1945, after a long winter stalemate, military operations by most Allied armies in Northwest Europe resumed with

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744-543: The Palatinate . In the end, the separatists failed to gain any decisive support among the population since they were viewed as puppets of the French. The Treaty of Versailles also specified the demilitarization of the entire area to provide a buffer between Germany on one side and France, Belgium and Luxembourg (and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands) on the other side, which meant that no German forces were allowed there after

806-786: The People's State of Hesse , was transferred to Hesse-Nassau. In the last free German federal election in March 1933 , two of the four parliamentary districts of the Rhine Province (Cologne-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier) were the only districts in Germany in which the Nazi Party did not win the plurality of votes. In violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the spirit of the Locarno Pact , Nazi Germany remilitarized

868-677: The Soviet Union . However, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke formed the Kreisau Circle as part of the resistance to Nazi rule, and as World War II turned against Nazi Germany, several senior Junkers in the Wehrmacht participated in Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg 's assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. Fifty-eight of them either 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

930-458: The Treaty of Versailles . The cantons of Eupen , Malmedy and Sankt Vith though (with the exception of Malmedy) German in culture and language, became the East Cantons of Belgium. Although a plebiscite was held in early 1920, it was not conducted as a secret ballot but required only those opposed to Belgian annexation to register their formal protest. Only a few did so because of the threat of

992-599: 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 through the Prussian three-class franchise . When German chancellor Leo von Caprivi in

1054-582: The " camarilla " around him urging the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany , personified by men like Hindenburg's son Oskar and his West Prussian "neighbour" Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau , who played a vital role in the Osthilfe scandal of 1932/33. Many World War II field marshals were also members of the Junkers, most notably Gerd von Rundstedt , Fedor von Bock , and Erich von Manstein . Many Junkers used forced labourers from Poland and

1116-467: 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. "Junker" acquired its current and often pejorative sense during the 19th-century disputes over the domestic policies of the German Empire. The term

1178-405: The Allied forces had withdrawn. Furthermore, quite unbearably from the German perspective, the treaty entitled the Allies to reoccupy the Rhineland at their will if the Allies unilaterally found the German side responsible for any violation of the treaty. In 1932, Wetzlar ( Landkreis Wetzlar  [ de ] ), formerly an exclave of the Rhine Province situated between Hesse-Nassau and

1240-504: The British and the French but did not demand war over the issue. The remilitarization of the Rhineland was supported by most of the local population because of a resurgence of German nationalism and the bitterness that had been harboured over the Allied occupation of the Rhineland until 1930 and Saarland until 1935. A side effect of the French occupations was the offspring of French soldiers and German women. Those children, who were seen as

1302-698: The German courts have upheld the land reforms and rebuffed claims to full compensation, confirming the legal validity of the terms within the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Two Plus Four Agreement) (and incorporated into the Basic Law of the Federal Republic ), by which expropriations of land under Soviet occupation were irreversible. The last decisive case was the unsuccessful lawsuit of Prince Ernst August of Hanover in September 2006, when

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1364-599: The Junkers owned most of the arable land in Prussia. Being the bulwark of the ruling House of Hohenzollern , the Junkers controlled the Prussian Army , leading in political influence and social status , and owning immense estates worked by tenants. These were located especially in the north-eastern half of Germany (i.e. the Prussian provinces of Brandenburg , Pomerania , Silesia , West Prussia , East Prussia , and Posen ). This

1426-911: The Nazi regime by the Soviet Military Administration and the SED, with many of them being arrested, brutally beaten and interned in NKVD special camps ( Speziallager ), while their property was plundered and the manor houses demolished. Some were executed. Many women were raped . From 1952 these individual farms were pressured by a variety of means to join together as collectives and incorporated into Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften ("agricultural production comradeships", LPG) or nationalised as Volkseigene Güter ("publicly owned estates", VEG). After German reunification , some Junkers tried to regain their former estates through civil lawsuits, but

1488-636: The Rhine Province furnished its most substantial claim to the title of the "richest jewel in the crown of Prussia". Besides parts of the carboniferous measures of the Saar and the Ruhr, it also contains important deposits of coal near Aachen . Iron ore was found in abundance near Koblenz, the Bleiberg in the Eifel possessed an apparently inexhaustible supply of lead, and zinc was found near Cologne and Aachen. The mineral products of

1550-583: The Rhine Province was split between the French and British Occupation Zones . The Rhine Province was abolished in August 1946 when the northern part of the province, under British administration, was merged with the former province of Westphalia to form North Rhine-Westphalia and most of the southern portion, under French administration, was merged with the Palatinate (previously an exclave of Bavaria ) and other territories to form Rhineland-Palatinate . These areas of

1612-579: The Rhine river. The supporting operation by the US Ninth Army, Operation Grenade , was planned to coincide from the River Roer , in the south. This was delayed for two weeks, however, by German flooding of the Roer valley. On March 7, 1945, a company of armoured infantry of the U.S. 9th Armored Division captured the last intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen . General George Patton 's Third US Army also made

1674-409: The Rhineland on Saturday, March 7, 1936. The occupation was done with very little military force, the troops entered on tractors and no effort was made to stop it . Even though France had an overwhelming force nearby it did not act because of its political instability, and since the remilitarization occurred during a weekend, the British government could not find out or discuss actions to be taken until

1736-569: The Rhineland was strongly garrisoned, and the Rhine was guarded by the three strong fortresses of Cologne with Deutz , Koblenz with Ehrenbreitstein , and Wesel . The province sent 35 members to the German Reichstag and 62 to the Prussian House of Representatives . Of the total area of the Rhine Province, about 45% was occupied by arable land, 16% by meadows and pastures, and 31% by forests. Little except oats and potatoes could be raised on

1798-728: The advance of the Red Army in the closing months of the war and subsequently, most 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 . After World War II, during the communist Bodenreform (land reform) of September 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone , later East Germany , all private property exceeding an area of 100 hectares (250 acres)

1860-493: The continuing French pollution of German culture, were shunned by the broader German society and were known as Rhineland Bastards . Children fathered by French colonial or American troops of African ancestry were especially despised and became targets of Nazi sterilisation programmes in the 1930s. The American poet Charles Bukowski was born in 1920 in Andernach as the son of a German mother and an American soldier, who served in

1922-467: The course of the Rhine, which formed the eastern border of the province from Bingen to Koblenz , and then flows in a north-northwesterly direction inside the province, approximately following its eastern border. It is now part of North Rhine-Westphalia , Rhineland-Palatinate , Saarland , and Hesse . The population of the Rhine Province in 1905 was 6,435,778, including 4,472,058 Roman Catholics , 1,877,582 Protestants and 55,408 Jews . The left bank

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1984-560: The court of territorial princes . These families were mostly part of the German medieval Uradel and had carried on the colonisation and Christianisation of the northeastern European territories during the Ostsiedlung . Over the centuries, they had become influential commanders and landowners, especially in the lands east of the Elbe River in the Kingdom of Prussia. As landed aristocrats,

2046-411: The district also included lignite, copper, manganese, vitriol, lime, gypsum, volcanic stones (used for millstones) and slates. By far the most important item was coal. Of the numerous mineral springs, the best known were those of Aachen and Kreuznach. The mineral resources of the Rhine Province, coupled with its favourable situation and the facilities of transit afforded by its great waterway, made it

2108-436: The district, while the principal exports are coal, fruit, wine, dyes, cloth, silk and other manufactured articles of various descriptions. In the 1815 Congress of Vienna , Prussia gained control of the duchies of Cleves, Berg, Gelderland and Jülich, the ecclesiastical principalities of Trier and Cologne, the free cities of Aachen and Cologne, and nearly one hundred small lordships and abbeys which would all be amalgamated into

2170-566: The following Monday. As a result, the governments were inclined to see the remilitarization as a fait accompli . Adolf Hitler took a risk when he sent his troops to the Rhineland. He told them to "turn back and not to resist" if they were stopped by the French Army. The French, however, did not try to stop them because they were about to hold legislative elections ; further, President Albert Lebrun did not want to start an unpopular war against Germany and French intelligence greatly overestimated

2232-620: The formal ratification of the treaty, which took place in 1920, thus the occupation was intended to last until 1935. Initially, 5 zones of Occupation of the Rhineland were established, but the American Forces handed over their zone in 1923, since they had not ratified the Treaty of Versailles, to the French. The treaty also separated the Saar from the Province and administered by the League of Nations until

2294-735: The former province were incorporated as states into the new Federal Republic of Germany when it was established in May 1949. The French organised the Saarland as a separate protectorate on 16 February 1946 and it eventually joined the Federal Republic as a separate state in 1957. Within North Rhine-Westphalia, the Landschaftsverband Rheinland  [ de ] (LVR), which was established in 1953 as regional council, still holds considerable administrative power and can be regarded as

2356-526: The goal of reaching the Rhine. From their winter positions in The Netherlands, the First Canadian Army under General Henry Crerar reinforced by elements of the British Second Army under General Miles Dempsey , drove through the Rhineland beginning in the first week of February 1945. Operation Veritable lasted several weeks, resulting in the clearance of all German forces from the west side of

2418-529: The high-lying plateaus in the south of the province, but the river-valleys and the northern lowlands were extremely fertile. The great bulk of the soil was in the hands of small proprietors, and this is alleged to have had the effect of somewhat retarding the progress of scientific agriculture. The usual cereal crops were, however, all grown with success, and tobacco, hops, flax, hemp and beetroot (for sugar) were cultivated for commercial purposes. Large quantities of fruit were also produced. The vine-culture occupied

2480-741: The imposition of high tariffs that reduced competition from U.S. grain and meat. During World War I , Irish nationalist MP Tom Kettle compared the Anglo-Irish landlord class to the Prussian Junkers, saying, "England goes to fight for liberty in Europe and for junkerdom in Ireland." Their political influence extended from the German Empire of 1871–1918 through the Weimar Republic of 1919–1933. It

2542-411: The incoming Polish and Soviet administrations, and their lands were confiscated. In western and southern Germany, the land was often owned by small independent farmers or a mixture of small farmers and estate owners, and this system was often contrasted with the dominance of the large estate owners of the east. Before World War II, the dividing line was often drawn at the river Elbe which was also roughly

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2604-509: The industrial region of the Ruhr housed recent Polish migrants from the eastern provinces of the Empire . The Rhine Province was the most densely populated part of Prussia, the general average being 617 persons per km . The province contains a greater number of large towns than any other province in Prussia. Upwards of half, the population were supported by industrial and commercial pursuits, and barely

2666-509: The lower Rhine, but the number of sheep in the province was comparatively small, not greatly in excess of that of the goats. The wooded hills were well stocked with deer, and a stray wolf occasionally found its way from the forests of the Ardennes into those of the Hunsrück . The salmon fishery of the Rhine was very productive, and trout abound in the mountain streams. The great mineral wealth of

2728-522: The most important manufacturing district in Germany. The industry was mainly concentrated around two chief centres, Aachen and Düsseldorf (with the valley of the Wupper ), while there were naturally few manufacturers in the hilly districts of the south or the marshy flats of the north. The largest iron and steel works were at Essen , Oberhausen , Duisburg , Düsseldorf and Cologne, while cutlery and other small metallic wares were extensively made at Solingen, Remscheid and Aachen. The cloth of Aachen and

2790-425: The new Prussian Rhine Province. In 1822 Prussia established the Rhine Province by joining the provinces of Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg . Its capital was Koblenz ; it had 8.0 million inhabitants by 1939. Popes Pius VIII (in 1830) and Gregory XVI (in 1833) raised concerns regarding the pastoral care of Catholics in the Upper Rhineland, both writing letters of concern to the local bishops. Following

2852-447: The north by the Netherlands , on the east by the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau , and the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt , on the southeast by the Palatinate (a district of the Kingdom of Bavaria ), on the south and southwest by Lorraine , and on the west by Luxembourg , Belgium and the Netherlands. The small exclave district of Wetzlar , wedged between the grand duchy states Hesse-Nassau and Hesse-Darmstadt

2914-428: The number of German troops. The British government did not oppose the remilitarization in principle, and Lord Lothian famously stated that "the Germans are after all only going into their own back garden". However, the British government rejected the Nazi manner of accomplishing the act, which they had been willing to concede by negotiations with Germany. Winston Churchill advocated military action by co-operation by

2976-402: The occupation troops. Two different military campaigns were fought in the Rhineland. The first operation of the campaign was the Allied Operation Market Garden that sought to allow the Second British Army to advance past the northern flank of the Siegfried Line and enter the Ruhr industrial area. After the failure of that operation for five months, from September 1944 until February 1945,

3038-420: The ousted landowners was rejected by the German Bundestag in 2008. Notes Bibliography Rhine Province The Rhine Province ( German : Rheinprovinz ), also known as Rhenish Prussia ( Rheinpreußen ) or synonymous with the Rhineland ( Rheinland ), was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia , within the German Reich , from 1822 to 1946. It

3100-418: The river, and the battles for the Rhineland were over. In the official histories of the British and Canadian armies, the term Rhineland refers only to fighting west of the river in February and March 1945, with subsequent operations on the river and to the east known as "Rhine Crossing". Both terms are official Battle Honours in the Commonwealth forces. Following the unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945,

3162-403: The silk of Krefeld formed important articles of export. The chief industries of Elberfeld - Barmen and the valley of the Wupper was cotton-weaving, calico-printing and the manufacture of turkey red and other dyes. Linen was largely made at Mönchengladbach , leather at Malmedy , glass in the Saar district and beetroot sugar near Cologne. Though the Rhineland was par excellence the country of

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3224-424: The title is Jkr., most often placed before the given name and titles, for example: Jkr. Heinrich von Hohenberg. The female equivalent Junkfrau (Jkfr.) was used only sporadically. In some cases, the honorific Jkr. was also used for Freiherren (Barons) and Grafen (Counts). A good number of poorer Junkers took up careers as soldiers ( Fahnenjunker ), mercenaries, and officials ( Hofjunker , Kammerjunker ) at

3286-413: The vine, beer was produced in quantities, distilleries were also numerous, and large quantities of sparkling Mosel wine were made at Koblenz, chiefly for exportation to Britain. Commerce was greatly aided by the navigable rivers, a very extensive network of railways, and the excellent roads constructed during the French régime. The imports consist mainly of raw material for working up in the factories of

3348-434: The western boundary of Slavic settlement by the Wends in the so-called Germania Slavica prior to Ostsiedlung . The term for the junker dominated East was thus Ostelbien or East Elbia. They played a prominent role in repressing the liberal movement in Germany. Junker is derived from Middle High German Juncherre , meaning "young nobleman" or otherwise "young lord" (derivation of jung and Herr ), and originally

3410-454: Was also part of the Rhine Province. The principality of Birkenfeld , on the other hand, was an enclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg , a separate state of the German Empire . In 1911, the extent of the province was 10,423 km (4,024 sq mi); its extreme length, from north to south, was nearly 200 km (120 mi), and its greatest breadth was just under 90 km (56 mi). It included about 200 km (120 mi) of

3472-412: Was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg . Its capital was Koblenz and in 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province. Also, for a short period of time, the Province of Hohenzollern was indirectly and de facto controlled by the Rhine Province. The Rhine Province was bounded on

3534-469: Was expropriated, and then predominantly allocated to 'New Farmers' on condition that they continued farming them. As most of these large estates, especially in Brandenburg and Western Pomerania , had belonged to Junkers, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany promoted their plans with East German President Wilhelm Pieck 's slogan Junkerland in Bauernhand! ("Junker land into farmer's hand!"). The former owners were accused of war crimes and involvement in

3596-424: Was in contrast to the predominantly Catholic southern states such as the Kingdom of Bavaria or the Grand Duchy of Baden , where land was owned by small farms, or the mixed agriculture of the western states like the Grand Duchy of Hesse or even the Prussian Rhine and Westphalian provinces. Junkers formed a tightly knit elite. Their challenge was how to retain their dominance in an emerging modern state with

3658-401: Was predominantly Catholic, while on the right bank about half the population was Protestant. The great bulk of the population was ethnically German, although some villages and towns in the northern part ( Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg ) were more oriented toward the Netherlands. On the western and southern frontiers (especially in the Saarland ) resided smaller French-speaking communities, while

3720-423: Was said that "if Prussia ruled Germany, the Junkers ruled Prussia, and through it the Empire itself". A policy known as Osthilfe ("Help for the East") granted Junkers 500,000,000 marks in subsidies to help pay for certain debts and to improve equipment. Junkers continued to demand and receive more and more subsidies, which gave them more money in their pockets, thus resulting in political power. Junkers exploited

3782-549: Was the title of members of the higher edelfrei ( immediate ) nobility without or before the accolade . It evolved to a general denotation of a young or lesser noble, often poor and politically insignificant, understood as "country squire " (cf. Martin Luther 's disguise as "Junker Jörg" at the Wartburg ; he would later mock King Henry VIII of England as "Juncker Heintz" ). As part of the nobility, many Junker families only had prepositions such as von or zu before their family names without further ranks. The abbreviation of

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3844-468: Was used by sociologists such as Max Weber and was even adopted by members of the landed class themselves. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was a noted Junker, though his family hailed 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 of Neudeck in West Prussia, and to

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