According to the agricultural statistics gathered in Germany on June 2, 1882, the farms fell into the following categories according to size:—


Area.
Farms.		Percentage of
Total Farms.
Under 1 hectare 2,323,316 44.03
1 to 5 hectares 1,719,922 32.54
5 to 10 hectares 554,174 10.50
10 to 20 hectares 372,431 7.06
20 to 50 hectares 239,887 4.50
50 to 100 hectares 41,623 0.80
100 to 200 hectares 11,033 0.21
200 to 500 hectares 9,814 0.18
500 to 1,000 hectares 3,629 0.07
1,000 hectares 515 0.01
————————— —————
Total 5,276,344 99.90

According to Koppe, a minimum of 6 hectares are requisite in Northern Germany for a farmer's family to barely beat itself through; in order to live in tolerable circumstances, 15 to 20 hectares are requisite. In the fertile districts of Southern Germany, 3 to 4 hectares are considered good ground to support a peasant family on. This minimum is reached in Germany by not four million farms, and only about 6 per cent. of the farmers have holdings large enough to enable them to get along in comfort. Not less than 3,222,270 farmers conduct industrial or commercial pursuits besides agriculture. It is a characteristic feature of the lands under cultivation that the farms of less than 50 hectares—5,200,000 in all—contained only 3,747,677 hectares of grain lands, whereas the farms of more than 50 hectares—66,000 in round figures—contained 9,636,246 hectares. One and a quarter per cent. of the farms contained 2½ times more grain land than the other 98¾ per cent. put together.

And yet the picture presented by these statistics falls by far short of the reality. It has not been ascertained among how many owners these 5,276,344 farms are divided. The number of owners is far smaller than that of the farms themselves: many are the owners of dozens of farms: it is in the instance of large farms, in particular, that many are held by one proprietor. A knowledge of the concentration of land is of the highest socio-political importance, yet on this point the agricultural statistics of 1882 leave us greatly in the lurch. A few facts are, nevertheless, ascertained from other sources, and they give an approximate picture of the reality. The percentages of large landed property—over 100 hectares—to the aggregate agricultural property was as follows:—

Provinces.Percentage.
Pomerania64.87
Posen61.22
West Prussia54.41
East Prussia41.79
Brandenburg42.60
Silesia42.14
Saxony30.89
Schleswig-Holstein 18.03

According to the memorial of the Prussian Minister of Agriculture, published in the bulletin of the Prussian Bureau of Statistics, the number of middle class farms sank, from 354,610 with 35,260,084 acres, in 1816, to 344,737 with 33,498,433 acres, in 1859. The number of these farms had, accordingly, decreased within that period by 9,873, and peasant property had been wiped out to the volume of 1,711,641 acres. The inquiry extended only to the provinces of Prussia, Posen (from 1823 on), Pomerania, exclusive of Stralsund; Brandenburg, Saxony, Silesia, and Westphalia.

What disappears as peasant property usually goes into large estates. In 1885, in the province of Pomerania, 62 proprietors held 118 estates; in 1891, however, the same number of proprietors held 203 estates with an area of 147,139 hectares. Altogether, there were in the province of Pomerania, in 1891, 1,353 noble and bourgeois landlords, owning 2,258 estates with 1,247,201 hectares.[172] The estates averaged 551 hectares in size.

Our eastern provinces give this table of landlords for the year 1888:—

Prince of Hohenlohe-Oehringen 39,365 hectares
Prince of Sigmaringen29,611 "
Prince of Thurn and Taxis24,482 "
Prince Bismarck18,600 "
Prince Radziwill16,398 "
Duke of Milzinski13,933 "
Representative Kennemann10,482 "
Duke Serg. v. Czarnecki 9,263 "
v. Hansemann 7,734 "
Etc., etc., etc.

We see that we here have to do with owners of latifundia of first rank; and a portion of these gentlemen own also large estates in Southern Germany and Austria.