Ländliche Neusiedlung im westlichen Mitteleuropa vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart: Ehrgeizige Pläne - enttäuschende Resultate?

Abschließende Bemerkungen zu den Referaten und Diskussionsbeiträgen

Abstract

On the occasion of the 45th German Geographentag in Berlin in 1985 the Working Group on Genetic Settlement Research in Central Europe, under the direction of K. Fehn and W. Krings, held a seminar which was devoted to the topic of Rural colonization in western Central Europe from the end of the 19th century up to the present. A presentation of the agricultural policy aspect by Smit was followed by separate analyses for the areas of the Federal Republic of Germany (Graafen), Switzerland (Egli), Austria (Penz), the Netherlands (Burggraaff) and Denmark (Pedersen). This contribution offers a summarizing commentary, which leads further, on the presentations, as well as taking the results of the discussions into account. Chapter 1 treats rural colonization as a subject of study in accordance with the interests of the working group; they are primarily directed towards the effects of settlement structures, but here related more to the process of colonization as a political task and planning concern. Chapter 2 deals with questions of definition and problems of statistical data. Chapter 3 applies itself to modalities of planning. An international inventory of historical colonization schemes and their specific characteristics would be very welcome as a basis for comparative investigations. Chapter 4, finally, refers to the motives for colonization. One discerns fiscal and economic aims, those of national and power politics, of social reforms and other, more sophisticated ones, the significance of which underwent changes over the course of time and sometimes varied between states under investigation.