Important estates characterise the memories of East Prussia. Large estates functioned like small villages and were often described in post-war literature. A special feature of East Prussia were the so-called "Instleute"- families of farm workers living on the farm, who, in contrast to day labourers, were paid according to the amount harvested and therefore usually showed a great deal of commitment.
40 percent of the agricultural land belonged to the large landowners with over 100 hectares of land. Although only five percent of the farms were attributable to them, this is where political power was. A good 50 estates even had over 1,000 hectares at their disposal. Their soil was often more fertile than the farm property.
It was attempted to counteract the partly dramatic rural exodus by settlement programmes where unprofitable estates were divided up and cheap loans enabled small farmsteads to exist. In the Weimar Republic, therefore, the proportion of estate land declined.
Illustrations:
1.) View of the estate Groß Bestendorf
The picture shows the multitude of maidservants and farmhands of a larger estate with its substantial stock of animals and extensive arable and forest areas.
The estate Groß Bestendorf, which had been owned by the von der Goltz-Domhardt family since the 19th century, had several outlying estates and was a large agricultural enterprise and entailed estate (fideicommissum) located in the Oberland (today Prusy Górne) in the Mohrungen (today Morąg) district with a total area of several thousand hectares. The farm included Trakehner breeding, over 1,000 cattle, pigs and sheep each, intensive fishing on the estate's own ponds and well over 2,000 hectares of forest.
Photo: Private Archive
2.) Estate house
Settler farm of Julius Müller and family in Göritten (Puschkino), district of Stallupönen (today Nesterow), at the easternmost edge of East Prussia.
Small settler farms covered only a few hectares of land and were mostly managed by a single family. Their stock of animals included, aside from poultry and goats, one or two cows and often only a single horse for the hard work, which was the pride of the family. In many cases, the settlers were organised in cooperatives, which helped each other out with the building of houses – often as a cheap standard construction – and with loans.
Photo: Picture Archive East Prussia