ABSTRACT
The Prussian Junkers were a ruling class for as an economically successful, politically powerful and socially dominant in equal measures. The success of the Junkers as a landed elite before the nineteenth century rests on a variety of factors, which include the commercialization of east Elbian grain-based agriculture which, in the wake of economic differentiation between Eastern and Western Europe, had facilitated the expansion of noble enterprise since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Historians agree that the Junkers represented a great political, economic and social burden for Prusso-German history. The tendencies towards a 'refeudalization' of society in Imperial Germany, which found their most significant and exaggerated expression in the institution of the Reserve Officer Corps, 113 completely corresponded with the successful efforts of the English elite to inculcate advancing social groups with aristocratic values. Thus, this essay cannot fill such a demanding agenda, but it can suggest that pursuing it rigorously offers an extremely effective strategy for challenging well-worn prejudices.
