ABSTRACT
The planting of highways and byways in the German countryside with fruit trees developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to become a motif of political iconography. The bucolic results were admired by travellers in many regions as a sign of prosperity and progressive rule. A closer look at the creation of this fruit tree planting tradition shows that it was integrated into economic and structural policies addressed at individuals, local communities, and later administrations. An example of highway planting shows that beginning from the collective benefits of fruit harvests and then the acceptance of privatisation, the central administration increasingly claimed the rights of use and benefits. In this context, highways and byways became a location for the societal renegotiation of rights.
