ABSTRACT
One of the most important changes in the social structure of Germany around the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth century affected the peasantry. Writers of peasant literature, which by the 1830s had established itself both among the discriminating reading public in the towns and the literate rural labouring class, reflected current liberal progressive beliefs in the importance and the viability of a strong peasantry. The peasant vendors either settled in the village, living for a time on the proceeds, or obtained employment as rural labourers on the estates. Personal unfreedom among rural labourers was not limited to the great estates of the east but was also characteristic of other areas, such as the large farmlands of Bavaria. In Bavaria and the Alpine regions primogeniture had ensured a sound agricultural structure, and here a sturdy medium and large peasantry existed as a class.
