The Farmers’ and Agricultural Workers’ Councils

In the winter of 1918–1919, a separate network of farmers’ and agricultural workers’ councils grew up in the Kassel district alongside the workers’ and soldiers’ councils. Unlike the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which blossomed as spontaneous revolutionary phenomena, the farmers’ and agricultural workers’ councils were the product of external initiatives. On November 12, 1918 the Reich government issued a decree calling upon all classes of the rural population, irrespective of political orientation, freely and in concert, to establish farmers’ councils in order to secure the nation’s food supply, peace and order in the countryside and the unimpeded operation of rural enterprises. The central workers’ and soldiers’ council must have been disappointed that the decree made no mention of political tasks for the farmers’ councils and instead defined their responsibilities along the lines of the war committee’s plans. At the national level, however, the war committee dared not risk the farmers’ councils’ becoming agents of rural revolution.