Reichsnährstand sign @museum.de

M: On the 30th of January 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, as Reich Chancellor. The National Socialists immediately began to subject everything to their totalitarian claim to power. State and social institutions were brought into line with the party's ideological and political goals. The state, the judiciary and society were completely taken over and co-opted. Including agriculture.

F: In September 1933, the "Law for the Provisional Establishment of the Reichsnährstand" forcibly united everyone involved in farming: all individuals, businesses, associations and chambers of agriculture. As a national farming organisation, the Reichsnährstand now had around 17 million members. In a strict hierarchical structure, the territory of the Reich was divided into 26 regional farming bodies, each of which was further subdivided into district and local farming associations.

M: Heidelsheim, now a district of Bruchsal, didn't escape the enforced conformity. The local farmers' leader there was a certain Christian Jäger, who was also an alderman on the municipal council. The sign you see here once hung outside his house on Friedrichstraße, present-day Zähringerstraße.

F: The motto of the national socialist Reichsnährstand was Blut und Boden, "Blood and Soil". It promoted the ideal of a home-loving, pre-industrial farming community – the "main wellspring of the German people", in the parlance of the day. This idealisation was in part an attempt to stem the dramatic rural exodus and the associated drop in the rural labour force. Because despite all the ideological and socio-political efforts, people were drawn to the cities – where the better-paying jobs were to be found.