Agricultural Settlement of the Borderland: Mountain Pastoral Cooperatives in the Eastern Giant Mountains 1945-1949
Abstract
The history of mountain pastoral cooperatives has not yet been sufficiently elaborated and reflected in the whole range of issues, not even at the national level, let alone at the level of each border political district or otherwise defined region. The presented text will focus on the genesis of mountain pasture cooperatives at the national level, including the fundamental theoretical background, and will describe in particular the implementation of six cooperatives in the Giant Mts (Krkonoše in Czech, Karkonosze in Polish) and Giant Mts foothills, in particular the Trutnov political district.
Comparison of the theoretical plans of the Ministry of Agriculture with concrete implementation in the complicated reality of the various ways of re-locating post-war sites in the Trutnov district brings a new perspective firstly on the evaluation of the success of the mountain pastoral cooperatives or on the limits and possibilities of their success. Secondly, it presents pastoral cooperatives as a key player in the transformation of the cultural landscape of some localities affected by them.
At the same time, the study describes the exclusive possibility for grassland promoters to intervene in traditional land use due to land confiscations of German property and the resulting central management of high officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, which implied problems with local authorities. The text shows that a regional study is necessary to build on a nationwide situation, and vice versa, that it is necessary to know their application in specific places for a deeper understanding of societal changes.