German Reunification

In 1945, German families with more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of land were forced from their homes by the Soviet authorities now in control of that area. These families were brutally evicted from their property and had their land expropriated. In the next 45 years the GDR government would come to control all of the agricultural land. At reunification in 1990 the earlier abuse of these farmers was compounded when the German government would not restore any of this expropriated land to these families. Joyce Bromley draws on extensive field research, and previously untapped sources, to explore the reliability of the government's version of these important events.

Joyce E. Bromley has been Visiting Researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle (Saale), Germany.