Agrarian League

Agrarian League, extraparliamentary organization active under the German empire from 1893. Formed to combat the free-trade policies (initiated in 1892) of Chancellor Leo, Graf (count) von Caprivi, the league worked for farmers’ subsidies, import tariffs, and minimum prices. Caprivi’s successor promised to increase wheat tariffs, but by 1900 the Agrarian League had increased to 250,000 members—50,000 more than its mid-1890s membership. By then it had largely captured the Conservative Party, which in the Reichstag (parliament) represented the economic self-interest of Germany’s landed class. In 1902 another new chancellor restored agricultural tariffs (partly in return for support for legislation in naval expansion) to their 1892 levels, though this was insufficient for the league. In 1921 it became the Reichslandbund, or State Land League.