The big landlords of eastern Germany have loomed large in the country's history, but the absence of official statistics on land ownership has left their position and identity confined to folklore, without satisfactory quantification.
This study, making extensive use of primary sources from the seven "core provinces" of eastern Germany-the so-called "East Elbian" region-establishes answers to questions pivotal to our understanding of pre-war Germany: who were the biggest land owners, both by area and by the tax assessment of their land? Which social groups held land? How much land did they...