1. MARK FINLAY received his doctorate from Iowa State University and is currently associate professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University. The author would like thank AASU, the Otto-von-Guericke Universitat of Magdeburg, Germany, and the Tallinn Pedagogical University of Tallinn, Estonia, for supporting this project. In addition, the author would like to thank Marion Gray, Wolfgang Heun, Volker Klemm, Monika Kuhne, and Michael Price for their help with this essay.
2. The standard corpus appeared in the series "Deutsche Agrargeschichte," under the general editorship of Gunther Franz and published by Eugen Ulmer of Stuttgart. Herbert Jankuhn, Vor- und Fruhgeschichte vom Neolithikum bis zur Volkerswanderungszeit(1969);
3. Wilhelm Abel, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft vom fruhen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (1962);
4. Friedrich Lutge. Geschichte der deutschen Agrarverfassung vom fruhen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (1963);
5. Gunther Franz, Geschichte des deutschen Bauernstandes vom fruhen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (1970); and Heinz Haushofer, Die deutsche Landwirtschaft im technischen Zeitalter (1963). For an introduction to this literature, see Friedrich-Wilhelm Henning, "Die Agrargeschichtliche Forschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis 1986," in Historia Socialis et Oeconomica: Festschrift fur Wolfgang Zorn zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Kellenbenz and Hans Pohl, (Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 84), (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1987), 72-80. Henning praises the traditional works of German Agrargeschichte, but his conclusions are nonetheless pessimistic due to the apparently declining interest in agricultural history. For the recent critics, see Ian Farr, "'Tradition' and the Peasantry: On the Modern Historiography of Rural Germany," in The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, ed. Richard J. Evans and W. R. Lee (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), 1-36;