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I have finished entering all the crop and livestock data from the Staats-Handbücher available to me. There are still years outstanding and I will need to collect that data on a trip to Oldenburg. It would be best if I could indentify appropriate price data. Even in it’s incomplete form, I have been liable to draw some very tentative observation and hypotheses.
At the end of November, I had entered all of the material that I had collected on crop production in Oldenburg 1890-1933 as part of my project on Theodor Tantzen, the German Democratic Party, and the collapse of Weimar liberalism. This was incredibly exhausting and time-consuming. I decided that I needed a break before continuing with my livestock data, so I took the month of December off. The many tasks of Christmas month would have made continued work extremely difficult in any case.
I also had to think about the way forward. I have read and made notes on all of the available narrative sources (both primary and secondary). After my data entry is compete, the next logical steps are to 1) marry my agricultural data to my GIS and begin spatial analysis, and 2) take all of these elements and begin fashioning my narrative.
Problem 1: there are sources at the Lower Saxon State archives in Oldenburg, the Oldenburg Landesbibliothek and the Institut für Zeitungsforschung in Dortmund (using the Schlweswig-Holstein press). I can craft my analysis provisionally without recourse to these materials but I really need to see them before calling the project „done“. This trip would not have necessarily have posed a physical problem (I travelled hin und her to Leiden last year with no problem) but the past several years have not been good for persons dependent on Deutsche Bahn and I fear travel disruptions would cut into my archival time.
Problem 2: On a personal level, I am uncertain about leaving central Ohio for 7-10 days in the coming year. My wide and I have committed to watching our eldest granddaughter every Sunday and our infant granddaughter 2 1/2 days/week. There is simply no way in good conscience that I can leave Charlene alone with this task.
I guess we‘ll see how this all works out. Tomorrow, it back to counting cows!
I have read or re-read everything that I could find on rural liberalism and Weimar food policy. I have hit a stop until I return the archives.
Fortunately, I have collected reams of a agricultural statistics published by the Grand Duchy (then Free State) of Oldenburg. I am entering them now. Gosh, I’d forgotten how damnably boring data entry could be. I hope/assume that when I am done it will shed light on the policy debates and electoral movements of the Weimar period.