Inner colonization

Summary

The German practice, aimed at training and settling German farmers in territories annexed by Prussia in the partitions of Poland and at using agricultural settlements in areas of ethnic conflict, which Derek Penslar, as presented in Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, argued Franz Oppenheimer transplanted to Zionist settlement of Palestine (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.21).

Elements such as creating farmers out of city dwellers with no prior farming experience seemed to bear potential for Zionist colonization (PDF p.21).
After the German empire’s demise, Oppenheimer still advanced agricultural cooperative settlements within the framework of inner colonization as a means of democratically transforming Germany (PDF p.30).
Oppenheimer preferred “inner colonization” over overseas colonization, claiming expeditions searching for virgin soil without land enclosure were superfluous and even counterproductive, while the concept simultaneously served German efforts to nationalise provincial areas in the East and subordinate ethnic minorities, most prominently Poles (PDF p.114).

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