Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture

The Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, abbreviated RMEL) was responsible for the agricultural policy of Germany during the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933 and during the Nazi dictatorship of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945. It was headed by a Reichsminister under whom a state secretary served. On 1 January 1935, the ministry merged with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, Domains and Forests, founded in 1879. Until 1938 and the Anschluss with Austria, it was called the "Reich and Prussian Ministry of Food and Agriculture". After the end of National Socialism in 1945 and of the Allied occupation of Germany, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture was established in 1949 as a successor in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).

History
In March 1919, the Reich Office of Food (Reichsernährungsamt) established the Reich Ministry of Food. It was combined with the Reich Ministry of Economics in September 1919 and re-founded during the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 under the name Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture. In the same year, the ministry moved into the Palace of Prince Alexander and Prince George at 72 Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. From 1924, four large-format paintings by August Weber were on loan in the building. Since 1945 they have been considered lost.

After the Nazis seized power on 30 January 1933, the ministry was initially led by Alfred Hugenberg. Coerced into resignation in June 1933, Hugenburg was succeeded by Kurt Schmitt (minister of economics) and Walther Darré (minister of food and agriculture). The latter took over the management of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture as Reich Farmers' Leader (Reichsbauernführer) on 30 June 1933. In this function he was also responsible for the Reichsnährstand (loosely, Reich Bureau of Food and Nutrition), which had been created for the "co-ordination" (Gleichschaltung) of German agriculture. Darré simultaneously headed the Office for Agricultural Policy (from 1936, Reich Office for Agricultural Policy; from 1942, Reich Office for Rural Inhabitants), which belonged to the party's official apparatus and was responsible for the management and supervision of the Reich Bureau of Food and Nutrition.

The RMEL essentially took over the state's oversight of the Reichsnährstand organization. As a result, individual areas of responsibility were gradually transferred to other National Socialist authorities. In 1934, for example, the Reich Forestry Office (Reichsforstamt), under the leadership of Hermann Göring, was created as the supreme Reich authority for forestry and hunting, the timber industry, nature conservation and the preservation of natural monuments. The Reich Forestry Office was in turn united on 1 January 1935 with the Prussian State Forestry Office. Goring's deputy and the de facto head of German Forestry was Walter von Keudell, and then from 1937 Friedrich Alpers. Furthermore, in 1934 and 1935, the agricultural vocational and technical school system was transferred to the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture, and veterinary medicine was transferred to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. On 22 September 1938, by decree of the Reich minister, all research institutes in the fisheries sector were consolidated in the Reich Institute for Fisheries.