Possessing community: Property, land and territorial social order in Ferdinand Tönnies

Ferdinand Tönnies’ distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is usually read as a contrast between communal and impersonal forms of social life. This article argues that it also contains a sociology of possession, property and land. In his 1887 account, communal relations are organised through common goods, dwelling, cultivation and attachment to place, while modern society increasingly separates people and things through money, contract and exchange. His later work on property distinguishes factual possession from legally recognised ownership while showing that ownership itself need not take an or alienable form. Tönnies’ 1923 discussion of Prussian internal colonisation shows how these distinctions bear on competing claims to land. German settlement and Polish land acquisition both relied on modern legal, financial and administrative institutions, yet Tönnies judged their claims differently according to nationality. His sociology explains how attachments to land are socially organised. It offers no basis, however, for the priority he gives to German claims. His account of ownership as possession recognised by the state provides a starting point for explaining how national preferences govern property rights, a question the pamphlet leaves unexamined.