The Junker (pronounced YOON-ker) were the landed aristocracy of Prussia. They controlled the military, leading in social status and politics. They owned immense estates, and their peasants worked for starvation wages, with nearly no rights.
Regarded as reactionary, and holding a monopoly on military and civilian office, they were ferociously anti- liberal, siding with the forces of reaction during the Revolution of 1848.
The jingoistic leader Otto von Bismarck was a noted Junker, as was Paul von Hindenburg, who relinquished power to Adolf Hitler in 1933.
After the Soviets had liberated East Germany, during the Bodenreform (ground reform) all private property exceeding a certain area (i.e. all the land that used to belong to the Junker) was seized and collectives of farmers were formed. The Junker were expelled and are now, after the German reunification, trying to get their former property back. The treaties that the FRG and the GDR have made with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union however contained the rule that any decision made by any of the four forces during the time of occupation (1945-1955) must be kept up, lest the freed Germans label it as wrong ex post.
