Friedrich Neuser
Appearances
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So we're looking at a map of all of Osing and you're going to write what you just got.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Today is a good feeling. And then, another few plots later, his name is called again. Yes, it is perfect in Franconian.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
But after today, the plots he's farmed and cared for will no longer be his. He'll trade them in for new plots. Through a lottery, a land lottery.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
After a bit more walking, he gets a few more okay plots. But it's now hour six. We've walked about 10 miles. And at this point, we start crossing over into the Badland.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
They definitely feel like scratchy, scritchy roots of something.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Yeah, your son said, and walked away. So that seems like he didn't like this land too much.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Friedrich has gotten nine plots through the lottery. Two are really good, a few are medium, and two are schlumpy. But these might not be the plots he ends the day with. Because in all the rules of this land lottery, there's another move that can be made. Friedrich says it's not over yet. Hope dies last. There's still a possibility.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
After the break, the Ossing Verlosung allows Friedrich one more shot at getting those good plots of soil.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Like Friedrich. He got a few pieces of land he doesn't want because they're far from his other plots and they're not great for growing potatoes. And that's bad for Friedrich. That would mean half as many crops in a year on those plots. But that's also bad for the economy because this land would be great for farming corn or wheat. And so Friedrich getting this land is kind of a waste.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So the lottery's fair, but maybe not efficient. That's why the people of the Ossing have a second part to the Ossing Fair Lausanne. The celebratory tent has turned into a trading pit. Farmers like Friedrich can go to another farmer and outright trade for a better plot. There are more than 600 other plots, hundreds of potential deals.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
A secondary market has emerged because even though the lottery is designed and executed to be totally, completely random, after the plots are assigned, the new landowners can all trade with each other. Essentially, Marcus says, it's like this game we all kind of know.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So at today's lottery, the map of all this land is going to be wiped clean. Friedrich and all the farmers here, their economic fates will be decided by pulling names out of a bag.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
The goal of trade is to maximize what lots we get in life. And that is precisely what everyone here in the osing is doing. Farmers can trade a plot for a plot, but they can also add money to a deal.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Yeah. Is that wrong? Friedrich and his son start trying to make some trades. They want to get rid of their bad, schlumpy plots.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Next, Friedrich and his son try making a deal with one of the big farmers, the ones with lots of plots. A lot of the big farmers have set up makeshift headquarters on the beds of their pickup trucks. Smaller farmers like Friedrich and his son seek them out, hoping to make a deal.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
No, it is no fun. So Friedrich finds the next farmer and they huddle over his map of the Ossing. Over the course of the day, it's become covered with smudged names and phone numbers and all kinds of notes.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
All around us, these strategic trades are happening. And the farmers have different strategies. One of the farmers has a notebook with a list of 15 deals he needs to make to get all of his land together. Markus talks us through an exchange between the two farmers.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
And with each trade, the land itself gets closer to its most efficient use. In theory, trading means the land can end up with the farmer who will make the most of it, help it yield its highest value. And after all the trading is over, the farmers and the land will be better off. And we see some of this happening right in front of us.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
The crowd in the tent starts to thin. We check back in with Friedrich and his son. They've had dozens of conversations and the prospects of a few three-way trades... But no handshakes. They decide to pause their trading for the night. And Friedrich tells us, yes, this whole system is confusing. But it is what they have. They can't change it. Whether it's beautiful or not.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Hasan Bayt says, yeah, this is out of date. A hundred years ago, it was okay. But it's 2024.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Friedrich is talking about Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune. And he hopes today she helps him out.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Just doing this every 10 years is enough. It's enough. It's all enough. And so another chapter in this thousand-year-old fairy tale is coming to an end.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
If they did, maybe one village or one family would have gotten all the good plots, amassed a lot of wealth, maybe become the noble families of the area.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
A few weeks after the lottery, we spoke with Friedrich. In the end, he made seven trades and got all the land he wanted. And he's going to get to farm it happily ever after, or at least for the next 10 years.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thank you to Karina Tall. Adam Berry, Caitlin Carroll, and Caroline Drees provided interpretation help. And thank you to Mary Claire Peete for first telling us about this land lottery a couple years ago.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
I think it's beginning. The master of ceremonies steps to the microphone for the start of the Ossing Verlosung. That translates to the Ossing Land Lottery. He says, the Ossing Land Lottery greets you, dear guests. Friedrich is starting to look kind of nervous.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Yeah, I see you. Everybody looks a little happy, but also a little nervous right now. Friedrich says his adrenaline is going up, up, up. As he says this, his hand goes up like a roller coaster climbing. I raise my microphone as if I'm making a toast. All right. Let there be good land. For good land. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erika Barris.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Today on the show, we follow along as every farmer has a shot at the perfect piece of land. or the absolute worst piece of land. And we see what we can learn from this living medieval tradition that tries to balance fairness and efficiency. So, why does OSING have this unusual lottery system? Well, we asked a bunch of people and they all said we need to talk to George Rudolph.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
The story begins a thousand years ago. When an empress, Empress Kunikunde, was on a hunting trip here in this area, she got lost.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So, Empress Gunekunde was lost in the woods and she couldn't find her way out. Until she heard bells from the churches coming from the communities at the corners of the forest.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
She found her way out and she was so grateful. She gifted the forest land to the people of these four villages. And that forest land became the Olsing. It became the Olsing farmland.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Because the four villages had to share that farmland. Now, communal farmland, it was not such a novel idea, especially around this time in Europe. Lots of places communally farmed land. But what the people of the Osing did next was kind of novel.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Before we get started, this episode includes some swearing, once in English, but some in the German dialect called Franconian.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
He's from this area and he knows this story well. And he says, you see, the people here fought over the lands with the better soil. They fought over how much land they were getting.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So it was just squabbling. Your land is better than my land.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So this is why in the 1500s, the villages came up with a novel system to distribute the land. Elsewhere in Europe, communities were turning communal land into plots people owned individually. Here in the Ossingtho, they came up with their own version of land ownership.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
So the villages created the land lottery. Basically, the Olsing would be divided among the people of the four villages. The farmers would randomly be assigned plots. The good ones, the bad ones. Now, some people would be luckier than others. That happens. So there's another part of the lottery. You only got to keep your land for 10 years.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Today is a day that Friedrich Neuser has been waiting for for the past 10 years. Good morning. How are you doing, Friedrich? Good morning.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
And today, in 2024. It's sunny, a little windy, and people are milling around, mostly dressed in jeans and hiking boots. But there's also a man dressed in lederhosen and a woman in a red velvet dress with puffy sleeves and a crown. Is that the empress? Kunikunde is coming. Kunikunde is coming. When the lottery begins, hundreds of people spill out of the tent and onto a gravel path.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
I guess we should walk a little faster. No, there are a lot of people behind us. They won't start until we all get there? Yeah, absolutely.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Oh, there he is. Hello again. Hello again. We're going to walk plot to plot and watch as they randomly draw winners at each one. In total, the group will walk to about 600 plots. It's a long walk. It's a long walk? It's a long walk, yes. I hope I wore the right shoes. We never walk alone.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
The master of ceremonies stands in the middle of the crowd with a bag that has the names of all the farmers in it. Friedrich has a blank map of the Olsing, ready to be filled in if they call his name. We check out this first plot. How is this land? Is this good or this bad?
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
A kid from the community reaches their hand into the bag, pulls out a slip of paper. The name of the winner trickles through the crowd. Tony! The name they call is Tony. Not Friedrich. Tony gets this plot. There's some celebration as the new landowner makes their way to the center of the crowd and hammers a stake in the ground. And then we start moving to the next plot.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Each plot is a little different. Varying sizes, different soil quality. And that adrenaline Friedrich felt earlier? It's stronger. Because the land at the beginning of the lottery is some of the best, it's fertile, workable. He really wants his name to get called. Oh, here we go. Here's another one. See what happens now. Again, not him.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
This is Friedrich's fourth lottery. When his son was little, he was one of the children who pulled the names out of the bag. Kids love to do it because the farmers whose names they pull tip them. Today, his eight-year-old neighbor Obi is one of those kids getting handfuls of euros.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
After two hours, the lottery is starting to get stressful. Because the Goodfields get doled out in the beginning, Friedrich is missing out. And he's worried they'll run out of the good land.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Friedrich loves a joke and is relentlessly positive. He's this tall, lanky potato farmer in his 60s.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Friedrich says the most important thing is fairness. And Markus says that's why the lottery has stuck around.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
And if any of that were to change, you might lose what makes this so special. They're willing to give up some efficiency for more fairness. But still, people are getting impatient. Like eight-year-old Obi, who is waiting to pull names from the bag.
Planet Money
The great German land lottery
Now, there are only about ten good plots left. If his name isn't called soon, he'll be stuck with Badland. Friedrich, though, is still holding out hope. And then... That's you. That's mine, yeah. Friedrich and his son start hammering in the steak with their name on it. Friedrich has a full smile. This is a good one. Yeah. Yeah. This is your claim? Yes.