He was the first to conceive and establish the cooperative organization of credit and agricultural cooperatives which, together with those instituted by H. Schulze-Delitzsch for workers and small urban tradesmen, have become increasingly successful also in Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. After several years in a military career, R. entered public administration, performing for about 20 years the functions of mayor in several small towns. This public office brought R. into direct contact with the populations, especially rural ones, whose needs he came to know, which had become particularly difficult following the famine of 1846-47. To overcome these dire conditions of the farmers, aggravated also by the misuse of credit and usury, R. conceived and founded, contributing with his own resources, the first agricultural credit mutual fund at Meyerbusch and Heddersdorf in 1846-47, and later in other centers, relief societies and credit institutions that took on the character of cooperatives. R., in fact, intended, through these organizations, to strengthen social relations among the inhabitants of various rural centers, initially, in order to renew, subsequently, the moral conditions of the people themselves. Therefore, R. designed these institutions so that the activity of each was confined to a limited territorial area, so that their members could know each other well, a condition which was fundamental for the security of credit; moreover, he wished to exclude any speculation and instead emphasize mutuality. R.'s contribution to this cooperative movement was not only material but primarily intellectual, and is embodied in the publication from 1878 of a periodical: *Landwirtschaftliches Genossenschaftsblatt* and in the work *Die Darlehensvereine* (7th ed., Neuwied 1889).
RAIFFAISEN, FRIEDRICH WILHELM
