The right wing early on was Prussian. As part of that Prussian force were the Armed Forces of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin pretty much all of these Mecklenburg soldiers were included. The 34th infantry brigade that was the spearhead of the northernmost part of the attack on Liège originally consisted of the 89th and 90th infantry regiments from Mecklenburg. Two of the cavalry regiments in the fourth cavalry division were the 17th and 18th Dragoons from Mecklenburg. The officer corps of these organizations represented most of the elites from this Grand Duchy.
Mecklenburg was the closest thing to medieval serfdom in Germany. Mecklenburg was so backward that Bismarck once said, “If one day the world will be destroyed, I’ll move to Mecklenburg because there everything happens at least a hundred years later.” Serfdom was eliminated in Mecklenburg in 1820. However, it was replaced by a citizenship system that was very similar. Under the old feudal system, landowners were responsible for the workers when they became old or disabled. Under the new system, landowners were only responsible to those workers who had been granted a “right of establishment” by the landowner. As a result, landowners kept few permanent workers, and granted the right of establishment to few. There was no parliament.
It was not a right of all residents of Mecklenburg, but rather a privilege granted by the landowner. A side result of this system was that residents were not citizens of Mecklenburg as much as they were citizens of the city or village in which they obtained their right of establishment. Residents who did not have the right of establishment could not get married, start a permanent home, or have children. The ruling class refused to grant the right of establishment to a large part of the population, who were temporary laborers for their entire lives. They were given only a limited right to residence, only for as long as they had work. As a result, it was fair to say that many Mecklenburgers were homeless inside their own country.
The byproduct was that Mecklenburg had the third highest emigration rate in Europe. 261,000 Mecklenburgers left their home country (the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz) between 1820 and 1890. Without the right of establishment, the lower classes did not have any prospects for the future in Mecklenburg.
The Mecklenburg troops suffered a disproportionally high number of casualties in the first two weeks of the war. With so many dead buried in mass graves, families in Germany cried out for some sort of settlement and closure. The regiments were very much tied to cities back in the homeland, and some regiments had suffered enormously. On 12 August 1915, a celebration and battle commemoration of Halen was held on the battlefield. Forty relatives from Germany attended, carried there on a special train. The governor general of occupied Belgium, Gen.Obst. Freiherr von Bissing, attended and offered personal condolences to all the families. The military governor of the province of Limburg, Gen.Maj Keim, made a speech. Keim, in his address, lauded the participation of the German cavalry. “Today, one year ago in this region, German troops fought superior enemy forces under unfavorable circumstances. Though not granted to be victorious that day, they were then able to prepare the future successful breakthrough.”