Well this has been an understudied portion of the war, but one study I'm familiar with, Vejas Liulevicius's War Land on the Eastern Front argues essentially that the Germans were attempting to import order and culture to the East. Ludendorff and his subordinates erected a mini-empire in the territory of Ober Ost, the present day Baltic States, in which Germans would effectively develop the local land, through German order, and improve the local culture, by imposing German culture.

It's important to note that this is not the same thing that the Nazis would later do. It's similar in many ways, but the major difference is that the Germans during WWI were acting in paternalistic ways. Yes, they thought the local inhabitants to be backwards and needing to be brought up to their (i.e. German) level, but they thought this was something that would be good for all involved. The Nazis, of course, didn't think it was a worthy (or even possible) cause, and instead went for enslavement and/or extermination. Sorry I cannot give a more in-depth answer. It's been years since I read the book. But I can highly recommend it.