Office purchase

Buying an office is the acquisition of an office and the rights and income associated with it through purchase or other financial donations.

History of origin

Acquiring an office through purchase was not uncommon in individual European countries from the 16th century to the beginning of the 19th century. As a derogatory description, the term " Ämterschacherei " established itself .

The background to this institution was that there was a lack of a functioning state administrative organization as well as a professional civil service that was able to perform administrative tasks. In the absence of such an organization, for example, the state sold the right to collect taxes in a certain area. The same applied to officer patents .

If it is a question of the purchase of an ecclesiastical office or of ecclesiastical benefices , one speaks of simony .

See also

• Paulette (tax)
• Patronage , office patronage
• nepotism
• corruption

literature

• Detlef Liebs : Buying offices and patronage in late antiquity. Propaganda and practical necessity with Julian the Apostate , magazine of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History: Romance Department, Volume 95, Issue 1 (Aug. 1978), pp. 158-186
• Fritz Friedrich : The purchase of offices in pre-revolutionary France . In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte , Vol. 32 (1944), pp. 254-277, ISSN  0003-9233
• Klaus Malettke (Ed.): Offices can be bought. Aspects of social mobility in a European comparison (17th and 18th centuries) . Colloquium-Verlag, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-7678-0511-1
• Ilja Mieck (Ed.): Official trade in the late Middle Ages and in the 16th century . Colloquium-Verlag, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7678-0617-7

Web links

• Clemens Steinwender: Corruption, buying offices and patronage in Florence. Informal politics in the Italian city-state and Tuscany historia scribere, 07 (2015), pp. 279–293
• Don Alphonso: Modernism and Absolutism 3: Der Ämterkauf FAZ , June 26, 2010
• Party donations: Candidates for their office at the CDU Bottrop also pay WAZ , May 17, 2011

Individual evidence

1. ^ Peter Steiner: purchase of offices. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . June 11, 2015 , accessed July 2, 2019 .
2. ↑ Simonie ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Peter CA Schels, Small Encyclopedia of the German Middle Ages