Arable citizen

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Agricultural town Joachimsthal

Those citizens of a town or residents of a market town were referred to as arable citizens , who operated agriculture as their main occupation and received the major part of their income from it.

City farmers

Since the Middle Ages, agricultural citizens represented a special group within the urban social structure . A agricultural citizen could not be assigned to any of the typical urban employment classes. He was a farmer with citizen status and cultivated his lands within the urban Feldmark , which resulted in sufficiently large economic units through the additional leasing of agricultural land for other citizens . There were arable citizens, in other words “city farmers”, in both larger and smaller cities. More recent statistical and socio-historical studies have led to the realization that the number of arable citizens in most European cities was significantly behind other, typically urban branches of activity and that urban agriculture played a subordinate role, which was mainly limited to the self-sufficiency of cities and their residents.

An arable citizen was not considered to be someone who was a citizen of a city and who farmed or had farmed his lands within the Stadtfeldmark merely as a sideline or for self-sufficiency. The combination of a main occupation in the craft, trade or trade and secondary agricultural activity remained formative for the life of the people in the cities for centuries. Arable citizens were also not considered to be those who lived as residents or residents in a city without having citizenship , even if their main livelihood was in agriculture.

Traditionally, farmers began to unite in trade-like guilds or offices, which often left traces in the history of the city as building guilds , building trades or construction teams at the latest in the 18th century . In some cases, these associations organized and financed joint projects in the construction of roads and paths, but above all they coordinated the use of fields and pastures as well as joint livestock farming. Many cities also had their own building yards that cultivated the urban lands.

Agricultural bourgeoisie

Farmhouse in Stralsund Zoo
Farm house in Calvörde
Farmhouse in Gerolzhofen

Historic building structures that had large gate entrances and were suitable for an agricultural operation are often referred to as arable bourgeois houses . The houses were often on the outskirts of the cities near the city ​​gates so that the farm wagons did not obstruct general traffic. The more recent house research shows, however, that such externals are not reliable criteria that distinguish arable bourgeois houses from other residential buildings. According to the more recent reading, the typical arable bourgeois house never existed.

Agricultural town

An arable town is a town whose economic basis is mainly agriculture and which has no central inner-city administration. In contrast, typical European cities, especially craft - Commercial companies and trade on. The evidence of arable citizens in a town or the existence of buildings that served the agricultural business of the urban farmers does not necessarily characterize a town as an arable town. Only when the number of citizens (not the inhabitants) who are full-time farming predominate in a city, one speaks of an arable city. As recent studies have shown, many places that were previously regarded as typical arable towns, such as Blomberg , Rietberg and Wiedenbrück , cannot be designated as such. They were characterized by a much more differentiated social structure and agriculture only played a subordinate role.

Even “ Scheunenviertel ” along the arterial roads at the gates of a city are not a reliable reference point for classifying the place as an agricultural town. Rather, they are visible evidence of the more stringent fire protection regulations from the middle of the 18th century, which led to the relocation of the citizens' barns from the residential areas of the cities in front of the gates.

Since the end of the 18th century there has been a fundamental reorganization of the urban agrarian constitution in many cities. In contemporary sources referred to as common division or separation , the agricultural land on urban land was measured, rearranged and often returned to the ownership of the citizens entitled to a share by lot. This reorganization went hand in hand with the abolition of the common land (common property). In some places, as a result of this reorganization, agricultural estate complexes formed on urban areas.

In all the old towns of Mecklenburg , until well into the 19th century, every single house plot always included a certain, inalienable portion of the agricultural land of the city field mark as pertinence, which the citizens could either cultivate themselves or lease to third parties. Nevertheless, the old Mecklenburg land law did not have any rural population in the cities. Citizens of a city could only become someone who was of so-called honest descent and worked as a trader, trader or craftsman, owned a house in the city concerned and took the oath of citizenship. The cultivation of the land in urban areas by the citizens in Mecklenburg was usually part of the job. For lower social classes, urban agriculture (mostly daily wages) offered opportunities to earn food. There were only a few classic arable citizens with their own tension, who operated full-time farming in Mecklenburg cities. Not a single one of the small Mecklenburg rural towns met the criterion of being an arable town , although agricultural activity - often for self-sufficiency - was part of everyday life for the townspeople for centuries.

literature

  • Werner Bockholt: Agricultural towns in Westphalia. A contribution to the historical urban geography. Schnell, Warendorf 1987, ISBN 3-87716-953-8 (also: Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 1987).
  • Heinrich Stiewe: House building and social structure in a small town in Low Germany. Blomberg between 1450 and 1870 (= writings of the Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum Detmold - Landesmuseum für Volkskunde. Vol. 13). Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum, Detmold 1996, ISBN 3-926160-23-3 (also: Münster, Universität, Dissertation, 1993).
  • Thomas Moritz: "Problems on the timeline". Comments on dating and naming issues in the areas of building history, house research and archeology in southern Lower Saxony. In: Hans-Heinrich Hillegeist (Hrsg.): Heimat- und Regionalforschung in Südniedersachsen. Tasks - Results - Perspectives (= series of publications of the AG for South Lower Saxony Homeland Research eV Vol. 18). Mecke, Duderstadt 2006, ISBN 3-936617-63-5 , pp. 102–122, here: “Myth of Akerbürgerhaus”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Gebhard: Farmhouses in Bavaria . Hugendubel, Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3-89631-369-0 , pp. 379 .
  2. ↑ Building trade, construction team. (No longer available online.) In: Neues historical Lexikon. Haffverlag, archived from the original on February 14, 2009 ; Retrieved November 14, 2009 .