Office (Saxony)

The offices or bailiwicks , which, with the inclusion or reorganization of older forms of regional organization such as the Supanien or Burgwarde, have been covering the land in the Mark Meissen since the 13th century with an ever closer network, formed the spatial reference point for the collection of sovereign taxes for the Demand for compulsory service , for jurisdiction , police and army service . The official castles were also bases of the roving lordly court.

history

In the course of the 14th century, the organization of offices became the predominant principle in local administration. This can be seen in the fact that new territories were immediately incorporated into an office or new offices were formed from them. The boundaries of the offices were not yet finally fixed at this time. B. occasionally went to smaller districts in larger offices.

The terms Vogt and Amtmann existed side by side for a long time and were used as synonyms, in the 16th century the term Amtmann had finally prevailed. Its tasks consisted of exercising manorial power and jurisdiction over the subjects of the office, calling up and exercising the military contingent, ensuring public security and managing the office's income. He was the representative of the sovereign in his area of ​​office. Only nobles could hold such a position. In addition, there was the bourgeois Schösser from around 1500 , which was responsible for the entire financial management of the office and represented the bailiff when he was absent. As the administration and judiciary became more and more literate in the 16th century, he became the main person in the administration, which he eventually took over. At the end of the 17th century, the term bailiff passed to him. He now also needed an assistant for the finance department, who was initially called the clerk . From the end of the 18th century he was called the office pension administrator or office administrator. The aristocratic bailiff, on the other hand, was subordinate to several offices from the middle of the 16th century, and his responsibility was limited to supervisory functions. He now held the title of governor, but it developed into a dignity without any practical tasks.

In 1547 the territory of Electoral Saxony was divided into circles, namely the Kurkreis , the Leipziger or Osterländischen Kreis, the Meißnische Kreis and the Thuringian Kreis . Between 1570 and 1691 the Vogtland , the Neustädter and the Erzgebirgische Kreis , which branched off from the Meißnische, were added. The aim of this district division was to integrate the areas that were especially gained by the Ernestine Wettins in the 16th century .

A number of offices, cities and knightly vassals belonged to each district . To top supervisor was Kreishauptmann ordered. However, this function also faded to an honorary title, as with the emergence of a differentiated organization of authorities and an increase in written form in the 16th century, the focus of local administration shifted further to the offices.

The font Assen but remained untouched for them, because they were contrary to the Office Sassen any office, but the provincial government immediately assumed. This meant that they did not receive the electoral orders through the bailiff, but directly from the central government. The taxes of the villagers, who were under written manorial estates , were added directly to the district tax collection without the agency of the office. In army campaigns they were not included in the official contingent. The central government dealt with the writers just as directly as with the offices. The state lord gave the residence in writing . To achieve it was the desire of many officials, even when the writing process lost its importance in the course of the 16th century. Those knightly estates that had only received their written status after 1660 were referred to as newly written.

The immediate official villages, on the other hand, were closely connected to the office, which was responsible for them as the sole authority . All peasant property was given to the office as a fief , for which interest and services were to be paid to the office . The higher and inheritance courts belonged to the office, which also took care of the collection of taxes and called the men up for military service. The military service was to be carried out in such a way that a number of villages together had to provide an army cart with the necessary clothing and two wagon servants, which was housed in one of the villages. In addition, a number of armed foot servants corresponding to the size of each village had to be provided. Another part of the army service was the defense system . The Defensioner were a country militia created in 1603 , which was only deployed when there was a threat of war. In 1708 this organization was dissolved because the untrained people had proven to be of little help. The landlords had to do knight service, that is, depending on the size of the estate, they had to provide one or more horses and equipment. This was later replaced by the payment of the so-called knight horse money. The position of the writers had to come into conflict with the striving of the modern state for standardization and the elimination of special interests. This conflict gradually resolved itself through the increased intensity of state administration.

The offices were able to gradually extend their competence as lower organs of the state administration to include the writers located in their district, so that the office finally passed on commands from the central administration to the writers. In the official landlords, the officials now dealt with the residents directly over the heads of the landlords. Where the written form could not be completely eliminated, it was at least weakened.

The importance of the offices for the state administration increased not only because their competence was gradually expanded to include those in writing, but above all because of the expansion of the state territory through the secularization of church property in the course of the Reformation and the purchase of large manors. From these acquired lands new offices were set up in which the sovereign took the place of the landlord. Thus the number of the immediate official villages rose again, which had mainly decreased in the middle of the 16th century after the sovereign had sold many villages for lack of money.

Since the beginning of the 17th century, the Saxon constitution of offices can be regarded as complete with regard to their spatial extension, as the entire state territory was divided into offices. From a factual point of view, however, there were still differences in the dependency of the official and written members. In the immediate official villages, the office was entitled to land lordship, higher and inheritance courts and all sovereign powers, in the written locations it was only the rights of the sovereign and the role of mediator in the central administration and in some cases the higher courts. In principle, the offices remained in this different position until the 19th century .

Overall, the constitution of offices was not a rationally developed administrative organization created by a regulation, but a slowly merged mixture of administrative units of very different sizes and origins. The territories of the former bailiwicks , counties or lordships remained relatively unchanged even within the administration of offices. As a result, there was spatial fragmentation and interlocking as well as constitutional layers in the division of offices. For some places the inheritance courts were in the hands of one office, the higher courts in another.

Hardly anything changed about that until the end of the constitution. In the 16th century the were expanding mining industry also still mining authorities set up. These superimposed the organization of the offices and sometimes also competed with them, as they not only directed the technical side of the mining operation, but also had jurisdiction and administrative powers over all mining production sites.

tasks

The tasks of the offices consisted of handling the judiciary , exercising the police force and collecting income. As a judicial authority, they exercised the supreme jurisdiction of the sovereign in their area of ​​jurisdiction, as long as this function was not assigned to vassals or city ​​councilors . They also had lower jurisdiction over the official villages in which the sovereign was also the landlord . They stood above once, once on a par with the written patrimonial courts .

The exercise of the patrimonial jurisdiction, i.e. the public law jurisdiction over all inmates to which the landlord is entitled, was usually carried out by a court administrator appointed by the landlord with the consent of the central administration. It only extended to the lower jurisdiction, that is the jurisdiction over civil disputes and minor offenses, but the achievement of the higher jurisdiction was the goal of every landlord.

For offices and patrimonial courts, the higher jurisdiction meant that they could conduct formal legal proceedings, but had to turn to the lordly ruling authorities such as the Schöppenstuhl in Leipzig or the Wittenberg Faculty of Law to reach a verdict . When handling the police, the offices were organs for the tasks of public authority and internal administration such as B. Road safety, bridge construction, bank reinforcement, construction concessions and health police.

The income from offices was of great importance for the state. Therefore, the main task of the Office was to properly collect the income consisting of monetary interest, supplies in kind or services. The income of an office is composed of fixed income such as floor, hereditary interest and tithe , of fluctuating income such as escort and customs , court income and loan money , from the sale of natural produce such as grain and wood and from the management of the farms .

The economic structures in the offices did not remain constant, e.g. B. 1558 escort posts and outbuildings were leased. Overall, however, the judiciary was seen as the gentler task. This is shown in the fact that the administration of the official business was always with the judiciary.

The offices were first subordinate to the Chamber College, which had been an independent authority since 1586, and its successor since 1782, the Secret Finance College. The correspondence between the offices and another central authority takes place directly and not via the Chamber College or Finance College. The state government, as the central judicial authority, only had an advisory role in personnel decisions.

In addition to the tasks mentioned, the offices also acted in the form of commissions. Since the central administration could not investigate every process in the country itself, the officials were often called in. In their actual function, however, they could not take action, because that would have violated the position of the people in writing. Therefore, their commission activities are carried out by special mandate from the central administration. Commissions were usually brought into being on the basis of complaints or supplications addressed to the sovereign. The investigation commissions summoned the parties and finally prepared reports for the competent central authority. Years could pass until a decision was made after their resolution, objections by those concerned, renewed negotiations and reports. An abundance of commission files was created at the offices. Often they were sent to the central authorities and are now in their holdings, e.g. B. at the appellate court . The importance of the commissions for the consolidation of the constitution of offices and their extension to include those in writing should not be underestimated, because if the civil servants as personal agents of the central administration, not as trustees of the office, had to decide on those in writing, the difference between the committee and Office activity gradually blurring. This was counteracted by the fact that, as a rule, it was not the staff of the office in which the process took place, but those of a neighboring office that were chosen for commissions. Usually commissions consisted of a noble vassal and a civil official, usually the bailiff himself.

The district offices received orders with regard to the written records particularly frequently. The Meißen district office existed for the Meißnische Kreis, the Leipzig district office for the Leipzig district, the Freiberg and Schwarzenberg district offices for the Erzgebirge district and the Plauen district office for the Vogtland district .

The 18th century was a period when offices were leased. The aim was to increase the income from the offices, with the tenants trying for their part to obtain the income and thus their profit at the expense of the subordinates. In 1769 64 of the 94 offices were leased. The offices of Dresden and Leipzig were always excluded from leases.

Only qualified administrators were considered as tenants. It was easier for the rent chamber to settle accounts with the tenant using a single lease sum than with the bailiff about the complicated sum of payments in kind and cash. Jurisdiction retained the state mostly before, so that in addition to many tenants still a tenured court administrator (Temporary Administrator) stood. Towards the end of the 18th century, the leases, which had proven to be disadvantageous overall, were given up again.

In 1764 the competences of the district and official governors were renewed and expanded. When, as a result of the Seven Years' War, a reorganization of the state system with stricter supervision of the local authorities was deemed necessary, the district and official captains were entrusted with general supervision of the tax, judicial, police, commercial and manufacturing system the offices often leased at the time, which u. a. included the control of the civil servants' fulfillment of duties and the proper filing and accounting as well as the supervision of the judiciary and taxation. The writers were only indirectly subordinate to them. In order to become active here, a special mandate from the central authorities was required again.

The demarcation of the districts remained unchanged, but that of the district governor's districts changed in order to adapt to the convenience of the governors who performed their duties from their estates. The Amtshauptmann was always the respective District Chief assumed. Basically you can say that the circle and Office Bezirkshauptmannschaften supervision , but no issuing authorities were.

In the middle of the 18th century, the major offices each had a bailiff and an administrator, in the smaller offices the clerk stood next to the bailiff. With the greater differentiation of the administration in judicial and financial matters, from around 1780 the bailiff became the judicial officer, and the rent administrator became the rent official. These designations were retained until the end of the constitution of offices in 1856. The division into justice and rent offices was initially only carried out in the form of subject areas. They did not yet exist as independent, separate authorities.

Offices in the Kingdom of Saxony

In 1815, Saxony lost over half of its territory through the Peace of Vienna . It had to cover the Neustädter and Thuringian districts, the spa district around Wittenberg, the entire Lower Lusatia and the north-eastern part of Upper Lusatia as well as parts of the Leipzig and Meißnian district v. a. ceded to Prussia and, to a lesser extent, to Sachsen-Weimar . The remaining parts of the Leipzig and Meißnian districts and Upper Lusatia, as well as the Vogtland and Erzgebirge districts, remained. Their administration initially continued to exist.

In Saxony, a constitution came into force in 1831, introducing a constitutional monarchy . This also resulted in a comprehensive administrative reform. Line ministries were set up and the state government and all other old central authorities were dissolved in accordance with the principle of the separation of administration and justice .

Establishment of district directorates

Her successors were partly the State Judicial College under the Ministry of Justice and partly the State Directorate under the Ministry of the Interior . These institutions were only intended as a temporary measure pending the establishment of regional authorities. They were dissolved after the four district directorates and the four appellate courts of Dresden, Leipzig, Bautzen and Zwickau were established in 1835.

The district directorates had become ordinary state authorities with a district director, some government councilors and chancellery staff as well as a fixed area of ​​responsibility limited to internal administration.

The governors retained their duties as before. At the local level, the judicial offices were completely separated from the tax offices in 1831. The judicial offices were subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, while the pension offices remained in the portfolio of the Ministry of Finance. Otherwise, the local authorities initially continued to exist unchanged. After the district directorates were established, small corrections were made to the division of offices in 1836, whereby v. a. individual locations were assigned to other offices.

Change of patrimonial jurisdiction

In the following years it became clear that the old administration of offices was no longer able to cope with the increase in tasks. This resulted, on the one hand, from the general increase in government responsibilities due to population growth and industrialization. On the other hand, in 1855 patrimonial jurisdiction fell to the state, which thus became the sole owner of the judiciary. Some of it could already be assigned voluntarily from August 1, 1833. In order to be able to cope with the new tasks in the field of jurisdiction, the state initially set up the so-called royal courts as new judicial offices in addition to the judicial offices, which took over the jurisdiction ceded by cities and patrimonial courts and sometimes also partial jurisdictions of the judicial offices. Even the inexpedient, historically grown area delimitation did not meet the new needs of the local administration.

End of the constitution of offices

In 1856 the judicial offices and royal courts were dissolved, from now on 123 judicial offices formed according to rational criteria formed the lower level of internal administration and justice. That meant the end of the constitution of offices. The rent offices were dissolved in 1865. The separation of administration and justice at the local level was not realized until 1873 with the formation of the administrative authorities. The court offices continued to exist as the first instance of the administration of justice and were converted into local courts in 1879 on the basis of the Courts Constitution Act for the German Empire.

literature

• Karlheinz Blaschke: To the authority of the local administration in Saxony. In: Archivist and Historian. Berlin 1956.
• Karlheinz Blaschke: he expansion of the state in Saxony and the expansion of its spatial administrative districts. In: sheets for German national history. Volume 91, 1954.
• Karlheinz Blaschke: Saxon administrative history. Berlin 1958 (= teaching letters for distance learning from technical schools for archivists. Administrative history of the state. Teaching letter 3).
• Karlheinz Blaschke: Administrative history for city and district archivists in the area of ​​the former state of Saxony. Dresden 1962.
• Karlheinz Blaschke: Kursächsischer Ämteratlas 1790. Dresden 1964-1967.
• Leo Bönhoff: The oldest offices of the Mark Meissen. In: New archive for Saxon history and antiquity. Volume 38, 1917, pp. 17-46.
• Conrad Bornhak: The development of the Saxon official constitution in comparison with the Brandenburg district constitution. In: Prussian year books. Volume 56, 1885, Issue 2, pp. 126-140.
• Reiner Groß: Court books and protocols of the Saxon local authorities until 1856 in the Saxon State Main Archive Dresden. In: Archive messages. Volume 13, 1963, pp. 186-190.
• Werner Heubel: The development of the internal state administration in the Saxon hereditary lands from 929 to the constitution of 1831. Sebnitz 1927.
• Thomas Klein (Hrsg.): Outline of the German administrative history 1815-1945. Volume 14: Saxony. Marburg / Lahn 1982.
• Rudolf Kötzschke: The administrative reform in the electoral state of Saxony under Elector Moritz 1547/48. In: Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology. New episode Volume 34, 1940.
• Friedrich Lütge: The Central German rulership. Jena 1934.
• Werner Ohnsorge: The administrative reform under Christian I. A contribution to the history of central authority formation in Saxony. In: New archive for Saxon history. Volume 63, 1942.
• Curt von Raab: The Plauen office in the beginning of the 16th century and the hereditary book from 1506. Plauen 1902.
• Curt von Raab: The office of Pausa until it was acquired by Elector August von Sachsen in 1569 and the inheritance book from 1506 (= supplement to the communications of the Altertumsverein zu Plauen 16 [1903/04]), Plauen 1903.
• Uwe Schirmer: Basics, tasks and problems of a state education and state financial history in Saxony. From the late Middle Ages to the Augustan period. In: New archive for Saxon history. Volume 67, 1996, pp. 31-70.
• August Schumann: Complete State, Post and Newspaper Lexicon of Saxony. Volumes 2 and 10, Zwickau 1815 and 1823.
• Georg Carl Treitschke and Gustav Wilhelm Schubert: Outline of the judicial constitution in the Kingdom of Saxony and the Royal Saxon Upper Lusatia. Leipzig 1829.

Web links

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Individual evidence

1. ↑ SächsHStA, 10036 Chamber College / Secret Finance College, Loc. 34136, establishment of tabular excerpts from all offices, chamber estates and farms along with their income (1768) and the Saxon court and state calendar for the year 1775
2. ↑ Law and Ordinance Gazette for the Kingdom of Saxony (GVOBL Saxony): "Ordinance, the establishment of the ministerial departments and the related provisional provisions concerning" dated November 7, 1831
3. ↑ GVOBl Saxony: "Regulation for establishment of district Directionen" from April 6, 1835
4. ↑ GVOBL Saxony: "Ordinance on the change in the district division" from 28 May and 9 September 1836