Road duty
Wegzoll (including tolls or toll ) was a delivery to the respective landlords travelers and merchants , so that this group of people the roads and waterways was allowed to use the land. Wegzoll, also enforced through the compulsory road , was particularly widespread in the Middle Ages and was an important source of income in addition to payments from stacking rights . Today the related term toll is more common.
history
Road tolls usually had to be paid at strategic locations such as bridges or city gates . In Europe , the road toll goes back to Germanic tribes who demanded taxes from travelers if they wanted to cross mountain passages. Road tolls had to be paid since the Middle Ages, especially in the Holy Roman Empire . For this purpose, a passage system developed: There were several customs offices on a route where low taxes were levied. Examples were the Ochsenweg in Schleswig-Holstein with the customs posts on the Königsau and in Rendsburg , Neumünster , Bramstedt and Ulzburg as well as the Gabler Strasse with the Karlsfried Castle as the customs post. Another form of road toll was the line fee, which had to be paid when entering the city of Vienna from the beginning of the 18th century.
A special form of the road toll was the pavement tariff , which had to be paid for the first paving and the subsequent maintenance. In Lünen there was the Siebenpfennigsknapp on a street hill when passing .
There were no binding regulations when levying the road toll, which is why it was often arbitrary. The transition from customs to robbery was gradual. Although the tariffs were the rulers to, but of them to the customs castles used ministerials often decided independently of the amount and the tax withheld from them pay .
Ship duty
Another form of the road toll was the ship's toll, which was levied for the use of a waterway. Outside the cities, there were also special systems as customs stations, the customs castles : Loevestein Castle , for example, was built in the Netherlands at a strategic point where two rivers met. Here, ships and boats had to pay a ship duty to continue using the river.
The Kingdom of Denmark was for the enforcement of the Sound tax the Kronborg Castle built.
In a document dated March 17, 1130 relating to the castle complex in Cochem , which Count Palatine Wilhelm von Ballenstedt had issued, a customary shipping tariff on the Moselle is mentioned. Pfalzgrafenstein Castle near Kaub , located in the Rhine , was used to collect a ship's duty. Another well-known customs post on the Rhine was the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth since 1174 .
In Greek mythology, the ferryman Charon collected a ship's tariff, the obolus, from the dead when he was crossing the Acheron (also Lethe or Styx ) . Then they came into the realm of Hades .
See also
- Rhine toll
- Truck toll in Germany
- Truck toll in Austria
- Heavy vehicle tax (Switzerland)
- Elsflether Weserzoll
- Pillage
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Thomas Kühtreiber : Street and Castle. Notes on a complex relationship , p. 286ff. In: Kornelia Holzner-Tobisch, Thomas Kühtreiber, Gertrud Blaschitz (eds.): The complexity of the street. Continuity and change in the Middle Ages and early modern times , publications by the Institute for Reality Studies of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times 22, Vienna 2012, pp. 263–301.
- ↑ Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt, Ortwin Pelc (Ed.): The new Schleswig-Holstein Lexicon. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2006, Lemma Zoll.
- ↑ Timothy Reuter , The Uncertainty on the Roads in the European Early and High Middle Ages: Perpetrators, Victims and Their Medieval and Modern Viewers . In: Carriers and instruments of peace in the high and late Middle Ages , Sigmaringen 1996.