Inheritance
As inheritance (also inheritance , inheritance contract or hereditary fraternization , Latin pactum confraternitatis ) are agreements between high nobility or princes in which the two contracting parties mutually appoint themselves and their descendants as heirs, should the other family die out before their own. The contingent right acquired in this way is also referred to as an entitlement . Often heirs were closed in connection with dynastic weddings.
With the conclusion of a contract of inheritance, the chances of a princely house to expand its territory without having to spend on their own increased. At the same time, this prevented a principality from falling back to the king or emperor as a reverted fief after its dynasty died out , who could then reassign it at his own discretion.
Legacies became common practice in the high Middle Ages, when the fiefdom character of the developing principalities had largely been pushed back and the princes were able to bequeath their territories to their descendants with almost no restrictions.
Like dynastic weddings, legacies served to bind the two contracting parties together politically. Ultimately, an inheritance was almost always a kind of bet on the future, as one could only hope that the contract partner's family would die out sooner than one's own. It is not uncommon for the entitlement acquired through an inheritance to be offset by other inheritance rights, which then often led to wars of succession when the inheritance occurred.
Since the succession changed by the inheritance could drastically change the fate of the affected territories, the estates tried to influence such contracts. As a result, the inheritance contracts actually under private law often took on the character of state contracts.
In a broader sense, inheritance was also used to denote a contract that was intended to bind not only the persons who concluded the contract, but also their successors and heirs. See unification and inheritance (Switzerland)
Well-known hereditary brotherhoods and inheritance contracts
- 1373: Hereditary brotherhood between Landgrave Heinrich II of Hesse and Friedrich III. the Strict , Landgrave of Thuringia and Margrave of Meissen after the Star Wars , renewed in 1431. 1457 expanded through the accession of Brandenburg; Renewed in 1587 and 1614.
- 1496: Hereditary brotherhood of the Dukes of Jülich and Berg with the Dukes of Kleve; due to this, Johann III inherited . von Kleve 1511, after the death of Wilhelm von Jülich and Berg his countries.
- 1554: Wilhelm IV. Count von Henneberg-Schleusingen concluded a comprehensive inheritance with the Ernestine Wettins in view of the childlessness of his sons . The succession occurred in 1582.
literature
- Johann Jacob Moser: German constitutional law. 17th part. Leipzig / Ebersdorff 1745. pp. 9–169.
- Mario Müller, Karl-Heinz Spieß , Uwe Tresp (eds.): Legacies and hereditary fraternities in the late Middle Ages and early modern times. Cross-generational contracts and strategies in a European comparison (= studies on Brandenburg and comparative national history. Volume 17). Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86732-190-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Union of heirs and hereditary brotherhood between Saxony, Brandenburg and Hesse, in 1457. In: Carl Peter Lepsius: Small writings: Contributions to the Thuringian-Saxon history and German art and antiquity. First volume. Creutz, Magdeburg, 1854, p. 158
- ^ Friedrich Wilhelm von Rohrscheidt (ed.): Prussia`s state contracts. F. Schneider & Comp., Berlin, 1852, pp. 382-384