Fahnlehen

Representation in the Richental Chronicle (around 1464): King Sigismund enfeoffs the Elector Ludwig III. at the Council of Constance with the Electoral Palatinate , symbolized by the flag.

The Fahnlehen , also Fahnenlehen ( Latin: vexillaria feuda ), was a fiefdom at the time of the Holy Roman Empire , which was awarded directly by the emperor to secular princes by means of a flag as a military standard and symbol of the exile . As a result of the immediacy, these extremely free people had the right to stand politically only before the emperor in the prince's court, not before the imperial regional courts or the court judge .

The Fahnlehn was also regularly connected with the jurisdiction, the court ban . Fiefs that were given to spiritual princes were the so-called scepter fiefs .

The last to be enfeoffed in this way was previously Elector Moritz von Sachsen . The fact is, however, that Elector August was enfeoffed with 13 flags in a ceremonial act in Augsburg in 1566 .

An imitation of this custom was the enfeoffment of the Dukes of Prussia by the King of Poland between 1525 and 1660. The last such act was the enfeoffment of the Grand Elector with the Duchy of Prussia, which he personally obtained in Warsaw in 1641 .

In fact, with the introduction of standing armies in the 15th century, flag leaning had lost its importance.

Another type of symbolic handover took place with the helmet. Knight fiefs were awarded with the shield and therefore called shield fiefs . The custom of enfeoffment with the flag goes back a long way. Gregory of Tours tells that King Guntchramm gave King Childebert his entire kingdom by means of a spear . The spear and flag are identical, however, as the knights used to wear their flag tied to the spear. At the court of the Hohenstaufen it was the custom that kingdoms were bestowed with the sword and provinces with the flag. In 1152, Emperor Friedrich I enfeoffed King Peter of Denmark under the symbol of a sword. Long before the Sachsenspiegel , all religious prince fiefdoms were awarded with the scepter and all secular prince fiefdoms with the flag. In the meantime, however, in 1180 the Archbishop of Cologne was granted ducal power in Westphalia and Engern with the imperial flag. In 1258 Duke Friedrich von Lorraine was enfeoffed with five flags by the opposing king Alfons . In later times it became customary for the feudal flags to be adorned with the coats of arms of the landscapes to be awarded; in addition, the princes received a red flag because of the ban on blood .

literature

• Siegfried Rietschel : On the doctrine of the Fahnlehn , in: HZ 107, 1911, page 353.
• Karl-Friedrich Krieger : The feudal sovereignty of the German kings in the late Middle Ages , Scientia-Verlag, Aalen 1979, ISBN 3-511-02843-4 , page 36-42.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fahnenlehn Brockhaus' Kleines Konversations-Lexikon, fifth edition, volume 1. Leipzig 1911., p. 553. zeno.org, accessed on June 19, 2020.
2. ^ Johann Friedrich von Schulte : Textbook of the German history of the empire and legal history, 6th revised edition, Stuttgart 1892, p. 212, 273.
3. ↑ Fahnenlehn Pierer's Universal Lexikon, Volume 6. Altenburg 1858, p. 73. zeno.org, accessed on June 19, 2020.
4. ^ Lehnwesen Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 12. Leipzig 1908, pp. 335–338. zeno.org, accessed June 19, 2020.

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

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