Free master
Freimeister is a term used from the Middle Ages to the 18th century for a master who was not subject to any guild , guild or colliery .
The Freimeisterei was an exception mostly for painters , artists or sculptors so that they could sell their products legally. The city council was able to decide , independently of the guild leaders , who often sat on the city councils, whether special permits were issued to citizens who were able to provide special services or products.
In principle, the guilds were against the free masters, as they saw them as unwelcome competition. Free masters enjoyed a good reputation among the nobility and the church and mostly trained themselves in an autodidactic way or received training from other free masters. Johannes Gutenberg , Lucas Achtschellinck and Cornelis de Vos were well-known free masters.
The free masters lacked individual guild members' rights, such as keeping apprentices.
You can read about the acceptance of craftsmen in the medieval guilds in a book on the history of the city constitution from 1870:
"Made z. B. a guild unreasonable difficulties, the council used to order the admission. And if the guilds did not want to obey the orders of the authorities, or even stopped their trades, the councils used to appoint so-called free masters, freelance bakers, free butchers etc. in addition to the guilds, or even to suspend the guilds themselves until they obeyed again, e.g. . B. in Lübeck. "
Web links
- Guild in the Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon
Individual evidence
- ^ Georg Ludwig von Maurer: History of the city constitution in Germany. 2nd volume, Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, Erlangen 1870, p. 457 ( limited preview in the Google book search), with reference to Carl Friedrich Wehrmann: The older Lübeckische Zunftrolle. 1st ed., Verlag Friedrich Aschenfeldt, Lübeck 1864, pp. 63–76, 85 ( limited preview in Google book search).