Free

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Free refers to the members of a class who, in contrast, e.g. B. to slaves or serfs , about freedom of movement, legal capacity and z. T. have political participation. In the Roman Empire they were called līberi , with the Saxons Frilinge .

Antiquity

In the history of Athens, after the abolition of the monarchy, the oligarchy of the noble families first emerged. Finally, various structural reforms led to the development of classical Attic democracy. Even in the epoch of its completion, Attic democracy only offered the free (male) part of the population the right to have a say in politics.

Roman citizenship was a prerequisite for the active and passive right to vote for free men in popular assemblies.

middle Ages

In the early Middle Ages , the division into free and unfree or minor free was the central conception of social structure. The pauper , that is, the "poor" free man whose freedom is threatened , appeared as an intermediate layer , in contrast to the noble free, the potentes . In the High Middle Ages , social change and the legal harmonization of suitors and non-freemen increasingly lost its importance and was replaced by other interpretative schemes, including the three-tier system with clergy , nobility and peasants or citizens - including oratores , bellatores and laboratores - asserted. According to medieval ideas, freelancers alone had full legal capacity, had a share in the army and had the right and duty to participate in court. Having one's own house and yard is just as important. It is unclear what significance and what extent the free population had in the early Middle Ages, because especially non-aristocratic free people usually only come into the light of the sources when they lose their freedom. It must be assumed, however, that the scope and importance of the class of the free was far overestimated in early research influenced by Romanticism . Already in the Migration Period and in the early Middle Ages, the "aristocracy of the kings [...] was a determining factor of political, social and economic life in the emerging Germanic empires."

Even in pre-Carolingian times, beginning with the formation of the Germanic empires, the importance of the category of the free began to wane. Depressed by the army succession and ongoing military threats, many free, often forced, went into the protection of noble and spiritual landlords. (Whereby, because of the more favorable conditions - often only a wax interest was charged - ecclesiastical landlords were preferred.) Politically the weight of the nobility, the church and royalty grew. People's assemblies had not been called since Clovis I. In the army contingent, which partly took over the functions of the people's assembly, in administration and jurisdiction, the nobility growing together from Germanic nobility and Romanesque land nobility increasingly dominated; especially after the military constitution was changed under Charlemagne in 807 so that only farmers who had more than three hooves had to provide a man for the army on three hooves. Free farmers began to gradually withdraw from the army. At the same time, the social and legal positions of free and non-free sections of the population came closer together. Ultimately, only to the east of the Rhine , non-aristocratic freemen held to a noteworthy extent, while west of the Rhine, where the villication constitution came into full development, the terms liber and nobilis were soon used without distinction.

With the disappearance of the original class of the free, a new group of suitors gained importance with the consolidation of the kingship. The so-called king-free were distinguished precisely by the fact that they were the king's subjects. Settled in the border areas of the Frankish Empire and on cleared land, they enjoyed extensive privileges. The servants or ministerials of great landlords were able to achieve a similar, limited free position . In the High Middle Ages, the bourgeoisie of the cities broke out of the personal rulership structures of the medieval state in a completely different way, by constituting itself as a community ( coniuratio, unity, guild ). This made the individual free, even if the community as a whole continued to be subject to one master. In this sense, the legal rule also applied: " City air makes you free ". Village cooperatives of dependent peasants also succeeded, albeit rarely completely, in triggering sovereign rights. So partly free farming communities emerged, z. B. the Swiss rural communities or the Dithmarsch peasant republic .

In today's Switzerland , too, some village cooperatives from the free, z. B. the County of Laax or the Free of Laax , permanently free from aristocracy. Such ( imperial direct ) counties were not headed by a count, but consisted of cooperatives organized in hundreds . In the French-speaking area of ​​Switzerland, places where hundreds of free farmers existed can be recognized by field names such as Centenair (from the Latin centum = "hundred"). The cooperatives were usually allied with other hundreds and then formed so-called confederations. The reasons why these unions of free peasants were able to last through the entire Middle Ages are, in addition to their defensiveness and unity, also in the support of the emperor, who was interested in securing certain Alpine passes and not letting them fall into the hands of aristocratic families .

In the Scandinavian countries, the free remained the largest and most important group of the population throughout the Middle Ages. In France , too , the passed farmers were numerically more important than in Central Europe .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker ; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152, here p. 138.
  2. ^ Oexle, Otto Gerhard: The functional tripartite division as an interpretation scheme of social reality in the corporate society of the Middle Ages. In: Schulze, Winfried (Hrsg.): Corporate society and social mobility. Munich 1988, p. 33.
  3. ^ Fleckenstein, Josef: Foundations and beginning of German history. (German history 1). Göttingen 1988, pp. 40 and 50.
  4. ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152, here p. 135.
  5. ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152, here p. 140.
  6. ^ Fleckenstein, Josef: Foundations and beginning of German history. (German history 1). Göttingen 1988, p. 40.
  7. ^ Fleckenstein, Josef: Foundations and beginning of German history. (German history 1). Göttingen 1988, p. 157.
  8. ^ Fleckenstein, Josef: Foundations and beginning of German history. (German history 1). Göttingen 1988, p. 52f.
  9. ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152, here p. 141.
  10. ^ Fleckenstein, Josef: Foundations and beginning of German history. (German history 1). Göttingen 1988, p. 53f.
  11. ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152, here p. 139.

swell

  • Otto P. Clavadetscher: The formation of power in Raetia . In: The Alps in European history in the Middle Ages . Reichenau lectures 1961–1962. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen et al. 1965, pp. 141–158 ( lectures and research 10, ISSN  0452-490X ).
  • Josef Fleckenstein : Foundations and beginning of German history . 3rd revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-525-33548-2 ( German history 1), ( Kleine Vandenhoeck series 1397).
  • Winfried Schulze (ed.): Corporate society and social mobility . Oldenbourg, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-486-54351-2 ( writings of the Historisches Kolleg Colloquia 12).