Free County
Free county (ndd .: frigrêveschap ) designates both the office and the authority as well as the area of a free count . The free count was enfeoffed by the king or in his name with the free county and exercised there jurisdiction on behalf of his liege lord as chairman of the free courts. A Franche usually involved several court benches (Outdoor chairs), which finally just about free , not a landlord's hearing focused. Originally only judicial districts, free counties or individual free courts often developed into independent rulers .
While the high medieval county, which dates back to Carolingian origins, lost its jurisdiction as a result of the mediatization associated with territorialization , free counties in Westphalia , in particular, were able to retain these and other forms of justice until the 19th century.
Structure and development
Each Westphalian free county had several open-air courts (often under tall trees), known as open or (thing) chairs . The designated free count was enfeoffed by the chairman with the free county. He sat before the court that meets every eighteen weeks. All men in the free judicial district were subject to a charge . As in the time of Charlemagne, the free court also included a college of aldermen. In the Westphalian dioceses of Cologne , Münster , Paderborn and Osnabrück , over 400 free chairs have been counted. Some of them had an eventful, but uninterrupted, millennial history.
The competence of the free courts resulted essentially from the competence of the Carolingian count for the ban cases . The free court was responsible, among other things, for disputes about property ownership - hence also for notarizing transfers of property - and for crimes worthy of death. In doing so, they developed from and alongside other dishes, above all the goose dish .
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the importance of the free or femoral courts reached its peak. Partly this is the fact attributed that in 1371 Emperor Charles IV. The chair gentlemen, free counts and free aldermen enforcement of public peace transferred so loaded in the wake of rioting defendant in Germany before a mostly Westphalian free court and in the absence of the night could be explained.
literature
- Theodor Linder: The Feme, history of the "secret" dishes of Westphalia. 2nd edition., 1896; Reprint 1989.
- Theodor Lindner: The free chairs of the Westphalian Feme. Berlin 1931.
- Albert K. Hömberg : County, Free County, Gografschaft. Munster 1949.
- Heinrich Mitteis: German legal history. 15th edition, Munich 1978.