Freimarkt
The term Freimarkt (or Frey-Markt ) originally referred to a privilege, mostly granted by the church or city magistrate in the Middle Ages , to foreign merchants to sell goods on a certain date in a municipality or city . (The word feil comes from Old High German and means can be bought .)
The earliest documents about this date from the beginning of the 10th century and initially limited this right to one date per year. Only very late - in the 17th and especially the 18th century - was this right gradually extended to include further dates due to the growing power of bourgeois manufacturers and dealers : first in a row (e.g. 4th Sunday after Easter), then more completely Including Christian dates (Easter / Christmas) and as multi-day markets .
A well-known example is the Bremer Freimarkt in Northern Germany, which has been taking place since 1035 and has turned into an important folk festival over the years (largest in Northern Germany with over 4 million visitors in 17 days). Other well-known free markets exist in Hildesheim , Passau , Tamsweg u. v. m.
The term "free market" itself is not limited to the German-speaking area (e.g. Dutch vrijmarkt ) and is certainly analogous in other languages as well as historically expanded to general political and economic contexts and theories, e.g. B. on free trade ( English free market ), but differs from the expression as a flea market .
Individual evidence
- ↑ JG Krünitz: Economic Encyclopedia . 1858, kruenitz1.uni-trier.de .
- ↑ for sale . In: Duden: The dictionary of origin. Etymology of the German language. Mannheim 2007.
- ↑ Freimarkt . In: Prussian Academy of Sciences (Hrsg.): German legal dictionary . tape 3 , issue 5 (edited by Eberhard von Künßberg ). Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar ( adw.uni-heidelberg.de - publication date between 1935 and 1938).