Municipal law (Pfronten)

The parish law , often referred to as "parish law", regulated the participation of individual citizens in the property of the entire parish in Pfronten . Associated with municipal law was also a share in the common ownership of a district ("local law").

Beneficiaries

Pfronten is a clearing settlement. Associated with this was the granting of special freedoms for the recruited "colonizers". Despite the restriction and legalization of special rights by the bishopric of Augsburg , the parishioners were able to maintain a relatively strong position vis-à-vis their sovereign, the Bishop of Augsburg.

One of these special rights was the opinion that the entire land in the parish is the property of the parishioners and is only formally a fiefdom . The owners were all Pfrontener ("lawyers"), who sat "with fire and smoke" here on a property. As recently as the 1930s, an appraisal stipulated: "The Pfrontener Mark is therefore the joint private property of the market members who manage it".

Number of community rights

The number of farms can be found - approximately - for the first time in the tax description for the year 1594. There are 375 homeowners listed in Pfronten. In 1662 there were only 337. The decline was probably a consequence of the Thirty Years' War . After that, the number of property owners rose again. As early as 1700, it is believed, a lot was achieved that could no longer be exceeded, because otherwise the livelihood of the existing properties would have been at risk. It can be proven that there were between 420 and 430 farmsteads in Pfronten in 1758, on which municipal rights rested. When house numbers were introduced in 1784, exactly 434 numbers were assigned in Pfronten, of which only two (431: school and 433: hospital) had no municipal rights.

There were 432 lawyers in Pfronten. Only Nikolaus Reichart in the Fallmühle managed to get municipal rights later. Having owned house number 45 in Pfronten-Weißbach, he was always a lawyer. By building a habitable gypsum mill in the Akhtal, he was able to get another right.

Scope of authorization

The individual rights of the beneficiaries are described in the tax book of the year 1828 based on the "written and oral tradition". Under the heading "Preliminary remark about the observance with regard to the parish and grazing rights in the parish of Pfronten", the benefits that result from the possession of a parish right are explained in detail:

Every congregation member who owns a house here may:

a) Chop firewood and construction wood for his house in the community forests as required, but this must be done from a forestry point of view.

b) Mow grass in the mountains where the cattle are not driven.

c) When the harvest is in, strip off leaves, even on the land that is taxable.

d) Catching fish and snails, but only at certain times.

e) Pick all ripe fruit in pastures, Alps and forests.

Every lawyer has the right to graze in the as yet undistributed community grounds (" commons ").

Through his grazing rights, the lawyer was able to drive a certain number of animals (cattle, horses) to the common community grounds. Because the right to graze - "since time immemorial" - did not rest on the house, but on the property, the number of drive rights was based on the number of cattle that a lawyer could feed over the winter. This was also the yardstick for the division of church grounds after 1800: those who owned more land received a larger share. This regulation was still observed when later laws prescribed other provisions. The old customary law has not been repealed.

Change of the old tradition

Although the prince-bishop's government allowed the immigration of foreigners from around 1792 and the Bavarian government regulated this by law from 1803, the immigration of new citizens was limited. The Pfrontener lawyers remained a "closed society". Until the middle of the 19th century, only two new buildings were built in the rural community of Steinachpfronten, which were carried out by locals. In contrast to the "even" house numbers of the lawyers, these houses were given so-called "odd" house numbers. Their identification were fractions added to the house number. There was no municipal law on such new buildings.

Only at the end of the 19th century were more houses built in Pfronten, all with an "odd" house number. By around 1920 there were already 42 new buildings in the municipality of Pfronten-Steinach. Now the question of who owned the property of the former parish, the lawyers alone or the ever-growing political community, came to the fore. No solution had been found until World War II .

After German property abroad had passed into the possession of the Allies in 1945, there was a risk that the Pfronten people could also lose their forests and alpine pastures in Austria . Certain exceptions to this expropriation were possible for private property. Therefore, in May 1955, a state treaty was signed with Austria. The lawyers and the municipality agreed on their shares in their property in Austria. The municipality of Pfronten received 109 hectares in the so-called Klockerwald, the rest fell to the lawyers.

At that time the question of how to deal with the remaining possessions (commons) of the individual districts was not clarified. As a result of a comparison between lawyers and the municipality before the Bavarian Administrative Court in 1970, this property could also be divided. In complicated and lengthy negotiations between 1970 and 2007, replacement agreements were concluded here. The rule that the lawyers should be entitled to 2/3 and the community 1/3 served as a standard.

Individual evidence

↑ Thaddäus Steiner (ed.): Rural legal sources from the Allgäu . Publications of the Swabian Research Association ISBN 978-3-89639-659-4 , p. 163ff (Pfronten)
^ District court judge Schoeller, Schongau: The Pfrontner Allmende, a joint private property of the 435 Mark comrades . Printed report, no year, approx. 1930
^ State archive Augsburg HA NA 180: Turkish tax for care Füssen
↑ Dr. Anton Schmid: Source documents on the history of the rights to the Pfrontener Alpine pastures , typescript 1930

↑ Tax book 1758, (private) Editing: Bertold Pölcher

↑ ^a ^b Pfronten parish archive: Competition roll 1828, 2nd volume (Bergpfronten and Steinachpfronten)

^ Pfronten parish archive: complaint 1796, § 123

↑ Pfronten community registry: List of persons entitled to reside in the rural community of Steinach, 1829 (with supplements up to around 1850)

↑ Pfronten community registry: Directory of those entitled to homeland in the rural community of Steinach , started around 1854 (with additions to around 1920)

[1] Thaddäus Steiner (ed.): Rural legal sources from the Allgäu . Publications of the Swabian Research Association ISBN 978-3-89639-659-4 , p. 163ff (Pfronten)

[2] District court judge Schoeller, Schongau: The Pfrontner Allmende, a joint private property of the 435 Mark comrades . Printed report, no year, approx. 1930

[3] State archive Augsburg HA NA 180: Turkish tax for care Füssen

[Schmid-4] Dr. Anton Schmid: Source documents on the history of the rights to the Pfrontener Alpine pastures , typescript 1930

[5] Tax book 1758, (private) Editing: Bertold Pölcher

[Steuerbuch_1828-6] Pfronten parish archive: Competition roll 1828, 2nd volume (Bergpfronten and Steinachpfronten)

[7] Pfronten parish archive: complaint 1796, § 123

[8] Pfronten community registry: List of persons entitled to reside in the rural community of Steinach, 1829 (with supplements up to around 1850)

[9] Pfronten community registry: Directory of those entitled to homeland in the rural community of Steinach , started around 1854 (with additions to around 1920)