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Halfen is a redirect to this article. For the German soccer player, see Erwin Halfen .

A Halfe (also Halbwinner , Halbmann or Halberling ) was a tenant with a special lease . This had a certain share, mostly half, of his income to deliver to the landlord .

As a result of the dissolution of the Villication Constitution , the landlords gave up the management of their Fronhöfe by the beginning of the 13th century at the latest. The natural economic, self-sufficient system of medieval manorial rule had lost too much of its efficiency and effectiveness since the urban market and money economy flourished.

The effects associated with the change in the agricultural system differed from region to region with regard to the Fronhöfe. While the old manor country was almost completely divided up in south-west Germany, the Fronhöfe in the Lower Rhine and Cologne Bight were only very rarely dissolved. There, the landlords took other paths to secure their livelihoods: They leased their Fronhöfe and Salland on a temporary basis.

The original form of leasing manors was half-lease. The tenant paid half of his agricultural income to the landlord as a lease. For this reason, the tenant of a Fronhof was also called Halbwinner, Halfe, Halbmann or Halberling, in the plural Halfleute. When, in the course of time, the lease was no longer halved depending on the income, but the landlord and leaseholder agreed on a fixed lease sum, the name Halfe was retained.

The usual lease term in the Rhineland was three or six years in the 14th century and leveled off at twelve years in the 16th and 17th centuries. At the end of a lease period, provided the landlord was satisfied with the management of his tenant and the latter had always reliably met his obligations and payments, the contract was extended for a further twelve years. In many cases, the leased property remained in the hands of the same tenant family for generations.

Half-winners brought great economic advantages not only to the landlord, but also to the tenant: Since the half-winners were not allowed to sell a piece of the leased property and the property was not subject to real division after the death of a tenant (as a rule, the lease contract went to the eldest son or a son-in-law), their acreage remained the same or was even larger through acquisitions. This meant that the Halfen were superior to the farmers with their own property, because they had to struggle with the problem of downsizing the farms with every inheritance. In the Rhineland and other north-western regions, a new, rural upper class developed with the tenant class, which was personally completely free and economically extremely wealthy.

See also

• Land lease

Web links

• Monika Borisch: Halfen families in Brühl and the surrounding area until approx. 1750. Aachen, 2007.

swell

• Edith Ennen , Walter Janssen : German agricultural history. From the Neolithic to the threshold of the industrial age . Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, Wiesbaden, 1979, ISBN 3-515-02420-4 , ( Scientific Paperbacks, Social and Economic History 12).
• Barthel Huppertz: Spaces and layers of rural cultural forms in Germany . Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, Bonn 1939.
• Franz Irsigler : Dissolution of the Villication Constitution . In: Hans Patze (ed.): The manorial rule in the late Middle Ages . Volume 1. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen, 1983, ISBN 3-7995-6627-9 , ( lectures and research 27), pp. 295-311.