Hofsteig
Hofsteig is the historical name of a region in the Vorarlberg Rhine Valley . The Hofsteig communities Hard , Lauterach , Wolfurt , Schwarzach , Bildstein and Buch were administered centrally by the Hofsteig Lower Court, which belonged to the Bregenz domain , for around 800 years . Also Alberschwende and Dornbirn district Haselstauden had temporarily connect to Hofsteig.
In 1806, Vorarlberg was annexed by Bavaria . The new rulers abolished the old courts, and Hofsteig was also dissolved. A modern system of administration and jurisdiction came into effect. The region was subdivided into six new localities, municipal boundaries were created and around 1811 mayors took office. Today, more than 200 years after the Hofsteig court was dissolved, the term is once again very present in the region: buildings, streets, associations, banks, associations and clubs in the region bear the name “Hofsteig”. Since 1929 the music bands of the eight named municipalities have formed the Hofsteiger Music Association.
Hofsteig today
The Hofsteig communities today cover an area with around 38,000 inhabitants. In order to solve the problems of the present, the cross-community cooperation was accelerated. The Hofsteig Parliament was formed to coordinate this. Every two years the mayors of the Hofsteig communities, reinforced by the mayor of the Kennelbach community , come together with their 150 community representatives for the Hofsteig Parliament. One example of the collaboration is the "Hofsteig-Ader". This is a cross-community project to regulate the volume of traffic on the L3 highway in Schwarzach and Wolfurt.
Viticulture was an important branch of the economy until the 19th century. In Lauterach alone there are still 12 field names in which the word Weingarten is directly mentioned.
In the 20th century, the appearance of the region was shaped by high-stem fruit trees . Artur Schwarz (Hofsteiglesebuch, p. 13) describes the Lauterach community as follows in 1956: “The houses are submerged in the sea of leaves and on May days the area resembles a field of flowers.” Due to the urban sprawl, the tall fruit trees can only be found today still in a few places. In the broadcast Vorarlberg today on May 19, 2013, the fruit tree population in Vorarlberg for 1943 is given as 800,000 - in 2013 there are only 200,000. The Wolfurt-born writer Arno Geiger describes the Wolfurt community in the Hofsteiglesebuch (p. 16) in 2007: “[Wolfurt is] a mostly arbitrary conglomerate of streets, new and old buildings, industrial plants and garden fences. The whole thing is not very attractive. - Most cities get more beautiful over the centuries (...). Most of the villages are getting ugly. ”While urban sprawl and the decay of village structures pose challenges for the larger Hofsteig communities, the prosperous economy of the region in return means that these communities are well funded.
As in the entire Rhine Valley, the formerly separate Hofsteig communities have now grown together and form a kind of suburb without a center. For strangers it is difficult to see where one community ends and the other begins; The church towers of the individual parishes provide orientation.
The centuries of coexistence between the farmers and villages in the Hofsteig region have created their own dialect, which differs from the dialect of the Lustenau , Dornbirn , Bregenz and Bregenz Forests.
History of Hofsteig
Hofsteig was first mentioned in a document in 1260, about 200 years earlier the farm had developed "too steady" in the Wolfurt district of Rickenbach into an independent court. From the 13th century the region was administered from Lauterach. Initially, the court sessions took place in the open air near the village linden, until a “dance house” was built in Lauterach as well as in other administrative centers. The "Tanzhus zu Luterach" is mentioned in a document from 1515. It was a wooden structure on four piles that supported a wooden roof. The multi-purpose building was used for dance events such as the harvest festival. It also served as a meeting place for the men before going to church, who exchanged important information in an age without the press and radio. Traveling dealers like Kessler or scissors grinders offered their services. In case of enemy threat, the conscripts gathered in the dance house. After the Tanzhaus disappeared, the Hofsteig region was administered from 1786 from the still preserved courthouse Bundesstrasse 60 in Lauterach.
Duties of the Hofsteig court
Hofsteig was described as a court, but the administrative tasks went far beyond the jurisprudence: the board of the court collected taxes, issued ordinances in community matters and carried out legal transactions such as the conclusion of contracts. In addition, the court exercised corridor and road police as well as military tasks in the context of national defense. Thus, the court with the Landammann at its head had important community competencies . The ammen belonged to the village upper class and had to swear to serve the sovereign loyally. The election of the Landammann "by supply" was an important event that was regulated in Hofsteig in a precisely defined procedure. Those men who were allowed to carry a weapon were entitled to vote. The number of those entitled was considerable; It is said that in 1689 a total of 517 men took part in the election. In the village square, three candidates stood in three different places. On command, everyone ran to their candidate. Whoever could gather the most of them had won. Since this electoral process repeatedly resulted in tumultuous scenes, voting was introduced in the 18th century.
Obligatory payments from farmers to the Hofsteig court
The fees paid by the farmers to the court were considerable. They had to pay the tithe and give up some of the products they had earned: oats, hay, wine, calves, geese, ducks, apples, pears, hemp, flax, butter, eggs, honey, wax, etc. were stored in the storehouses by Ammann and his servants collected by the court. In return, the farm offered protection in times of war and provided plows, wagons, kettles, stallions, bulls and boars in the interests of a large community. He checked weights and measures, owned a poor house and looked after the orphans. Thus, part of the goods sold benefited the peasants; however, the Ammann had to hand over a large part of the goods to the liege lord , the Count of Bregenz. A part went to the Mehrerau monastery .
Witch chase in Hofsteig
In witch trials , the court Hofsteig had no skills, here is the higher ranking "Malefitz" -Gericht decided in Bregenz. It has been proven that a particularly large number of people were persecuted as witches in Hofsteig . The Vorarlberg average was 0.4 persecuted per hundred people, in the Hofsteig region at least 2.7. In the 20 years between 1595 and 1615 alone, 26 court climbers were executed as witches or sorcerers. One cause was possibly the economic crisis around 1600, which hit the area, which is heavily dependent on viticulture. The Flotzbach district in Wolfurt was a popular witches' dance venue. Twenty-two convicts were tortured to have participated in witch meetings in what was then a swampy region.
literature
- Dietmar Tschaikner (Ed.): Hofsteig reading book . 1st edition, November 2007. unartproduktion, Dornbirn
- Siegfried Heim: Heimat Wolfurt, Issue 13 (Hofsteig). Published by the local history group Wolfurt, November 1993