Ius emigrandi

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The Ius emigrandi ( lat . Right to emigrate ) is the Article 24 of the Augsburg religious peace of 1555 and granted all his subjects the right to emigrate for religious reasons in a territory of their denomination.

background

Augsburg religious peace

After the religious unity of the empire had been destroyed in the course of the Reformation , disputes between the Protestant and the old-faith imperial estates continued to arise. The division of the Protestants into Lutheran and Reformed also further heated up the conflicts, so that all attempts to reintegrate the Protestants into the old-believing church and thus to re-establish religious unity failed. It was not until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 that the followers of the Confessio Augustana of 1530 and the associated biconfessionalism of the empire were recognized.

Ius reformandi

One of the fundamental provisions of the Augsburg Religious Peace was the ius reformandi , which was closely related to the ius emigrandi and granted the respective sovereign the right to determine the religion of his territory and all of his subjects. This regulation was intended to help maintain peace in the country by giving the sovereigns the opportunity to freely choose their religion and at the same time to restore the religious unity of their respective territories. However, this gave rise to the problem that subjects whose sovereign belonged to a different denomination than they themselves or to whom they changed had to change their denomination accordingly.

Legal proposition

The ius emigrandi , as a kind of compensation to the ius reformandi, offered the subjects the opportunity to sell their property and emigrate with their family to a territory of their denomination if they did not want to change their denomination.

“But where ours, including the electors, princes and estates, are subject to the old religion or the Augspurgic Confession, because of their religion, from ours, including the electors, princes and estates of the Third Reich, lands, princes, cities or towns with their wives and children want to move to other places and bow down, to them should such departure and arrival, including the sale of their belongings and goods for a small, cheap removal of serfs and additional taxes, as it has been customary in every place of old age, brought and kept , unrestrictedly male admitted and approved, but their honors and duties are unpaid. But the superiorities of their righteousness and tradition of the serfs, whether to count them single or not, should not be broken off or dazed by this. "(§ 24)

Even if this regulation at first glance granted all subjects a right that enabled them to freely choose their denomination, it must be questioned at this point whether this was actually always practicable in reality. Giving up existence and emigrating to another territory could well mean economic ruin, especially since a sufficient sum could not always be obtained when selling property. In addition, it was by no means certain that a foothold could easily be found in another territory. The regulations of the ius emigrandi of 1555 were finally adopted in a modified form in the Westphalian Peace Treaty of 1648, which also contained a right of residence for denominational minorities.

Emigration or deportation law

As with many regulations of the Augsburg Religious Peace, the interpretation of the ius emigrandi is also ambiguous. So it is not clear from the formulation whether a subject who does not want to accept the denomination of his sovereign may or must emigrate. The right of the subjects to emigrate and the right of deportation of the sovereigns are therefore close together. Should a subject refuse to accept the denomination of his sovereign, the sovereign could expel him from a territory and simply invoke the ius emigrandi . The Protestant reading of § 24 clearly emphasizes the right of the subjects to emigrate, which the Protestant side had already called for several times. The Old Believers, however, interpreted it primarily as a right to expulsion. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the ius emigrandi primarily served to make the ius reformandi of the sovereigns more practicable in reality. Therefore, the question often discussed in research as to whether the ius emigrand i was the forerunner of a modern basic right is not easy to answer. The undeniable progressiveness of the ius emigrandi as a right to emigrate and the interpretation as a right to expel form a stark contrast. In practice, the latter finally prevailed in both 1555 and 1648, even if the importance of the right to emigrate as a first step towards religious freedom should not be underestimated.

literature

  • Matthias Asche : Emigration law and migration for reasons of faith - state of knowledge and research perspectives on the ius emigrandi regulation of the Augsburg religious peace, in: Heinz Schilling , Heribert Smolinsky (Ed.): Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden 1555. Scientific symposium on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the peace treaty, Augsburg 21 until September 25, 2005, Münster 2007, pp. 75-104.
  • Axel Gotthard : The Augsburg Religious Peace, Münster 2004.
  • Georg May : The emergence of the main provisions on the ius emigrandi (Art. V §§ 30-43IPO) at the Westphalian Peace Congress, in: ZRG Kan. Abt. 74 (1) (1988), pp. 436-494.
  • Dietmar Willoweit : Religious law in the Holy Roman Empire between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, in: Carl A. Hoffmann / Markus Johanns / Annette Kranz u. a. (Ed.): When peace was possible. 450 years of religious peace in Augsburg. Volume accompanying the exhibition in the Maximiliansmuseum Augsburg, Regensburg 2005, pp. 35–50.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Axel Gotthard: The Augsburg religious peace . Münster 2004, p. 529 .
  2. ^ Matthias Asche: Emigration law and migration for reasons of faith - State of knowledge and research perspectives on the ius emigrandi regulation of the Augsburg religious peace . In: Heinz Schilling, Heribert Smolinsky (eds.): Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden 1555. Scientific symposium on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the peace treaty, Augsburg September 21-25, 2005 . Münster 2007, p. 84-86 .
  3. ^ Matthias Asche: Emigration law and migration for reasons of faith - State of knowledge and research perspectives on the ius emigrandi regulation of the Augsburg religious peace . In: Heinz Schilling, Heribert Smolinsky (eds.): Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden 1555. Scientific symposium on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the peace treaty, Augsburg September 21-25, 2005 . Münster 2007, p. 84 .
  4. ^ Axel Gotthard: The Augsburg religious peace . Münster 2004, p. 100-101 .