Kitchen village
The kitchen villages were a collective name for places that had to provide a special labor service.
The Economic Encyclopedia defines the term as follows:
- Kitchens = village, in some areas a village whose income is intended for the manorial kitchen, or whose inhabitants have to enjoy the manorial kitchen. The five electoral princes belong to this last type. Maynian kitchens = villages near Erfurt, which were subordinated to the bishopric that was founded there before it.
Since the Middle Ages, compulsory labor was a service of the peasant for the landlord or lord . They included a very wide range of different activities for a set number of days per year. In addition, there was work, the scope of which was based on the workload. Usually the farmers did so-called manual and tensioning services ( Scharwerk ). Handicrafts consisted of planting, tending and harvesting the landlord's agricultural crops, for example. Span services were work that was carried out with draft animals.
- Some villages in the vicinity of Erfurt , named Witterda , Hochheim , Melchendorf , Daberstedt and Dittelstedt , were obliged to pay taxes in kind for the supply of the electoral administration - the Mainzer Hof in Erfurt. These taxes were later replaced by cash payments. The Erfurt kitchen villages remained Catholic even after the Reformation was introduced in Erfurt.
- The place Oberpörlitz was a kitchen village of Ilmenau . As the town is one of the few in Thuringia that does not have a church, the inhabitants have always been closely tied to the city of Ilmenau. They had similar to Erfurt Kitchen villages taxes in kind to make. These were mainly wool and wood. The citizens of Oberpörlitz were allowed to choose whether they paid their taxes in kind or in cash.