Country (historical)

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Land is the name for an area and a historical form of community , as it was typical in the Middle Ages, especially in Western and Central Europe. Its privileged residents (mostly the nobility ) form a legal community and (mostly) have a sovereign at their head. For the legal affiliation to the country mostly the possession of an allod or fiefdom located in the area concerned, or at least a free house, was necessary. All residents of the country distinguished in this way were personally free and subject only to the jurisdiction of the regional court , but not to any manorial or municipal jurisdictions . The free compatriots had to take part in the defense of the country personally if the prince asked them to do so.

The country is not primarily constituted by the territory, but by the association of its members. That is why the medieval countries often do not have closed borders, because there were autonomous holders of rulership rights who did not belong to the country like their neighbors but, for example, belonged to the country. B. were exempted as imperial knights, i.e. only subject to the emperor. The same applies to a number of cities. Likewise, the goods under the lordship of the prince were not part of the country in the strict legal sense. A distinction has to be made between the “countries” or large territories in the Austrian-Bavarian area and the “rulers” in the inner kingdom, which in general did not reach the size of the Habsburg and Wittelsbach areas, and consequently did not have the quality of a “land”. The late medieval country saw itself in the southeast as a community of estates and communes (Landsgemeinde), as a community of benefit, honor and peace, which gathered at landscape days to regulate public affairs. Central to the sense of identity in the country was the "common benefit" to which the participants in the landscape assemblies were sworn and to which the prince was also obliged.

Examples

See also

literature

  • Otto Brunner : Land and Dominion. Basic questions of the territorial constitutional history of Southeast Germany in the Middle Ages . Bathing b. Vienna [u. a.] 1939.
  • Ursula Floßmann : Land law as a constitution (=  Linzer Universitätsschriften 2). Vienna 1976.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Konstantin Langmaier: The land Ere and Nucz, Frid and Gemach: The land as honor, benefit and peace community. A contribution to the discussion about the common benefit . In: Quarterly for social and economic history . tape 103 , no. 2 , 2016, p. 178-200 .