Land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen

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Title page of the 1795 edition

The land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen (also: "Landesordnung") was the particular law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen .

Knowledge

The original documents on the history of the development of the land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen and many documents on its application were burned in the Darmstadt State Archives during World War II . The knowledge about this is therefore fragmentary and can only be obtained from older literature, some of which also contradict each other in terms of information. Due to the unclear course of the development process, it is also unclear in which direction the influences on other legislative projects in the vicinity of the Landgraviate that arose in the same period, such as the Solms land law , or individual laws that George I issued.

history

prehistory

In 1479 the von Katzenelnbogen family died out with Philip I in the male line, and the county came as heir to Landgrave Heinrich III with Philip's daughter Anna . of Hessen . With the death of the last Hessian Landgrave, Philip I the "Magnanimous" in 1567, the Landgraviate of Hesse was divided among his four sons. Georg I received the southern part of the country, subsequently referred to as the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt .

Emergence

Georg I commissioned his chancellor, Johann Kleinschmidt, with a collection of the law applicable in his domain, which was completed in 1569 at the earliest and in which, as was common at the time, public and private law were mixed. This legal collection was initially not published because the then four ruling Hessian landgraves tried to agree on a legal system that was binding for all four parts of the country. A draft by Reinhard Scheffer was available for this. However, the project failed in 1588/89. Georg I therefore took Kleinschmidt's draft out of the drawer in 1589 and sent it to the court court in Marburg with the request that the lawyers from the Hessian State University of Marburg examine it and make suggestions for improvement. The court, however, had concerns, delayed the matter and it took until 1591 for the Landgrave to receive the draft back from Marburg.

application

How and when the landgrave actually introduced the draft is unknown. The state regulations are preceded by the draft of a publication patent, but they have never been put into effect publicly, perhaps in order not to undermine the unity of Hessen. According to the opinion at the time, publication was also not necessary: ​​it was sufficient for the sovereign to send the law to the bodies responsible for the application of the law. The land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen was initially not printed, only handwritten copies existed. Since it was probably largely a collection of applicable law, the content was not new to those applying the law. This only handwritten distribution, however, had the consequence that the land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen was largely limited to the area of ​​the Upper County to the extent that it had passed to Hesse and had hardly any effect beyond that, such as the neighboring Solmser Landrecht . The Seeheim office seems to be the only exception .

It is also completely unclear to what extent Kleinschmidt's text was actually used in court practice. There is much to suggest that this was not the case and that only individual areas of the law gained practical importance.

In 1779 the Landrecht of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen appeared for the first time in print, then again before and once after the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The edition of 1795/96 was also the first to appear in the scope of land law.

Validity

Material

Kleinschmidt's design comprised four parts:

  1. Church and police regulations . This part corresponds to the regulations published in 1572 with a few additions.
  2. contracts
    1. credit
    2. usury
    3. Purchase contract
    4. Downforce and closer purchase
    5. guarantee
    6. Lien
    7. Priority of creditors
    8. Real securities
    9. Help in matters of debt
  3. Regulations on food , craftsmen , day laborers and servants
  4. Actual "Land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen":
    1. Marriage
    2. One-childship
    3. Inheritance among spouses
    4. Left Debts
    5. Testamentary disposition
    6. Intestate inheritance
    7. Acceptance of inheritance and division of inheritance
    8. guardianship
    9. Oath of the guardian
    10. Oath of the Curatoris bonorum
    11. Form of the inventory of guardianship
    12. Form of accounting for guardianship

Insofar as the land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen did not contain any regulation for a matter, the common law was subsidiary .

Locally

The land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen was valid in the entire Upper County of Katzenelnbogen, which included the following offices :

Temporally

The land law of the Upper County of Katzenelnbogen retained its validity for the entire 19th century even after the Landgraviate had been elevated to the Grand Duchy of Hesse . On January 1, 1900, it was replaced by the Civil Code , which was uniformly applicable throughout the German Empire .

swell

Text output

Secondary literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Not to be confused with a number of lawyers of the same name, see Johann Kleinschmidt (disambiguation) .
  2. ↑ The years 1572 and 1578 are also mentioned for this (Diestelkamp, ​​column 672). Diestelkamp, ​​Sp. 672, only wants one year from 1573 onwards, the year in which Kleinschmidt became chancellor. However, he leaves open why he should only have drafted the draft as Chancellor.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 671.
  2. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 672.
  3. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 672.
  4. ^ Löhr: Kleinschmidt .
  5. ^ So: Schmidt, p. 68.
  6. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 673.
  7. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 674.
  8. ↑ Schmidt, pp. 69f; Diestelkamp, ​​Sp. 674.
  9. ↑ So the representation in the literature. Diestelkamp, ​​Sp. 675, points out, however, that this has never been seriously investigated.
  10. ↑ Schmidt, p. 70.
  11. ^ Schmidt, p. 109, note 43.
  12. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 674.
  13. ↑ See: Sources.
  14. ↑ Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 674.
  15. ^ See: Diestelkamp, ​​Col. 675.
  16. ↑ See Schmidt, pp. 70f, note 51.
  17. ↑ See Schmidt, pp. 70f, note 51.
  18. ↑ Schmidt, pp. 67–72 and accompanying map.
  19. ↑ Schmidt, pp. 67–72 and accompanying map.
  20. ^ Schmidt, p. 71 and note 53.
  21. ↑ So also in Hebis .
  22. ↑ Schmidt, p. 71 and note 55.
  23. ↑ So in Hebis.
  24. ↑ Schmidt, pp. 71f.