Landschreiberei (Kurpfalz)

The Landschreibereien in the Electoral Palatinate arose from the 14th century and initially decentralized the recording and accounting of the sovereign income, but were later expanded to include other administrative areas - especially the judiciary.

History and task

The land clerks were the representatives of the senior officials in their district , some of whom did not stay on site at all, but liked to stay at the electoral court. In addition to the administration of the sovereign income and goods, they were also responsible for the jurisdiction and they led court hearings and official investigations. In the Oberamts of the Electoral Palatinate , the land clerk was the second most important official, often even the one who - under the responsibility of the Oberamtmann - took the concrete administrative measures.

On the website of the Frankenthal District Court (Pfalz) it says:

“With its current scope of duties, the district court only began to exist through the Courts Constitution Act of January 27, 1878, the goals of which all Länder were to achieve by October 1, 1879. Before that, the tasks of a local court in the area of ​​the historical Palatinate were distributed to offices whose roots in the Electoral Palatinate lay in the Oberamt Neustadt, Germersheim, Lautern, Lauterecken, and the Unteramt Freinsheim (from the Oberamt Alzey). These offices were headed towards the end of the 18th century by a land clerk , who was assigned a clerk appointed by the elector with his registrar to help. The land clerk led the court as chairman and was named Oberfauth in the Electoral Palatinate. He was assisted by four lay judges and a clerk, a senior official, a physician and surgeon, four lawyers, two clerks and a messenger. Many of the tasks of these offices can be found today in the local courts, especially as far as voluntary jurisdiction is concerned. For example, there was an official in charge of guardianship who was called Ausfauth and was responsible for orphans and mentally handicapped people. "

- District court Frankenthal (Pfalz)

In the 16th century, when the administrative organization of the Electoral Palatinate had already developed, land registry offices existed in the following places: Heidelberg (first documented in 1384), Neustadt an der Haardt (first documented in 1367), Alzey (first documented in 1394), Germersheim , Kaiserslautern , Oppenheim (First proven in 1388) and Simmern .

Grave slab of the land clerk Jeckel von Dannstadt in the Neustadt collegiate church

Landschreiber

• Heinrich Belchental, named 1341 to 1344. In 1356 he created the first surviving copy book of the Count Palatine near Rhine .
• Konrad von Aschaffenburg , 1356 to 1365
• Heinrich von Diebach, around 1360
• Jeckel von Dannstadt († 1427), land clerk and mayor in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse .
• Paul Heinrich Joseph von Stengel (1717–1754), land clerk in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, father of General Heinrich Christian Michael von Stengel (1744–1796).
• Andreas van Recum (1765–1828), last electoral Palatinate land clerk (also Oberamtsverweser) of the Oberamt Simmern (1792–1797).

literature

• Karl-Heinz Spieß : feudal rights, feudal politics and feudal administration of the Count Palatine near Rhine in the late Middle Ages. Wiesbaden 1978 (Geschichtliche Landeskunde, Vol. 18, ISBN 3-515-02744-0 ), pp. 21-25.
• Monika Rose: The judiciary of the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken in the 18th century. 1994, ISBN 3-631-47230-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Evidence for the activity of the land clerk in the judiciary
2. ↑ Der Landschreiber im Oberamt Simmern, 5th yellow text box ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.