Fellow neighbor

Mitnachbar is a designation that can be found in documents from West Prussia . Sometimes you only find the term “neighbor”. In a death certificate from 1802 from the parish of Groß Lesewitz / West Prussia it says “Freyköllnischer Mitnachbar”.

The “neighborhood” dates from the Middle Ages and was still a legal entity within a village in the 18th century. This included all “taxpayers”, that is, in addition to farmers, craftsmen and day laborers. Whoever lived within such a “neighborhood” was a “fellow neighbor”. For the 19th century the term seems to have become an empty phrase, but certainly not in the documents.

literature

• Hans Werner Götz: Life in the Middle Ages. Munich 1986
• Richard van Dülmen: Culture and everyday life in the early modern period. Munich 1999.