equality

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Double portrait of Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz and his wife Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici - Depiction of the equality of Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz with his wife Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici in oneimage of the ruler

Equality describes the equality of status according to birth.

Equality in European nobility law

In the past, equality was a legal requirement for a marriage in keeping with one's rank among the nobility . There was no equality in marriages between nobles and non-nobles, but in some cases also not in marriages between members of the high nobility and the lower nobility, and even in marriages between different ranks of the high nobility. Marriages that did not follow these rules were called miscarriage or mesalliance , legally left-hand marriage or morganatic marriage .

The standards for who was considered equal and who was not differed in individual countries, also depending on the historical epoch and in the families involved, see in detail the representation of the three departments of the princely houses in the article high nobility . The barriers to class in Germany were much higher than z. B. in England, where the marriage between members of the royal family and families with peer rank or between the peers and the top of the bourgeoisie did not lead to any legal disadvantages. An example of the opposite extreme was the Habsburg family , who only recognized members of the high nobility who came from ruling royal or ducal houses as equal. The formal procedure for ensuring this was the trial of nobility . Because of the patriarchal family and social structures, the unequal part was the woman in the vast majority of cases.

Legal and economic consequences

A befitting marriage was a prerequisite for mutual children to receive the status and the associated rights of the father ( succession ). In the case of ruling houses, this included the succession to the throne and, for the rest of the nobility, the right to inheritance or the usufruct of bound assets (family or household assets, entails ) and fiefdoms . The woman was also excluded from the status of the spouse in a marriage of no equal. Both the wife and the children of an unequal marriage only had those property rights to the father's legacy that were independent of the requirement of equality, i.e. non-tied real estate or financial assets. However, due to the usual disinheritance, such was seldom available, and men and children were not entitled to appanage (in the form of allocated paraglider goods , regular monetary payments or at least free board and lodging on family properties), and morganatic widows had no claim to the wage due to their status from the dynasty's property . All of this worked for centuries as a decisive means of discipline, since in the event of unequal marriages, the person concerned - in the absence of an inheritance and lack of appanage, furthermore largely closed professional paths (except for military or administrative service, if necessary abroad) - is in fact withdrawn from material Livelihood threatened.

Historical development in Germany

As the class structure became more differentiated in the Middle Ages , the principle prevailed that in a marriage in which the partners belonged to different classes, the children of the “angry hand”, i.e. H. the lower class followed. This “deficiency” could be remedied in individual cases by raising the status of the emperor or a sovereign .

A distinction was made in Germany between the lower nobility ( knighthood ), counts and princes ( high nobility ), whose treatment of equality also developed differently. The high nobility held onto it longest.

Gentry

Children from unequal marriages of the lower nobility up to and including the count belonged to the aristocracy - albeit subject to approval by the sovereign - but illegitimate children only very rarely, if they were expressly ennobled by nobility letter. (Occasionally, however, they carried the father's name with an von predicate, without being accepted into the nobility.)

With the gradual loss of noble privileges since the end of the 18th century, civil legal rules were initially applied to marriages of the lower nobility, so that in marriages between noble men and non-noble women, these and their joint descendants attained the status of the man. In Prussia , the equality regulations of the General Prussian Land Law of 1794 (II, 1, §§ 30–33), which regulated marriages between nobles and "women from the peasant or lower middle class", were completely repealed in 1854. The insistence on equitable spouses thus became exclusively a matter of social prestige , but no longer had any legal significance. Economic development also played a role in the change in social norms: the more the agricultural estates got into economic difficulties in the second half of the 19th century, the more acceptable it was to marry a rich heiress from a respected bourgeois family as a financial opportunity renovate. Despite the anti-Semitism that was widespread in aristocratic circles at the time, women from assimilated Jewish families also came into consideration as spouses. For developments in the UK : see the main article Gentry .

High nobility

The development of the high nobility was different. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, it was common practice for ruling families to marry on a political or dynastic basis . The ruling houses of Europe married each other as often as they waged wars against each other, not infrequently also wars of succession .

As a result of the territorial fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire , the number of families of the high nobility was particularly high here. Their status privileges were retained even after the mediatization that took place in 1806 and enshrined in the German Federal Act of June 8, 1815. As a result, the German-speaking nobility from the 17th to the 20th century represented by far the largest reservoir of equal spouses for the ruling houses of Europe (the ducal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, for example, was considered the " Gestüt Europe ”, as it came to several royal thrones in this way). With the personal union of Great Britain with the Electorate of Hanover from 1714, the continental equality rules also came to the British Isles, where the earlier Plantagenet , Tudor and Stuart dynasties had not known them before, as there were only peers (including the titular dukes), but not ruling ones Petty princes gave.

The ducal and count houses mediated around 1806 tried to compensate for their real loss of status by emphasizing their formal equality with the members of ruling houses, which was also expressed in tenacious adherence to the principle of equality in their own house laws . It is true that the equality of the mediatized princes was undisputed, as was the equality of those genders who lost their sovereignty in the further course of the 19th century ( Hanover , Electorate Hesse , Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and Nassau ), and finally the ruling houses in Germany and after that were ousted in 1918 and after Europe. More dubious, however, was the position of the titular princes (who did not rule their own sovereign territory, but were subordinate to a sovereign from whom they received the title of duke or prince ) and the position of the mediatized counts. In the Gotha Court Calendar (called “Gotha” for short) the mediatized counts were initially listed as a separate department III from 1841, while the mediatized German princes, together with the titular European princes, formed department II and the ruling houses became department I. Only in 1877 the mediatized princes and counts grouped together as Division II A (with reference to the guarantee of equality in the German Federal Act of June 8, 1815) and the titular princes were moved to Division III. In terms of equality, this was sometimes criticized as being German-centric. It was also criticized that the imperial direct counts in the Old Kingdom were by no means considered equal to the ruling European royal houses and that they had at best had a semi-sovereignty, and that, not least in their historical rank, they were behind some of the European titular royal houses. The titles of the mediatized houses were often raised by one rank to compensate for the loss of sovereignty, and formerly ruling counts became titular princes. The term "high nobility" is only used in the German language and has no direct parallel in most other European languages, since there is mostly only a distinction between sovereign (or previously sovereign) houses and aristocratic houses of various ranks. However, the German court rankings were also not clear in this respect, for example, according to the Prussian court rank regulations of 1878 at the Prussian court in the Second German Empire, a titular prince of the third division took precedence over a count of the second division, although he was not on par with the German houses of the first Department owned. Nevertheless, the division into the three departments, also in the Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility , volume series Princely Houses , has been retained until today.

In order to take into account the house laws of the ruling and formerly ruling houses of the First Division, the Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility managed to create a section III B , to which those members of houses of the First Division who had not married in accordance with house law were moved so that, according to the provisions of the house laws, at the time of the monarchy, they lost their membership in the house and their descendants at that time would at best have received minor Morgan title . However, as the generations progressed, the house laws became less and less respected and ultimately many heads of the houses of the First Division, including European heirs to the throne and monarchs, ignored the house laws (or gave themselves and their relatives generous "exemptions", see examples below ), this classification is now also obsolete.

Equality after 1945

Determination of the violation of the constitution

As early as 1949, the Basic Law established the legal equality of all people in Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law. In Art. 6 GG it also standardized - according to the prevailing interpretation - people's freedom of marriage. However, the Federal Constitutional Court only had to deal with the special case of equality regulations relatively late, namely at the beginning of the 21st century.

Previously had federal court with decision (Ref .: IV ZB 19/97) decided on 2 December 1998 an estate matter: "A testator, which is located on the grounds of family tradition at the rank of his family according to the views of the nobility, can for his of The estate, which is shaped by the origin of the family, will last willingly and effectively order that of his descendants not the sole subsequent heir who does not come from an equal marriage or who does not live in an equal marriage. "

This was based on the following facts: Of the four sons of Louis Ferdinand of Prussia , only one of the younger sons, Louis Ferdinand jr. , according to house law a countess from a mediatized princely house; the marriage of the youngest son Christian Sigismund to a noble countess had been recognized by the father as an exception as part of the house law. Louis Ferdinand's father, Crown Prince Wilhelm , had stipulated in an inheritance contract with his father, the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II , and his son Louis Ferdinand that any descendant would be excluded from the inheritance who “did not come from one of the principles of the old constitution of Brandenburg- Prussian house corresponding marriage originates or lives in a marriage not in accordance with the house constitution ”. On the other hand, after the death of Louis Ferdinand († 1994), the two older sons, Friedrich Wilhelm and Michael , who were excluded from the inheritance, sued .

The legal dispute was referred back by the BGH to the Hechingen district court , which had to examine which candidates for the inheritance satisfied the equality clause. The second oldest appealed against its decision of December 7, 2000 (Ref .: 3 T 15/96), the subsequent decision of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court of November 21, 2001 (Ref .: 8 W 643/00) and the above-mentioned decision of the BGH Louis Ferdinand's son, Michael, lodged a constitutional complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court . This then repealed all of the resolutions mentioned.

In its decision of March 22, 2004 (Az .: 1 BvR 2248/01), the court found that the principle of equality is incompatible with freedom of marriage under Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law. Corresponding contracts - which are what are known as "house laws" - are to be viewed as immoral due to the indirect third-party effect of the fundamental rights.

Persistence in association law

According to the current view of the Association of German Nobility Associations , membership of the historical nobility is determined by the Lex Salica , i. H. exclusively by passing on in the male line. According to this, a non-noble woman acquires membership of the nobility ("noble name-bearer") by marrying a noble man, but not the man by marrying a noble woman. Should he, in accordance with the possibilities of the applicable German naming law , decide to take the noble surname of his wife, he will be classified as a "non-noble bearer of the name" according to the rules of nobility law . On the other hand, a woman from a noble family loses membership of the nobility by marrying a non-noble, but not the man by marrying a non-noble woman. Correspondingly, the membership of the children in the nobility is determined by the status of the (legitimate) father. These rules are still valid in the European countries with monarchies ; in Germany today they are only valid as so-called special private law, thus predominantly in terms of internal association law and at least no longer under public law. They stand in contrast to current legal name provisions and are criticized in part because they fundamental constitutional principles such as the equality of men and women ( Article 3, paragraph 2 GG ) and the equality of marital and non-marital contradicted children (art. 6, para. 5 GG).

Examples

Since the end of the Second World War , the principle of equality has been subject to a constant process of erosion, even in the families of the high nobility. The loss of political importance of the remaining European monarchies and the change in the prevailing social outlook resulted in a steadily growing number of marriages between members of ruling houses and unconcerning, mostly bourgeois spouses. This also applies to heirs to the throne.

Was the wedding of

In contrast, in

Figurative meaning

After the end of the estates , the term “equal” is still used metaphorically in modern parlance in the sense of “equal”.

See also

literature

  • Siegfried Fitte: Unequal princes in earlier centuries. In: The border messengers . Volume 65, No. 4, 1906, pp. 632–644, here p. 636 ( searchable in the Google book search).
  • Johannes Bollmann : The doctrine of equality in German princely houses with Joh. Stephan Pütter and John. Jakob Moser , and its significance for today's law. Göttingen 1897 (legal doctoral thesis; searchable in the Google book search).
  • Heinrich von Minnigerode: Ebenburt and authenticity. Investigations into the doctrine of the noble married sibling before the 13th century. Heidelberg 1912.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ When Marie-Louise of Austria , the widow of Napoleon I, married Adam Albert von Neipperg , who came from the former ruling Count's house, in 1821 , the marriage was considered morganatic and in 1864 the children were given the title of Prince of Montenuovo .
  2. ^ A counterexample is again Marie-Louise of Austria .
  3. ↑ The counts were only a small part of the aristocratic lords princely rank (and only once direct imperial seat and a vote in the Imperial Council of the Reichstag of the existing until 1806 the Holy Roman Empire ), and therefore include a rule - as the Barons and the Mass of the untitled, simple “von” nobility - not to the high nobility, but to the lower nobility (“ lower nobility ”).
  4. ↑ see e.g. B .: Stephan Malinowski: From king to leader. Social decline and political radicalization in the German nobility between the German Empire and the Nazi state , Akademie Verlag Berlin, 3rd edition 2003 (Elitenwandel in der Moderne, Volume 4), p. 157 ff .; Heinz Reif: Nobility in the 19th and 20th centuries , Oldenbourg, Munich, 2nd edition 2012 (Encyclopedia of German History, Volume 55), p. 49
  5. ↑ Judgment of December 2nd, 1998, Az .: IV ZB 19/97 . Wolters Kluwer Germany GmbH. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  6. ↑ 1 BvR 2248/01 . Federal Constitutional Court. March 22, 2004. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
  7. ↑ In fact, however, there is a certain contradiction between the view that the nobility was "abolished" in 1919 (according to the wording of the Weimar Imperial Constitution, it was merely stripped of its "privileges") and the demand for the "equalization" of nobility law according to the standards of the present valid naming rights not to be mistaken.
  8. ↑ Another marriage within the First Department is the third marriage of the longstanding Monegasque heir to the throne, Princess Caroline , in 1999 with Ernst August Prince of Hanover , who of course now live separately; Caroline's three older children, who follow in line to the throne, come from her second civil marriage.