Ausburger

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Ausburger or expatriate synonymous with Pfahlburger is a term from medieval town law . It referred to people who had civil rights without being resident in the urban legal district.

definition

There is no uniform definition of the term “Ausburger” from the Middle Ages. What was meant by this in detail varied from region to region, from place to place. An analysis of the source contexts in which it was used allows the following general definition:

"[Are Ausburger] all those members of the rural population [...] that a state or landlord sovereign in any relationship of dependence, this is now funda- or physical magnificent dependence were, and still came to a town in civil legal relations."

- MG Schmidt

In the medieval sources there are different terms for Ausburgerschaft. The so-called Pfahlburger, which etymologically can possibly be derived from “Falsch-Bürger”, is factually identical . The opinion circulating in older research, according to which Pfahlburgers “lived in front of the city stakes, ie in the suburbs” and should therefore be distinguished from the actual Ausburgers, does not stand up to a more precise source analysis and is no longer supported by more recent research. There are, however, isolated testimonies that make a different distinction: at the Nuremberg Reichstag in 1431, the cities understood Pfahlburgers to be unfree , while Ausburgers understood free (e.g. noble ) country residents with citizenship. Latin be Ausburger cives falsi or cives non-resident called, in French-speaking countries were the terms bourgeois forain or bourgeois external use, in Italy there was talk of borghesi esterni , in the Netherlands of buitenpoorters .

In large parts of the Münsterland one also speaks of Poahlbürger in dialect .

history

The term appears in the German-speaking area in the early 13th century . It can be assumed that the matter itself was practiced by the cities from about the same time. The Ausburgerwesen should henceforth until the early modern period a permanent point of contention remain in the cities surrounding principalities, because they had to see their jurisdiction undermined by the existence of Ausburgern in their fields. Most of the sources that have survived on the Ausburger system arose in connection with such conflicts.

With regional and local bans as well as comparisons with the cities themselves, the sovereigns tried again and again to eliminate or at least limit the Ausburger system, but without lasting success. In the empire , the late medieval emperors and kings issued numerous bans on Ausburger in the interests of the sovereign (including the Golden Bull of 1356), but these could never be enforced across the board: On the one hand, the royal power in the late Middle Ages was no longer sufficient, on the other hand, the kingship also had no real one Interest in permanently strengthening the sovereigns at the expense of the imperial cities . For France and the Netherlands , on the other hand, it can be shown that kings and territorial lords partially used the right to evacuate to gain more direct access to power over their subjects (bypassing the sovereign level).

The cities' interests in accepting Ausburgern are not entirely clear. As a means of an independent urban territorial policy - as most research has assumed - it was largely of no use, because it usually only allowed legal claims to people, but not to the land itself, to be registered. The control of the Ausburger living outside the actual urban area was difficult, as was the collection of taxes . Sanction instruments were largely absent. In this context, the numerous attempts by the cities to link the admission of resident residents to sometimes very restrictive conditions, from the demand for Udel ( Bern ) or other interest, to the acquisition of land or houses in the city, to obligations to take up residence in the city during certain periods (usually in winter).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schmidt 1901 (see literature): 255
  2. ^ The quote from Georg Ludwig von Maurer , History of the City Constitution in Germany , Vol. 2, Erlangen 1870, p. 241; Refutation in Schmidt 1901 (cf. literature): 241–255; Marchal 2002 (cf. literature): 334–336 with note 6
  3. ↑ Marchal 2002 (see literature): 355, note 6
  4. ↑ Marchal 2002 (see literature): 352-360
  5. ↑ Marchal 2002 (see literature): 336–343

See also

literature

  • Max Georg Schmidt: Die Pfalbürger , in: Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte 9 (1901), pp. 241–321.
  • Peter Blickle : “Double pass” in the Middle Ages: Expatriates in Upper German and Swiss cities and the decline of feudal rule. In: The city as a communication space, contributions to city history from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Festschrift for Karl Czok , ed. by Helmut Bräuer and Elke Schlenkrich, Leipzig 2001, pp. 37–48.
  • Guy P. Marchal : Pfahlburger, bourgeois forains, buitenpoorters, bourgeois du roi: Aspects of an ambiguous legal position , in: Migration and exchange in the urban landscape of the old empire (1250–1550), Berlin 2002 (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beih. 30), Pp. 333-367.
  • Peter Blickle: Pfal citizens of Swabian imperial cities. A contribution to the construction of serfdom. In: History in Spaces. FS Rolf Kiessling, ed. by Johannes Burkhardt et al., Konstanz 2006, pp. 51-71.