Police regulations
As a police order or good Policey (contemp. Also Policeyordnung ) are sovereign's laws of the early modern period referred to (according to the current understanding rechtsdogmatischem) administrative , regulatory private law , but occasionally also criminal codified regulations.
Conceptuality and conceptual history
The term police order or good police comes from Plato 's work politeia . In this philosophical work, Plato presents his ideal utopian state. The police regulations try to do justice to this platonic work. It is therefore not a matter of police regulations , but of overarching laws with very different contents. At that time "police" did not mean police officers or an authority, but "good order and administration" of public life. Their goals, content and means were specified in the respective regional police regulations.
Contemporary the term was often spelled as policey . Research has adopted this spelling in order to distinguish it from the modern, narrow-minded term police.
The concept of the good policey comes from the ancient politia. Following on from the Aristotelian doctrine of virtue, which was received from the 13th century in Europe by Thomas Aquinas, among others. At first there was no conceptual difference between politia and policey.
The concept of the good policey has been understood as synonymous with "good order" and its enforcement within the framework of a Christian community since the 16th century. While the objectives of the Good Policey initially outweighed the preservation of the social order and Christian values, the term underwent a change in meaning in the wake of the Enlightenment aimed at economic improvements.
Research explains the emergence of the good policey with critical changes at the end of the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. The uprisings of the common man (climax: German Peasants' War, 1525) and the Reformation are named as decisive points. The good policey emerged as a reaction to these crises and can be understood as an attempt at coping.
Important police theorists of the 16th century were Claude de Seyssel, Johannes Oldendorp and Melchior von Osse. While the latter were primarily aimed at maintaining the order of the estates, for Seyssel the policey was one of the three powers that restricted kingship (alongside law and religion).
In the 17th century, the Gute Policey was theoretically oriented more towards the absolutist character of princely rule. Georg Obrecht advocated statistical surveys such as population figures and income, which was the first time that he considered the individual outside of the class order. Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff also requested information about the nature of the agriculturally used land.
Jean Domat derived the good policey from the commandment of Christian charity, which the policey needed as a condition for its realization.
In the 18th century, good policey became a subject taught at universities in Germany from 1727, while in France it existed purely as an administrative practice.
Heinrich Gottlob Justi first distinguished between the happiness of the citizens and the well-being of the state, so he no longer set the absolute good order.
Emergence
Starting with the imperial adoption of 1495 and continuing with the imperial policy orders of 1530, 1548, and 1577, the emperor negotiated with the imperial estates customary law through codified law and thus institutionalized the good policey.
With the consolidation of the territorial states since the end of the 16th century , the state interests broke away from the private interests of the sovereign. The Reich Police Regulations (Worms 1495, Augsburg 1539) are, along with the Carolina, the most important judicial laws of the aging empire.
At the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1547/1548, the police order "The Roman-Imperial Majesty Order and Reformation of Good Policey, for the Promotion of Common Use" was adopted as a legal framework to which the police orders of the individual territories of the empire had to be based.
Subject matter and purpose
The police regulations deal with good public order (clothing, weddings, minstrels, beggars, usury ) and also contain regulations on economic and labor law (trade, measurements, weights and prices). In part, the police regulations also contained fire brigade , court and procedural regulations . A distinction was made between Reich Police and City Police Regulations, with the Reich Police Regulations being issued by the King and the City Police by the city lord. The territorial princes also issued corresponding ordinances. One example is the police order for the Duchy of Westphalia from 1723 .
The purpose of the police regulations has always been the public order of social life and the economy. They were primarily management instruments and an expression of the consolidation of state power and thus contributed to the formation of the state. Even in the phase of enlightened absolutism, they appeared as a legal order of the prince who recommended the spirit of obedience to his subjects.
Individual evidence
- ^ Johannes Burkhardt: Completion and reorganization of the early modern empire 1648–1763. Stuttgart 2006, p. 171
literature
- Franz Wieacker : History of private law in modern times. Göttingen, 1996, p. 204ff.
- Marcel Senn, Lukas Gschwend, René Pahud de Montagnes: Legal History 2006 . Chapter 7, No. 26.
- Matthias Weber: The Reich Police Regulations of 1530, 1548 and 1577. Frankfurt / M. 2002.
- W. Brauneder and I. Helperstorfer (eds.): The Austrian police regulations of the 16th century. 1993.
- Andrea Iseli: Good Policey. Public Order in the Early Modern Era . Stuttgart 2009: UTB
Web links
(Reich Police Order of 1531)
