Possad
The Possad ( German Vorwerk , Vorstadt ) formed the commercial suburb of a Kremlin in medieval Russia . It is located outside the protective Kremlin walls . The Possad was subordinate to a tsarist governor and had self-administration which was comparable to the village community, the Obschtschina , but not quite as pronounced.
construction
The posad outside the walls could in turn be surrounded by a wooden enclosure or earth wall, with an external moat or pile ditch. Mostly the merchants and craftsmen settled in the Possad and sold their goods there on the market, the Torg . In addition to the function of a trading place, the market place , demonstrably the meeting place of the Wetsche , the people's assembly, was also used as a political forum. The market marked the center of the Possad, which the houses of craftsmen and traders cared about. These were divided according to certain craft trades and ethnic groups and created their own small suburbs ( slobody ), mostly with a church or a commercial yard as the center.
Up to the end of the 17th century it was characterized by inconsistent and narrow buildings. The houses and farmsteads were seldom on the street line. The townscape was built without planning, and simple wooden houses , the Russian Isba , as well as representative stone houses (e.g. monasteries, mansions of the princely followers, boyars and merchants) dominated the cityscape. Due to the dense development with wooden houses, the old Russian cities were often ravaged by fires that could completely destroy the entire city. When a fire broke out, the main search was to save the royal court and the treasures kept in the churches. In such cases, reconstruction was started relatively quickly.
Characteristic for the manor houses were a large spatial extent, stable construction, juxtaposition and confusion of the numerous farm and auxiliary buildings as well as the apartments of the courtiers, servants (up to 700 people) and the yards of the dependent craftsmen. The entire complex of the courtyard with all buildings and economic facilities is usually referred to as the house in the sources. Each such courtyard represented a self-contained whole and was surrounded by a solid weir. These large feudal residential and commercial complexes stood out strikingly from the ordinary buildings of the townspeople.
The monasteries and large churches with the associated properties stood out even more. A monastery with a wooden, rare stone protective weir, its stone church, the monk cells and farm buildings often formed a city within the city walls.
But also the courtyards of the urban craftsmen and traders were each a residential and economic unit in itself. Excavations usually reveal a city dweller's house as well as his cattle yard . This was followed by a smaller piece of land enclosed with a fence. This city dweller's courtyard is also self-contained and separated from the outside world.
There were always large, unpopulated areas between the individual suburbs.
Occurrence
Some Russian city names still contain the word Possad today :
literature
- Christiane Hamel: Russia: from the Volga to the Neva: Moscow and the Golden Ring . DuMont Reiseverlag, Ostfildern 2010.
- Andrea Hapke, Evelyn Scheer: And the Golden Ring: Old Russian cities on Moskva, Oka and Volga . 3. Edition. Trescher Verlag, 2005.