Robot (forced labor in the Kingdom of Bohemia)
Robot (the / key, plural: robots, from the Slavic robota - labor ) is the common name for the era of feudalism in the Kingdom of Bohemia , the Margraviate of Moravia and after the Silesian wars from the Duchy of Silesia the House of Habsburg remainders (Austro ) Silesia by the local Erbuntertanen their landlords / ladies and gentlemen owed labor services .
Succession and serfdom
The landlords were the regent of the House of Habsburg, who had ruled in these countries of the Bohemian crown since 1524 - generally the ruling Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - (in his domains ) as well as the estates entered in the land table , i.e. the secular and spiritual nobility , the land-owning monasteries and monasteries and the royal cities (in their dominions ).
With exceptions, inherited subjects were very few “free farmers ” and the citizens living in the towns and markets located on these dominions, who were merely their “subjects” and therefore had no robot to perform, all other domestic residents of these territories. As long as they had their own household / stove, so were all farmers, cottagers (Chalupper) Inleute (tenant) and tongs (in the old part robot subject of the farmer / cottager living parents). It was irrelevant whether these farmers and “farmed” cottagers cultivated Rustikalgrund ( farmer's property ) or Dominikalgrund ( manorial property ). Even “unfielded” cottagers were obliged to do so. Farmers down to the “quarter farmer” had to perform “clamping robots” with a horse or ox or in two to four horses. In Bohemia since the years 1653/54, the estimated amount entered in the tax cadastre ( Berní rula ) was decisive, as it was initially determining for the ordinary contribution (tax) to be paid for Rustikalgrund since then. In the case of a team - at least two draft animals - a bridle driver had to be provided with the team driver; In addition, the equipment required for the respective work - wagon or plow.
Anyone who had to perform clamping robots was, in view of the myriad of such robot days demanded, forced to keep the draft animals required for the clamping service in addition to the horses / oxen and servants required for the work in their yard, which in itself is significant for the farmer's income has decreased. Small farmers (eighth farmers) and all other robots required (only) to perform “foot or hand robots”. Since they were forced to earn a living for themselves and their families as craftsmen or as day laborers for farmers and they also received nothing from their landlord as wages for their work, they lost a lot of time for wage labor, which in turn meant that they at best could secure their subsistence level.
Legal Status
In terms of both personal and property law, the inheritance was very limited in relation to the landlord. In contrast to the slave , for example in ancient Rome, in the age of feudalism the inherited subject had its own legal personality and also legal capacity. Since he was the only born farm laborer for his landlord, the master tried to secure this labor and keep him on his clod (clod obligation). He was therefore only allowed to leave his territory temporarily with the approval of his landlord, for example to take up work elsewhere (hiking consensus). If he wanted to move away permanently, he had to apply for his release from submission (discharge letter), which cost him 5 to 10 percent of his assets.
In addition to these restrictions on his freedom of movement, he required prior approval from the rulership (craft or marriage consensus) in order to enter into an apprenticeship with a master craftsman or to marry. A “tax” had to be paid for this too. In addition, he was subject to a number of contracting constraints , such as the mill compulsion, which ordered him to have his grain milled only in a mill determined by the rulers and leased by them and for this - of course - to pay more than in another mill, still only beer from the to drink a manorial brewery (compulsory bar) or to sell grain only to his rulers for a lower fee and only to buy seed grain in the manorial grain store for a higher price (grain monopoly). The village community, on the other hand, was required to buy prescribed quantities of beer from the brewery or, before public holidays, on which meat dishes were served here and there among the village population, to purchase meat of often questionable quality from a manorial farm. Since the rulers had a monopoly , they achieved a higher price than had to be paid in the cities and markets that were subject to protection. Conversely, craftsmen had to work cheaper for the rule than craftsmen from these places.
In terms of personal law, however, the subject was not a slave or serf. In some dominions where a despotic ruling regiment could be observed, for example in the rule Dobříš of Prince Mansfeld, the enslaved and brutally exploited subject hardly differed from a Roman slave, which is why the term " Serfdom ”was used to describe the legal position of the subject.
In terms of property law, the position of the farmer or cottage owner was dominated by the oppressive burden of his easements which his master had demanded of him. As far as he was a Dominikal farmer, he was only a tenant and the lease with the landlord ended with his death at the latest. So he could not inherit his farm. Nonetheless, it was common practice, at least in the last few decades of hereditary subjection, for a subsequent lease agreement to be concluded with one of the children after the death of a Dominical farmer. In principle, these leases were limited to a few years. In the beginning, tenants often took turns. At least they had legal security for the duration of the contract.
The question of whether the rustic farmer was also only a tenant (hereditary leaseholder) and therefore only owner of the land he cultivated or whether he was the owner alone or with his master can only be answered if one can clearly answer such as his legal relationship to this soil before it lost more and more justice under feudalism. His better "old law", to which the peasant always referred in his defense against arbitrary rule, was just as little fixed in writing as the "old law and tradition" with exactly the opposite content, to which the classes in turn invoked when they did have repulsed state intervention for the benefit of the exploited subjects. In view of this lack of clarity, legal historians who attempt this answer speak of “ shared property ” or “upper property” of the landlord.
In any case, the fact is that by the end of the 16th century this property was distributed in such a way that the farmer, who was already badly depressed by the robot, could at least bequeath his farm. At the time of the worst excesses of feudalism, this was no longer certain, at least in a large number of dominions. The “unbought” farmer could be “donated” at any time, that is, driven from the farm. The “bought-in” farmer, who had bought back the property that had once been taken from him, could at least not be donated arbitrarily and could sell or bequeath his farm. Very few farmers were only “bought in” because they either lacked the money for this purchase or they did not expect their position to improve.
history
Tax burden in the 17th century
Only when the state, the emperor in distant Vienna, saw the peasants and the other subjects as taxpayers and as "recruits" (soldiers), did he begin to recognize the miserable conditions in which his subjects lived and in which poor physical condition were those among them whom he needed for his wars against the Turks. With the first tax cadastre from 1653/54, the assessment basis for the ordinary contribution (33 ⅓%), which from then on had to be paid for all rustic land, was to be created. The - lower - extraordinary tax (29%), which had to be paid in exceptional cases such as a state of war, was incumbent on the estates for their Dominikalland, which was also much too low. So that Rustikalgrund does not become Dominikalgrund and thus fall out of the ordinary contribution, the landlord should now fulfill the tax liability on this property himself after "peeling off" one of his rustic farmers and moving in the land that he had previously managed. As a side effect, at least the aforementioned peeling off and the entry of farmland should be prevented. But since the landlord was a lower administrative authority and in particular also tax collector, he continued to donate, enlarged his master country and burdened the remaining rustic farmers with this tax, with the result that the increased tax burden depressed them even more.
This burden and the simultaneous increase in the number of robots - more manorial land also required more workers and robotic work cost the masters nothing - caused the enslaved peasants to rebel again in 1680, again without lasting success. That was the reason for the emperor's first robot patent, which was intended to limit this service to three days in a week and to stop the work on Sundays and public holidays. Since sanctions were not provided in the event of a violation and the emperor only appealed to their Christian conscience and their duty to their subjects, the authorities disregarded this patent and sometimes let their subjects continue to work on their estates every weekday and donated them continue at will.
The robot patents issued after further peasant unrest in 1713, 1717 and 1738, which again did not provide for sanctions and again only appealed to the conscience and sense of duty of the authorities, had just as little success.
Reforms
Reforms only started under Empress Maria Theresa after she had to painfully acknowledge the lack of a central state administration and the consequences of inadequate collection and transfer of taxes after her defeat in the Silesian Wars. Therefore it created central authorities for the entire Reich in Vienna and in particular also its own tax authorities, which now collected the taxes themselves and paid them to the headquarters. She was open to reforms for the benefit of the rural subjects and set a good example by abolishing serfdom in her domains and freeing her peasants from robots and creating new farming jobs there. From 1774 these reforms (also known as Raabisation ) were carried out on the initiative of Franz Anton von Raab . However, she shrank from challenging the cantons and by law to rob them of what they claimed for themselves as their rights and privileges.
Her son and successor Joseph II , who was co-regent during her lifetime , was a staunch supporter of the Enlightenment and the emerging natural law school . Not what is right, rather what should be right, was decisive for his reforms. The exploitation of the peasants by their authorities could therefore not be right for him, especially since for him an efficient state economy had a strong peasant class as a basic requirement - peasant land in peasant hands. Although he recognized the need to abolish serfdom and the basic services that were “sticking to it” at the same time as serfdom - without compensation payments from subjects who were previously unable to do so financially - he shrank from this “revolution from above”. He even had to consider questionable property rights to farm land.
Shortly after he took office as co-regent, peasant unrest broke out in Austrian Silesia in 1769, and in 1770 a bad harvest in large parts of Bohemia triggered a great famine, to which many people fell victim, especially in 1771. Already in 1768 Ernst Baron von Unwerth had denounced intolerable conditions in a memorandum, especially in the Mansfeld rule Dobříš. In its final report in 1770, the local authority investigation that was initiated confirmed: unprecedented peasant smuggling, tax evasion (overburdening the ordinary contribution to the remaining rustic farmers as a result of peasant laying), usury in granting loans and selling grain, monopoly of the grain trade, non-payment of the “patent Fees ”for long-distance journeys“ for more than 30 years ”and even the use of robotic subjects in the stately mines and iron hammers. In Silesia, therefore, it was first landed - a written record of the services to be provided by a household to an appropriate extent - and on July 6, 1771, the (Robot) main patent valid for this part of the country was obtained. For example, the handheld robots have been (almost) halved: for a resident / tenant from 24 to 13 days a year, for those without a field from 52 to 26 days a year and for those who are exposed from 104 to 52 days a year.
After a long back-and-forth of reports and counter-reports and statements by the central and state authorities and the particularly angry classes and a failure to land easements in Bohemia, the emperor finally pushed through his robot patent of August 13, 1775 for Bohemia and Moravia. Spannrobot could only be done by farmers who in 1773 had to pay more than 9 guilders and 30 kreuzer contributions. All those who were previously required to do so only had to do hand robots, which immediately resulted in numerous draft animals being abolished and cows being kept in their place.
With the patent dated November 1, 1781, "serfdom" was finally abolished in all three Bohemian countries and in its place "moderate subservience according to the model of the Austrian hereditary lands" was introduced. In this way the adult subject was legally fully competent and no longer dependent on the various consensus of his authorities. For the young people from the age of fourteen who had previously been used for three to six years of unpaid "court service" in their rulership, also with sometimes miserable food and accommodation, this hated forced labor was no longer applicable. Appeals by the emperor to enable their subjects to “purchase” their farms and thus to acquire (sole) property through generous concession were not heard by the estates; On the one hand, the peasants did not have the money required for this, on the other hand, they would rather wait for a settlement like in the emperor's domains, where the peasant had nothing to pay.
In view of this passivity of the estates, from 1785 (patent dated April 20, 1785) the emperor set about a tax and land management regulation without listening to the estates, which were previously unwilling to accommodate and relieve their subjects. Assuming that a farmer would have to retain 70% of the gross income from his agriculture, 13% in taxes for the state and contributions to the community and the church, a maximum of 17% remains for services to the authorities. From now on, these services should no longer be provided by Robot, but rather by paying the monetary value. However, the farmer should be able to choose between monetary payment or voluntary work for a period of time to be agreed in advance with the landlord. In addition, everyone, farmers and estates alike, should be called upon to make ordinary contributions. In the following four years, exactly the services owed by the subjects were recorded in land registers and their monetary value calculated. With a transition period of one year, the regulation should come into force on November 1, 1790.
Reversal and standstill of reforms
The death of the emperor in February 1790 and the fact that his successor Leopold II wanted to accommodate the estates prevented the completion of the reform steps Josef II. Went as far as they were at all possible in his day. With the patent for Bohemia dated May 9, 1790 and previously issued for the other crown lands , Josef II's legal changes were almost completely withdrawn from April 20, 1785. However, the estates and the farmers were given the opportunity to make agreements on a voluntary basis that the farmers could provide cash for years instead of robots. The state authorities should, however, ensure that - once the land registers cease to be used as a yardstick - the farmers are not taken advantage of. The stalls had previously announced their willingness to submit proposals for calculating these amounts of money. This is expressly referred to in the patent. However, these suggestions did not materialize. Leopold II reminded the estates of their acceptance and called for these proposals before his death. The estates countered, however, by leaving the patent dated May 9, 1790. The legal situation remained as it was created by the robot patent of August 13, 1775.
Under his successor Franz II the reform process came to a complete standstill. A law was passed on September 1, 1798 to replace these easements. Nothing changed in the legal situation, however, because it only repeated that these were to be negotiated by those affected - estates and farmers - and that no one could be forced to do so. In the following years with armed conflicts and then paralyzing inactivity, nothing happened in the reform process until the unrest in Galicia in 1846. The peasants there refused to use the robot, which in turn shook the imperial government in distant Vienna out of its lethargy because the estates in the other provinces had also become restless. In June 1846, 109 aristocrats submitted a “petition” with the suggestion that the communities should replace the robot services and that this could lead to a “dissolution of the landlord-peasant relationship”. The court chancellery decree of December 18, 1846 again only referred to the possibility of voluntary agreements such as “interest and cash purchases”.
Final repeal
So it had to come to the March Revolution of 1848 and the constitution of the Reichstag, which emerged from it, on July 22, 1848, in which the youngest member, Hans Kudlich , a farmer's son from Austrian Silesia, introduced as a first proposal, “the high Reich Assembly should declare: from now on the subservience together with all rights and duties arising therefrom is abolished; subject to the provisions on whether and how compensation is to be paid ”. The latter was the problem here too. After long debates in parliament, Emperor Ferdinand I signed the patent of September 7th, 1848 ( basic relief patent ), with which subservience and the protective relationship were abolished and it was regulated that both rustical and Dominical grounds were to be "relieved" and furthermore "all burdens, easements and generosities of every kind arising from the subservience relationship, clinging to the submissive reason ... cease". It was also regulated which rights of the previous rulers should be compensated. That was the case even after the suppression of the revolution.
In order to acquire the land, the previously subservient farmers had to pay considerable sums of money (in cash or as a pension) to the previous landlords. They could buy their farms for a third of the appraised value. The state paid another third to the landlords, who in turn had to forego the last third. Because of the money required, many farmers got into debt, and there was a new dependency, this time on the donors. Others could not pay the fee for the liberation from manorial rule. Some of these therefore moved to the cities and from then on earned their living with wage labor. Only further legal provisions finally eliminated all leasehold and inheritance law relationships in 1867.
See also
literature
- Franz August Brauner: About the robot and its replacement for the Bohemian and Moravian farmer . Kronberger and Ržiwnatz, Prague 1848, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10622447-7 .
- Markus Cerman , Hermann Zeitlhofer (ed.): Social structures in Bohemia. A regional comparison of economy and society in manors, 16. – 19. Century . Oldenbourg, Vienna 2002.
- Karl Grünberg : The peasants' liberation and the abolition of the landlord-peasant relations in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia . 2 vols. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig ( digitized [accessed on April 6, 2016] 1893/1894).
- Karl Grünberg: Studies on Austrian agricultural history . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1901 ( digitized [accessed April 6, 2016]).
- Pavel Himl: The “poor people” and power . Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2003 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
- Thomas Keller: Prague 1848/49 - from the social to the national revolution . GRIN Verlag, 2007.
- Georg Friedrich Knapp : The peasant liberation and the origin of the farm workers in the older parts of Prussia . 2 vols. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887 ( edition from 1887 in sections [PDF; accessed on April 6, 2016] 2nd unchanged edition. Munich 1927).
- Georg Friedrich Knapp: manorial rule and manor . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb11127325-6 .
- Karl Leiner: Presentation of all robot laws for Bohemia and Moravia and the more advantageous use of the natural robot for the authorities and subjects . Haase, Prague 1847, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10543618-6 .
- Franz Plaček: The Austrian basic relief capital . Haase, Prague 1853, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10543112-9 .
- Franz Anton von Raab: Lessons on the transformation of the quays. Köngl. Bohemian domains in farm estates . Vienna 1777, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10506470-0 .
- Georg Viktorin Raffius: About the donation of the subjects in the kingdom of Bohemia . Prague 1798 ( full text in Google book search).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robot patent of 13 August 1775 (Nro. 1707). In: Theresian law book. Digitized on ÖNB-ALEX , p. 265 f. , accessed April 3, 2016 .
- ↑ Robotsabolizionssistem N. IV. In: Handbook of the Imperial and Royal Laws 8th Vol. 1785. Digitalisat on ÖNB-ALEX, p. 16 f. , accessed April 3, 2016 .
- ↑ Patent for Bohemia from May 9, 1790. In: Handbuch der Leopoldinischen Gesetz 1790–1792 1. Bd. Digitalisat auf ÖNB-ALEX, p. 209 f. , accessed April 3, 2016 .
- ↑ Minutes of the third session of the constituent Reichstag on July 26, 1848. In: Official stenographic reports on the negotiations of the Austrian Reichstag 1.-27. Meeting. Digitized on ÖNB-ALEX, p. 159 f. , accessed April 3, 2016 .
- ^ Abolition of the bondage bond and relief of peasant property. In: Political laws and ordinances 1792–1848 76. Bd. Digitalisat on ÖNB-ALEX, p. 285 f. , accessed April 3, 2016 .