St. Ingbert forest dispute

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In the forest near St. Ingbert

The St. Ingberter Waldstreit (also St. Ingberter Wald Trial ) was fought in the years 1754 to 1791. It was disputed which wood usage rights the common people of St. Ingbert were entitled to in the forests of the rule of the Imperial Count von der Leyen on the district of St. Ingbert. The process was lost through two instances for the St. Ingberters and then reached the last instance at the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Wetzlar. In 1789 there was a military execution against St. Ingbert. As an example of hundreds of similar processes around the resource wood in the 18th century, the St. Ingbert forest dispute has been treated several times by historians.

Basics

Around St. Ingbert, which is naturally located in the St. Ingbert valley , is the middle red sandstone , the soil of which is unsuitable for agricultural use. The community of St. Ingbert, first mentioned in 888 (as Lantoluinga , later Lendelfingen ), was restricted to the fertile valley floodplain in its development in the pre-industrial period, while large forest areas lay around the settlement. In these forests and as far as the district of St. Ingbert extended (the district boundaries were in part disputed with the neighboring communities), the people of St. Ingbert have been claiming a right to the removal of firewood and construction timber, forest pastures and some hunting of small game for their own use Rulership claimed hunting rights and ownership of the forest. After the Thirty Years' War the village of St. Ingbert was almost depopulated and forests had also emerged on areas that were formerly used for agriculture (i.e. private property of the St. Ingbert farmers). With the government forester taking over the municipal forest supervision since 1732 and the shortage and increase in the price of wood as a resource in the middle of the 18th century, a dispute developed between the municipality of St. Ingbert and the rulers over authorizations in the forest, especially payment of firewood and construction wood.

Process flow

After there had been multiple differences over the timber permits, the Count of Leyensche Fiscal (attorney for the government treasury ) filed a formal complaint against the municipality of St. Ingbert at the Blieskastel office with the aim of displacing the municipality from the forest . After an eleven-year trial, the judgment was passed in the first instance in Blieskastel in 1765 on the basis of an extensive expert opinion obtained from the University of Marburg, which denied the St. Ingbert community ownership of the forest. In the future, the wood should only be allowed to be removed from the forest against payment. The process costs were compared against each other. A week later, the St. Ingbert parish appealed against the judgment to the Countess Leyen's office in Koblenz as the next higher instance. Here, too, after a six-year process, the municipality was subject to external legal opinions (such as the Universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen) and the judgment in 1771 approved the tax authorities.

The town of St. Ingbert appealed to in 1771 at the highest court of the Empire , the imperial Imperial Court in Wetzlar. The process dragged on for another 18 years until 1789 at high costs for both sides. Neither did the Count von der Leyen, whose predecessor St. Ingbert had bought in 1664 from the previous owners, the Electors of Trier and the Lords of Helmstatt , nor the community of St. Ingbert, convincingly prove the existence or non-existence of the rights of pride since both sides had precedents. Sometimes wood was given in exchange for payment, sometimes free of charge. In particular, in the 17th century, resettlement and reconstruction had a priority and timber was sometimes given away free of charge. But no acquisition of rights was based on this.

When the process before the Reich Chamber of Commerce became increasingly hopeless for the forest fighters, they hit upon the idea of ​​presenting a falsified wisdom to the court . The document, which appeared all of a sudden in October 1772, was supposedly a ban renewal from 1601 . This document was intended to prove the alleged rights of use of the citizens of St. Ingbert. The forgery by the Hochstift-Speyerischen head forester and document forger Johann Wilhelm Hannitz was so clumsy, however, that Wolfgang Krämer listed 25 recognizable errors. The document was not admitted as evidence by the examiners of the Reich Chamber of Commerce because of incorrect sealing. The false certificate had no influence on the outcome of the process.

In 1789, events escalated. The community of St. Ingbert, encouraged by the French Revolution that had broken out in the nearby Kingdom of France , and the Countess Marianne von der Leyen , who ruled as guardian, clashed over the forest issue. The community sought support from other communities, the countess sought help from the emperor. On September 17, 1789, 19 of the 38 municipalities of the Blieskastel District Office met for a landscape assembly in Ommersheim , at which St. Ingbert and other municipalities brought numerous other complaints against the Countess and presented them on September 19. At the same time, on September 18, 1789, at the instigation of the Countess, the Imperial Court of Justice administration in Wetzlar issued an open letter from the Emperor against St. Ingbert, Utweiler , Altheim , Neualtheim , Niedergailbach and other communities of the Blieskastel District Office , requesting that all unauthorized steps be omitted . The letter was read and posted on September 21, 1789 in St. Ingbert and other parishes.

The decision of the Reich Chamber Court of September 26, 1789 was ignored. The local mayor was expelled and on October 9, 1789, the forest, coal mines, smelting and other manorial works were occupied by the population. The countess now obtained an execution against the revolting communities. The municipalities had nothing to oppose the military invasion by troops of the Electorate of the Palatinate and Mainz of 326 men on December 6, 1789 with two guns. So the Countess von der Leyen won across the board. The execution costs were imposed on the communities, which were recovered through seizures. St. Ingbert received 18,650 guilders, which were passed on to the 150 common people. After the soldiers withdrew in January 1790, there were again unrest in St. Ingbert on March 21, 1790, this time because of the execution costs. As a result, a guard was transferred to St. Ingbert, which was there until February 3, 1791. In the meantime, legal and execution costs had been so high for the community as for the tax authorities that they were ready to settle on February 3, 1791, because they lacked the financial means to continue the process.

Result

The trial ended on February 3, 1791 with a final settlement with Blieskastel . In the contract, the property rights of the Counts von der Leyen were recognized. However, the citizens of St. Ingbert received some perks that allowed them to use the forest to a certain extent on special “wood and leafy days”. Although the Leyensche forest ownership passed into other hands in 1820, these rights of use were not replaced until 1950.

After the war in the First Coalition War hit the Saar and Blies area at the end of 1792 , the community of St. Ingbert applied to the French district administration in Saarlouis in November 1792 and again on 6 December 1792 to the French district administration in Sarreguemines for admission ( Réunion as it was then , Reunification) to the French Republic , according to whose laws they wanted to “live and die” in order not to have to continue their “life in the slavery of a despotic sovereign”. The corresponding petition was signed by 76 St. Ingbert people, i.e. about half of the politically entitled community citizens. On February 21, 1793, the request for reunion was presented to the National Convention, which, however, did not decide on it.

memory

A well-known local historian from St. Ingbert published the story “About forest and coal” (1925) under the code name “Heinrich Märker”. The St. Ingbert homeland poet Karl Uhl wrote a homeland game "Die Waldstreiter" in connection with the 100th anniversary celebration (1929) of the city development of St. Ingbert. Some streets (e.g. Henrion-, Peter-Eich-, Hanspeter-Hellenthal-Straße) in the residential area Mühlwald in St. Ingbert are named after Waldstreitern.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Hans-Walter Herrmann (Ed.): The French Revolution and the Saar. Exhibition catalog . St. Ingbert 1989. ISBN 3-924555-41-9 , pp. 102-106, p. 114.
  • Eva Kell: Lots of cursed innovations. Forest crime and unrest during the French Revolution = history workshop St. Ingbert: Contributions to regional history, Issue 9, 1992. Online
  • Wolfgang Krämer : History of the city of St. Ingbert. From the beginning to the end of the Second World War. A local history based on archival sources . 2nd, completely revised and significantly expanded edition. 2 volumes. Self-published by the city of St. Ingbert, St. Ingbert 1955. First volume, pp. 187–235.
  • Heinrich Märker (pseudonym of Wolfgang Krämer): About forest and coal . Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1925. 2nd improved edition. Franz Scharl, Munich 1960.
  • Uwe Eduard Schmidt: The forest in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries . Saarbrücken 2002. ISBN 3-9808118-6-7 , p. 64

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c Krämer 1955, pp. 187-235
  2. ↑ a b Schmidt 2002, p. 64
  3. ↑ Krämer 1955, pp. 197–202, with endnote 361 on pp. 59 * –60 * of the notes on Johann Wilhelm Hannitz and with an illustration of the forged wisdom on panel IX after p. 192.
  4. ↑ Herrmann 1989, pp. 102-106
  5. ↑ Reprinted by Krämer 1955, p. 219, facsimile by Krämer 1955, p. 220
  6. ^ Reprinted by Siegmund von Bibra (Ed.): Journal von und für Deutschland , Volume 6, Ellrich 1789, pp. 257f. Joseph II, Roman-German Emperor: Litterae Patentes Caesareae in matters of the Counts of Leyen's guardianship, against the communities of St. Ingberth, Utweiler, Altheim, Neualtheim, Gailbach and others of the Bliescastell district office.
  7. ↑ Krämer 1955, p. 220
  8. ↑ Schmidt 2002, p. 64. Schmidt probably means the “Open Letter” of September 18, 1789, which is dated “Our empire, the Roman, in the sixth and twentieth” year etc.
  9. ↑ Krämer 1955, p. 230
  10. ^ Saarpfalz. Sheets for history and folklore, special issue 2012, Homburg, p. 69
  11. ↑ Herrmann 1989, p. 114