City air makes you free

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Town houses on the market square in Spišská Sobota ( Slovakia )

The saying "City air sets you free after year and day" describes a legal principle of the Middle Ages :

From settlements around castles and monasteries , which were founded around the 11th century by ransomed serfs and other members of the 3rd class , further cities arose in addition to the old Roman or Germanic foundations . More and more serfs settled in the cities, where they were mostly undetectable for their landlords.

So it became legal practice that a non-free person living in a city could no longer be reclaimed from his employer after year and day and thus became an inmate (also city dweller). But if the employer could prove with seven witnesses that the serf was his property, he had to serve him again. This regulation was abandoned by the statute in favorem principum (1231/32) in favor of the princes .

literature

  • Heinrich Mitteis : About the legal basis of the sentence “City air makes free”. In: Erika Kunz (ed.): Festschrift Edmund E. Stengel for his 70th birthday on December 24, 1949, presented by friends, colleagues and students. Böhlau, Münster et al. 1952, pp. 342–358 (Also in: Carl Haase (Hrsg.): Die Stadt des Mittelalters. Volume 2: Law and Administration. 2nd expanded edition. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1976).
  • Christoph Kreutzmüller, Eckart Schörle; TWA Thuringian Economic Archives , Centrum Judaicum (Ed.): City air makes free? Jewish businesses in Erfurt from 1919 to 1939 . Hentrich & Hentrich , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-942271-97-4 (= Jewish miniatures , volume 138).

Individual evidence

  1. Erik Hühns / Ingeborg Hühns: Farmer, Citizen, Nobleman: Life in the Middle Ages. , Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1963 (p. 123)