Tertiary law
The tertiary law was a special right concerning the ownership and use of country estates. In Germany it was only valid in the area of the former administrative district of Stralsund ( Neuvorpommern and Rügen ) from the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century. The estates subject to tertiary law as real law, the tertiary estates, were owned by the state and entered as such in the land register. At the same time, property and use were given as perpetual leases at an unchangeable low rent to certain families ( tertialists ) according to a special, fixed succession. A third of the agreed rent, the tertial , was waived for the tenants. Tertial goods were inalienable and indivisible. They were not knightly estates and were often owned by middle-class families.
The inheritance was based on the principle of primogeniture to the oldest son. If he remained without offspring, the male descendants of the second son of the first buyer inherited. If there were no male descendants, the widow of the last owner inherited or, if this did not exist, the female descendants of the first purchaser. Their male descendants then followed. If the descendants of the first acquirer died out and there was no widow entitled to inherit, they were reverted to the state.
The tertiary law arose under Swedish law at the end of the 17th century in the form of various royal resolutions. The background to this was the so-called "reduction" that had been decided to finance the state finances. With the reduction, the former possessions of the Pomeranian dukes , which in the meantime had not been formally properly sold, especially by the Swedish kings as their legal successors, were returned to the Swedish crown. Tertial law was first introduced by the Swedes on October 5, 1689 in Estonia and on September 23, 1690 in Livonia , and then on August 16, 1693 in Swedish Pomerania . In actual Sweden and Finland it never existed.
After the transition from Swedish Pomerania to Prussia , the tertiary law was retained. With the introduction of the property tax , the tertiary goods were classified as domains and thus exempt from the tax. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the tertiary law proved to be out of date, as no loans could be taken out on the property. In 1911 it was finally repealed by law. None of the tertialists made use of the possibility of returning the tertial property to the state in return for a compensation amounting to 25 times the net income from property tax. Instead, everyone acquired ownership of the goods for five times the property tax net income.
The following goods were tertiale in the Greifswald district : Negentin , Neuendorf , Schulzenhof , Rubenow , Wusterhusen , Voddow and Kräpelin .
literature
- Willi Griebenow : Tertial law and Tertialgüter in the former New Western Pomerania and Rügen. In: Greifswald-Stralsund yearbook . Vol. 10, 1972/73, pp. 101-126.
- Willi Griebenow: Tertial law and Tertialgüter in the former New Western Pomerania and Rügen. Historical sketch of a Swedish legal institution (Aus Deutschlands Mitte, vol. 20) . Bonn - Dümmler 1989.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Heinrich Berghaus : Land book of the Duchy of Pomerania and the Principality of Rügen . IV. Part II. Volume: Greifswalder Kreis . Anklam 1868, pp. 30-32 ( Google Books ).