Administration of the County of Hanau-Munzenberg
The administration of the County of Hanau-Münzenberg developed from late medieval roots and then became increasingly differentiated.
Starting position
The administration of the County of Hanau , which emerged in 1429 from the dominion of Hanau , from 1458 onwards, the County of Hanau-Münzenberg , emerged from the personal regiment of the respective ruler and his house and farm administration. As part of the incipient professionalization of administration and early state forms of administrative action, individual studied councils were taken into service. They were mostly of bourgeois origin. But also some of the gentlemen, later counts of Hanau, had completed university training.
Territorial division
Starting from medieval structures, the county had a core range of allods and solid, traditional in the hands of the lords and counts of Hanau held fiefs . The acquisition of these holdings was largely completed at the beginning of the 16th century. It was divided into a number of offices, each of different sizes, each comprising a number of villages. There were also condominiums with other territorial lords, but they were also divided into this office structure. At the head of the offices were mayors or bailiffs . In addition, there were shares, rights of use or other rights - such as church patronage or bailiff's rights - which could condense into territorial rule in individual cases, but in many cases remained limited to their economic value.
development
Unit management
A central administration, the chancellery , had developed since the 15th century . It was made up of collegial councils headed by a senior bailiff, usually from the lower nobility . The councilors included the treasurer (responsible for finances), a bailiff (responsible for the affairs of the count's court, usually also from the lower nobility), a chancellery and a secretary (both usually studied commoners), as well as clerks, Registrar and clerk.
During the long-standing guardianship in Hanau for underage counts whose father had already died, the office staff was of increased importance, since then often none of the guardians was personally on site.
A chancellery regulation issued in the Duchy of Pfalz-Zweibrücken in 1559 was adopted as a basis for work.
In the middle of the 16th century, the Reformation - initially in its Lutheran form - took hold and an independent regional church developed in Hanau-Münzenberg . Their central administration was also controlled from the law firm. This was formally done in 1573 when a separate department was set up for it.
Differentiation
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Under the government of the reform-loving Count Philip Ludwig II (1580–1612), the country's central administration was also redesigned. When considering this, the following branches of work of the central administration were identified:
- Church administration
- Judicial administration
- Court affairs
- Chamber (financial administration)
The chamber and church administration (as the “ consistory ”) were spun off from the chancellery into their own authorities in 1609 , which were themselves renamed the government . Internal administration and the judiciary remained with the government. Since administration and judiciary were not yet separated at that time, the councils of the government also formed the court court , the highest court in the county. Secured by a Privilegium de non appellando , it was in the majority of cases the highest authority up to which a subject of the Count could sue.
The separation of the individual administrative branches into their own authorities, however, was not strictly carried out in terms of personnel: it happened that a functionary performed tasks in more than one authority. In 1612 the chamber received its own chamber rules. In it, she was also assigned responsibility for the mint .
Under Count Friedrich Casimir (1642–1685), who cultivated a baroque rulership, there was again an opposing tendency: The council Johann Michael Moscherosch became head of all three authorities at the same time and was also given the title of "President". Since then, the heads of the Hanau higher authorities have held this title.
Count Friedrich Casimir, who came from the Lutheran branch of the family, from the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg , also tolerated or promoted the Lutheran denomination in the County of Hanau-Münzenberg, which had been reformed since 1597. In the decades following his assumption of government in 1642, a second Lutheran regional church was formed, for which a further Lutheran consistory was required, which was established in 1658. Another reformed consistory, which was responsible for the two Reformed communities in Neustadt Hanau, the Dutch and French- speaking communities of refugees from the Spanish Netherlands and France, should be distinguished from this. This third consistory had the same tasks as the other two, but was not a state authority, but a self-governing body of the communities. It is therefore the only one of the authorities described here that still exists today - and that under the traditional name of a “consistory”.
Subordinate administration
The administration of the County of Hanau-Munzenberg was hierarchically organized in three levels: village - office - county. The subordinate general administration was headed by the mayor or bailiff, the subordinate chamber administration was headed by basement . The administration of the mayors and bailiffs were assigned to regional courts, which were the appellate instance for the first instance, local courts, but in practice were often circumvented by appealing directly to the court court. The local administration was in the hands of local schools appointed by the count or in the hands of elected mayors . At this level there were lay judges under the chairmanship of the respective local school officer or mayor.
Land estates did not develop in the county of Hanau-Munzenberg. This was due, on the one hand, to the fact that the county did not expand too much, but also to the fact that the overwhelming financial and tax potential had been concentrated in the new town of Hanau since the end of the 16th century and the lobby group of the large taxpayers thus only a few hundred Meters away from the count's court lived and worked.
Secret advice
With the death of the last independent Count of Hanau, Johann Reinhard III. , the Landgraves of Hessen-Kassel inherited the County of Hanau Munzenberg. In fact, it was Landgrave Wilhelm VIII. Due to the complicated family situation, Hanau-Munzenberg existed for fifty more years as a secondary school for the House of Hessen-Kassel without the authorities merging. However, Wilhelm VIII transferred administrative forms that he knew from Kassel to Hanau. The most important innovation was the establishment of a secret cabinet , which - in contrast to the other three authorities, which were more active in administration - was a more political body that had to protect the sovereign rights of the sovereign and was responsible for complaints from subjects to the sovereign.
The End
When Landgrave Wilhelm IX./I., Who had ruled the Hanau-Münzenberg secondary school in 1785, inherited the home countries, he dissolved the secret cabinet in Hanau. Its tasks were now carried out by the parallel committee in Kassel. In 1792, the tasks that had previously been carried out by the Hanau court were transferred to the Kassel Higher Appeal Court . The other authorities were not integrated into the Hessian administrative structure until 1803. However, this state, now the Electorate of Hesse , went under as early as 1806. After French military occupation and the interlude of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt , it was restituted in 1813. It was not until the administrative reform of the restituted electorate in 1821 that the last peculiarities in the administration of the former county of Hanau-Münzenberg were eliminated.
literature
- Reinhard Dietrich : The state constitution in Hanau. The position of the lords and counts in Hanau-Münzenberg based on the archival sources (= Hanauer Geschichtsblätter. Volume 34). Hanau History Association , Hanau 1996, ISBN 3-9801933-6-5 .
- Uta Löwenstein: County of Hanau . In: Knights, Counts and Princes - Secular Dominions in the Hessian Area approx. 900-1806 = Handbook of Hessian History 3 = Publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse 63. Marburg 2014. ISBN 978-3-942225-17-5 , p. 196 -230 (216ff).
Remarks
- ↑ From 1452 to 1641 all accession to government in the county of Hanau-Munzenberg took place in this way (see Dietrich, p. 84ff).
- ↑ Corresponding privileges were given: granted in 1606 and 1791 (cf. Dietrich, pp. 35 and 263, note 157).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 218.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Dietrich, p. 35.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 216.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 222.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 222.
- ^ Homepage ( Memento of February 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) of the Walloon-Dutch Church .
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 218.
- ↑ Dietrich, p. 152ff.
- ^ Löwenstein, p. 217.
- ↑ Löwenstein, p. 218.