Bird meal
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The Vogelmahl even Vogelmal , bird whey , Tagmulchen or short only Alprecht called, is a grand -bay , the in rem tax on various alpine inns in Liechtenstein , the southern Vorarlberg ( Feldkirch , Bludenz , Frastanz , Great Walser Valley ) and north-eastern Raetia Curiensis was, and once was payable in the year in the form of cheese and butter . The basis of assessment was the milk yield of one alpine day; the Jakobitag (July 25) frequently served as a date. Outside of the above-mentioned, geographically rather narrow area, this tax is not known, so that it applies as a whole as a churretian legal element. This levy appears for the first time in 1355 in a document from two Werdenberg counts. The longest it could hold in the area of today's Principality of Liechtenstein; It was not until 1861 that the alpine owners were able to cancel this obligation by making a one-off payment to the manor.
The bird feast is based on the original property rights to land, which were in the hands of the ruling families. In the course of time, some of these were transferred to servants as fiefs , who in turn loaned them out again. So also rural village communities and free farmers became fiefs . Most of these fiefdoms became hereditary over time and thus only differed formally from private estates. Associated with the property rights were other rights, for example the hunting right, which in most cases remained within the noble family. The bird meal seems to have developed from this noble hunting shelf, which was also to be understood as an obligation to hunt. The managers of the alp undertook to compensate the hunting owners for protecting them and the alpine cattle from wolves, bears and lynxes. Originally, this payment seems to have been made in kind in the form of food for dogs and birds of prey that were used for hunting . Hence the name, which in the course of the late Middle Ages could no longer have been understood. The interest in kind in the form of butter and cheese developed from this levy in kind.
There are detailed information about the amount of the interest from various documents, which prove that the bird meal was far more than a symbolic tax, even if it must be taken into account that the conversion of medieval units of measurement is usually subject to a certain uncertainty. The Brandisische Urbar from 1507, for example, specifies an output of 2 quarters of butter and 23 loaves of cheese for the particularly profitable Alpe Malbun . The quarter was the most common measure of capacity in the Middle Ages and held between 29 and 38 liters in the eastern, Alpine region of Switzerland. Today the weight of a wheel of alpine cheese is between 20 and 30 kg. The annual delivery of Malbun would have been between 58 and 76 liters of butter and between 460 and 805 kg of cheese. Alpe Malbun came into the possession of Vaduz and Schaan families as an inheritance in the 13th century . The height of the Vogelmahl for this alp is known from various land registers.
literature
- Alexander Frick: The bird meal resp. Vogelmolken, Vogelrecht, Alpmolken etc. etc. A legal historical study. In: Yearbook of the Historical Association for the Principality of Liechtenstein (1983) pp. 44–70
- Claudius Gurt: Bird Milk. In: Historical Lexicon of the Principality of Liechtenstein . December 31, 2011 .
- Ferdinand Elsener: The bird meal, a Churrätische base load In: Bündnerisches monthly newspaper No. 12, December 1947. P. 353–362
- Swiss Idioticon online. Keyword bird mark
Individual evidence
- ↑ Elsener, Das Vogelmahl ... p. 356
- ↑ Elsener: The Vogelmahl ... esp pp 358-362.
- ↑ Frick: Das Vogelmahl ... p. 45
- ↑ Claudius Gurt: Vogelmolken. In: Historical Lexicon of the Principality of Liechtenstein . December 31, 2011 .
- ↑ Idiotikon Vol. IV Column 156f Keyword: Vogelmal
- ↑ Frick: Das Vogelmahl ... p. 47
- ^ Anne-Marie Dubler: Quarter. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 15, 2014 , accessed July 13, 2019 .