Wisdom
As Weistum (to 1901 "Weisthum" with th, abbr. Weisth.) Is a historical source of law referred to, which was transmitted orally, as a rule or logged after negotiations.
The German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm traces the term back to “collective statement by legally trained men about the existing law”, whereby the process of direct legal finding is primarily meant and not the written form. The wisdom is partly traced back to tribal rights up to the Nordic thing .
According to the sources, the word Weistum comes from the area of the central Rhine and Moselle . In the sources of other regions other names are used, in southern Germany for example Ehaft and Ehafttaiding , in Alsace Dinghofrodel and in Lower Germany arbitrariness or popularity . In Switzerland it was called opening , in Austria banntaiding . The peasant wisdoms were particularly widespread in southwest Germany, Switzerland and Austria .
Origin of the word wisdom from the legal usage in the times of the purely oral tradition
Before the wisdom was recorded, the orally handed down legal clauses were kept alive and remembered by the fact that on fixed annual thing days or later court days the law spokesmen or judges recited them to the assembly of residents by heart.
The initial formula for the legal clauses was in certain areas: We assign to the Lord on our oath ... or We assign the church on our oath (oath), this or that right. These were z. B. the right of the landlord to receive a certain tax of a certain amount from the parishioners, including provisions on the manner of the service provision. An example: And if we are to deliver the grain two miles away without rocks, mountains and waterways, at our expense. Therefore, the judges were as Wisende or oriented referred to, so as pointing the right , not knowing .
Property and meaning
The wisdom (ahd. Wistuom "wisdom"; ahd. Wisen "teach") is in its fundamental meaning the information of legally trained men about the applicable law. According to the medieval view, the law was not an enacted law laid down in statutes, but the customary law developed through practice within a community . The law to be applied in a legal case had to be “drawn” (= taken from) and “instructed” by the lay judges (mhd. Create “design”, “arrange”) from the traditional law.
Wisdoms are predominantly rural legal sources of the Middle Ages and modern times , which came about through an instruction , through the information of legally competent persons about an existing legal situation in an assembly called for this purpose. The corresponding records are therefore to be addressed as “standardized artifacts intended for a circumscribed circle of legitimate or addressed recipients, namely the“ rulers ”and the peasant landlords / court inmates.” Instructions in the broader sense appear earliest in the so-called Germanic popular rights . Instructions in the narrower sense are rural sources of law from the late Middle Ages and early modern times. They mainly served to clarify contentious questions in the legal relationship between landlords and farmers. The reason for the formation of wisdoms varied according to place and time. For example, it was related to the abandonment of manorial self-construction or a change in the court system . The establishment of the internal order in the manorial rule was the occasion, but sometimes also the dispute with rival lords. Wisdoms arose predominantly at the request of the rulers through the instruction of peasant lay judges in the village court .
Even wisdom in the narrower sense does not have a uniform content. The regulation of the relationship between landlord and community comes first according to the number of provisions. Charges and services are regulated and the use of forest, pasture and water. The occupation, jurisdiction and punishment of the village court is an issue. Above all, wisdoms also served to regulate village life and rural economy.
Wisdoms are important sources for economic and social history and for legal and constitutional history . In Germany there are no contemporary supraregional collections, but only spatially limited collections of wisdom. An early wisdom from 1386 is documented for Cologne-Deutz . The siebenharden siege formulated in 1426 comes from North Friesland .
As Reichsweistum a medieval rulers judgment like given decision is called. As early as 938 or 942, Otto the Great issued an imperial law on the right of entry for grandchildren. The Rhenser Empire of 1338 led to the Golden Bull in 1356 , which regulated the election of a king and the position of imperial princes. A basic law arose from a wisdom that was valid throughout the empire.
Two wisdoms from the Electoral Palatinate
Since the beginning of the 15th century, the administration of the Electorate of the Palatinate has established wisdoms by questioning subjects , collecting them and occasionally renewing them. She wanted to clarify the existing legal relationships in an acquired area.
Dorfweise Schluchtern
Schluchtern is now part of the municipality of Leingarten in the Heilbronn district. In addition to the lords of Neipperg and other landlords, the lords of Weinsberg were also wealthy here in the 14th century . Their jurisdiction , serfs , goods and wine press came to the Electoral Palatinate via Pfalz-Mosbach in 1499 by inheritance. In the Schluchterner Weistum from the 16th century, the applicable rights are formulated:
1. High authoritarian (stately violence), 2. Church set (occupation of the parish), 3. estimate ( control ), 4. wine and fruit customs , 5. Umgeld ( excise duty ), 6. Common rays (campaign), 7. Frondienst with roß und hand (manual and tensioning services of the farmers), 8. outrage and penance (fine and fine), 9. Waldainung (cooperative), 10. forest and wild course ( hunting rights ), 11. fishing and waterbech (right to use the brooks ), 12th deduction ( deduction money ), 13th innzug ( citizens' money ), 14th wine press , 15th wine and fruit tithing ( tithe ), 16th annual and weekly market (markets), 17th Oberhoff (upper court), 18th mass , measure and weight (measures and weights), 19. Stendige gefäll (income), 20. Volgen, what strangers have to Schluchtern before liking (income from foreign landlords), 21. Bailey people and rights (levy on death to the body owner), 22. Herd law (handed over to the landlord in the event of death), 23. Volgende rulers have their own corpses to sway and otherwise have nothing to command (rights of others of the gentlemen), 24th Schluchterer mark .
Dallau village district
Today Dallau is part of the Elztal municipality in the Neckar-Odenwald district. The village came under Palatinate sovereignty in 1330 . From 1499 the Teutonic Order and the Electoral Palatinate divided the local rule in half. Six subjects each from the Palatinate and six from the Teutonic Order sat as judges in the village court. A section in the Dorfweise gives an insight into how it was created:
In 1541, the Palatinate bailiff of the responsible Lohrbach winery questioned the six oldest residents born in Dallau . The Palatinate mayor von Dallau was present as a witness alongside his colleagues from Burckheim ( Neckarburken ) and Sulzbach and the forester. In this case, the “cellar” questioned the six oldest residents of the place and not the six legally trained Palatine court men or exclusively the subjects of the Palatinate.
literature
- Dieter Werkmüller : Wisdom. In: Concise dictionary on German legal history . Vol. 5. Schmidt, Berlin 1971ff, Sp. 1239-1250, ISBN 3-503-00015-1 .
- Dieter Werkmüller: About the emergence and spread of wisdom: after the collection of Jacob Grimm . Schmidt, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-89688-255-4 .
- Gerhard Kiesow: Schluchtern. An Electoral Palatinate village in the 16th century. BOD, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-7954-1957-3 (source texts, edited and commented).
- Simon Teuscher : Compilation and Orality. Ruling culture and use of wisdom in the Zurich area, 14. – 15. Century . In: Historical magazine. Munich 273, 2001, pp. 289-333. ISSN 0018-2613
- Simon Teuscher: Narrated right. Local rule, writing and tradition formation in the late Middle Ages . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 3-593-38494-9
- Karl Kollnig (edit.): The wisdom of the Zenten Eberbach and Mosbach . Baden wisdom and village regulations. Vol. 4. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-17-008405-4
- Hans J. Domsta: The wisdoms of the Jülichschen offices Düren and Nörvenich and the dominions Burgau and Gürzenich . Düsseldorf 1983, ISBN 3-7700-7547-1
- Peter Blickle (Ed.): German rural legal sources . Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-12-910200-0
- Jacob Grimm (Ed.): Weisthümer . 6 vols. Register volume by Richard Schröder. Göttingen 1840–1878, Darmstadt 1957 (Repr).
- Winfried Becher: A Hofgeding zu Oberembt 1668. Renewal of a wisdom that was lost in the Thirty Years' War. In: Pulheimer Contributions to History. Pulheim 2006. ISSN 0171-3426
- Ignaz Vinzenz Zingerle , Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, Josef Egger (arrangement): Tirolische Weistümer (Austrian Weistümer 2–5). 5 vols. Vienna 1875-1891.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Dieter Werkmüller: About the emergence and spread of wisdom . Erich Schmidt Verlag , 1972, p. 66 ( online in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Journal von und für Deutschland 1785, pp. 42–43 on the website of Bielefeld University
- ↑ Hannes Obermair : Social Production of Law? The wisdom of the court of Salurn in South Tyrol from 1403 . In: Concilium Medii Aevi 4, 2001, pp. 179-201, here p. 183.
- ↑ Paul Reucher: bollard (hi) story . Verlag Dohr Cologne 2000, p. 99f: The crosses known to us ...
- ↑ University of Innsbruck: ReichsWEISum ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ State Main Archives Rhineland-Palatinate: January 10, 1356. The Golden Bull is proclaimed. ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Kiesow pp. 23-32.
- ↑ Kollnig p. 227.
- ↑ Look inside the book
