Wismar Tribunal

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The Fürstenhof in Wismar, seat of the court from 1653 to 1802
The Meyerfeldtsche Palais in Stralsund, seat of the court from 1802 to 1803

Royal High Tribunal in Wismar was the name of a court founded in 1653 for the Swedish imperial fiefs in the Holy Roman Empire . Contemporaries and later research called it the Wismar Tribunal after the first place of jurisdiction . The seat of the court was Wismar from 1653 to 1802 , Stralsund from 1802 to 1803 and Greifswald from 1803 until its dissolution , where it operated under the name of Greifswald Higher Appeal Court . During the French occupation , the court was called the Imperial French High Tribunal .

history

In the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War, Sweden was given some areas of the empire as fiefs. The city of Wismar, in which Luebian law had been in effect since the town charter was granted in 1266 , was occupied by Swedes in 1632 and, together with the surrounding area, the island of Poel and the Neukloster office , was permanently awarded to Sweden by the peace treaty. Swedish Pomerania and the duchies of Bremen and Verden , which were administered as a single area from Stade , as well as the cathedral chapter of Hamburg also joined Sweden .

Sweden originally intended to completely reorganize the highest imperial jurisdiction, consisting of the imperial chamber court and the imperial court council , and to create a third supreme imperial court for the Upper Saxon , Lower Saxony and Lower Rhine-Westphalian districts. With this plan, the Swedish delegation was unable to prevail in the peace negotiations and therefore demanded the granting of an unlimited privilege of appeal .

The provisions of the Peace Treaty of the Peace of Westphalia linked the granting of the privilege to the establishment of a separate highest court for the new Swedish imperial fiefdom, which works according to the principles of the Imperial Court of Justice.

The newly created Higher Appeal Court therefore replaced the Reich Chamber Court as the highest court for the Swedish imperial territories from 1653. The tribunal was created with the knowledge that Sweden was the strongest power in Northern Europe when it was founded. Sweden played a not unimportant role in the Reich with several seats and votes in the Reichstag , representation in three Reich circles and thus, among other things, the corresponding authorizations to make presentations for judges at the Reich Chamber of Commerce. The tribunal should occupy a corresponding place next to the other two highest imperial courts. Through its performance, it should be consciously established as an alternative to the Reich Chamber Court and Reichshofrat.

On May 17, 1653, in the presence of representatives of the state governments and the estates of the three duchies of Bremen-Verdens and Pomerania, the Hamburg cathedral chapter and the council of the city of Wismar and the members of the tribunal institution commission Bengt Oxenstierna and Schering Rosenhane, the introduction of the court was celebrated.

In the first years of the court there were great difficulties both with the maintenance of the court and with the amicable composition. The north German province was difficult to organize, the more swiftly reorganized Pomerania lacked the economic capacity to contribute to the upkeep of the court due to the long war. It was not until 1665 that all six assessors were filled for the first time .

Only after the end of the war did the feudal territories improve economically and the tribunal was able to develop. The maintenance was permanently secured, and after a visit from 1688 to 1692 the court was strengthened by two assessors. Crucial powers have been transferred to the Swedish government in Pomerania . The pending processes were dealt with quickly. The cooperation of the vice-presidents, assessors and fiscal authorities in numerous commissions made a contribution to legal security in the Swedish fiefdoms, while at the same time the Imperial Court of Justice slipped more and more into a crisis. Until 1715 the court was manned by one president and one vice-president, eight assessors, one protonotary, two referees, one secretary each, fiscal, registrar, messenger, pedell, court doctor, executor and bailiff, two registrars, copyists and courtiers and three court messengers .

The Great Northern War brought great losses to the north-west German fiefdom of Sweden. Bremen-Verden and the Hamburg cathedral chapter went to Denmark in 1712, in 1720 Sweden had to renounce the north-west German fiefs acquired in the Peace of Westphalia, and there were also territorial losses in Swedish-Western Pomerania . On November 22nd, 1721 the representatives of Sweden, the Pomeranian estates, the West Pomeranian state government and the council of the city of Wismar agreed to reduce the occupation of the court. From then on, the court was manned by four assessors and one protonotary, registrar, fiscal, registrar, copyist, pedell, messenger and two servants each; salaries were cut significantly. The powers transferred to the government after the visitation in 1688–1692 were in parts transferred back to the court.

From 1753 onwards, the higher tribunal became the court of first and only instance responsible for lawsuits against the University of Greifswald . In several judgments, the court took the position of the Pomeranian estates and thus against the Swedish government in questions of taxes, cost allocation or the exclusion of Jews from the Pomeranian economic life. From 1772 the Swedish government tried to control and narrow down the competences of the tribunal. The long-term negotiations between the Swedish government and the Pomeranian estates led to an action by the estates at the Reichshofrat in Vienna . On December 10, 1800, the representatives of both sides signed a compromise in which the king waived a visitation, the estates made extensive concessions to the king on pending tax issues and committed themselves to the payment of 20,000 Reichstalers.

After an initial salary increase in 1788, which was due to the devaluation of money, the salaries were not actually increased in real terms until around 1800 and adjusted to those of the wages paid by the Higher Appeal Court in Celle since 1750. This increased the attractiveness of employment at the tribunal for the first time.

In parallel, King Gustav IV Adolf continued to work on restricting the powers of the court. This should primarily be achieved through personnel changes. On October 7, 1799, Nils Anton Augustin Bark (1760-1822) was appointed President of the court. The post of deputy, since 1798 only occupied by Johann Jakob von Mühlenfels as a substitute, was refused by the king until the end of 1802.

When the Swedish government pledged Wismar to Mecklenburg in 1803, the court was moved to Stralsund, where it only stayed for eight months and then moved on to Greifswald. After the move to Greifswald, the court became the Greifswald Higher Appeal Court in 1810 as a result of a court reform in Swedish Pomerania . It remained under this name because of the special legal position of New Western Pomerania and the administrative district of Stralsund even after the takeover by Prussia and was only dissolved in the course of the general court reform of the 1870s.

On August 6, 1806, the Swedish government dissolved the Pomeranian estates and ordered the introduction of Swedish law. The tribunal as the highest regional court was subordinated to the court in Stockholm.

After Stralsund had been occupied by the Napoleonic troops in 1807, the tribunal remained the final court instance in Western Pomerania as the Imperial French Upper Tribunal with the same staff. Johann Jakob von Mühlenfels was appointed president.

With the two re-acquisitions in 1810 and 1813, the court temporarily returned to Swedish jurisdiction until Swedish Pomerania fell to Prussia in 1815 . The judicial system of the territory initially remained untouched and the upper tribunal continued to exist under the name of Greifswald Higher Appeal Court until the court reform of 1848.

Structure and jurisdiction

In terms of structure, working methods and principles, the new court was based on the Reich Chamber of Commerce. The tribunal order drawn up by David Mevius in 1656, which at its time also became a model in the German Empire, was implemented at the Higher Appeal Court. In addition, there were elements of the case law of the Reichshofrat and the Swedish Court Court.

The entrance courts of the first instance and appellate courts for the second instance (today mostly called appeals ) were largely left unchanged. The tribunal in Wismar was set up in 1653 under Queen Christina I of Sweden as the highest and last instance to decide on appeals against the decisions of the appellate courts .

Since the imperial fiefs that had come to Sweden remained German imperial territories , the previous legal system was retained, which was based on imperial legislation and the imperial procedural order. The "common law" of Pomerania , private, criminal and church law as well as the vast majority of the constitutional provisions were retained. The Swedish land law or the general Swedish imperial law were not transferred to the German imperial fiefs.

Seat

Geographically, Wismar was roughly in the middle of the Swedish imperial fiefs; thus the place of jurisdiction should be easily accessible to all involved. The court had its seat in the magnificent Renaissance building of the prince's court , the former residence of the Mecklenburg dukes in Wismar and the last building of the late Renaissance on German soil.

After Sweden lost considerable territory in the course of the Great Northern War, the transfer of the staffed court to a Pomeranian city was considered. Nevertheless, Wismar remained the seat of the court. The fire at the Princely Court in 1781 did nothing to change that. The Pomeranian estates took over a large part of the cost of restoring the largely burned down court seat in the amount of 15,000 Reichstalers; they saw advantages for themselves in a court seat in distant Wismar and the spatial separation of executive and judicial branches.

When Wismar was pledged to Mecklenburg by the Malmö pledge agreement of 1803 , it was necessary to relocate the court that is now actually only responsible for Swedish Pomerania. A royal letter dated April 14, 1802 announced to the tribunal:

"We hereby gracefully acknowledge (...) that (...) we have decided (...) to move your college from Wismar to Stralsund, (...)"

- Gustav IV Adolf, Stockholm, April 14, 1802

Since almost all of the court's employees owned real estate in Wismar, the tribunals told the king the resulting difficulties in changing the court within a few weeks. Gustav IV. Adolf, despite energetic letters from the council of the city of Wismar and the Pomeranian estates, stuck to his decision, to which the tribunal order of 1657 expressly enabled him. Tough negotiations about privileges and benefits began between the members of the tribunal and the city of Stralsund. The Swedish government bought the Meyerfeldtsche Palais from the former Swedish Governor General Johan August Meijerfeldt and from December 1801 quickly converted it into a courthouse. The Swedish government made far-reaching concessions to the tribunals, but continued to press for a quick move. From November 6 to 18, 1802, business was idle, and on November 19, 1802, court operations began in Stralsund. The first day of judgment was held on December 6, 1802.

On December 7, 1802, the state parliament discussed a new relocation of the tribunal. The arguments put forward by the estates were that a spatial separation of the judiciary and the executive (Stralsund was the seat of the Swedish governors-general) was necessary, that Stralsund as a fortress would not be safe and that the courthouse in Meyerfeldt's palace was only provisionally set up. The Swedish government made concessions to the estates on the question of location, not least because they had already achieved their most urgent wish for the court to move to Pomerania.

The Greifswald councilor Odebrecht offered Greifswald as the seat of the court. The court was to move into the Greifswald town hall until a suitable building was found or built. The Meyerfeldtsche Palais was to be bought up by the estates. The Swedish king agreed to sell the palace in late February 1803. He left the place of the court to be relocated and assured that if necessary, he would cover half of the cost of transporting the archive material. At a state parliament on April 27, 1803, the demands of the cities of Barth and Wolgast for the tribunal to be moved to their city were rejected and the move to Greifswald was decided. A new building according to plans by the architect Johann Gottfried Quistorp was to be erected, until then the court was to have its seat in the town hall. In lengthy negotiations between the tribunal and the council of the city of Greifswald, the move was finally agreed, and the king agreed to this at the end of June 1803.

On July 22, 1803, the move from Stralsund to Greifswald to the town hall there began, where it took up one and a half floors. On September 5, 1803, the tribunal in Greifswald declared itself capable of working.

Soon there were again difficulties in the relationship between the tribunal and the city as the seat of the court. The original plans for a new building were delayed considerably. In October 1813, the tribunal turned to the Swedish government with the request to rent the house at Greifswalder Büchstrasse 33, which was bought by the last Swedish court president, Count Bark, which they did. This building remained the seat of the court until the handover of the territory to Prussia.

Well-known representatives

Filing

Most of the files left behind by the Wismar Higher Tribunal are in the Greifswald State Archives (rep. 29). Other parts are in the Wismar City Archives, i.e. on the spot, in the Greifswald City Archives, in the Lower Saxony State Archives in Stade, but also in the Stockholm Reich Archives , there also as part of the Gadebusch collection of the constitutional lawyer Thomas Heinrich Gadebusch .

literature

  • Nils Jörn : Lübeck Oberhof, Reich Chamber Court, Reichshofrat and Wismar Tribunal. Research status and perspectives for further work on the last instance jurisprudence in the southern Baltic region . In: The memory of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck . Lübeck 2005, pp. 371-380. ISBN 3-7950-5555-5
  • Nils Jörn (Ed.): Servorum Dei Gaudium. That is God's faithful servant joys = reward. Biographies from the environment of the Wismar Tribunal. In: Publications of the Chair for Nordic History. Vol. 3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University, Greifswald 2003, ISBN 3-86006-214-X .
  • Nils Jörn: The relocation of the Wismar Tribunal to Pomerania at the beginning of the 19th century. In: Baltic Studies , New Series, Volume 89, Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2004, pages 93–112
  • Nils Jörn / Bernhard Diestelkamp / Kjell Åke Modéer (eds.): Integration through law. The Wismar Tribunal (1653–1806) (= sources and research on the highest jurisdiction in the Old Kingdom; vol. 47). Cologne / Weimar / Vienna: Böhlau 2003 ISBN 978-3-412-18203-8 ( review ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörn, Nils., Diestelkamp, ​​Bernhard., Modéer, Kjell Å .: Integration through law: the Wismar Tribunal (1653-1806) . Böhlau, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-412-18203-6 , pp. 5 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b Nils Jörn: The Wismar Tribunal: History and working methods of the Swedish higher court in the Reich as well as listing of its trial files . In: Battenberg, Friedrich., Schildt, Bernd (Hrsg.): The Reichskammergericht in the mirror of its trial files: Balance sheet and perspectives of research . Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-21317-6 , pp. 270 f .
  3. ↑ Art X § 12 of the Treaty of Osnabrück stipulates in paragraph 1: Vnd give in addition to this in all and each such fiefdom the Privilegium de non appellando, but with the condition / that you have a certain high tribunal or Appellationis instantiam to one in Germany Convenient Orth order / and provide the same with qualified persons / who are to administer every right and justice / the imperial constitutions, and every Orth's statutes after / except for further appellations or demands of things. ( quoted after the edition at Wikisource )
  4. ↑ a b Nils Jörn: The Wismar Tribunal: History and working methods of the Swedish higher court in the Reich as well as listing of its trial files . In: Battenberg, Friedrich., Schildt, Bernd (Hrsg.): The Reichskammergericht in the mirror of its trial files: Balance sheet and perspectives of research . Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-21317-6 , pp. 271 .
  5. ^ Norbert Buske : Pomerania - territorial state and part of Prussia. An overview of the political development . Helms, Schwerin 1997, ISBN 3-931185-07-9 , p. 51.
  6. ^ Heiko Wartenberg: Archive Guide to the History of Pomerania up to 1945 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58540-7 , p. 68.
  7. ↑ Jan Lokers : The files of the Wismar Tribunal in the Stade State Archives: a stepchild in regional and legal historical research. In: Integration through law: the Wismar Tribunal (1653-1806). Cologne [u. a.]: Böhlau 2003, pp. 383–385

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