Guild Constitution

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Guild constitutions were a possible constitution of medieval imperial cities . The guild constitutions involved the craftsmen ( guilds ) in governing the cities.

history

Tensions in the aristocratic and commercial ruling class led in the 13th century in many cities in the Holy Roman Empire to a revolution of the guilds against the patricians , who were mostly represented in the council and who had made their fortune with the flourishing long-distance trade. The so-called "Geschell der Müllenheim und Zorn" in Strasbourg on May 20, 1332, as a result of which the dominance of the city nobility was overthrown, led to a guild constitution. The Brunsche Guild Constitution is another example of such a guild constitution, which was in force in Zurich between 1336 and 1798 . In Augsburg there was an uprising of the urban craftsmen in 1368, which also led to the introduction of a guild constitution.

In 1548, in the wake of the Augsburg Interim , Emperor Charles V ordered the abolition of the old guild constitutions that existed in most imperial cities, as he made them responsible for the spread of the Reformation . The imperial commissioner Heinrich Has replaced them with new, patrician-dominated city constitutions based on the model of Nuremberg , the so-called rabbit councils .

In Upper German imperial cities such as Ulm , Reutlingen , Überlingen and Pfullendorf , the old guild constitutions were reverted to with imperial approval in the 1570s. In the 1790s and 1800s, as a result of the upheavals of the French Revolution and the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the last existing guild constitutions z. B. repealed in Zurich and Strasbourg.

literature

  • Markus Brühlmeier, Beat Frei: The Zurich guild system. 2 vols. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-03823-171-1 .
  • Brief Zurich Constitutional History 1218–2000. Published by the State Archives of the Canton of Zurich on behalf of the Directorate of Justice and the Interior for the day the Zurich Constitutional Council was constituted on September 13, 2000. Chronos, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-905314-03-7 .
  • Eberhard Naujoks (ed.), Emperor Karl V and the guild constitution. Selected files on the constitutional changes in the Upper German imperial cities (1547–1556) (= publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Series A: Sources. Vol. 36). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-17-008562-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludwig Spach:  Bertold von Buchegg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 529-531.