No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Symbols, Serfdom, and Peasant Factions: A Response to Hermann Rebel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
The main fault that Hermann Rebel finds with the practitioners of “symbolic actionism” is a tendency to naturalize systems of power and cultural domination and to treat subaltern groups as if they were unable to examine their position in them critically. This tendency in turn causes symbolic actionists to misrecognize self-interested maneuvers within existing systems of domination as counterhegemonic symbolic manipulations. The overall effect of symbolic-actionist analysis, therefore, is to “downplay the degradation and terror experienced by victims of exploitation and persecution.” Rebel's view of such relationships could hardly differ more. As he sees it, hegemonic forces were so disruptive that to speak of peasant societies as culturally autonomous and of peasants as historical “agents” is at best self-deceiving.
- Type
- Responses
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2001
References
1. Rebel, Hermann, “Cultural Hegemony and Class Experience: A Critical Reading of Recent Ethnological-Historical Approaches,” American Ethnologist 16 (1989): 117–36 and 350–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 342–44.
2. Rebel, “Cultural Hegemony and Class Experience,” 131, 351.
3. Biersack, Aletta, “Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond,” in The New Cultural History, ed. Hunt, Lynn (Berkeley, 1989), 72–96Google Scholar, here 82–83.
4. Rebel, “Cultural Hegemony,” 122; “What Do the Peasants Want Now?” 351.
5. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 356 (emphasis added).
6. Ibid., 320, 322, 342, 345, 356.
7. Rebel's failure to distinguish between historical analysis and ethical prescription generates a host of needless misrepresentations. To identify only a few of these: in Rebel's retelling, my narrative of peasants' legal victories is presented as a recommendation to view so-called fundamentalists as “ineffectual and self-contradicting.” But my book is in no sense a brief for “realism” in politics, past or present, and I pass no judgment on the ability or inability of “fundamentalists” to “govern.” Rather, I consider Rebel's question ahistorical and irrelevant, especially in view of the significant fact that leading “fundamentalists” actually did govern. To be sure, my book does suggest that the election to public office of “disobedient” peasants in the context of what elites liked to call “rebellion” generated considerable administrative turmoil, but it is wholly inappropriate to extrapolate normative endorsements from a commentary on the obvious. Similarly, Rebel misrepresents my references to “naïve monarchism” — a misguided concept I never invoked approvingly — as a programmatic encouragement to belittle peasants. Why, one wonders, would anyone want to do that? And again: factional strife was the dominant fact of political life in Hauenstein after 1727 at the latest, but Rebel insinuates that to comment on this is somehow to consign salpeterisch peasants to a “scripted role as irrational fundamentalists given to self-serving factional infighting.” It is nothing of the sort. Rebel thinks it argues against my interpretation that exogenous shocks “initiated the process of threshold-crossing escalations,” but in fact I emphasize that St. Blasien initiated the disruptions and that the role of Hauenstein's political elites was largely reactive. Having read only Rebel's critique, the weary reader might think that my book means to draw a sharp line between “peasant wars” and Everyday Life, but in fact one of my principle goals in His Majesty's Rebels was to undermine what I consider a fake and misleading distinction. Finally, Rebel misconstrues my case for an anthropological reformulation of Winfried Schulze's juridification thesis as a “conservative and ironic” endorsement of social control through litigation and appellate processes. And so on; cf. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 319, 322, 339, 344, 345–46.
8. Ibid., 332.
9. Ibid., 336.
10. For only the geographically most proximate comparisons, see Hohkamp, Michaela, Herrschaft in der Herrschaft: Die vorderösterreichische Obervogtei Triberg von 1737 bis 1780 (Göttingen, 1998)Google Scholar; idem, “Vom Wirtshaus zum Amtshaus,” WerkstattGeschichte 16 (1997): 8–18; Rublack, Ulinka, “Frühneuzeitliche Staatlichkeit und lokale Herrschaftspraxis in Württemberg,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung (hereafter ZHF) 24 (1997): 347–76Google Scholar; Landwehr, Achim, Policey im Alltag: Die Implementation frühneuzeitlicher Policeyordnungen in Leonberg (Frankfurt am Main, 2000)Google Scholar. On implementation as a problem of cultural history, see Landwehr, , “‘Normendurchsetzung’ in der Frühen Neuzeit?: Kritik eines Begriffes,” Zeitschrift für Geschischtswissenschaft 48, no. 2 (2000): 146–62Google Scholar.
11. In this connection see above all Trossbach, Werner, Soziale Bewegung und politische Erfahrung: Bäuerlicher Protest in hessischen Territorien, 1648–1806 (Weingarten, 1987), esp. 205–73Google Scholar; and the essays contained in Blickle, Peter, et al. , Aufruhr und Empörung?: Studien zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im Alten Reich (Munich, 1980)Google Scholar.
12. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 121–41Google Scholar.
13. Alf Lüdtke, “Herrschaft als soziale Praxis,” in Herrschaft als soziale Praxis: Historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien, ed. idem (Göttingen, 1991), 9–63.
14. Weber, Max, Economy and Society, ed. Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1978), 1:212 (emphasis added)Google Scholar. For a development of this theme see Landwehr's, Achim “Praxeology” of early modern Herrschaft in Policey im Alltag, 313–29Google Scholar.
15. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 58, 149–51, 154, 161, 173–74Google Scholar.
16. Ibid., 153–54, 182–84.
17. Past and Present 154 (1997): 71–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 341–42.
19. Rabe, Hannah, Das Problem Leibeigenschaft: Eine Untersuchung über die Anfänge einer Ideologisierung und des verfassungsrechtlichen Wandels von Freiheit und Eigentum im Deutschen Bauernkrieg (Wiesbaden, 1977), esp. 65–68, 81–104Google Scholar; and the reassertion of her thesis in her recent essay, “Wer waren die Leibeigenen und Königsleute Südwestdeutschlands?,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie (hereafter ZAA) 45, no. 1 (1997): 1–14Google Scholar.
20. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 336.
21. An analysis of Leibbücher from the Nöggenschwihl — a village located in the northeastern corner of Hauenstein — permits us to specify the basic marriage patterns of abbatial serfs (GLA 65: 11632, 1r–57r, comp. 1727–1730). The dominant characteristic was status-group endogamy: in the vast majority of the 189 marriages recorded during the period between ca. 1600 to 1730, both the bride (169 cases) and groom (175 cases) were abbatial serfs, though this figure may be skewed by the source's genealogical purpose. The data on marriage rates is equivocal. These marriages produced a total of 600 offspring, an overall fertility rate of 3.17 offspring per marriage; of the 305 male offspring, 105 (34.4 percent) married, whereas only 72 (24.4 percent) of the female offspring did. These low rates, however, do not reflect the effects of infant mortality or unauthorized emigration. That unauthorized emigration was quite common is indicated by the unusually large percentage of marriages in which both bride and groom remained in the village (69.9 percent). In sum, we cannot say with confidence that serfs experienced any greater difficulty marrying off their children than non-serfs did. This should come as no surprise, since the vast majority of potential partners living within the geographical extent of Nöggenschwihl's marriage market was leibeigen. On balance, it is safe to conclude that finding a marriage partner was difficult, especially for women, but also that women experienced little specific disadvantage owing to leibeigen status. As for the subdivision of peasant holdings, finally, we know that the abbey was chronically unable to enforce bans against the partition of legally impartible Fronhöfe; for an example see “Bericht wie der St. Blas: Lehen-Frohn-Hoff zu Birndorff seit vor Hundert Jahren hero vertheilet und von welchen Lehen-Leutehn solcher theilbar bisshero besessen worden” [1763], GLA 229:9112, no. 2.
22. As Werner Trossbach explains, Rabe's hypothesis depends on a rationalist fallacy that the use of Leibeigenschaft as a polemical concept somehow undermines the historicity of leibeigen impediments on inheritance or freedom of movement; see Trossbach, Werner, “‘Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft’ in der frühen Neuzeit — eine Bagatelle?” Geschichte und Gesellschaft (hereafter GuG) 7, no. 1 (1981): 69–90, here 85Google Scholar.
23. The following relies on Ulbrich, Claudia, Leibherrschaft am Oberrhein im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen, 1978), 253–308Google Scholar; and Trossbach, “Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft.” As Christian Keitel stresses, Leibeigenschaft also developed from its inception in close interaction with territorially-defined forms of lordship; see his, Herrschaft über Land und Leute: Leibherrschaft und Territorialisierung in Württemberg 1246–1593 (Leinfelden, 2000)Google Scholar.
24. See Müller, Walter, Entwicklung und Spätformen der Leibeigenschaft am Beispiel der Heiratsbeschränkungen: Die Ehegenosssame im alemannisch-schweizerischen Raum (Sigmaringen, 1974)Google Scholar.
25. Rebel adopts these mistaken interpretations uncritically; “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 334–36.
26. In Hauenstein, conflicts do appear to have emerged between the holders of manses (Fronhöfe) and communally-organized peasantries, but by the mid-fourteenth century Black Forest villagers had succeessfully absorbed abbatial lands into the communally-regulated cycle of planting and harvest; see Ott, Hugo, Studien zur Geschichte des Klosters St. Blasien im hohen und späten Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1963), 16–24Google Scholar. In any event, these conflicts had little specifically to do with the personal status — bonded or nonbonded — of the participants.
27. Bader, Josef, “Urkundenregeste über das ehemalige sankt-blasische Waldamt,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins (hereafter ZGO) 6 (1855): 226–50, 358–82, 466–87, here 364Google Scholar.
28. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 335 (emphasis added).
29. Ulbrich, Leibherrschaft am Oberrhein; Trossbach, “Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft,” 76–77.
30. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 45–47Google Scholar; Maurer, Hans-Martin, “Die Ausbildung der Territorialgewalt oberschwäbischer Klöster vom 14. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 109 (1973): 151–244Google Scholar; and Holenstein, André, “Äbte und Bauern; Vom Regiment der Klöster im Spätmittelalter,” in Politische Kultur in Oberschwaben, ed. Blickle, Peter (Tübingen, 1993), 243–68Google Scholar.
31. Blickle, Peter, “Agrarkrise und Leibeigenschaft im spätmittelalterlichen deutschen Südwesten,” in Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im Spätmittelalter und 19.–20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kellenbenz, Hermann (Stuttgart, 1975), 39–54Google Scholar. Leibeigenschaft also enabled lords to acquire peasant freeholds, especially in Upper Swabia and the Black Forest, where a good deal still remained for the picking; cf. Holenstein, “Äbte und Bauern.”
32. Keitel, , Herrschaft über Land und Leute, 210–29Google Scholar.
33. For example, the Cistercian Convent at Wald, near Sigmaringen; cf. Rehfus, Maren, Das Zisterzienserinnenkloster Wald: Grundherrschaft, Gerichtsherrschaft und Verwaltung (Sigmaringen, 1971), 342–44Google Scholar.
34. In the meantime, however, leibeigen dependents who were subject to the jurisdiction of someone other than their bond-lord might derive certain immunities from their status — as did the dependents of a noble convent in Buchau. These relationships appear to support Rabe's thesis, but as Ulbrich explains, peasants offered themselves to convents such as Buchau as a means of escaping harsher forms of leibeigen subjection. Ulbrich, , Leibherrschaft am Oberrhein, 255–56Google Scholar; and see Stemmler, Eugen, “Die Kornelier des Damenstifts Buchau: Ein Beitrag zur Frage der oberschwäbischen Leibeigenschaft,” Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte 36 (1977): 10–48Google Scholar. The convent transformed these jurisdictional reservations into conventional Leibeigenschaft during the first decades of the sixteenth century.
35. Of course, Leibeigenschaft was by no means the only tool of internal consolidation. The Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren used Grundherrschaft to much the same effect; see Blickle, Peter, “Leibeigenschaft als Instrument der Territorialpolitik im Allgäu: Grundlagen der Landeshoheit der Klöster Kempten und Ottobeuren,” in Wege und Forschungen der Agrargeschichte, ed. Haushofer, Heinz and Boelcke, Willi A. (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), 50–66Google Scholar.
36. I include this benefit even though most historians are hard put to demonstrate a concrete example of this obligation at work; see Ulbrich, , Leibherrschaft am Oberrhein, 300–2Google Scholar; and Tischler, Manfred, Die Leibeigenschaft im Hochstift Würzburg vom 13. bis zum beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert (Würzburg, 1963), 87–88Google Scholar. See also Algazi, Gadi, Herrengewalt und Gewalt der Herren im späten Mittelalter (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 56–96Google Scholar.
37. Stemmler, “Die Kornelier,” 28–30.
38. In Württemberg, to cite but one example, comital lands were assigned only to peasants who agreed to assume leibeigen status; see Keitel, , Herrschaft über Land und Leute, 194–97Google Scholar. Similarly within jurisdictions subject to the Cistercian Sisters of Wald; Rehfus, , Zisterzienserinnenkloster Wald, 347Google Scholar.
39. Ott, , Studien zur Geschichte des Klosters St. Blasien, 16–24Google Scholar.
40. Blickle, Peter, The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective, trans. Brady, Thomas A. Jr and Midelfort, H. C. Erik (Baltimore, 1985), 53Google Scholar.
41. Schussenried accomplished this by converting all holdings in lifetime tenures; Arbeitsgruppe, Saarbrücker, “Die spätmittelalterliche Leibeigenschaft in Oberschwaben,” ZAA 22 (1974): 9–33Google Scholar; von Hippel, Wolfgang, “Klosterherrschaft und Klosterwirtschaft in Oberschwaben am Ende des Alten Reiches: Das Beispiel Schussenried,” in Gemeinde, Reformation und Widerstand, ed. Schmidt, Heinrich R., Holenstein, André, and Würgler, Andreas (Tübingen, 1998), 457–74Google Scholar.
42. Müller, Walter, Die Abgaben von Todes wegen in der Abtei St. Gallen: Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsgeschichte des sanktgallischen Klosterstaates (Cologne, 1961), 11–14Google Scholar; Fröhlich, Roberto M., Die Eigenleute des Johanniterhauses Bubikon: Eigenschaft und Leibherrschaft im Herrschaftsbereich der Johanniterkomturei Bubikon, 1192–1789 (Zurich, 1993), 223–36Google Scholar.
43. Sabean, David W., Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am Vorabend des Bauernkrieges (Stuttgart, 1972), 90–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sabean argues that Weingarten abbey used leibeigen inheritance claims to acquire the remaining freehold property in its vicinity.
44. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 42–43, 111–12Google Scholar. There is a further reason why abbatial Leibeigenschaft conferred no inheritance benefit specific to women. Rebel's interpretation presumes that leibeigen status was transmitted through maternal inheritance. But St. Blasien treated leibeigen status as heritable through both parents. Thus the “benefits” of Leibeigenschaft could be had by marriage to any leibeigen subject, male or female.
45. Ulbrich, , Leibherrschaft am Oberrhein, 49–76Google Scholar; idem, “Freiheit und Eigenschaft in spätmittel-alterlichen ländlichen Rechtsquellen des Oberrheingebietes,” in Deutsche ländliche Rechtsquellen: Probleme und Wege der Weistumsforschung, ed. Peter Blickle (Stuttgart, 1977), 185–97. Peter Blickle goes so far as to argue that pressure from subjects was primarily responsible for reducing Leibeigenschaft to an economically and politically unimportant dependency in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; see his “Von der Leibeigenschaft in die Freiheit,” in Grund- und Freiheitsrechte im Wandel der Gesellschaft und Geschichte: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Grund- und Freiheitsrechte vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Revolution von 1848, ed. Birtsch, Günther (Göttingen, 1981), 25–40Google Scholar, here 31.
46. Dingrodel des Waldamts, 19 May 1467, excerpted in Bader, Josef, “Urkundenregeste über die ehemaligen sankt-blasischen Niedergerichte,” ZGO 7 (1856): 228–56, 328–50Google Scholar, here 235–39. Though St. Blasien did not formally cede leibeigen marriage impediments and restrictions on freedom of movement, it is clear that enforcement of these rights had ceased even before the 1467 deal.
47. Most often Besthaupt or Bestvieh (in its myriad local manifestations). On death-duties the definitive case study remains Müller, Abgaben von Todes wegen. In Hauenstein, St. Blasien continued to claim a leibeigen inheritance portion against the estates of males and females who remained unmarried to the age of 50. This so-called Hagestolzenrecht was finally abolished in 1728; see Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 70Google Scholar.
48. Trossbach, “Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft,” 75 (emphasis added).
49. In 1406, for example, Zürich acquired the role of mediator in exchange for bestowing citizenship rights on Hermann Gesler, lien administrator of Swiss Landvogtei Grüningen, a status the city later used to establish territorial sovereignty over the district. See Weibel, Thomas, Erbrecht, Gerichtswesen und Leibeigenschaft in der Landvogtei Grüningen (Zurich, 1987), 21Google Scholar; Fröhlich, , Eigenleute des Johanniterhauses Bubikon, 116–17Google Scholar.
50. Winfried Schulze recently revisited the impact of rebellion on lawmaking in his “Klettgau 1603: Von der Bauernrevolte zur Landes- und Policeyordnung,” in Gemeinde, Reformation und Widerstand, 415–31.
51. Trossbach, “Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft.”
52. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 62–63Google Scholar.
53. “Rationes rusticorum warumb sye nit leibeigen sein wollen,” 25 February 1673, GLA 99:458, no. 2.
54. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 43Google Scholar. These estimates are based on a comparison between “Ohngefährlicher Auffsatz der fallbaren Leüthen in der Graffschafft Hawenstein,” 28 February 1738, GLA 113:116, 26r–v; and “Graffschafft Hawensteinische Seelenbeschreibung,” 20 November 1754, GLA 113:198. The former is an estimate compiled for the purposes of apportioning the manumission fee among St. Blasien's Leibeigene in Hauenstein; the second is chronologically the nearest estimate of Hauenstein's population that can claim any precision. Given the generally upward trend of population movements during the early eighteenth century, it is likely the estimate is artificially low.
55. “Formula juramenti seu homagy dero Niederichtlichen Underthonen,” GLA 113:225, 238r. Similarly, tenants on abbatial lands located outside the lower court districts were required to deliver an oath identical to that of serfs; see “Formula juramenti deren so nicht gerichtliche Untertanen nacher St. Blasien seyndt,” GLA 113:225, 373r.
56. For examples see Keitel, Herrschaft über Land und Leute; Ludwig, Theodor, Der badische Bauer im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Strasbourg, 1896)Google Scholar; Rehfus, , Zisterzienserinnenkloster Wald, 349–53Google Scholar.
57. These devices included retirement provisions — transferring movable and immovable property to heirs before death — even though the practices had been outlawed under an agreement between Hauenstein and the abbey concluded in 1671. For a case of Leibfall-evasion by means of retirement provision, see Hochamtsprotokolle, 27 January 1712, GLA 61:10648, 26v.
58. Blickle, Renate, “Leibeigenschaft: Versuch über Zeitgenossenschaft in Wissenschaft und Wirklichkeit, durchgeführt am Beispiel Altbayerns,” in Gutsherrschaft als soziales Modell: Vergleichende Betrachtungen zur Funktionsweise frühneuzeitlicher Agrargesellschaften, ed. Peters, Jan (Munich, 1995), 53–79Google Scholar; and her “Appetitus Libertatis: A Social Historical Approach to the Development of the Earliest Human Rights: The Example of Bavaria,” in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Europe, Arabic-Islamic World, Africa, China, ed. Schmale, Wolfgang (Goldbach, 1993), 143–62Google Scholar.
59. Trossbach, “Südwestdeutsche Leibeigenschaft,” 86; Renate Blickle, “Hausnotdurft: Ein Fundamentalrecht in der altständischen Ordnung Bayerns,” in Grund- und Freiheitsrechte von der ständischen zur spätbürgerlichen Gesellschaft; Andermann, Kurt, “Leibeigenschaft im pfälzischen Oberrheingebiet,” ZHF 18 (1990): 281–303Google Scholar; Göttsch, Silke, Alle für einen Mann: Leibeigene und Widerständigkeit in Schleswig-Holstein im 18. Jahrhundert (Neumünster, 1991), 300–9Google Scholar.
60. “What Do the Peasants Want Now?,” 334.
61. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 90–146Google Scholar.
62. Luebke, David M., “Terms of Loyalty: Factional Politics in a Single German Village (Nöggenschwihl, 1725–1745),” in Infinite Boundaries: Order, Reorder, and Disorder in Early Modern German Culture, ed. Reinhart, Max and Robisheaux, Thomas (Kirksville, 1998), 77–105Google Scholar.
63. They also exercised lower jurisdiction over the villages of Hänner and Willaringen and enjoyed formal command of a territorial militia, the Landfahnen, although for military purposes this institution was largely moribund by the eighteenth century. The Landfahnen did, however, reemerge during the “Salpeter Wars” as a designation that both factions used for their respective militias. On the Landfahnen see Karl F. Werner, “Der Hauensteiner Landfahnen: Entstehung, Entwicklung, und Bedeutung der hauensteiner Wehrorganisation bis zum Begin der Unruhen in der Grafschaft im Jahre 1726,” ZGO 95 (1943): 301–97; and Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels 78, 81–84Google Scholar.
64. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 30–35Google Scholar. Let it be duly noted that these “elections” bore only a remote resemblance to modern democratic practices.
65. Blickle, Peter, Kommunalismus: Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform, vol. 1, Oberdeutschland (Munich, 2000)Google Scholar; idem, Landschaften im Alten Reich: Die staatliche Funktion des gemeinen Mannes in Oberdeutschland (Munich, 1973).
66. See von Friedeburg, Robert, “‘Kommunalismus’ und ‘Republikanismus’ in der Frühneuzeit? Überlegungen zur politischen Mobilisierung sozial differenzierter ländlicher Gemeinden unter agrar- und sozialhistorischem Blickwinkel,” ZHF 21 (1994): 65–91Google Scholar; and Blickle's, Peter response in “Begriffsverfremdung: Über den Umgang mit dem wissenschaftlichen Ordnungsbegriff Kommunalismus,” ZHF 22 (1995): 246–53Google Scholar.
67. See the European contextualizations by Steinar Imsen and Günter Vogler, “Communal Autonomy and Peasant Resistance in Northern and Central Europe” and by Blickle, Peter, Ellis, Steven, and Österberg, Eva, “The Commons and the State: Representation, Influence and the Legislative Process,” both in Resistance, Representation and Community, ed. Blickle, Peter (Oxford, 1997), 5–43 and 115–53Google Scholar respectively.
68. For the influence of peasant action on legislation, see the studies contained in Blickle, Peter, ed., Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; and idem, ed., Gemeinde und Staat im alten Europa (Munich, 1998), especially Andreas Würgler, “Desideria und Landesordnungen: Kommunaler und landständischer Einfluss auf die fürstliche Gesetzgebung in Hessen-Kassel, 1650–1800,” 149–215; Renate Blickle, “Laufen gen Hof: Die Beschwerden der Untertanen und die Entstehung des Hofrats in Bayern: Ein Beitrag zu den Varianten rechtlicher Verfahren im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,” 241–66; and André Holenstein, “Bittgesuche, Gesetze und Verwaltung: Zur Praxis ‘guter Policey’ in Gemeinde und Staat des Ancien Régime am Beispiel der Markgrafschaft Baden-Durlach,” 267–355.
69. Having said that, we must not forget that as factional rivalries hardened, the müllerisch faction effectively offered itself to Habsburg and abbatial authorities as a political surveillance network; see Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 72–73Google Scholar.
70. See Trossbach, , Soziale Bewegung und politische Erfahrung, 174–202Google Scholar; idem, Im Schatten der Aufklärung: Bauern, Bürger, und Illuminaten in der Grafschaft Wied-Neuwied (Fulda, 1991), 130–40.
71. 1. Pfandshandlung, 6 August 1596, in Bader, “Urkundenregeste über die ehemaligen sanktblasischen Niedergerichte,” 246–47. The judicial powers in question embraced the right to try offenses up to and including the capital. For the second, third, and fourth Pfandshandlungen (5 November 1627, 21 September 1655, and 15 April 1705), see ibid., 248, 253, 328–30, respectively. I used the word “lease” to describe these deals in order to emphasize their essence, namely the temporary cession of ownership rights in return for a cash payment in the form of a noninterest-bearing loan (that was never repaid).
72. Leopold's instruction cited the figure of 300,000 Gulden; “Resolutionsschreiben des Kaisers Leopold an die oberösterreichische geheime Stelle,” 16 August 1704, in Bader, “Urkundenregeste über die ehemaligen sankt-blasischen Niedergerichte,” 328–29. Wernet estimates that the total indebtedness was closer to 400,000 Gulden; Wernet, Karl F., “St. Blasiens Versuche, sich der Grafschaft Hauenstein pfandweise zu bemächtigen,” ZGO 107 (1859): 161–82Google Scholar, here 182.
73. The seventeenth-century route of appeal in St. Blasien's judicial system is described in “Verzeichnis der Gerichten, so man von St. Blasmischer Cantzley zu verwalten … hat” [1638], GLA 99:79; a published version of this account may be found in Bader, “Urkundenregeste über die ehemaligen sankt-blasischen Niedergerichte,” 248–53.
74. Austria also recovered the right to collect the “shrove chicken” from all households within the Zwing und Bann — a total annual payment of 194 chickens — which had been ceded to St. Blasien in 1655; the right to collect this recognition tax was restored to St. Blasien to 1715 in return for imperial confirmation of the 1705 “perpetuation” and yet another non-interest-bearing loan of 20,000 Gulden.
75. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 59Google Scholar.
76. For an excerpt of this recognition decree, see Bader, Josef, “Urkunden und Regeste aus dem Archive der ehemaligen Grafschaft Hauenstein,” ZGO 10 (1859): 353–84Google Scholar; 11 (1850): 465–90, here 11:487.
77. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 64Google Scholar.
78. “Urkundlicher Ausszug deren Rechten undt Freyheiten des uralten löbl. Stiffts St. Blasien am Schwartzwaldt” [n.d.], GLA 65:11398. On the distribution of jurisdictional competences in St. Blasien's lower courts, see Ott, , Studien zur Geschichte des Klosters St. Blasien, 69–77Google Scholar.
79. Rebel seems to think that the “exclusion” was selective; but nothing in the relevant clause suggests that it was: “Es solle unsere hofcanzlei keine sachen, die nicht ihrer besonderen aigenschaft nach oder sonst von rechts- und gewohnheitswegen unmittelbar für uns gehören, mit hindansetzung der ersteren oder anderen ordentlichen instanzien an sich ziehen, vielmehr aber diejenige, so mit vorbeigehung der ersteren und subordinirten instanzien sich zu unserem hof immediate wenden wollen, zuruck an ihre behörde verweisen…”; Instruktion Kaiser Karls VI. für die österreichische Hofkanzlei, 26 March 1720, §3; reprinted in Thomas Fellner and Heinrich Kretschmayr, Die österreichische Zentralverwaltung (Vienna, 1907; reprint Nendeln, 1970), pt. 1, vol. 3, Aktenstücke 1683–1749, 347–75, here 365–66.
80. See Blickle, Renate, “Supplikationen und Demonstrationen: Mittel und Wege der Partizipation im bayerischen Territorialstaat,” Kommunikation in der ländlichen Gesellschaft vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne, ed. Rösener, Werner (Göttingen, 2000), 263–318Google Scholar. André Holenstein shows how these transformations played out in the ritual of homage; Die Huldigung der Untertanen: Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung (800–1800) (Stuttgart, 1991), 342–84, 493–95Google Scholar and passim.
81. Schlumbohm, Jürgen, “Gesetze, die nicht durchgesetzt werden — ein Strukturmerkmal des frühneuzeitlichen Staates?” GuG 23/4 (1997): 647–63Google Scholar.
82. Recess zwischen St. Blasien und Hauenstein wegen Befreiung von der Leibeigenschaft und der Fallbarkeit, 15 January 1738, GLA 11:3135.
83. For the receipt of final payment on the manumission fee, see GLA 11:3140; and Bader, “Urkundenregeste über die ehemaligen sankt-blasischen Niedergerichte,” 350.
84. Luebke, , His Majesty's Rebels, 74–75, 79Google Scholar. According to estimates compiled for the purposes of dissolving serfdom, there were 257 abbatial serfs resident in Indlekofen, as against 11,048 in the Hauenstein proper; “Specification wievill Männer Weiber undt Kindter so nacher St. Blasien fahlbar seindt, bey der Undersuchung dem 28 isten July 1739 so zue Dogern beschehen sich in denen 8 Einungen … befundten,” GLA 113:111, n.p.
85. “Patent über die Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft in Vorderösterreich,” Vienna, 20 December 1782; in von Hippel, Wolfgang, Die Bauernbefreiung im Königreich Württemberg, vol. 2, Quellen (Boppard, 1977), 35–36Google Scholar. The decree eliminated all marital contraints, restrictions on freedom of movement, and established a uniform schedule of Manumissionsgeld, but left all the dues and service appertaining to serf status in tact.
You have
Access