Publication details
Bürger, Adel, Klerus, Klöster : Formen städtischer Einbürgerung im späten Mittelalter
| Title in English | Citizens, nobility, clergy, monasteries : Forms of urban naturalisation in the late Middle Ages |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Biuletyn Polskiej Misji Historycznej |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | Akademicka Platforma Czasopism |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/BPMH.2022.002 |
| Keywords | City; Naturalisation; Citizen; Nobility; Late Middle Ages; Covenant; |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Almost all southern German cities used the instrument of Burgrecht to formalise relations with nobles, monasteries, Jews, Lombards or rural communities. The individual Burgrechte of nobles and monasteries represented the local form of the widespread norm. The castle rights were characterised by the individually stipulated conditions, mutual reservations and circles of assistance, by the specification of the legal process, the clearly defined terms of the castle right or the minimum term, as well as the individual deed to the process. Castle rights allowed a flexible approach to mutual obligations, rights and claims, which were laid down in a contract. This made it possible for the late medieval cities to deal with the means of naturalisation in a much more dyna-mic way than our modern usage of naturalisation and citizenship suggests.In the area of the Swiss Confederation, numerous layers of alliances, treaties and castle rights were superimposed in the 13th to 15th centuries. The resulting network of alliances between cities, countries, nobles and monasteries was perceived from the outside as peculiar and increasingly alien. While the lordly relationships on the Upper Rhine, in Württemberg and in Swabia developed in the direction of princely rule in the course of the early modern period, the treaties in the area of the Confederation remained the basis of the cohesion of the important players and their collective freedoms. The individual allies each had their own development in terms of city constitutions and the composition of the citizenry. In addition, the country towns increasingly behaved like cities in the 15th century (cf. contribution by Oliver Landolt in this volume). Thus, until the Napoleonic period, the concept of "state" and "citizenship" was also ambivalent and characterised by this variety of contractual intermediate levels. The Enlightenment ideas of individual liberties and the bourgeois movements in the Restoration period had difficulty with these older, more dynamic concepts of liberties, citizenship and nationality until the founding of the Swiss federal state in 1848. Nevertheless, the older treaties of the federal towns and cities retained their validity and value. |
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