Community law (Pfronten) – Wikipedia

By the Municipal right , often also referred to as “parish law”, the participation of individual citizens was regulated in Pfronten in the possession of the entire parish. A share of the shared possession of a district (“local law”) was also associated with a municipal law.

Pfronten is a clearing settlement. This was associated with the granting of special freedoms for the recruited “colonizers”. ^[first] Despite the restriction and legalization of special rights by the Augsburg Hochstift, the parishes were able to preserve a relatively strong position towards their sovereign, the Bishop of Augsburg.

One of these special rights was that the entire land in the parish was an own property of the parishes and only formally a fief. The owners were all Pfrontener (“Lawyer”) who “with fire and smoke” were sitting here on a property. In the 1930s, an expert opinion stated: “The Pfronten Mark is a common private property of the marksmen that are cultivating”. ^[2]

The number of farmers can be found – approximately – for the first time in the tax description of 1594. ^[3] There are 375 homeowners listed there in Pfronten. In 1662 there were only 337. The decline was probably a result of the Thirty Years’ War. Then the number of owners of the property rose again. As early as 1700, it is assumed that ^[4] A lot has been reached that could no longer be exceeded, because otherwise the existential basis of the existing property would have been endangered at the time. It can be proven that there were between 420 and 430 farmsteads in Pfronten in 1758 ^[5] on which a municipal right rested. In the introduction of house numbers in 1784, exactly 434 numbers were awarded in plums, of which only two (431: school and 433: hospital) had no municipal law.

So there were 432 lawyers in Pfronten. Only the Nikolaus Reichart in the Fallmühle still managed to get a municipal law later. He has always been a lawyer by possession of the number 45 in Pfronten-Weißbach. By building a habitable plaster mill in the Achtal, he was able to get another right.

The individual rights of the beneficiaries are described in the tax book of 1828 on the basis of the “written and oral tradition”. ^[6] Under the heading “Preliminary remark about the observance with regard to the municipal and pasture law in the parish of Pfronten”, the benefits that result from the possession of a municipal law are explained in detail:

• Every municipal strainer who owns a house here may:

a) Burning and building wood in the community forestings for his house as required, but this has to be done for forestry.

b) Mow in the mountains, where the cattle are not driven.

c) If the harvest is inserted, stripping leaves, even on the land that needs to be taxed.

d) Catch and collect fish, but only at certain times.

e) pick all mature fruit in cattle pastures, Alps and forests.

• Each right -wing law has a pasture law in the still disadvantaged municipal reasons (“general”).

Through his pasture law, the lawyer was able to drive a certain number of animals (cattle, horses) to the common grounds. Because the pasture law – “for fermenting times” – was not on the house, but on the property of a property, the number of shoot rights was based on the number of large cattle, which a lawyer could feed over the winter. This was also the yardstick for the distribution of municipal reasons after 1800: Anyone who owned more properties received a larger proportion. This regulation has also been observed when later laws specified other provisions. The old habit law was not canceled. ^[6]

Although the prince -bishop’s government allowed the influx of external persons from around 1792 ^[7] And the Bavarian government regulated this from 1803, the immigration of new citizens was limited. The Pfronten lawyers remained a “closed society”. Until the middle of the 19th century, only two new buildings were built in the Ruralgemeinde Steinachpfronten ^[8] that were carried out by locals. In contrast to the “straight” house numbers, these houses received so -called “odd” house numbers. Their license plates were added to the house number. No municipal rights rested on such new buildings.

It was only at the end of the 19th century that more houses were built in Pfronten, all with an “odd” house number. ^[9] Until around 1920, these were already 42 new buildings in the Pfronten-Steinach community. Now the question was increasingly coming to the fore, who owned the possession of the former parish, the lawyers alone or the ever increasing political community. No solution had been found here until the Second World War.

After German property abroad passed through the Allies in 1945, there was a risk that the Pfronteners could also lose their forests and alpine pastures in Austria. Certain exceptions to this expropriation were possible for private possessions. Therefore, a state contract with Austria occurred in May 1955. Lawyer and community agreed on their shares in their property in Austria. The municipality of Pfronten received 109 ha in the so -called Klockerwald, the rest fell to the lawyers.

At that time, the question was not clarified how the existing possessions (general) of the individual districts should be done. As a result of a comparison between lawyers and the municipality in front of the Bavarian Administrative Court in 1970, this property was also divided. Detachment contracts were concluded here in complicated and lengthy negotiations between 1970 and 2007. The rule served as a yardstick that the lawyers 2/3 and the municipality 1/3 should be due.

1. ↑ Thaddäus Steiner (ed.): Rural legal sources from the Allgäu . Publications of the Swabian Research Foundation ISBN 978-3-89639-659-4, p. 163ff (Pfronten)
2. ↑ District Court Council Schoeller, Schongau: The Pfrontner Allmende, a common private property of the 435 marksmen . Printed report, without a year, approx. 1930
3. ↑ State Archives Augsburg HA Na 180: Turkish tax of care Füssen
4. ↑ Dr. Anton Schmid: Source documents on the history of rights to the Pfronten Alpenweiden , Machine script 1930
5. ↑ Tax book 1758, (private) Processing: Bertold Pölcher
6. ↑ ^{a b} Community archive Pfronten: Concurrent role 1828, 2nd vol.
7. ↑ Community archive Pfronten: Complaint 1796, § 123
8. ↑ Pfronten municipal registration: List of people entitled to home in the Ruralgemeinde Steinach, 1829 (with supplements until about 1850)
9. ↑ Pfronten municipal registration: Directory of the home beneficiaries in the rural community of Steinach , started around 1854 (with supplements until about 1920)