Zum Problem des bürgerlichen Untertanenbesitzes auf dem Lande

Die landesfürstlichen Städte ob der Enns und des Viertels ober dem Manhartsberg (NÖ) im Vergleich

Abstract

This paper deals with the influence of towns, of town clerical institutions and of individual town citizens in the countryside, particularly with respect to the acquisition of rural estates, subject holdings and other forms of rent income. In Upper Austria, the first activities in this respect can be dated to the late thirteenth century, and evidence becomes denser after 1350. In many cases we can reconstruct a succession of ownership from followers of the territorial prince or from noblemen to upper-class citizens, a group consisting of officeholders of the territorial prince, nobility and merchants. This process was very likely connected to the economic difficulties of the lower nobility in the later Middle Ages. They did not usually acquire complete entities or villages with subject tenant holdings; rather, their possessions as landlords were in dispersed locations and could only rarely be consolidated to ‘bourgeois estates‘ with a motte-type estate centre. In the period until about 1500, also lower town strata acquired rents from rural holdings. These properties were sometimes used as objects of sale and exchange processes, more often, however, they became part of foundations for spiritual or town charitable institutions. During the sixteenth century, a new type of bourgeois posses- sions in the countryside arose among successful merchants and entrepreneurs, who bought small feudal estates and mostly managed to rise to the rank of the nobility after some time. As they were in an intermediary position between a feudal and a mercantile basis, this group faced conflicts with the traditional nobility, whose lower ranks fought with severe economic problems. Small rent possessions of town citizens were generally taken over by the high nobility and church landlords in the long run. The north-western district of Lower Austria (Viertel ober dem Manhartsberg), which is investigated in comparative perspective, had about the same number of princely towns as the province of Upper Austria, but those were mostly smaller and less integrated in supra-regional networks of trade. This may have been one of the reasons why rural estates of town citizens, which were acquired with proceeds from trade and industry in Upper Austria, were completely absent here in the sixteenth century. The twin towns of Krems and Stein are an exception in this respect. Here, bour- geois property was mainly held in rural vinyards rather than in tenant holdings. In general, bourgeois possession of holdings of rural subjects did not play an important role for the economic relations between towns and (surrounding) countryside in the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century.