[German Culture Past and Present by Ernest Belfort Bax]@TWC D-Link book
German Culture Past and Present

PREFACE
16/57

They had acquired wealth, and influence which was in many cases hereditary in their family, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century they were confronted with the more or less veiled and more or less open opposition of the smaller guildsmen and of the newest comers into the city, the shiftless proletariat of serfs and free peasants, whom economic pressure was fast driving within the walls, owing to the changed conditions of the times.
The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the _leibeigener_ or serf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord's domain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in all respects amenable to the will of his lord; the _hoeriger_ or villein, whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the _freier_ or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent in kind or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status in the rural community under the protection of the manorial lord.

The last was practically the counterpart of the mediaeval English copyholder.

The Germans had undergone essentially the same transformations in social organization as the other populations of Europe.
The barbarian nations at the time of their great migration in the fifth century were organized on a tribal and village basis.

The head man was simply _primus inter pares_.

In the course of their wanderings the successful military leader acquired powers and assumed a position that was unknown to the previous times, when war, such as it was, was merely inter-tribal and inter-clannish, and did not involve the movements of peoples and federations of tribes, and when, in consequence, the need of permanent military leaders or for the semblance of a military hierarchy had not arisen.


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