In the first place, a noble class, spiritual and temporal, was opposed to a peasantry either wholly servile or but nominally free.

In addition to this opposition of noble and peasant there was that of the township, which, in its corporate capacity, stood in the relation of lord to the surrounding peasantry.
The township in Germany was of two kinds--first of all, there was the township that was "free of the Empire," that is, that held nominally from the Emperor himself (_Reichstadt_), and secondly, there was the township that was under the domination of an intermediate lord.

The economic basis of the whole was still land; the status of a man or of a corporation was determined by the mode in which they held their land.

"No land without a lord" was the principle of mediaeval polity; just as "money has no master" is the basis of the modern world with its self-made men.

Every distinction of rank in the feudal system was still denoted for the most part by a special costume.