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The Knights and the Problems of Political Organizing in Sixteenth-Century Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Marlene Jahss Legates
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The tribute given to Saul Alinsky on his death in 1972 indicates the attention paid in our age to the problems of community organizing. Most citizen groups formed in response to such threats as urban renewal, danger to the environment, or mandatory busing face problems of factionalism, inefficiency, lack of money, and even conflicting loyalties of their members, unless they have the direction of someone like Alinsky, who earned his reputation as a professional organizer. The alternative is to found a group imbued with an ideology which can be characterized as radical (“as a kind of mental and moral discipline”) and an organization which consequently reflects this discipline. The existence of such political organizations, “specially designated and organized bands of men [who] might play a creative part in the political world,” of individuals motivated to join forces “with any man who might help them without regard to the older bonds of family and neighborhood” have a historical origin: they were the contribution of the religious wars in sixteenth-century Europe. The Calvinists were the ancestors of the Bolsheviks.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 99 - 136
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1974

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References

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18. Schubert, op. cit., p. 58.

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24. The organization of the Franconian Knighthood in the sixteenth century centered around the canton, which was the only permanently functioning unit, with officers, regular meetings, a chancellery, a treasury, and a mechanism for collecting money. The regional organization at first consisted only of meetings, called for the special purpose of negotiating with the imperial commissaries. Later in the century, the leading officers from each canton met regularly, four or five times a year, in effect constituting a regional executive committee. The Ritterordnung of 1590, confirmed by the emperor, was an attempt to stabilize the regional organization, calling for permanent, paid regional officers. The continuing importance of the canton does not contradict the existence of regional ties among the members, but rather it was the only political unit capable of reaching the members of each locality.

25. Besides the social ties described here, the multiplicity of feudal ties posed an obstacle to territorial subjection. For example, Canton Gebirg, named after the administrative unit of the Margraviate Ansbach-Bayreuth, the Oberland or Obergebirg area, centering around the town of Bayreuth, actually included more vassals of the Bamberg bishop than of the margrave. Most families held fiefs from more than one prince, just as they included civil servants employed by more than one principality. Furthermore, the Obergebirg area only formed one-third of the canton: the Bamberg/Forchheim area, centering around the Wiesent Valley but including the whole area bordered by the Rodach in the north and by the Regnitz in the west, furnished most of the active officers of the canton; the Vogtland area, in the extreme northeast corner, finally broke from the Franconian Knighthood in 1615, after a long political struggle. As long as the canton could continue to function, uniting such divergent interests, it constituted an effective barrier against the prince's goal of isolating and defining certain nobles as territorial subjects.

26. See below, pp. 121–22. It is incidentally very difficult to determine even approximately the number of families in the canton. Various membership lists are extant; none of them is easy to correlate to any other. Typically, families are listed who became extinct, who were members of other cantons, who were subjects of other principalities, or who were former owners of the estate in question. Even in the perhaps more reliable tax and attendance lists, names appear once and then forever disappear. The number of families mentioned more than just once or twice and showing some indication of participation at one time or other in the second half of the sixteenth century seems to be around sixty-six.

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28. Schubert, op. cit., p. 123.

29. Bader, Karl, “Reichsadel und Reichsstädte in Schwaben am Ende des alten Reiches,” in Büttner, Heinrich, Feger, Otto, and Meyer, Bruno, eds., Aus Verfassungs- und Landesgeschichte. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Theodor Mayer, I: Zur Allgemeinen und Verfassungsgeschichte (Lindau/Konstanz 1954–1955), p. 252.Google Scholar

30. Information about regional diets is taken from a collection of formal and highly stylized protocols in the Bayerisches Staatsarchiv, Bamberg (hereafter cited as Bbg StA), Register A 200, and from a handwritten summary of these as well as other nonextant sixteenth-century protocols, “Inventarium uber Gemeiner Ritterschaft aller Sechs Ort zu Franken Tagsatzungen…” (hereafter cited as “Inventarium”), which I discovered among the miscellaneous documents concerning Canton Rhön-Werra in the Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Marburg (hereafter cited as Mbg StA), Unver. Bestand 109, 26, 1. The documents concerning Canton Gebirg are most readily available in the Bamberg archive: besides official canton protocols included in the series A 200 (however, out of sixty-nine canton protocols up to 1650, only nine of these are from the sixteenth century, covering the years 1574–86) along with the protocols of the regional diets, there is a useful collection of correspondence, beginning in 1529 and generally addressed from the canton officers to one of the members, under Adelsakten von Thüna, as well as the documents concerning the canton in the state chancelleries of Bamberg and Ansbach-Bayreuth. The course of my investigations uncovered two other sets of documents, used by Biedermann (see below, fn. 67) but apparently unknown to later historians: (a) the appendices or Beilagen to “In Jure et Facto gegrundete Repraesentation, uber Dess, im Voigtland gesessenen Reichs-Adels unmittelbare Verwandschaft Immedietat et Exemption ad omni Landsassiatu,” 1730 (hereafter cited as “Repraesentation”) located in the Bamberg Stadtarchiv, Historischer Verein Rep. 2I, 1063, consisting of attendance, membership, and tax lists, protocols, and correspondence; and (b) the collection of correspondence, written grievances, and extracts from protocols in the “Verfassung was uf den Anno 65 zu Hassfurt ungelauffen und hernach in der Ritterschaft sachen vorkommen” (hereafter cited as “Verfassung”) in the Bayerisches Staatsarchiv, Würzburg, Reichsritterschaft 861I, most likely copied and bound in the early seventeenth century. Thus, the most revealing documents about the canton are located outside of the Bamberg State Archive, home of the canton's chancellery.

31. Once the knights protested the phrase “schuldige Reuttersdienst,” which had been used in imperial correspondence addressed to them (“Inventarium,” Mar. 17, 1580).

32. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, 1533.

33. Lünig, op. cit., No. 142, pp. 310–11.

34. Mbg StA, 109, 13, 3 (letters and reports concerning Canton Rhön-Werra), May 8, 1547.

35. “Inventarium,” Jan. 7, 1558; Koeleri, Johann David, “Dissertatio historica de ortu et progressu Subsidii Charitativi,” Fränkische Acta Erudita et Curiosa, XV, No. 7 (1728), 251;Google Scholarvon Schreckenstein, Roth, op. cit., p. 290.Google Scholar

36. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, Oct. 23, 1565; Feb. 20, 1566.

37. Mbg StA, 109, 13, 3, Sept. 16, 1566.

38. Lünig, op. cit., No. 5, p. 14.

39. Bbg StA, A 200, canton protocol, Nov. 26, 1574; “Verfassung,” protocol of canton executive diet, Aug. 2, 1582.

40. Bbg StA, A 200, canton protocol, Mar. 13, 1579.

41. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, Oct.-Dec. 1579.

42. Bbg StA, G 11I, 544, Feb. 1590.

43. “Verfassung” proposed agenda for canton diet to be held Mar. 26, 1583.

44. Lünig, op. cit., No. 15, p. 54.

45. Quoted in Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 179. See also Hofmann, Hanns Hubert, op. cit., pp. 50–60;Google Scholar“Mittel- und Oberfranken am Ende des Alten Reiches (1792),” Historischer Atlas von Bayern. Teil Franken, Series II, No. 1 (Munich, 1954), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

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48. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 19, list of proxies and grievances sent to canton officers, Jan. 19, 1574.

49. Lünig, op. cit., No. 144, pp. 311–12 (emphasis mine).

50. Bbg StA, B 28, 25, No. 2:2; 3, fol. 148, grievances presented to the bishop, May 15–16, 1560; Hotzelt, Wilhelm, Viet II. von Würtzburg. Fürstbischof von Bamberg (1561–1577) (diss.; Nuremberg, 1918), pp. 123–25;Google ScholarLooshorn, Johann, Die Geschichte des Bistums Bamberg, IV: Das Bistum Bamberg von 1400 bis 1556 (Munich, 1900), pp. 33–37.Google Scholar

51. Bbg StA, C 2, 3018, letter from councillors to administrative officials in district Hof, Oct. 6, 1578.

52. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 55, letter from administrative officials to councillors, 1551; Bbg StA, C 2, 3014, letter from councillors to administrative officials at Hof, Oct. 19, 1581.

53. Bbg StA, C 2, 3018, No. 2, letter from councillors to administrative official at Hof. Sept. 20, 1583.

54. Bbg StA, C 3, 1935, grievances presented to Margrave Georg Friedrich, Jan. 15, 1593.

55. Bbg StA, A 200, protocol of canton executive diet, Jan. 4, 1575.

56. Bbg StA, B 28, 3, fol. 148, minutes of territorial diet, May 15–16, 1560.

57. “Verfassung,” minutes of canton executive diet and list of grievances, Mar. 28, 1575.

58. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 9.

59. Lünig, op. cit., pp. 341–342; Bbg StA, G 11I, 1, 1580.

60. von Guttenberg, Erich Baron, “Reichsimmediat oder Landsass? Ein Beitrag zur Adelsgeschichte Frankens,” Archiv für Geschichte und Altertumskunde von Oberfranken, XXIV, No. 2 (1910), p. 44.Google Scholar

61. Bbg StA, A 200, Nov. 26, 1574.

62. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna (between 1533 and 1539).

63. Ibid., Aug. 23, 1558.

64. “Inventarium,” Feb. 12, 1560.

65. Pfeiffer, op. cit., p. 208.

66. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, Dec. 28, 1563.

67. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 41. This is most likely the old “matricul” to which Biedermann refers: Biedermann, Johann Gottfried, Geschlechts-Register der Reichs-Frey unmittelbaren Ritterschafft Landes zu Franken, löblichen Orts-Gebürg (Bamberg: Gertner, 1747), for example, Tables CI, CCCVII, CCCX, CCCXIX, CCCXX, CCCXL.Google Scholar

68. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 19, Jan. 19, 1574.

69. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna [1576].

70. Lünig, op. cit., No. 9, p. 41.

71. Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 13, 1579.

72. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, 1533. Provisions for majority decision were also made at the canton diet on Apr. 28, 1560 (“Repraesentation,” Beilage 10).

73. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, July 6, 1579.

74. For example, Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 13, 1579; “Verfassung,” canton protocol, Aug. 2, 1582.

75. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, 1529.

76. Bbg StA, G 4, 1500, protocol of regional diet, Aug. 8, 1565; “Inventarium,” Aug. 6–8, 1565.

77. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, July 6, 1577.

78. Mbg StA, 109, 13, 3, Apr. 1580.

79. Major, James Russell, “The Limitations of Absolutism in the ‘New Monarchies,’” in Slavin, Arthur, ed., The “New Monarchies” and Representative Assemblies. Medieval Constitutionalism or Modern Absolutism? (Boston, 1964), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

80. Bbg StA, A 200, Nov. 26, 1574.

81. This executive meeting (Bbg StA, A 200, Jan. 4, 1575) and the one of 1576 (“Verfassung,” Apr. 26, 1576) handled particularly important matters.

82. Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 13, 1579.

83. Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 28, 1584.

84. See below, p. 124.

85. For the use of these terms, see Schubert, op. cit., p. 104.

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90. See below, pp. 126–28.

91. Bbg StA, B 28, 5, fol. 13, protocol of territorial diet, Sept. 10, 1578.

92. Bbg StA, C 2, 3278, No. 4, letter from administrative officers to Georg Friedrich [1576].

93. von Waldenfels, Otto Baron, Die Freiherren von Waldenfels. Stammfolgen mit urkundlichen Belegen, II. (Munich: Selbstverlag, 1959), p. 340.Google Scholar

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97. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, Feb. 12, 1569.

98. Waldenfels, op. cit., pp. 114–15.

99. See above, fn. 25.

100. Bbg StA, A 200, Nov. 26, 1574.

101. “Verfassung,” minutes of meeting and grievances, Mar. 28, 1575.

102. Bbg StA, A 200, June 4, 1577.

103. Bbg StA, Adelsakten von Thüna, June 1577.

104. “Verfassung,” Aug. 15, 1577.

105. Bbg StA, A 200, Jan. 30, 1582.

106. Bbg StA, G 11I, 544, 10.

107. Bbg StA, G 11I, 544, 16, report from canton officers, Mar. 18, 1600.

108. Bbg StA, A 200, Nov. 26, 1574.

109. “Verfassung,” report of canton executive meeting, Aug. 15, 1577.

110. Bbg StA, A 200, Apr. 9, 1583.

111. “Verfassung,” letter from canton to Bamberg bishop, May 26, 1585.

112. Bbg StA, A 200, Aug. 9, 1586.

113. Bbg StA, G 11I, 544, No. 5, letter from canton's lawyer to captain, July 21, 1590.

114. Lünig, op. cit., No. 8, pp. 38–39.

115. Mbg StA, 109, 13, 3, Mar. 1597.

116. von Schreckenstein, Roth, op. cit., p. 154.Google Scholar

117. Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 13, 1579.

118. “Verfassung,” Aug. 2, 1582.

119. “Verfassung,” agenda for canton diet, Mar. 26, 1583.

120. Bbg StA, A 200, Mar. 27, 1584.

121. Mbg StA, 109, 13, 3, [May] 1547.

122. “Inventarium,” [January] 1564.

123. Bbg StA, G 4, 1500, protocol of regional diet, Aug. 8, 1565.

124. “Repraesentation,” Beilage 42, “Mandata Poenalis cum clausula, Reichs-Ritterschaft in Franken contra etliche derselben Ritter-Orts Gebirgs,” Sept. 10, 1576.

125. Bbg StA, A 200, Jan. 30, 1582.

126. “Verfassung,” May 26, 1585.

127. See DrHolle, , “Die Streitigkeiten der Markgrafen von Bayreuth mit der Ritterschaft über die Reichsunmittelbarkeit,” Archiv für Geschichte und Altertumskunde von Oberfranken, VIII, 2 (1861), 55–115;Google ScholarMay, Hanns Georg, “Die vogtländische Ritterschaft,” (unpub. diss., Erlangen, 1951);Google Scholarvon Lang, Karl Heinrich, Neuere Geschichte des Fürstentums Baireuth, III: Regierungszeit des Markgrafen Georg Friedrich von 1557 bis 1603 (Nuremberg, 1811), pp. 137ff.;Google Scholar “Repraesentation,” pp. 32–36.

128. Hotzelt, op. cit.; Looshorn, op. cit.; Jäck, Heinrich Joachim, Bambergische Jahrbücher vom Jahre 741 bis 1829 (Bamberg, 1829);Google Scholar Bachmann, op. cit.; Bbg StA, B 28, records of territorial diets and special diets with the knights.

129. Bbg StA, B 28, 17, 15, Sept. 2, 1596.

130. “Verfassung,” agreement between Canton Gebirg and Bamberg, July 16, 1588.

131. Jegel, Die landständische Verfassung, op. cit., pp. 19–27; Die Tätigkeit der Landstände, op. cit., pp. 3–40; Vocke, W., “Über das Steuerwesen im 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Finanzgeschichte des Fürstentums Brandenburg-Ansbach,” Jahresbericht für Ansbach, XXXIV (1866), 46.Google Scholar

132. Schubert, op. cit., p. 140.

133. “Verfassung,” July 16, 1588.

134. Bbg StA, B 28, 5, 1–11, 54–56, Sept. 10–12, 1578.

135. Looshorn, op. cit., p. 189.

136. Moser, op. cit., pp. 483ff.

137. Ibid., pp. 497–500, 506–8.

138. Lünig, op. cit., “Supplementa zur Freyen Reichs-Ritterschafft insgemein,” pp. 25–26.

139. Moser, op. cit., p. 483.

140. Ibid., pp. 487–89.

141. Bbg StA, C 3, 1935, 1, grievances of Jan. 1, 1593.

142. Ibid., letter to the margrave, Jan. 29, 1593.

143. Ibid., Feb. 1593.

144. Bbg StA, B 28, 16, 5, fol. 14, 16, 20, Sept. 10–11, 1578.

145. Moser, op. cit., pp., 484–87.

146. Bbg StA, C 2, 3278, 4, letter to the margrave, no date.

147. Lang, op. cit., pp. 138–39; Moser, op. cit.

148. Bbg StA, G 4, 1500, 77, May 23–30, 1592.

149. Lang, op. cit., p. 285.

150. Bbg StA, C 2, 3276, 16, June 16, 1592.

151. Ibid., 24, June 28; 26, June 28; 27, June 27; Lang, op. cit., p. 286.

152. Lang, op. cit.

153. Dickmann, Fritz, Der Westfälische Frieden (Münster, 1959);Google ScholarRiedenauer, Erwin, “Reichsritterschaft und Konfession. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zum Thema, Adel und Konfession,” in Rössler, Hellmuth, ed., Deutscher Adel, 1555–1740, Büdinger Vorträge 1964, Schriften zur Problematik der deutschen Führungsschichten in der Neuzeit, II (Darmstadt, 1965), 1–64.Google Scholar

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155. Ibid., pp. 94–100, 122.

156. Lünig, op. cit., pp. 17–18.

157. Guttenberg, op. cit., p. 24.