Property and the German Idea of Freedom

Colin F. Wilder, Ph.D. (2010), University of Chicago, is Assistant Professor of German and Digital History at the University of South Carolina.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

1 Introduction

 1 The Consensus and Revisionist Views of German Freedom

 2 This Book’s Contribution

 3 Legal Operators

 4 Significance

 5 Context

 6 Commercialization

 7 Political Economy

 8 Sources

2 The Core Stories and Ideas of German Freedom

 1 Ancient Germanic Freedom

 2 The Free German Empire

 3 German Freedom

3 Idea-Generative Institutions

 1 State Expansion

 2 Courts

 3 Supply, Demand, Population, and Commercialization

 4 Universities and Law Faculties

 5 Jurists

 6 Books

4 Free Disposition of Estates

 1 Chaos, Information Loss, and Self-Release

 2 Missing Money and Missing Records

 3 Tithe Conversion and Disposal

 4 Methods of Self-Release: The Claim of Allodial Property

 5 Models of Allod

 6 Circumventing Requirements through Legal Fictions

 7 Retraction Law

 8 Accepting the Results of Free Activity after the War

 9 The Princely Resolutions of 1655

5 Freedom from Extractions

 1 Noble Trespassing and Evasions

 2 Tax Registration, 1651–1654

 3 The ‘Graying’ of the Clear Cadastral Picture

 4 New Departures in the 1680s

 5 The Presumption of Natural Freedom

 6 The Regalianism of Christian Thomasius

 7 Regalian Rights

 8 Regalia as Imprescriptible

 9 Too Machiavellian?

6 Free Use of Paper Money

 1 Paper Money, Bills of Exchange, and Political Economic Ideas

 2 Evolution of the Law of Exchange in Europe

 3 The Political Economy of German States after 1648

 4 Adoption of the Law of Exchange Throughout the Empire

 5 Summary Procedure and Strict Liability (“Rigor”)

 6 Regional Finance in the Seventeenth Century

 7 New Directions in the Eighteenth Century

 8 Variations on the Theme

 9 Reconciling Conflicting Law, 1732–1749

7 Conclusion

 1 Property Rights and Freedom in Early Modern Germany

 2 Free Disposition of Estates

 3 Freedom from Extractions

 4 Freedom and the Use of Money

 5 German Freedom

 6 The Extension of Positive and Negative Civil Liberties

 7 Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict

 8 The One and the Many

Glossary

Bibliography

Index