Town law in Germany

The History

As Germans began to establish towns through northern Europe in the 10th century, they always received town privileges that were granting them autonomy from local religious or secular rulers. And such privileges included the right to economic autonomy, self-governance, militia, and criminal courts. Town laws were so to say copied from neighboring towns, like Westphalian towns of Munster, Dortmund, Minden, and Soest. As Germans began settling to the east, the colonists modelled the town laws on the pre-existing twelfth century laws of Cologne in the north (Lubeck law), Magdeburg in the center (Magdeburg rights), and Nuremberg and Vienna in the south (South-German law).

As many larger towns such as Hildesheim and Braunschweig grew through the agglomeration of towns in the neighborhood, some self-contained settlements had been split between areas utilizing differing city rights variants.

The granting of German city rights modeled after the established city to a new city regarded the original model as a Rechtsvorort, or a legal sponsor of the new-chartered town. For example, Magdeburg became the sponsor of cities using Magdeburg Rights, and its lay judges could rule legal cases using such rights. Certain town rights became known under different names, though they came from the same source; the name of some town variants designates the Rechtsvorort from that they became famous.

As territorial borders changed through the passing of time, changes to German town rights were inevitable. During the 15th -17th centuries, the town laws were modified with aspects of Roman law by many legal experts. The older cities' laws, along with local jurisdiction and autonomy, gave way to landed territorial rulers. And with the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803, almost all of the 51 reichsfrei towns of the Holy Roman Empire were mediatised by territorial princes; the remaining free cities of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Bremen, and Lubeck became sovereign states. And the only remnants of medieval city rights included in the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch of the 1st January 1900 were single articles that were concerning inheritance and family laws. The cities of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg are administered under Landesrechte, or the laws of the federal states of Germany.