Medieval German Social History: Generalizations and Particularism

Abstract

EIKE von Repgow commented around 1225 in theSachsenspiegel: “Now do not be amazed that this book says so little about the law of the ministerials. It is in fact so diverse that no one can fully comprehend it. Under every bishop, every abbot, and every abbess the ministerials have a distinct law; therefore, I cannot describe it.” Eike identified here a fundamental problem in studying German social history: how does one generalize about diverse social institutions that were both a cause and a consequence of Germany's political fragmentation? How different things could be is illustrated by the structure of the estates in the eastern Alpine principalities. In the duchies of Austria and Styria the nobility was divided into two estates, the lords and the knights; but while there were about seventy or eighty families of lordly rank in Austria in 1280, there were so few lineages of lords in Styria—about twenty-five in 1300, of whom only ten survived by 1400—that they could not meet by themselves.