John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes
Note 1576
Recently, we looked at one man’s reaction to his treatment by the overlords. I will continue in that same vein but not quite so personal. The area is the Kraichgau, which overlaps the area from where many members of the Second Germanna Colony came. The rulers in the Kraichgau were not strong; in fact, they were relatively weak, having only small territories. Generally, they were so small that there was no standing army. Many times the rulers would better be called knights. Their existence was precarious as they had much more powerful neighbors on all sides. Troubles with their residents could backfire and threaten the existence of the knights.
The Kraichgau was hit very hard by the wars of the Seventeenth Century. The Thirty Years’ War was bad, and that was followed by a series of incursions by the French armies. The population was reduced and buildings were damaged. The knights, though, wanted to live well, better than the existing tax base would support. The knights tried to raise the fees and taxes and to claim the common lands that were the right of the villagers to use.
In Ittlingen, about two or three miles from Gemmingen, the Öttlinger family attempted to increase duties, in violation of an agreement dating back to 1579, but the inhabitants succeeded in blocking this move by complaining to an Imperial court. Note that there were some agreements of long standing between the knights and the inhabitants. The von Kochendorf family began increasing feudal dues to pay for a new residence. They also began enclosing the common fields for their private use. They banned meetings of the village assembly and began selling off village interests to outsiders. A salt monopoly was sold to a Jewish merchant and the 200-year-old common bakery was sold to a private individual. Heavier fines were assessed for slight infractions of local ordinances. The villages really became suspicious when the Herrschaft (Lords) took the cellar of the town hall (owned by the villagers) and converted it into a jail.
When the von Kochendorfs built a fence around the village meadow, the villagers tore it down. These events were repeated once more. The villagers also expelled the Jewish merchant who had the salt monopoly. They submitted a twelve-point complaint to the court which had jurisdiction over the knights.
By now the von Gemmingens and von Kochendorfs considered the villagers of Ittlingen in rebellion. Bent on a course of increasing their revenues and maintaining their presence in the parish, they took extreme measures against the village in 1720. First, they raised the fees for grazing rights (established by an agreement in 1584) for the villagers’ hogs on the commons. When the villagers refused to pay and complained to Heilbronn again, the von Gemmingens and the von Kocherdorfs escalated the “hog war”.
(22 Jan 03)