Alltag und Kriminalität. Disziplinierungsversuche im 18. Jh

Contribution to Publishing Costs D 3256 Alltag und Kriminalität. Disziplinierungsversuche im 18. Jh. Martin SCHEUTZ 26.6.2000 Everyday Life and Criminality Disciplining Attempts in the Styrian and Lower-Austrian Border Territory in the 18th Century. The present manuscript deals with disciplining attempts in the 18th century, with two collections of source material of Lower Austrian archives, which supplement each other quite well, serving as examples: on the one hand, all the source material concerning the 18th century of the judicial archive of the district court of the Carthusian monastery of Gaming, which hat been vested with life-and-death jurisdiction, had been fully transcribed. On the other band, the material of the judicial archive of the small manorial market town of Scheibbs, which had also been fully transcribed for a period of 61 years, offered an excellent and wide-ranging source to examine in detail the self- regulating mechanisms or the manifold interventions of the authority into the everyday and legal lives of its subjects. A close examination of the officials in the small market town of Scheibbs (market judge, market clerk, market court usher, guard, schoolmaster, shepherd as well as court judge, district court -usher and executioner as representatives of the authority), which proved to be very labour-intensive because of the scattered sources, hinted at the often homogenous interest of the market town as well as the lord of the manor and the souvereing. Many different, often competing disciplining authorities proved for Jaw and order" in the market and its surroundings. The powerful, but not undisputed iron traders dominated the picture of this market living on iron and supply trades. Of utmost importance for the conflict regulation within the market was the common profit of the market town (weight of bread, prive of meat). The district court was vested witlimore comprehensive competences than the market court and could impose more severe sentences (including death penalty). In various cases the court judge (who was at the same time the administrator of the district court) as the top representative of the lord of the manor, the prelate of Gaming, was opposing as well as promoting the requests of the citizens of Scheibbs. Taking the offence type of the theft of iron being negotiated at district courts as an example the author presents an especially well-developed peculiarity in this iron-producing region. Above all, the local hammer lords as well as the iron traders were interested in persecuting in the most rigorous way possible the mostly poor iron thiefs, who severely disturbed the strictly regulated system of iron trade and iron production. The militarization of society in the 18th century is illustrated by the forced recruitment as a method of sanction. Apart from forced recruitment the local population got into touch with the ever more important disciplining authority of the 18th century the army, because of begging retired soldiers, disabled and deserters, but also following the invasion of Bavarian and French troops in 1741. The way of dealing with vagabonds and the thus closely connected poverty was one of the biggest problems within the examined period. Since the 20ies of the 18th century the manorial as well as the sovereign authorities had been trying to get vagabonds out of the country or get them back into their hometowns by means of costly beggar hunts, i. e. by visitations of beggars and a well-developed deportation system. This material-intensive study proves above all that ,disciplining" may not be understood as a uniform procedure, there were, on the contrary, many different often competing disciplining authorities on various levels of administration, who cared for the ,well-being" of their subjects.