The Land as a Community of Honour, Public Interest and Peace

Abstract

Relating to the Bavarian and Austrian estates the “Gemeine Nutzen” (“common good”) is a term already appearing in 15th century sources. This observation contradicts the opinion, the “Gemeine Nutzen” is an invention of the following century. Especially the example of the Austrian estates shows, that “Lander” (“lands”) could be defined as large communities, consisting of the “Herrschaft” (“dominion”) and the estates being the “Land”, which was understood as a community of peace, honour and public interest. Simultaneously the essay comments on the discussion about Otto Brunner’s work (“Land und Herrschaft”). In several steps the essay expounds the dependance between a territorial sovereign and a “Land”. The lack of money, the lack of peace and the necessity of a good judicature were fundamental for the formation of the idea of public use. The work tries to point out, that the discussion about “Land und Herrschaft” and its reception have provoked some problematic and misleading inferences: The domination over a “Land” was a complex partnership of convenience between a relatively weak territorial sovereign and the estates not a primitive lordship over subjects.