In East Frisia, the Hausmanns class was the class of large farmers who were also known as “self-inherited” and were the actual free Frisians, which even gave them the right to participate in the state parliament. The Hausleute formed the third estate, alongside the nobility and the towns. The clergy played no role in East Frisia . The extent to which land ownership and agriculture formed the sole economic basis of these Hausleute is questionable based on current knowledge. Often the Hausleute also participated in economic and speculative ventures.

For centuries, these Hausleute divided the local offices among themselves and, due to the resulting exclusivity, formed an almost unrivaled elite [2] .

A Hausmanns family was a special type of farmer that developed primarily in the East Frisian tribal areas and yet differed greatly from the peasantry that we know from history classes. Here we have more of a country nobleman in front of us who had freed himself from field work and moved between the aristocracy and the non-nobility based on his class consciousness.

The Hausleute set the taxes in the assembly of estates, which the nobility had to pay themselves. In the rest of the empire, the nobility were exempt from taxes, but not in East Friesland. Here, too, they had to pay the same taxes as everyone else [3] .

The Hausmanns class (also known as "the Hausleute") stood in the tradition of Frisian freedom and therefore had their own land and property very early on, as well as distinct rights to property, which found their way into state law through the forged Charles privileges and were thus guaranteed . For this reason, the Hausleute of East Friesland were able to develop right from the start up to the top of rural society [4] , where they ultimately legitimized their place through wealth and turned into an isolated elite with their own professional rules [5] . The hardly existing nobility in the region favored this rise, so that the Hausleute, as landowners and owners of not infrequently several tenant farms, filled this power vacuum and often took the same position in the village structure as noble landlords from other areas [6] .

From a legal point of view, one belonged to the Hausmanns status if one owned at least 25 acres of land or 50 acres of land under leasehold. This limit was last set for all of East Friesland in 1620 at the East Frisian state parliament.

The marriage policy of the Hausleute was to preserve status as far as possible, which meant that almost all of the old Hausleute families in Rheiderland are related to one another in one way or another. If you look at the aristocratic families of Europe, almost all of which can show family ties to one another, the same principle took place for centuries among Hausleute in the East Frisian microcosm. Here, too, the Hausleute was regarded as a closed society, which made up only 5% of the East Frisian population.

The term Hausleute probably developed from the old word "Huslotha" and referred to those Frisians who paid the "Huslotha", i.e. the royal interest for Frisian freedom, which probably later changed to the term "Huisluid", which translates into German as "Hausleute". “ means [7] . Since the first free Frisians were able to buy their way out of the feudal system with the Huslotha and thus attained imperial immediacy, this circumstance led some historians to see the Hausmanns class as a peculiar, Frisian nobility [8] , since it was personal between themselves and the emperor, none feudal authority had to accept. The naturalness of the Hausleute to actually be the leading estate in East Friesland is manifested in the fact that in many estates of Hausleute the East Frisian state law is listed in addition to the Bible and hymnal. The East Frisian Landrecht had a volume of 1345 pages, which made the purchase correspondingly expensive. This allows conclusions to be drawn about the importance of knowing the same for one's own justification and the political awareness of the Hausleute [9] . For a long time they still held the threads of political power in their hands and the counts and later the princes of East Friesland had to compete with the Hausleute to a not inconsiderable extent, because hardly anything could be decided without their consent. This wrangling over competence ultimately culminated in a civil war shortly before the annexation by Prussia, the so-called Appeal War 1724-1726 [10] .

It was not uncommon for Hausleute to achieve an economic status that allowed them to free themselves from daily work and devote themselves entirely to trading and supervising their own businesses [11] . They employed permanent servants to do the physical work and also seasonal workers, such as day laborers or migrant workers, who often remained connected to the farms of the Hausleute for years through recurring jobs [12] . From this position of freeing myself from physical work as much as possible, the desire for education resulted. This education often went far beyond agricultural knowledge. There are Hausmanns families who, at their own initiative, rented premises and hired a private tutor if a local schoolmaster (who, by the way, was chosen by the Hausleute) did not meet the requirements [13] .

The rural nobility in East Friesland was often superior to landowners, but otherwise moved on an equal footing with the Hausleute [14] . This circumstance only decreased over the years after Prussia took power in 1744 [15] and the Hausleute fell behind in the social structure to the same extent as the so-called Frisian freedom in personal union with the estates representation, the East Frisian countryside, faded. The class difference between the nobility and Hausleute took on ever sharper contours and curdled at the latest after all class privileges were abolished under Napoleon in 1807, which in East Friesland not only affected the nobility but also the Hausleute. The rights of the Landtag for Hausleute were abolished and the new municipal code of the French replaced the dump master with the office of mayor or mayor. Furthermore, all rural residents were given equal voting rights and the office of mayor was, at least theoretically, open to every resident and was no longer limited to the exclusive circle of Hausleute, who were no longer solely entitled to vote [16] . After this time, these privileges were never restored and the change from Hausleute to farmers was complete [17] , even if some Hausmanns families were able to save the conceit of bygone days until the post-war years of the 20th century, they had lost the real privileges and the only East Frisian "title" that ever existed disappeared forever.

In East Friesland, the Hausleute developed a unique position of power beyond the feudal system as employers, landowners and office holders in a personal union, which allowed them to actually compete on an equal footing with the nobility, who often used the same legitimacy model to justify their own existence [18]. . The local rule of the Hausleute in the early modern period is also referred to as "aristocratic peasant oligarchy" [19] . The reason why the nobility ultimately survived Napoleon's reforms as a class and was able to restore the old status after defeating them and the Hausleute were not, is mainly due to the Europe-wide acceptance, which was difficult for the Hausleute after the East Frisian takeover of Prussia in 1744 and after 1813 with the Connection of East Friesland to Hanover was completely off the table. Barons, counts and the nobility in Europe in general didn't really get along with Hausleute, in their eyes they were wealthy farmers, nothing more.

 

[1] Cf. Heike Düselder and Olga Sommerfeld, Nobility on the periphery? Culture and rule of the lower nobility in Northwest Germany Report on a research and exhibition project by the University of Osnabrück and the Lower Saxony open-air museum Museumsdorf Cloppenburg, 2005, p. 16

[2] See Dr. Jessica Cronshagen, essay Ostfriesische Landschaft: The Hausleute: land trade and land dealers, tenant farmers and heirs, countrymen and nobles in the Frisian marshes of the 17th and 18th centuries

[3] Ibid., p. 236

[4] Cf. Frank Schmekel, What makes a Hausmann: A rural elite between status and practices of legitimation, in: Discourses - Bodies - Artifacts: Historical Praxeology in Early Modern Research, p. 287

[5] See Dr. Cronshagen, essay: Hausleute

[6] Cf. Christoph Reinders-Düselder, Noble living environments in Northwest Germany, in: Early modern times: Festschrift for Ernst Hinrichs, Bielefeld 2004, p. 58

[7] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, p.73

[8] Cf. Frank Schmekel, How the village influenced the world and vice versa: East Frisian farmers as the glocal elite of the early modern period, 1st ed., Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsbuchhandlung Munich, 2011, p. 36

[9] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, p.154

[10]  The Apelle War was a conflict between the princes of East Frisia and the East Frisian estates over fiscal sovereignty in East Frisia. (see chapter: Spekker p. 268 in this book)

[11] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, p. 22 & Schmekel, Hausmann: ländl. Elite, in: Discourses – Bodies – Artifacts p. 287

[12] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, p.142

[13] Cf. Schmekel, Hausmann: rural. Elite, in: Discourses - Bodies - Artifacts, p.295 - 296

[14] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, p. 71

[15] Cf. Otto S. Knottnerus, Peasant Freedom in: The Frisian Freedom of the Middle Ages: Life and Legend, Hajo van Lengen, Aurich: Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH, 2003, p. 382

[16] Cf. Roskamp, Ostfr. Family Stories, p. 241

[17] Ibid., p. 241

[18] Cf. Cronshagen, Simply noble, pp. 298 - 300

[19] Cf. Köller, Agonalität, p. 265