5
Mathias Moosbrugger
In the beginning was the written word
With his insightful, yet notoriously complex Of Grammatology, the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida has become the philosophical godfather of creative writing. In this book, he famously proposed the rather perplexing thesis that writing is prior to language, which, in turn, is ‘only a moment, an essential but determined mode, a phenomenon, an aspect, a species of writing.’1 With his notion of ‘the written being’ he then went a step further, opening up an even more counterintuitive perspective according to which not only language but also entities in general are derived from writing.2 Writing, in this understanding, is the ultimate creative power. The world as we know it and everything in it exist because of writing.
Philosophically, one may agree or disagree with this point of view. Historically, however, Derrida quite certainly had a point. The extraordinarily creative power of writing – and reading – deeply shaped what the literary critic George Steiner once called the ‘bookish’ culture of scholasticism, which has been so enormously influential in European history, and beyond, for centuries.3 In this culture, the written word was crucial in the creation of both wisdom and virtue in scholars and students. In the Christian liturgy of the Mass, it even extended its power to the realm of the divine. In the course of the Middle Ages, more than ever before, the exact wording of the words of consecration were believed to be necessary for the priest to transform bread and wine into body and blood of Christ. For this, writing was essential.4 It is no exaggeration to say that in the logic of the Middle Ages, writing became an instrument in sacramentally creating salvation.
But the creative power of writing was not limited to a secluded cultural religious world of professionally bookish people like scholars or priests. It also affected everyday politics. The very complex shift by which writing was increasingly incorporated into the symbolic, rather than simply oral, political and social system of the Middle Ages – which, in this way, was fundamentally transformed from within –, thus was itself in a very profound way an increase in the belief in the creative power of writing.5 Writing gradually became an effective instrument in its own right in the political, economic and social power play, both by ecclesiastical and secular participants.6 Regardless of any legal or moral judgement of the matter, the rise of the refined art of forging documents was, to an extent, a sign of this growing belief that claims to power, property, privileges and levies of all sorts could become true by presenting a suitable piece of writing.7
In the hands of those who knew how to handle quill, ink and parchment craftily, the possibilities of the creative power of writing in politics grew extensive in the Middle Ages. This is not only true for the world of kings and popes but also for the world of small monasteries, low nobility, rather insignificant knights and urban life. It is well known that cities could be and actually were usually created by founding charters, an act that was often bringing an already existing settlement to a new legal status. But what about rural communities? Were they not very different, built on other social dynamics and interests like the logic of agriculture and the practicalities of life and survival – both physically and psychologically –, the art of writing being at best rather secondary and only representing a further stage of their development?
This chapter attempts to sketch answers to questions like these by presenting an exemplary case study from the German South-West. This is not a geographical coincidence. German historiography has been fascinated by rural communities for a long time. Due to its rich variety of rural (and urban) communities, the German South-West, including what is today Switzerland and Western Austria, has traditionally been an extraordinarily important field for scholars interested in this kind of research. Many of these scholars have interpreted rural communities as essentially economic corporations and have therefore assumed that they developed basically because of the need to organise agricultural processes and avoid pertinent conflicts. Others have emphasised their distinctly political character. They argued that these communities were important in giving solid structures to social coexistence for a majority of the people in the Middle Ages – and beyond – in exercising authority on a local level, especially in potentially destabilising situations, and in allowing interaction with Lords and other communities.8 Recent scholarship has generally focused on the second, political approach. Especially the late German-Swiss historian Peter Blickle (d. 2017) and his school have made this the centre of their attention. Blickle was very much opposed to what he considered to be harmonistic historiographical perspectives on the relationship between Lords and their subordinates, especially the ones proposed by the very influential mid-twentieth century Austrian historian Otto Brunner (d. 1981). Brunner had argued that the political system of the Middle Ages was built on reciprocity, holding the Lords responsible to safeguard their subordinates from harm, and, at the same time, requiring the subordinates to give their Lords counsel and help when they needed it.9 A prolific scholar of the German Peasants’ War of 1525, Blickle opened up quite a different perspective. He wanted to uncover the structural basis for the surprisingly long history of peasant insurrections and found it in the rural communities. In his eyes, they were not so much parts of a stabilising system of vertical power but represented a horizontal alternative of its own right, even with the potential to threaten feudalism. He called this alternative communalism and argued that it was to be found all over Europe. Communalism meant that peasants, and citizens, were actually organising local life autonomously in local communities and were originally not dependent on higher authorities for this. Blickle argued that this communalism was almost endemic in the German South-West.10
Blickle’s approach has been very fruitful in many respects. It has been pointed out, however, that his critique of overly harmonistic interpretations of vertical power structures has led him to overly harmonistic perspectives on the horizontal organisation of power in the local communities. Communalism tends to idealise communities – especially rural communities – as social bodies ruled not so much by the logic of power but by equals focused on the common good of all.
Turning to the beforementioned case study brings us to the remarkable valley of the Bregenzerwald in the late Middle Ages.11 Its earliest history provides us with a very illuminating example of how important the written word could be to politically organised rural life. At the same time, it allows us to have a glimpse into a world where rural communities were neither compliant actors in the vertical powerplay (Brunner) nor quasidemocratic Utopias run by peasants who were only interested in the well-being of all. It was far more complex – and far more interesting.
The investigation of the use of written materials in the Bregenzerwald, which in themselves are impressive both in qualitative and quantitative terms, for the self-administration and communication with higher authorities through the officials of this community would certainly be very fruitful. The communal archive really is a treasure trove, because it shows that in the Middle Ages rural life had the potential to maintain extraordinarily sophisticated administrational techniques for the organisation of political, economic, legal and social life.12 But when it comes to fully understanding the fundamental connection between writing and the organisation of this rural region, it is necessary to look beyond the use of the written word as an administrative tool within existing communal structures. In fact, it can be shown that writing is nothing short of being the essential element of the founding history of the rural community of the Bregenzerwald – a history of political creative writing that deserves to be uncovered.
Located in between the prealpine Lake Constance and the mountainous Arlberg, the Bregenzerwald cannot compete with the fame of its neighbouring Swiss valleys to the West that constituted the core from which, in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, the Old Swiss Confederacy emerged. In the pertinent processes, the Swiss valleys were becoming increasingly independent from their feudal Lords. This process involved revolts and military conflicts. Battles, of course, make great stories, and even greater history. Therefore, these historical processes that seemed to be so different from the rest of the history of feudal Europe have preoccupied historians for centuries. In contrast, rural communities like the Bregenzerwald, despite its being involved in corresponding insurrections like the Appenzell Wars in the early fifteenth century,13 have hardly stirred any extraordinary interest among professional historians apart from the random local historian. After all, in the long run, the Bregenzerwald had remained obedient to its Habsburg Lords over centuries, therefore seeming to fit perfectly into what is considered to be the usual feudal pattern of medieval history. The study of a community like this was not believed to be likely to generate significant new scholarly insights, or at least unusual excitement.
The shift of interest among historians from purely political to cultural perspectives in the last decades, however, has opened up new horizons.14 Paradoxically, precisely in the wake of cultural history, distinctly political processes often appear in a fascinating new light. It is not only the history of military success and effective nation-building and the likes that is of scholarly interest anymore. The creative development and application of cultural techniques in politics, in the broadest sense of the word, is easily equally fascinating. In this vain, several studies have impressively shown that the Swiss Confederacy used the creative rewriting of its actually very complex medieval past as a tool for political purposes. This was probably as important for the shaping of the Confederacy as insurrections and battles. To this day, having a clear-cut reading of a national history of free peasants, traditionally organised in self-ruling communities, who were justly rising up against oppressive feudal Lords, has been very effective for the political unity and self-perception of the Confederacy.15 But even though this fascinating master narrative gained literary immortality by Friedrich Schiller’s great play Wilhelm Tell, the Bregenzerwald, seen through the lens of cultural history – more precisely, the concept of creative writing – was probably even more remarkable. While the Swiss Confederacy and its many admirers in the eighteenth and nineteenth century creatively rewrote its own allegedly unique communal identity as the historical incarnation of freedom and independence retrospectively, the identity of the Bregenzerwald as a political valley community was created prospectively. That this rural community came to exist at all at the end of the fourteenth century – and then, in a rather complex historical process, acquired several notable communal privileges in self-administration16 – was due to somebody who wanted it to exist when it did not and wrote about it with such vigour and stamina that what he had written eventually became political reality. This somebody was their Habsburg Lord.
Prehistory
To fully appreciate how the rural community in the valley of the Bregenzerwald was created by means of creative writing at the end of the fourteenth century, it is very helpful to have a look at what could be called its communal prehistory in the eleventh and twelfth century. This does not only provide some helpful historical context, but also gives us a glimpse into an early laboratory of creative writing – with, initially, a rather unsuccessful outcome.
The mid-twelfth century chronicle of Petershausen Abbey, a Benedictine monastery located right next to the city of Constance, contains the earliest written record about the Bregenzerwald valley. It almost seems like the chronicle was aware of that and wanted to be even more: It tried vigorously to bring the message home that not only was it the earliest written record, but also the recording of the earliest history of the Bregenzerwald. It did this by informing us that the valley had been an uninhabited wilderness until very recently, in the late-eleventh century, a holy hermit of noble descent named Diedo had chosen it for the remainder of his pious life. The chronicle goes on to tell us that after he had died, count Ulrich X of Bregenz had asked the abbot of Petershausen to send some of his monks to an area called Andelsbuch, where he gave them land to found a new monastery. Only a few years later, this monastery had to be transferred to the shores of Lake Constance near Bregenz, from where it got its current name Mehrerau Abbey.17 According to the chronicle, the reason for this was that it had been too far in the woods and therefore beyond the economical assets of civilisation necessary to get the supplies it had needed to survive.18
For decades, this rendition of the events has utterly convinced the local historians. The Petershausen chronicle was believed to give us generally accurate information on the earliest history of the Bregenzerwald and how it, like many other peripheral places in Germany, had been settled for the first time in the high Middle Ages. But this reading of the Peterhausen chronicle was incorrect.19 To everyone who is only superficially familiar with historical records of this kind it comes as no surprise that there was more to the founding of the monastery mentioned in the chronicle than the religious zeal of a count and the service of devoted monks. In fact, the Petershausen chronicle represents the first attempt to produce a piece of creative writing in the Bregenzerwald for political purposes.20 The question is: What reality was it trying to hide behind a veil of the words?
The answer to this is twofold: First of all, in the eleventh century, the Bregenzerwald was no wilderness. We do not have any relevant written records, but rather recent palaeobotanical recoveries have shown that the region has been inhabited since, at least, 200 BC. Second of all, and more importantly, we have strong evidence that in what is now the village of Egg, almost within a stone’s throw from where the monastery had initially been built, the German kingdom, respectively the Holy Roman Empire, had already installed a local centre of power, including a proprietary church. The same applies for the nearby village of Schwarzenberg where the famous Imperial Abbey of St. Gall had also already installed another such centre of power.21 The Petershausen chronicle ignored all of this completely. In its own rendition of what happened at the end of the eleventh century, the Petershausen monks had been the first to establish civilisation in the Bregenzerwald. The implicit message of the text involved a historical revisionism of occupation that confirmed the rightful ownership of the Bregenzerwald to the monks of Petershausen, or, more precisely to the counts of Bregenz, who had asked the monks to go there.
Accordingly, a rather different historical picture emerges: For count Ulrich X of Bregenz, the fact that the German kingdom had established itself in the Bregenzerwald must have been troubling. Probably apart from some bits and pieces, it had made it difficult for him to get access to this economically interesting region located right at the doorstep of his namesake residence Bregenz. But in the context of the massive investiture controversy going on at the time between the German king Henry IV and the pope, new strategies became possible. Count Ulrich himself was a fervent proponent of the papal party, and even the son-in-law of the papally backed antiking Rudolf of Rheinfelden. When Ulrich began to act in the Bregenzerwald, Rudolf of Rheinfelden had already been killed in the decisive battle on the Elster in 1080 and Henry IV had re-established himself as king. In 1084 Henry even became Holy Roman Emperor. But the conflict was far from over and Ulrich was obviously still in the mood for fighting. Probably in 1086, he staged a coup to outdo the royal centres of power in his Bregenzerwald neighbourhood by setting up another one. The monks of Petershausen should have helped him do that but, unluckily for him, they were unsuccessful. The political situation in the Lake Constance region, as in all of Germany, was obviously not stable enough for such an attempt. In this difficult situation, the monks decided to or were forced to leave the Bregenzerwald – not because they could not get the food and other supplies to survive in the middle of nowhere. The thing was that even with the count of Bregenz on their side, they simply could not prevail, in the long run, in the face of the royal centres of power in the neighbouring villages of Egg and Schwarzenberg, at least the latter one being kept by the strong Imperial Abbey of St. Gall. They re-set up their monastery, but this time in Bregenz, close to their patron, where it has remained ever since. In the Petershausen chronicle, another story was told, but it was just a somewhat melancholic reminiscence of what they would have wanted the situation in the Bregenzerwald to look like, written down decades after the fact.
There are three lessons to be learned from this episode. Firstly, local history is often surprisingly closely connected to high politics. Secondly, as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, even in local politics doing politics was not only about creating political facts, military or otherwise, over against your opponents. People, especially clerics like the monk chronicler of Petershausen, started to believe that it was also about creating political narratives over against them, and making these narratives long-term effective by writing them down. This is the beginning of creative writing for political purposes. The specific case of Petershausen, respectively Mehrerau Abbey, may seem like an example of, probably, ‘too little’ and, definitely, ‘too late’.22 This is true, but the strategy of political creative writing itself had political potential and would actually pay off a hundred years later. In 1249, at the eve of the Interregnum in the German kingdom (1254–73), when royal power was, again, collapsing in the German South-West,23 the Mehrerau, though remaining in Bregenz, made a huge comeback in the Bregenzerwald. This time it was backed by a papal charter from the same year,24 which was easily as unscrupulous as the Peterhausen chronicle in rewriting history, pretending that Mehrerau Abbey had always owned a parish church in Andelsbuch, when, in fact, it had not. But this time, unlike the Petershausen chronicler a hundred years earlier, Mehrerau Abbey was not just retrospectively reminiscing of what could have been. They acted swiftly and took advantage of the highly developed administrational culture of the papal curia to present a pertinent document in due time. Using what is, at first sight, a very matter-of-factly piece of writing about the confirmation of property, Mehrerau Abbey could now successfully establish itself with a parish church in Andelsbuch. From there, it became a very potent participant in the local power play by erecting a network of proprietary parish churches in the whole valley – even after royal power began to recover after 1273. A few years later, in 1290, this development, among other factors, led to the German kingdom effectively giving up its rights to the Bregenzerwald.25 And this is where the third lesson to be learned from this ‘prehistoric’ episode of creative writing in the Bregenzerwald comes in: To make creative writing politically effective and therefore really creative in the actual sense of the word it was not enough just to write down whatever you wanted, like, in a way, the Peterhausen chronicler had done. A good piece of creative political writing is not beyond the hard facts of reality. It is, rather, built upon a very high awareness of the hard facts of reality, especially those that oppose its vision of how things should rather be. It takes a writer who can realistically assess how strong he is in the political power play to carry through his own story of how the political reality should actually be. And he has to act swiftly. Only then can such a writer, in writing down the story he wants to become reality (or in having it written down), know which pieces he can realistically scrap off actual reality and which ones he can add.
Good political creative writing, fictitious as it may be in many respects, is not like writing fiction but, so to speak, more like producing a good palimpsest: As a palimpsest writer you scratch off an old charter and write something more to your liking on it, probably even pretending that what your write is what had been written on this old charter all along. But knowing what story one wants to be written down in black and white is not enough. One would also have to be proficient in using certain techniques from fields like palaeography or sigillography to successfully convince the relevant readers of what one would write down. Good creative political writing is about the same thing. It does not only mean to have a clear vision of the alternate reality one wants to create by writing it down. It is not only about erasing certain features of reality that oppose one’s political vision, and including others that favour it to have a good piece of creative writing. It is also about knowing which techniques have to be employed so that the relevant public can be realistically persuaded of the authenticity of a specific story.26 At the end of the fourteenth century, the Habsburg Duke Leopold III of Austria and his successors found a fascinating way of doing this with regard to the Bregenzerwald. Step one was creating an alternate political reality in black and white; step two was introducing an effective means to persuade the relevant public of the authenticity of this alternate reality.
Step one: the art of the political palimpsest
To understand why the Habsburgs even felt the need to create an alternate political reality in the Bregenzerwald by writing about it in the first place, it is necessary to understand the specific situation of the valley before the Habsburgs entered the stage as new Lords at the end of the fourteenth century. After the death of the last count of Bregenz in the middle of the twelfth century, the newly founded family of the counts of Montfort had inherited the biggest part of what was left of their property and entitlements, including those to the Bregenzerwald.27 In 1290, they acquired the rights the German kingdom had had to this valley. The counts of Montfort lived to see turbulent times. The family soon got split up in several, often rivalrous branches that often had a hard time deciding if they should follow the rising political star of the Habsburgs or not. An important turning point of events was the year 1338, when the branch of the counts of Montfort–Bregenz died out. Their cousins, the counts of Montfort–Feldkirch inherited, among other things, the Bregenzerwald, which, from this day on, would remain an integral part of the county of Feldkirch. But the counts Montfort–Feldkirch were not a long-lived family either. In 1367, after a few successful years for some of their members both in the church and in secular politics, Rudolf V, the last remaining son of the reigning count, had to leave the clergy to take over the responsibility of succeeding in his father’s footsteps and producing an heir.28 He failed both assignments. In 1375, in the very year of his father’s death, he had obviously already lost every hope of ever begetting a legitimate son and sold the county of Feldkirch to the Habsburg Duke of Austria for 30,000 guilders. Rudolf stipulated to be reeve of his former property until death, which occurred in 1390. But long before that, the critical political decisions were already made by the Austrian Duke Leopold III.
This is where it got tricky.29 The purchase of the county of Feldkirch was not just a smooth transaction of property from one owner to another. At least not for Duke Leopold who, at the time, generally had to face several severe challenges in securing his power in the southern Lake Constance region. The rising Old Swiss Confederacy was threatening his standing massively and, in the end, ultimately: Leopold was killed by Confederate troops in the famous Battle of Sempach in 1386. This was one further step in the Habsburgs’ lost cause of trying to hold up their dominion where the roots of their family had originally been.30 Compared to these historically enormously potent events, it may seem rather unimportant that, after 1375, not only vis-à-vis the Swiss Confederacy, but also with regard to the Bregenzerwald valley, Duke Leopold had to find a way of pushing through his power as the legitimate Lord. From the perspective of cultural history, however, the way he used the tool of creative writing to establish his political power there was remarkable – and successful.
The challenge in the Bregenzerwald was quite different from the Swiss situation. As far as we know, people there did not downright reject Duke Leopold’s taking over the power in the valley, be it military or otherwise. The problem was actually more serious than that: There were simply no structures of power Leopold could have used to establish his dominion in the Bregenzerwald. This meant, in the first place, none of the usual top-down structures like manorialism and feudalism were at hand. Using feudal bonds was not a viable way, because there were no local ministeriales31 or low nobility with enough influence in the valley that could have served as instruments of representing the power of the new Lord vis-à-vis the peasants. And with several other interested parties, there was nothing even slightly resembling an at least almost all-encompassing manorial structure to be potentially exploited. Important players such as the monastery of St Gall, which had a strong hold in the village of Schwarzenberg, or the knights of Ems, who were in control of a big part of the village of Bizau, had an agenda of their own. It is striking that Leopold’s Montfort predecessors had obviously not felt the need, or had not had the means, to create any such top-down structures. Quite on the contrary, the sparse records show that the counts of Montfort–Bregenz had given away much of what they had possessed in the valley to their house monastery Mehrerau Abbey. We know, for example, of a not very well recorded handing over of levies from a district called ‘Engin’ in 1252,32 an exchange of property by which the monastery got hold of the hamlet of ‘Buchen’ in 1320,33 and the sales of rights to two other hamlets, the one ‘ze den Rutomannen’ and the other one ‘Veld’ in the same year 132034 and in 1321.35 The cartulary of Mehrerau Abbey provides some more information about transactions like these.36 It is not easy to interpret this way of action, but it seems like the Montforts, more interested in creating stable centres of powers close to their residences and cities, were content with a rather vague presence as Lords in the remote alpine valley of the Bregenzerwald. They were probably reinforcing the standing of Mehrerau Abbey because it was easier and more comfortable to control this valley via their house monastery, which had experience in the administration of manors, levies from hamlets and the likes, than having to develop such a system themselves. A strategy like this would also have had the advantage that the Mehrerau was, at the time, also in the process of becoming the most important participant in the parish organisation of the Bregenzerwald as well.37 It looks like presiding over the monastery that controlled the valley on several levels was the Montforts’ way of doing local politics and establishing themselves, however vaguely, as Lords in the Bregenzerwald. But in the course of the fourteenth century, this strategy eventually must have lost its appeal. This was due to several reasons. Probably the most important one has already been related above: After the counts of Montfort–Bregenz had died out in 1338, the counts of Montfort–Feldkirch had inherited the Bregenzerwald. Another branch of the Montfort family, however, had brought the city of Bregenz and its surroundings, including Mehrerau Abbey, under its control. Consequently, the Montfort–Feldkirchs, now also Lords of the Bregenzerwald, could not really use Mehrerau Abbey as an instrument anymore to exercise their – probably traditionally rather impalpable – power there.
Apart from these problems, geography was also a big issue that made top-down dominion difficult. Due to its mountainous character, the Bregenzerwald was hard to access from the outside and also rather far away from the city of Feldkirch. We know that other rural areas in the county close to the city of Feldkirch could be controlled more easily from inside the city, but the Bregenzerwald was, for the moment, beyond reach. All this must have been rather unsatisfactory for the counts of Montfort–Feldkirch, but, in the last decades of their existence before 1375, they certainly did not have the political resources to deal with this, let alone develop new strategies of implementing power.
The lack of utilisable top-down power structures was certainly more than unnerving for the new Lord Duke Leopold III. Easily equally troubling, however, must have been the lack of a distinct and all-encompassing bottom-up social identity of the people in the valley. There was nothing like a social or demographical substrate of a political unity of the valley. Today, imaginations of rural life in the Middle Ages often include images of peasants who had a strong sense of belonging together, a sense created in sharing the same labours of hard agricultural work and the same moral and social standards, celebrated in religious rituals and festivals. The beforementioned historical theory of communalism is built on the conviction that there is an almost natural feeling of belonging together among people sharing in the same lifeworld – and that this feeling has political consequences in the creation of politically potent communities. The history of the Bregenzerwald was often reconstructed in very similar terms, trying to uncover a valley-encompassing community created from within by its rural population. But, in fact, it was exactly the very rural, but not village-like character of the valley that had prevented any such thing from happening. The Bregenzerwald’s geography of settlement was characterised by only loosely connected villages and hamlets, scattered throughout a relatively large valley, some in distinctly alpine areas. There was no special need for valley-wide economic or agricultural cooperation that could have created such a long-term feeling of shared communal identity among the peasants with effects on the political or jurisdictional level. A charter from 1366 shows that certain legal customs connected some people from the Bregenzerwald with their landlord Mehrerau Abbey, which had tenants all over the valley.38 However, this obviously collectively accepted legal bond must not be misunderstood as an indication of an already developed communal corporation in the valley. The landts recht (common law) mentioned in this document does not imply the existence of a communally and legally organised ‘Land’ – a community – at all. Only some specific legal forms of the relationship between the monastery Mehrerau and its tenants in the Bregenzerwald were being dealt with here, which did not have any effect on the other peasants.39 In fact, all records we have demonstrate that, socially as well as politically speaking, there was nothing remotely resembling a valley-encompassing community with any legal authority among the people at all. In this respect, having a look at the practice of sealing is very helpful. Until the 1380s, all charters dealing with the sale and purchase of land and levies in the region – that is, any relevant charters at all – were sealed by institutions or people from outside the Bregenzerwald (e.g., Mehrerau Abbey or a Montfort count). In 1383, Eberlin Rieder who sold levies to Mehrerau Abbey, used the seal of another citizen of Bregenz to make sure that this purchase would be legally valid.40 This shows that there were no political institutions or officials of the valley who could have done that. A ‘minister’ that appears in the 1353 liber taxationis of the Diocese of Constance41 has often been interpreted as such an official, but this interpretation was the result of wishful thinking of historians who wanted to find structures of communal identity as early as possible. In fact, this was an official of either the Imperial Abbey of St. Gall or of the count of Montfort–Feldkirch who was entitled to a share of the tithes of the church of the village of Schwarzenberg.
All this was a huge problem for Leopold III because lacking top-down power structures to establish himself in the valley was one thing. Not having a potential counterpart representing the peasant population of the valley, because the population had no feeling of politically belonging together or forming a political body, however, was even harder. This made it very hard to develop a strategy to be officially accepted as Lord in the valley, even if all people were, individually, consenting. In the Middle Ages, when the ‘acceptance on site was believed to be essential for the execution of power’,42 having no one who could accept the execution of power on site, was a massive problem – even more massive than having someone who would not accept it. In the latter case, other means could be introduced. But what could be done in the first case?
Leopold’s – respectively his officials’ – course of actions was really revolutionary. The beginning of this revolution can be dated exactly to 9 January 1380. When, after having paid all of the 30,000 guilders to count Rudolf V in 1379, he was about to receive the oath of homage by his new subjects in the county of Feldkirch, Leopold III made sure that not only one, but two legally binding charters were written, both dating from said 9 January 1380. In the first of these, count Rudolf officially freed all of his subjects from all bonds of dominion, only excluding those bonds that befitted him in his new role as reeve of Duke Leopold.43 The other, second relevant charter is the record of the oath of homage by the Bregenzerwald.44 This charter and the story that is told in it is the revolution – a revolution of creative writing for political reasons. Right in this charter, literally out of the blue, a political community encompassing the whole valley (‘die Land Lüt gemeinlich in dem Pregentzerwald‘) appears on the stage, giving the legally required oath of homage to its new Lord for all the people in the valley.45 This community was not only represented by an official called Ammann (in some respects comparable to a bailiff). Additionally, the charter was also confirmed by a communal seal (‘des Landes Ingesigel’), implying that this community was equipped with the most important sign of legal capacity – and, consequently, capable of officially accepting the new Lord. From this day on, this community became the single most important player in the valley, determining life politically, legally and socially. In 1386 the Ammann of the valley community in the Bregenzerwald was, for the first time, officially sealing a charter dealing with the purchase of levies.46 This marked the beginning of his exclusive responsibility for such agendas. The time of having to look for private parties with the right to bear a seal was over.
The staging of the homage of 1380 was exactly that: a staging. It was the Lord’s doing, not the people’s. The historical context of what had happened before and what would happen afterwards in the legal and political reality of the Bregenzerwald, and also indications in the charter itself (e.g., the fact that the community strangely had to ask that someone else) – very likely the Lord or his officials – put their (!) communal seal on the charter, show this very clearly. This marked the beginning of the implementation of the strategy of creative writing by Duke Leopold. The story that was implicitly written in it by introducing an Ammann as representative of a valley community formed by all the people in the Bregenzerwald with even the kind of legal capacity that includes a communal seal was a sophisticated legal fictitious story told in the interest of the new Lord in charge. The Ammann who represented an actually nonexistent valley community of all people in the valley was installed by this new Lord, to whom he owed his allegiance, and gave the oath of homage in the people’s name. There was simply none other representative who could have done it, so he had to be created, and, in the same act, the community that he represented. But this was only the beginning. Having this fascinating piece of creative writing become political reality, that is, having the make-believe valley community become an actually functioning relay of power for the Lord’s needs, would be the most important task for the Ammann and his successors in office. It was remarkable that this strategy would eventually work. But parchment, ink, and a creative political mind was obviously not enough to push through the authority of the newly introduced communal political structures to which all people in the valley should succumb. There had to be blood.
Step two: a story in red ink
On 10 February 1400 Ammann Wilhelm vom Fröwis, who acted ‘by grace and power’ (von gnaden und gewaltes wegen) of his Habsburg Lord, decided to have a charter written concerning the – only partially successful – execution of the death penalty on the three brothers Claus, Lüti, and Burkart Knechtenhofer.47 The charter is remarkable on many levels, not least because with it the tradition of recording the executions of death penalties in official charters in the valley began. This was not normal administrative legal practice in the Middle Ages. Actually, for the proper execution of capital punishment the rather extravagant and costly procedure of producing a parchment charter was not needed, especially not in rural areas. Therefore, most of the information we have about capital punishment in the Middle Ages in this region is usually found in chronicles, literary sources, maybe some very well organised institutions would have protocols about it.
The different administrational approach to death penalty in the Bregenzerwald becomes understandable when one takes into account that it is much more than just administration. It is, in fact, the ultimate corroboration of what had been started twenty years earlier. It was the necessary second step in the act of political creative writing, which had been begun with staging the homage by the community of the Bregenzerwald. The 1400 charter, however, is not only the second part of the writing of a story for political purposes, but also is a thrilling story in its own right, told by Ammann Fröwis: According to him, the local jury members had sentenced the three Knechtenhofer brothers to death by hanging because of theft and similar endangering infringements. Burkart’s hanging had been successfully executed, but when the second one, Lüti, should be strung up, the rope was torn apart. This was obviously interpreted as some kind of divine ordeal. He and his brother Claus were being pardoned because ‘of the grace of our gracious Lordship of Austria’ (uff unser gnädiger herrschafft von Österrich gnad). It was then decided that this extraordinary case should be officially recorded in a charter. But for Ammann Fröwis one charter was not enough. Another one should be issued recording that the two surviving brothers had sworn to an oath of truce not too take vengeance for anything that had happened in their being sentenced to death, including their brother’s execution. This charter was issued about one month later on 15 March 1400.48
All this would have been an unusual amount of effort for a simple case of dealing with theft and, probably, robbery committed by ‘three poor fellows/servants’ (dryg arm knecht), as the February charter calls them. But this case was actually much more: It was the continuation of the act of creating writing for a political agenda that had been initiated in 1380. The methods applied here for bending reality according to a very clear-cut political vision were harsh. The overall strategy, however, was the same as in all acts of political writing: Both charters from 1400 were designed to act like a veil of words that was being pulled over the facts and, thusly, created an alternate reality over against actual reality. Fortunately, this veil can be unveiled to a certain extent. First of all, the three Knechtenhofer brothers were not at all the ‘three poor fellows’ the charter wants us to believe them to be. In fact, they were members of one of the most influential families of the valley. Their father Heinrich Knechtenhofer belonged to the local elite and even bore a seal, the Knechtenhofer family was economically strong.49 It is not really possible to understand the recording of this incident of capital punishment in two parchment charters by analysing the legal content that is being dealt with. But the two charters make perfect sense when they are interpreted as part of the Ammann’s strategy of the establishment of stable structures of power in the Bregenzerwald in his Lord’s interest. The creatively written story of the authority of the Lord in a politically unified and all-encompassing valley community that had been put down in 1380, was not only repeated in a new context, but fleshed out and, eventually, sealed in blood, thereby setting an example by resorting to the means of capital punishment. This had to be written down to have the political creative power it was supposed to have. It should be settled once and for all who had the say in the valley: not locally influential families like the Knechtenhofers, but the Ammann who represented the authority of the Habsburg Lord in a political community responsible for all inhabitants of the valley. In the long run, the local elites in the Bregenzerwald chose to find ways to adapt to, rather than oppose, the new situation. In the years to come, they would acquire the necessary intellectual, social, legal, and cultural knowledge to deal with and further develop the new forms of political power and administration, which also included having gifted local youths get a good, probably even academic education for their future as community leaders. They would occupy virtually all the posts of the newly introduced community, including the Ammann, thereby making the terms of interaction between the community and the Lord even more complex. Unfortunately, this process in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period has not yet been uncovered by historical research, even though the relevant records are quite promising.
The case of Burkhard Knechtenhofer was essential for this future development. This is corroborated by a fascinating approach taken in the act of authentication of the March 1400 charter recording the oath of truce by the two surviving brothers. This was not only done by Ammann Fröwis and the highest-ranking Habsburg official in Feldkirch, the reeve (Vogt), who sealed the document, but also by having the brothers’ father Heinrich Knechtenhofer seal it. The implications of this are intriguing: This charter is nothing short of an official political agreement that forced an important member of the local elite to officially accept the new political reality by acknowledging that the Habsburg backed Ammann was the only relevant authority in political affairs and in the maintaining of order and peace for the whole valley – which was a political structure to which each and everyone in the Bregenzerwald owed their allegiance. The power of the Lord which Fröwis represented, and the political valley community of which Fröwis was in charge, were now more real than ever. And it was a power over life and death.
Creative writing: the creation of a collective memory
It should come as no surprise that in a rural community that was conceived by writing, writing would also play an important role in maintaining its political existence. The archive of the Bregenzerwald was the single most important institution for upholding its unity and integrity as a community, because the community could not rely on everyday economic or social bonds, or the needs of agricultural cooperation. The archive served as collective memory and needed constant regeneration both by using the documents it already contained and by regularly feeding in new ones. Generally, the recording of charters became very important. Among these, the charters of capital punishment played an extra-important role. Having them recorded, became a socially vital tradition for more than a century, because they repeated the founding character such a charter had had in 1400.50 This practice was the fostering of the most important resource of the existence of the community itself. All this was a consolidation of the political narrative that had been introduced in the interest of the Lord. It was the continuation of the politically motivated foundational act of creative writing by administrational means.
This process of the political reshaping of local traditions and the introduction of new structures of power by having them written down can be traced on many levels in communal life in the late Middle Ages. Recently, Simon Teuscher has impressively shown this with regard to Swiss Weistümer – collections of late-medieval records of local law. According to a master narrative proposed by Jacob Grimm that was taken over by generations of historians after him, rural communities had always been governed by originally unwritten yet incorruptible ancient rules. Luckily, the Weistümer had preserved them in writing before they would have perished in the course of modernity. In contrast, Teuscher demonstrated that, precisely by writing them down in the context of very intricate forms of interaction between Lords, officials, legal experts and peasants, the Weistümer had created this master narrative in the first place. Through the process of the production of written authorities, claiming to objectively record older oral rules, the belief that rural communities were organised by nonnegotiable laws from a long history, began to take over. In the future, therefore, the balancing out of interests in a community would be bound to the legal logic taken from the world of written law. A new political master narrative had taken over.51 In the Bregenzerwald, this rather ordinary process of the reshaping of the local sociopolitical reality became extraordinarily effective – so effective that a new community was created.52
For decades, medievalists have been fascinated by uncovering the complex relationship between memory and written records. Very often they have tended to emphasise the variability and therefore historical unreliability of memory. Writing was believed to be different, that is, to be more reliable. The renowned historian Johannes Fried, who has developed a comprehensive theory of historical memory, which he called Memorik,53 put it this way: ‘Like a snapshot, only writing could keep memories from further alteration’.54 This perspective is very important and has enriched historical anthropology on many levels. Writing, however, could easily be as potent a force of altering reality as human memory. It was more than an instrument for making protocols or recording facts. It was an immensely effective instrument that could fundamentally change the course of political life; it could even create new worlds – not only literary Utopias, but also real-life communities. Even in a remote rural valley like the Bregenzerwald.
Notes
1. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 8.
2. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 18.
3. Cf. Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalion (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996).
4. See Arnold Angenendt, Offertorium: Das mittelalterliche Meßopfer (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2013), 71–5.
5. See Gerd Althoff, Die Macht der Rituale: Symbolik und Herrschaft im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2003). The orality of medieval culture was famously emphasised by Hanna Vollrath, ‘Das Mittelalter in der Typik oraler Gesellschaften,’ Historische Zeitschrift 233 (1981): 572–94.
6. Cf. the classical study by Michael Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 3rd ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). The role of theology and the Church in this process is emphasised by Hagen Keller, ‘Vom ‘heiligen Buch’ zur ‘Buchführung’: Lebensfunktionen der Schrift im Mittelalter,’ Frühmittelalterliche Studien 26 (1992): 1–31.
7. Cf. Horst Fuhrmann, ‘Die Wahrheit der Fälscher,’ in Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongreß der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 16.-19. September 1986 1.1: Kongreßdaten und Festvorträge, Literatur und Fälschung (Hannover: Hahn, 1988), 83–98. See also the other contributions to this volume.
8. In a three-volume study on the history of the rural village in Germany, Karl Siegfried Bader impressively brought together these both strands of the historical research tradition. In this impressively comprehensive and in-depth survey of the relevant sources Bader repeatedly warned of monocausal approaches to a very complex phenomenon: Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte des mittelalterlichen Dorfes, 3 vols. (Vienna et al.: Böhlau, 1957–73). For a short introduction to the topic see also Heide Wunder, Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutschland (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).
9. Cf. Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). The German original of this study was first published in 1939.
10. From among the numerous books by Peter Blickle see: The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasant’s War from a New Perspective (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Studien zur geschichtlichen Bedeutung des deutschen Bauernstandes (Stuttgart and New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1989); From the Communal Reformation to the Revolution of the Common Man (Leiden et al.: Brill Academic Publishers, 1998); Obedient Germans? A Rebuttal: A New View of German History (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1997); Kommunalismus: Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform, vol. 1 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2000).
11. Geographically, the Bregenzerwald also includes several villages that, historically, did not belong to the rural community I deal with here and that was often called ‘Hinterer Bregenzerwald’. Whenever I refer to the ‘Bregenzerwald,’ I do it in the historical sense of the word.
12. The communal archive is part of the Provincial Archive of the Land Vorarlberg (VLA).
13. See Alois Niederstätter and Peter Niederhäuser, eds., Die Appenzellerkriege – eine Krisenzeit am Bodensee? (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2006).
14. Cf. Peter Burke, What is Cultural History? 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
15. Cf. Roger Sablonier, ‘Die ‘Bauernstaats’-Ideologie,’ in Neue Studien zum Schweizerischen Nationalbewusstsein, ed. Beatrix Mesmer(Basel: Schwabe, 1992), 9–22. See also Guy P. Marchal, ‘Die ‘Alten Eidgenossen’ im Wandel der Zeiten: Das Bild der frühen Eidgenossen im Traditionsbewusstsein und in der Identitätsvorstellung der Schweizer vom 15. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert,’ in Innerschweiz und frühe Eidgenossenschaft: Jubiläumsschrift 700 Jahre Eidgenossenschaft, vol. 1: Verfassung, Kirche, Kunst (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1990), 309–403.
16. Ideologically driven, most local historians have extremely – and erroneously – overrated these communal privileges, see for example Benedikt Bilgeri, ‘Der Bregenzerwald in der ländlichen Verfassungsentwicklung Vorarlbergs,’ Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwartskunde Vorarlbergs 21 (1969): 282–334.
17. See Alois Niederstätter, ‘Mehrerau,’ in Die benediktinischen Mönchs- und Nonnenklöster in Österreich und Südtirol, eds. Ulrich Faust and Waltraud Krassnig (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag, 2001), 491–525.
18. Cf. Otto Feger, ed., Die Chronik des Klosters Petershausen (Lindau and Konstanz: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1956), 146–7.
19. That the historical reliability of this part of the Petershausen chronicle is questionable has already been shown, with regard to the hagiographisation of Diedo, by Alois Niederstätter, ‘Die Konstruktion von Geschichte(n): die seligen Geschwister Diedo, Merbod und Ilga,’ Montfort. Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs 60 (2008): 139–55.
20. For some of the following see Mathias Moosbrugger, ‘Die Etablierung institutionalisierter Kirchlichkeit im Hinteren Bregenzerwald – formende Kräftefelder und Strukturen,’ Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs 61 (2009): 163–77.
21. On the Abbey of St. Gall’s importance in the region cf. Alois Niederstätter, ‘St. Galler Klosterbesitz im heutigen Vorarlberg während des Mittelalters. Ein Überblick,’ Schriften des Vereins für Geschichte des Bodensees und seiner Umgebung 103 (1985): 1–32. See also Paul Oberholzer, Vom Eigenkirchenwesen zum Patronatsrecht. Leutkirchen des Klosters St. Gallen im Früh- und Hochmittelalter (St. Gallen: Stadtarchiv und Stiftsarchiv, 2002).
22. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the tool of writing was just beginning to be transferred from the religious to the nonreligious sphere, cf. Hagen Keller, ‘Die Entwicklung der europäischen Schriftkultur im Spiegel der mittelalterlichen Überlieferung. Beobachtungen und Überlegungen,’ in Geschichte und Geschichtsbewußtsein. Festschrift Karl-Ernst Jeismann zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Peter Leidinger and Dieter Metzler (Münster: Institut für Didaktik der Geschichte, 1990), 171–204, 193.
23. Cf. Karl Siegfried Bader, Der deutsche Südwesten in seiner territorialstaatlichen Entwicklung, 2nd ed. (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1978), 48.
24. VLA, Urk. 1446. See also Karl Heinz Burmeister, ‘Die Lyoner Urkunde von 1249: Über ein Exponat der Sommerausstellung Mehrerau 900 Jahre Zukunft,’ Montfort: Vierteljahresschrift für Geschichte und Gegenwart Vorarlbergs 51(1999): 235–36.
25. The relevant charter of king Rudolf I is printed in: Jahrs-Bericht des historischen Vereins im Oberdonau-Kreise für das Jahr 1834 (Augsburg: Lauter’sche Buchdruckerei, 1836), 70–1.
26. See Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 238 who writes that ‘the public had to be persuaded of the authenticity of writing itself’. This is not only true for the act but also of the content of writing.
27. Cf. Karl Heinz Burmeister, ‘Die Grafen von Montfort als Landesherren in Vorarlberg,’ in Die Grafen von Montfort. Geschichte, Recht, Kultur. Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Alois Niederstätter (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 1996), 19–26.
28. Cf. Burmeister, Die Grafen von Montfort, 209–11.
29. For the following pages see my book-length study: Mathias Moosbrugger, Der Hintere Bregenzerwald – eine Bauernrepublik?: Neue Untersuchungen zu seiner Verfassungs- und Strukturgeschichte im Spätmittelalter (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2009). I have also drawn extensively from research presented in the following article: Mathias Moosbrugger, Töten, um davon zu erzählen: Blutgericht und die Entstehung kommunaler Identität – Umrisse einer Fallstudie,’ in Politische Freiheit und republikanische Kultur im alten Europa: Essays zum Gedenkjahr ‘Gersau 2014’, ed. Beat Kümin (Vitznau: Bucher Druckmedien, 2015), 58–65.
30. See Guy P. Marchal, Sempach 1386: Von den Anfängen des Territorialstaates Luzern. Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte des Kantons Luzern (Basel et al.: Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag, 1986).
31. What ministeriales exactly were, is not easy to determine, as their political, legal, and social status was very much dependent on the specific techniques of power used by their feudal Lords. Originally drawn from among the unfree, they can probably be best described as social climbers in the high and later Middle Ages (esp. the eleventh through thirteenth centuries) who proved to be very useful for the politics of their Lords in administering tasks that were traditionally associated with aristocracy. In time, many overcame their status as high qualified serfs and came to be regarded as (lower) nobility. Ministeriales also played an important role in the rise of knighthood; they used the emerging cultures codes of chivalry to enter the world of aristocracy. Cf. Hartmut Boockmann, Einführung in die Geschichte des Mittelalters, 7th ed. (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001), 38–42.
32. VLA, Urk. 1448: ‘decimas in Engin a flumine Argun deorsum usque ad ripam Mellin et a flumine Bregentze seorsum usque ad alppes proxime adiacentes’.
33. VLA, Urk. 806.
34. VLA, Urk. 807 and 811.
35. This charter was printed in: Franz Josef Mone, ed., ‘Urkunden über Vorarlberg und Tirol, vom 12.–17. Jahrh.,’ Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins 10 (1859), 423–5.
36. The content of the Mehrerau cartulary got published: Karl Tizian, ed., ‘Ein Kartular des Klosters Mehrerau,’ Archiv für Geschichte und Landeskunde Vorarlbergs 5 (1908/09), 85–92; 6 (1910/11), 8–10, 38–41, 61–64; 7 (1911), 8–10, 27–30; 8 (1912), 18–21, 58–65; 9 (1913), 77–92.
37. Cf. Moosbrugger, ‘Die Etablierung’.
38. VLA, Urk. 842.
39. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that even the existence of collectively accepted common law in a region such as a valley does not necessarily imply the existence of a politically organised community, cf. Josef Riedmann, ‘War der Vinschgau einmal ein eigenes Land? Eine nicht ganz ernstgemeinte Frage mit vielleicht doch bemerkenswerten Antworten,’ in Grafschaft Tirol – Terra Venusta. Studien zur Geschichte Tirols, insbesondere des Vinschgaus. In Würdigung der Kulturarbeit von Marjan Cescutti, eds. Georg Mühlberger and Mercedes Blaas (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2007), 17–26. Obviously more than is needed.
40. Östereichisches Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Handschrift Blau 355, fol. 184r.
41. Wendelin Haid, ed., ‘Liber taxationis ecclesiarum et beneficiorum in Dioecesi Constantiensi de anno 1353,’ Freiburger Diöcesan-Archiv 5 (1870), 3–118, 26–7.
42. Roger Sablonier, ‘Verschriftlichung und Herrschaftspraxis. Urbariales Schriftgut im spätmittelalterlichen Gebrauch,’ in Pragmatische Dimensionen mittelalterlicher Schriftkultur: Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums 26.-29. Mai 1999, eds. Christel Meier, Volker Honemann, Hagen Keller, and Rudolf Suntrup (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002), 91–120, 98 (my translation).
43. VLA, Urk. 3748. This charter is also printed in: Franz Josef Mone, ed., ‘Urkunden über Vorarlberg und Liechtenstein. Vom 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert,’ in Zeitschrift für Geschichte des Oberrheins 15 (1863), 419–20.
44. This charter is printed in: Joseph Bergmann, ed., ‘Urkunden der vier vorarlbergischen Herrschaften und der Grafen von Montfort mit topographisch-historischen Erläuterungen,’ in Archiv für Kunde österreichischer Geschichtsquellen 3 (1849), 120–2.
45. On the history of nonfeudal homages see André Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen. Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung (800–1800) (Stuttgart and New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1991).
46. VLA, Urk. 5093.
47. VLA, Urk. 3749.
48. VLA, Urk. 3750. Cf. Alois Niederstätter, Vorarlberger Urfehdebriefe bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts. Eine Quellensammlung zur Rechts- und Sozialgeschichte des Landes (Dornbirn: Vorarlberger Verlagsanstalt, 1985), 24–5.
49. Cf. Alois Niederstätter, ‘Egg im Feudalzeitalter,’ in Egg im Bregenzerwald, eds. Ariel Lang, Alois Niederstätter, Maria Rose Steurer-Lang and Georg Sutterlüty (Hohenems: Bucher Verlag, 2008), 73–107, 85.
50. Sablonier, ‘Verschriftlichung und Herrschaftspraxis,’ 107 writes that ‘continuous record keeping establishes tradition’ (my translation).
51. Simon Teuscher, Lords’ Rights and Peasant Stories: Writing and the Formation of Tradition in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
52. In many respects, although within a different political context, the fascinating case of the development of the rural community of Appenzell in the late-fourteenth century in what is today Eastern Switzerland, is similar. To a large extent, the creation of communal structures in this region including the important political symbol of a communal seal, was due to the interests of allies, cities in the Lake Constance region, in the struggle against the Abbey of St. Gall. To have the Appenzell included in an emerging political network of such allies, which included written confederacies, the people there had to be pushed from the outside to organise themselves communally. Cf. Stefan Sonderegger, ‘Mit Urkunden Geschichte schreiben. Überlegungen aus der Arbeit an einer regionalen Urkundenedition,’ in Grenzüberschreitungen und neue Horizonte: Beiträge zur Rechts- und Regionalgeschichte der Schweiz und des Bodensees, ed. Lukas Gschwend (Zurich and St. Gallen: Dike Verlag, 2007), 443–63.
53. Johannes Fried, Der Schleier der Erinnerung. Grundzüge einer historischen Memorik (München: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2004).
54. Johannes Fried, ‘‘… vor fünfzig oder mehr Jahren’. Das Gedächtnis der Zeugen in Prozeßurkunden und in familiären Memorialtexten,’ in Pragmatische Dimensionen mittelalterlicher Schriftkultur: Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums 26.-29. Mai 1999, eds. Christel Meier, Volker Honemann, Hagen Keller, and Rudolf Suntrup(München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002), 23–61, 57 (my translation).