Die Murrhardter Amtsrechnung von 1568/69

The preceding text is an edition of historical sources. The edition’s origin dates back to two seminars of medieval and early modern history held at the University of Education of Schwäbisch Gmünd in the summer of 2009. The text contains an account book of 1568/69, beginning on St. Georges’s day (April 23rd) 1568 and ending on St. George’s day 1569. The account book contains all earnings and all expenses of the Murrhardt monastery and the area around the city of Murrhardt. Murrhardt today is a town of 13.000 inhabitants in the Rems-Murr county in the Land of Baden-Württemberg in the south-west of Germany. The account book enables detailed research concerning all aspects of the monastery’s social history, especially of the economy, as far as the revenues and expenses of money and natural produce are concerned. With this information it is possible to analyse the kinds and the amounts of cereals (spelt, wheat, rye, oats, and others), of wine, and all others naturals products, the relation of unpaid drudgery and of paid wage work of the monastery’s subjects. All kinds of craftsmen and their work and products are contained in the account book as well as a lot of information about the regional communication by runners or the politics of poor relief. Other chapters contain information about taxes, the valuta in use in 1568/68, the financial flows or the transport of money from the monastery to the central cash of the sovereign, the duke of Wurtemberg in Stuttgart. The amount of taxes which had to be paid is mentioned so it is possible to get a complete impression of the local social structure. In addition to this information the text enables research about the geography, about the land utilisation, about the climate and the weather, about the architecture of the monastery and the city of Murrhardt, about the demography of the regional population and about the legal relationship of the population. The former Benedictine abbey of Murrhardt was first submitted under the Lutherian reform in 1534/35 and then definitely in 1552, and had become a protestant institution. Although there were no more monks in the buildings of the monastery, the monastery as an economical unit continued to exist in the following centuries. This type of ancient monastery without monks but as an economical unit – a so-called Klosteramt – was usual in the duchy of Wurtemberg from the middle of the 16th century until the end of the old Holy Roman Empire in 1806. So, the account book gives information about the first decades under Lutheranian gouvernment and religion. As there are mentioned many streets, roads, ways, paths, bridges and fords it is possible to reconstruct the complete road network system around the town and the traffic communication and trade connections. The great number of plot names delivers palaeo-ecological data, and the names of hundreds of persons enables to reconstruct a complex net of relations between the local and regional families and power groups. On the base of the numerous plot names mentioned it is possible to reconstruct the history of the local and regional economy and settlement further back than only until the late 16th century. As far as the citizens are concerned, it is possible to write a complete social history the importance of which is exemplary for other regions, too. The text’s information concerning the buildings enables an exact description of the economic history and the history of the region’s settlement. Among historians it is not necessary to note that all the data of the account book do not only form a base for purely local or regional research but form a exemplary model of micro-historical research. These facts, however, should be noted for all the non-historian users of the account book. The data published here also should be used as a basis for future seminar papers of my students at my university