Between 1300 and 1500 the organs of central government in the territorial states became more specialized and diversified. The parent body was the advisory council (Hofrat) of high nobles and ecclesiastics, whom the prince consulted at his discretion. Its business was not differentiated, and there was no division of labour among the councillors. It met at the summons of the prince and did not convene at regular intervals. Its membership was not fixed, and some advisers did not attend except at special invitation. Others were regional councillors who attended the prince only when he appeared in their locality. A body so unspecialized and fluctuating was ill-adapted to cope with the increasingly complex problems of central government. Hence in the 14th and 15th centuries a professional element of “daily” or permanent councillors was introduced. They were usually legists, trained in Italy or in the newly founded universities of Prague (1364), Vienna (1365), Heidelberg (1386), Rostock (1419), and Tübingen (1477). They were well versed in Roman law, which, with its centralizing and authoritative precepts, provided a congenial climate for the growth of the powers of the territorial princes everywhere save in Saxony, Schleswig, and Holstein, where the ancient customary codes were deeply rooted. Financial administration, which required specialized skills, was placed under the direction of a separate department of government, the treasury (Hofkammer). An inner ring of favoured advisers, the privy council (Geheimrat), was also instituted to counsel the prince on affairs of state. The besetting weakness of the new administrative structure was financial. Few princes followed the example of the Hohenzollern dynasty in drawing up an annual budget and requiring financial officials to submit regular accounts to the government. On the positive side, chanceries gradually created a common German language, which Luther later used to spread his message. German society, economy, and culture in the 14th and 15th centuries Transformation of rural life
Despite the impressive advance of trade and industry in the later Middle Ages, German society was still sustained chiefly by agriculture. Of an estimated population of 12 million in 1500, only 1.5 million resided in cities and towns. Agriculture exhibited strong regional differences in organization. The more recently settled areas of the north and east were characterized by great farms and extensive estates that produced a surplus of grain for export through the Baltic ports. The south and west was a region of denser population, thickly sown with small villages and the “dwarf” estates of the lesser nobility. In the northeast the great landlords, headed by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, tightened their control over the originally free tenants, denied them freedom of movement, and ultimately bound them to the soil as serfs. In the south the heavy urban demand for grain chiefly benefited the larger peasant proprietors, who sold their surplus production in the nearest town and used their gains to acquire more land. The lesser peasantry, with their smaller holdings, practiced chiefly subsistence farming, produced no surplus, and therefore failed to benefit from the buoyant urban demand. The frequent division of the patrimony among heirs often reduced it to uneconomically small fragments and encouraged an exodus to the cities. On the other hand, landless day labourers who survived the Black Death in the mid-14th century were able to command higher wages for their services.
In southern Germany the strain of transition in rural society was heightened by the policies of the landlords, both lay and ecclesiastical. Confronted by labour shortages and rising costs, many landlords attempted to recoup their losses at the expense of their tenants. By means of ordinances passed in the manorial courts, they denied to the peasantry their traditional right of access to commons, woods, and streams. Further, they revived their demands for the performance of obsolete labour services and enforced the collection of the extraordinary taxes on behalf of the prince. The peasants protested and appealed to custom, but their sole legal recourse was to the manorial court, where their objections were silenced or ignored. Ecclesiastical landlords were especially efficient, and peasant discontent assumed a strong anticlerical tinge and gave rise to the localized disturbances in Gotha (1391), Bregenz (1407), Rottweil (1420), and Worms (1421). Disturbances recurred with increasing frequency in the course of the 15th century on the upper Rhine, in Alsace, and in the Black Forest. In 1458 a cattle tax imposed by the archbishop of Salzburg kindled a peasant insurrection, which spread to Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. In Alsace the malcontents adopted as the symbol of revolt the Bundschuh, the wooden shoe usually worn by the peasants. They also formulated a series of specific demands, which included the abolition of the hated manorial courts and the reduction of feudal dues and public taxes to a trifling annual amount. On these fundamental points there was little room for compromise, and the outbreaks were stifled by the heavy hand of established authority. But the rigours of repression added fuel to peasant discontent, which finally burst forth in the great uprising of 1524–25 (see below The revolution of 1525). The nobility
The lesser nobility included two distinct elements. The imperial knights (Reichsritter) held their estates as tenants in chief of the crown. The provincial nobility (Landesadel) had lost direct contact with the crown and were being compelled by degrees to acknowledge the suzerainty of the local prince. The imperial knights had been extensively employed by the Hohenstaufen emperors in military and administrative capacities and were chiefly concentrated in the former Hohenstaufen possessions in Swabia, Franconia, Alsace, and the Rhineland. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, they lost their function and rewards as a nobility of service. The revenues from their small estates sank in purchasing power as prices rose. Caste prejudice prevented them from seeking an alternative role in trade or industry. Resentful of the decline in their fortunes and fiercely independent, they clung grimly to their remaining privileges: exemption from imperial taxes and the right to indulge in private war. They stubbornly resisted the persistent attempts of the princes to reduce them to subject status, and in Trier and Württemberg especially they were given valuable aid by the provincial nobles. For purposes of defense or aggression, the imperial and provincial knights combined freely in powerful regional leagues, usually directed against the local princes or cities. In the course of their chronic feuds with the cities, many knights became mere highwaymen. Many others, who had been forced to sell their estates or who were encumbered with debts, took service in Germany or Italy as mercenaries (Soldritter). In eastern Germany the knights, though equally unruly, were far more affluent. The knightly estate (Rittergut) was larger and produced a profitable surplus for export. The provincial knights sat in the assembly of estates, and taxation by the prince required their consent. They were therefore well-entrenched against the encroachments of princely power. Urban life
Urban society in 15th-century Germany was concentrated in some 3,000 cities and towns. About 2,800 of the total were extremely small, with populations varying from 100 to 1,000. Of the remainder, no more than 15 cities contained more than 10,000 inhabitants. In this restricted group three were preeminent. Cologne reached its peak in the 13th century with a population of 60,000 but sank to 40,000 by 1500 following epidemics, internal disputes, and expulsions. In 1500 Augsburg was the most populous German city, with a resident population of 50,000. Third place was held by fast-growing Nürnberg, which counted 30,000 souls. The social unity of the citizen body had been most marked in the 13th century, when the guilds joined the dominant patrician families (Geschlechter) in wresting the right to form independent city councils (Stadtrat) from the lords of the cities. In the 14th century the guild masters, methodically excluded from the councils by the patrician oligarchy, broke into open revolt in Speyer (1327), Strassburg (now Strasbourg; 1332), Nürnberg (1348), and elsewhere. In its economic aspect the ensuing conflict embodied an attempt by the guildsmen as industrial producers to free urban industry from the tight control exercised by the merchant patriciate. By 1500 the guilds almost everywhere had gained varying degrees of representation in the city council.