Reforms in this situation of the peasantry began first in Prussia in 1702, when bondage was abolished for all those who could purchase their houses and farms from the gentry. As few had the means to do so, the result was the creation of a proletariat, hitherto unknown because under the old feudal system the lord had to feed his impoverished bondsmen from which he was now absolved.
Changes in forest property in particular were brought about by the increase of princely property through the various methods of exercising the seignorage. Especially after the Thirty Years’ War ownerless tracts falling under this right were plentiful. In addition, wherever waste lands grew up to wood, they were claimed by the princes:
“Wenn das Holz dem Ritter reicht an den Sporn
Hat der Bauer sein Recht verlorn.”
When wood has grown up to the spur of the knight, the peasant has lost his right.
Some additions came from the secularization of church and cloister property, and others by the slices which the princes as Obermärker secured from the Mark forests by various artifices. It is these properties, which in Prussia were turned over by the King to the State in 1713, and by other princes, not until the 19th century.
The same means which the princes employed were used by the landed gentry to increase their holdings especially at the expense of the Mark from which in their capacity of Obermärker they secured portions by force or intrigue.
The peasants’ forest property—the Mark forest—had by the 19th century been almost entirely dismembered, part having come into the hands of the princes and barons, part having been divided among the Märker, and part having become corporation forest in the modern sense.
Partition had become desirable when the restrictions of use which were ordered for the good of the forest became unendurable under the rigid rule of appointed officials, but the expected improvement in management which was looked for from partition and private ownership was never realized.