[51] G. L. von Maurer, Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark- Hof- Dorf- und Stadtverfassung, 1854, p. 93.
[52] P. Viollet, in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 1872, p. 503.
[53] Em. de. Laveleye, De la propriété et de ses formes primitives, 1874.
I.
The theory of Maurer as to community of land amongst the Germanic nations.
G. L. von Maurer is, if not the earliest, at any rate the chief author of the theory we are examining.
He presented it with great clearness in a book published in 1854. In this he maintained that, amongst the Germans, private domains, villages and towns, all spring alike from a primitive mark; that this primitive mark consisted of an area of land held in common; that the land was cultivated for a long period without there being any private property; and that the cultivators formed amongst themselves an “association of the mark,” a “markgenossenschaft.” “All land,” he said, “was in the beginning common-land, gemeinland or allmende” (page 93). “There was nothing which could be rightly termed private property” (ibid). “The ground was divided into equal lots, and this division was made afresh each year; every member received a part and moved each year to a new lot.” “The whole mark, cultivated land as well as forests, was held in common” (p. 97).
“The idea of property,” he says again, “only came as a result of Roman law” (p. 103). “Property, as we find it in later times, was produced by the decomposition of the ancient mark” (p. 10).
Our author re-stated his doctrine in another book published two years later: “The associations of the mark are bound up with the primitive cultivation of the soil; they can be traced back to the earliest German settlements, and in all probability once occupied the whole of Germany.”[54] We have to consider what are the facts, and what the authorities on which Maurer builds up this doctrine.
As the question concerns very early times, he naturally begins with early authorities. The first is Cæsar. Cæsar calls our attention, we are told, to the fact that amongst the Germans “there are no separate estates or private boundaries.”[55]