Abstract
This contribution looks at customs and practices concerning the rural use of the forest and focuses on questions relating to the content of conflicts that arose and how they were settled. Based on court records of the administrative districts (the bailiwicks) of Greifensee and Kyburg, forms of legal procedure or the settling of conflict outside the court become tangible. Unfortunately, settlements reached out of court are rarely documented because such arrangements were agreed between the parties themselves. Any written agreements that may have been reached in such disputes did not reach the hand of the authorities. Disputes usually only came before the court–and were thus documented by the clerk of the court–when attempts to settle out of court failed. It is therefore innate in the sources that we generally only find cases where private negotiation failed and were later brought before the judge. The majority of conflicts arising from the use of the forest in the administrative districts we examined arose within the context of the use of the commons and relate to the privatisation of the common forest when forests were allocated, or the dissolution or reduction of common grazing. Many villagers fell into dispute with the local officer charged with the supervision of the use of the forest.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
