bavarikon4UDescription
The restored archival records can partly be classified as a cartulary of municipal privileges. A few selected documents, for example on the salt trade, have been transferred here. The originals date from the time before the town fire in 1339. The surviving records are therefore still symbolic of the catulary’s original purpose to compensate for the loss of written records and to serve the purpose of legal security.
In terms of time, the texts otherwise focus on the 15th century. With regard to the content, the city is not so much the recipient of rights here; the records are more about what was of fundamental importance to the administration and the council. In addition to a concentrated collection of municipal guild regulations, some of which date back to the 14th century and have been preserved in their original form in this official book, there are also some business notes from the municipal offices. These may be an indication of a less differentiated form of administration in comparison to the 16th century when it distinguished its books from one another in terms of subject matter. Entries on the reorganisation of the town council in 1430, for example, naming all the council members, are about 100 years older than the council minutes. The early orders on Wasserburg guild crafts contained in the cartulary are also older than the succession files, which arose from the council’s supervision of the guilds.
The legal book’s main date of origin can be assumed to be around the year 1475.
Literature
Hippke, Zeno Felix Korbinian, Die Stadt Wasserburg am Inn im Spiegel des spätmittelalterlichen „Kopialbuches der Stadtrechte“ im Stadtarchiv Wasserburg, Diplomarbeit im Diplomstudiengang Geschichte in der Fakultät Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften der Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2010.