III. Der Schwabenspiegel als norddeutsches Kaiserrecht.

The essay examines late medieval discussions concerning 'Kaiserrecht' (Imperial Law, Emperor's Law) in northern and eastern Germany. A closer look at the municipal law of Lüneburg (1401) with its different layers of customs, book of statutes, 'Kaiserrecht' and Canon law shows clearly the problem. Notwithstanding the close similarity to the learned concept of the theory of the statutes, the Lüneburg source did in fact not follow the erudited hierarchy of particular law and civil law. The city possessed some manuscripts of the so called 'Schwabenspiegel' (Swabian Mirror) and the 'Kleines Kaiserrecht' (Emperor's Little Law) which were both, contemporarily, denominated as 'Kaiserrecht'. Broadening the perspective from this example to other northern and eastern cities, it is possible to find more than 80 examples of Law Books ('Rechtsbücher') which were all called Emperor's Law. The influence of the Swabian Mirror – firstly recorded in Regensburg or Augsburg – spread from the south wide into the north and the east. The often treated question if there existed some common German customs in medieval time is perhaps not that silly, as shows modern research, while older scholars' approaches – like Heinrich Christian von Senckenberg's (18th century) – may have been promising. On the other hand the reception of the learned law should perhaps sometimes be dated later. Although the duty to apply the Emperor's Law in procedural edicts and statutes was enacted in the 15th century, decisions still followed Roman law as well as, sometimes, the German Law Books from the 13th or the 14th centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]