Brandenburg Court Records

Schöppenbücher They are administrative records dealing with the freiwillige and niedere Gerichtsbarkeit (jurisdiction). Manor lords and villagers both were interested in clear cut property terms. To accommodate this wish the Schöppenbücher or also known as Gerichtsbücher were created. Their modern equivalents would be the land and mortgage records. Schoppenbücher existed into the 19th century. They were replaced by land and mortgage records with the disappearance of the Patrimonialgerichte (lower courts run by jurists under authority of manor lords) in 1849.

After the 30 Years War the order of the village courts changed. The manor lords who were the local highest judges had appointed legal administrators, mainly men from the village, who had authority in matters of niedere Gerichtsbarkeit, police, raising interests and tributes. They were called Schulze/Scholze, Richter, Gerichtsälteste, Gerichtsverwandte or Schöppen (according to the author Bernhard Hinz these terms mean one and the same thing: authority to act as a legal administrator in the realm of niedere Gerichtsbarkeit. See Die Schoppenbücher der Mark Brandenburg, 1964, page 18). The basis for making judgments was the common law as embedded in Saxon law. A scribe was appointed from among the villagers, such as the local pastor, the sexton or the school teacher who did this job on the side. When jurists with their Roman law training found their way into the realms of niedere Gerichtsbarkeit, the village court lost its importance. The Schöppenbuch becomes the “Gerichtsprotokollbuch”, containing entries of more than one village, sometimes the records of the whole Amtsbezirk (administrative jurisdiction). The installing of Schöppen was banished. The local court became more a documenting entity and was concerned with legal safeguarding rather than legal realization. The village court yielded to the state courts. Where before the village court only dealt with non contentious matters such as changes in property or exchanges in property (according to the old laws litigation was avoided when possible and settlements preferred) the courts now dealt with all matters of the lower jurisdiction.

Brandenburg has kept Schoppenbücher. They are more common in the South East part, in the Cottbus district. The above mentioned book lists the Schöppenbücher for the Province of Brandenburg according to villages in alphabetical order with the time frame such books were kept. Die Schoppenbücher der Mark Brandenburg is available at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. See www.familysearch.org, call number 943.15 P2h.

Actual records can be retrieved through the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv for the Kurmark, Neumark and Niederlausitz under the subject “ältere Gerichtsbehörden” (bis 1849) and Signatur numbers 1.1.2, 1.2.2 and 1.3.2