Landholding Status and Rural Society in Schaumburg-Lippe (ca. 1700–1850)

Between 1700 and 1850, most of the villages in Schaumburg-Lippe were shaped by older agrarian traditions. Land was not owned outright in a modern sense; instead, it was bound up in a mixture of lordship rights, hereditary leases, communal obligations, and settlement policies. When Berenbusch was founded in the 17th and early 18th century as a colonist settlement, the land was distributed to settlers under forms of hereditary tenure rather than fee-simple ownership. The state (the Fürstentum Schaumburg-Lippe), through its Amt in Bückeburg, oversaw these arrangements.

A village, therefore, was composed not simply of “owners” but of a complex hierarchy of households, each with a recognized status. Some households held land; some held only a small cottage; some had no land at all. The administrative systems of the time—tax rolls, fire insurance (Brandkasse), land registers (Lagerbücher)—recorded households by the status of their holder, not by modern property categories.

Within this world, the household was the fundamental unit. The Hausherr was its head; the Kolon or Kötter or Brinksitzer was its standing; and the Einlieger or servant was someone living within that structure but not representing it.

The sections that follow explain these terms and how they relate to each other.

A Kolon was the holder of a full colonist farmstead—one of the principal hereditary tenure types in Schaumburg-Lippe. The Kolonat was granted to a settler (usually during village expansion or reclamation of forest or heath land) on the condition of certain obligations: payment of rents, maintenance of the land, and participation in communal labor or duties. A Kolon typically held:

Kolone formed the upper layer of village society below the gentry and clergy. Their houses were the core economic units of the village, and many families lived for generations on the same Kolonat, often recorded in both church and secular registers.

A Kötter (plural Kötter or Köter) held a smaller hereditary or semi-hereditary holding—usually a cottage with a small plot of land. Kötter stood below Kolone in social and economic rank. Their land was limited, often not enough to sustain the family without additional labor, such as weaving, carting, or seasonal farming work for larger households.

Although their holdings were smaller, Kötter usually possessed:

Many Kötter households were stable over generations but lacked the wealth or social prominence of the full Kolonat holders.

A Brinksitzer (“someone sitting on the brink or edge”) was a smallholder living on the margin of the village—often literally on the “brink.” These households were typically formed later, as villages grew and marginal land became settled. A Brinksitzer might have:

Their economic standing was below that of the Kötter, and they frequently combined agricultural labor with trades or small crafts. Brinksitzer are regularly seen in lower-tax categories in Kontributionslisten.

A Hausherr was the head of a recognized household. The term does not mean modern ownership of a house; instead, it signifies the responsible holder of the dwelling, whether the underlying right was a Kolonat, a Kötterstelle, a cottage, or even an assigned house.

The Hausherr:

This means that a man listed as Hausherr—such as Jobst Heinrich Krückeberg in the 1803 baptism record—was recognized by the Amt as the responsible head of the dwelling (e.g., No. 6 Berenbusch), even if he did not “own” the house in a modern, absolute sense.

The significance of being Hausherr is that the secular records were organized by household, so the appearance of a man as Hausherr makes him traceable across multiple administrative sources.

An Einlieger was a lodger—someone living inside another’s household, without a holding of his own. Einlieger could be:

Einlieger had no formal household status; therefore, their names rarely appear in land, tax, or insurance records. They are known primarily through:

Understanding Einlieger status is crucial because many individuals later became Hausherren, Kolone, or Kötter after marriage or inheritance.

Village society can be pictured as a hierarchy of households:

At the top stood the Kolon or Meier, running substantial farms and holding hereditary rights. Below them were Kötter and Brinksitzer, smallholders with diminished land and economic power. At the base were Einlieger, living within other households and lacking a recognized holding.

The unifying element across all these statuses was the household. No matter the rank, the administrative world recognized households rather than individuals. Thus, the Hausherr—not the land itself—was the central figure in secular records.

The terms explained above shape how and where individuals appear in surviving records. A Hausherr will be present in:

By contrast, an Einlieger will appear primarily in church books, marginal notes, and occasional legal or military documents.

Understanding these categories allows us to track Krückeberg families across the 18th and 19th centuries and to interpret their place within the evolving agricultural society of Schaumburg-Lippe.