Alsfeld written!Alsfeld city constitution is written down

In the last two decades of the 14th century, Landgrave Hermann II had a residence built in Alsfeld and granted the growing guilds in the town the right to elect “four men from among themselves each year to participate in the decisions of the council, and even to control them. This early form of civic self-government naturally displeased the long-established patrician families, whose influence had been pushed back.

After Landgrave Hermann’s death in 1413, the patrician families joined forces with knights, burghers and nobles hostile to the bourgeoisie and influenced the noble guardian of the still youthful Ludwig (the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg) to abolish the “right of the four” and thus to roll back the influence of the guilds and the bourgeoisie. This period of restoration lasted 15 years before Landgrave Ludwig I, now grown up and in office and dignity, called “der Friedfertige”, issued a citizen-friendly town constitution in Alsfeld on January 24, 1429 with the so-called “Korebrief”, which was to be valid for almost 400 years (until 1821) and restored the possibilities of co-determination for the bourgeoisie. MNic