“Stadthöfe” – i.e. courtyards of (external) monasteries or noble families in medieval towns, where seigneurial revenues from the environs were collected and redistributed and where representation of elites was practiced – were primary interfaces of town-country relations in the premodern era. However, they have been rarely examined, since their documentary tradition is mostly not found in the respective city archives, but in monastic and noble traditions. Thus, the phenomenon offers ample opportunity for intensified research on the interactions and economic processes towards, within and around these courtyards, on materiality and resources, and thereby on town-country-connectivity in general. The regional foci of the project are Lower Austria and Northern Germany. The primary institutional partner is the   Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (IMAREAL) in Krems, Austria.

The courtyard of Göttweig Abbey in Stein an der Donau (Krems, Austria) (source: wikicommons/Immanuel Giel).

--------------------------------------
Project by Gabriel Zeilinger zeilinger@histosem.uni-kiel.de