THE *GENOSSENSCHAFT* 431 



man whose genoszschaft arises from an oath and not from blood. 

 Suggestive for the common life is the term brdtgenossen as equivalent 

 to ehalten (see p. 126). JFeidgenossen, alpgenossen, markgenossen all 

 indicate the primitive community with its common rights in wood, 

 pasture, and land. 



Thus we see, as in the wiunte, that the genossen were a com- 

 munity arising from a common satisfaction of appetite, a common 

 profit. It only remains to show that the genoszschaft was originally 

 an endogamous group. 



It is impossible here to enter on the picture of primitive com- 

 munal life that the Weisthiimer provide, but one or two points regard- 

 ing the earliest genoszschaft may be emphasised. In the first place, it 

 was a group having rights of inheritance, intermarriage, and inter- 

 change of products. The head of the community had to take care 

 that the genossen neither wiben nodi mannen uszer der gnoszschaft. If 

 they do, and a child results, that child has no inheritance within the 

 genoszschaft. 1 As the 1320 Ebersheimmiinster Weisthum puts it, 

 when a man " usser siner genossinne grifet, unde gewinnet die, ein kint" 

 that child is not his heir. 2 This custom of marrying within the 

 genoszschaft will be found in the Wdsihumer right away from Elsass 

 to Tyrol, and explains the strong feeling against exogamy which 

 still exists in many an out-of-the-way valley (p. 140). In several 

 cases we find different lesser or sub-communities claim the right to 

 give and to take each other's children in marriage ; and a noteworthy 

 paragraph in the Schwdbenspiegel tells us that if a man dies leaving 

 two daughters, one of whom has married her gendz and the other 

 her ungenoz, only the former inherits genoszschaft property. The 

 obvious basis of all this is that group-property was not to pass 

 out of the old endogamous kin-group. The group is repeatedly 

 described as consisting of persons einandern genosz und geerb, who may 

 zu einanndern varnn vnnd von einanndern, i.e. may intermarry. 3 Thus it 

 comes about that a genosz may only sell his land and rights within 

 the genoszscJiaft, or at least not until he has sought a purchaser 

 within the geerbe or genosze. But this restriction stretched a good 

 deal farther than the land, we find it applied not only to all stand- 

 ing crops, but to garden produce, to all the produce, in fact, of what 



1 J. Grimm's Weisthiimer, Bd. v. p. 64 (Koelikon, circa 1400). 



2 Ibid. Bd. i. p. 669. 

 3 See the Ofnung von Brutten, Grimm's Weisthumer, i. p. 144. 



