46 Germany. 



Some additions came from the secularization of 

 church and cloister property, and others by the slices 

 which the princes as Obermarker secured from the 

 Mark forests by various artifices. It is these proper- 

 ties, which in Prussia were turned over by the King 

 to the State in 1713, and by other princes, not 

 until the 19th century. 



The same means which the princes employed were 

 used by the landed gentry to increase their holdings 

 especially at the expense of the Mark from which in 

 their capacity of Obermarker they secured portions 

 by force or intrigue. 



The peasants' forest property the Mark forest 

 had by the 19th century been almost entirely dis- 

 membered, part having come into the hands of the 

 princes and barons, part having been divided among 

 the Marker, and part having become corporation 

 forest in the modern sense. 



Partition had become desirable when the restric- 

 tions of use which were ordered for the good of 

 the forest became unendurable under the rigid 

 rule of appointed officials, but the expected im- 

 provement in management which was looked for 

 from partition and private ownership was never 

 realized. 



After the Thirty Years' War the free cities were 

 impoverished and their autonomy undermined by 

 Roman doctrine. From free republics they became 

 mere corporations under the supervision of appointed 

 officials, and experienced decadence in political as 

 well as material directions. Hence, no increase in 

 city forest took place except through division of the 



