26 Germany. 



These were followed by the Germani (supposedly a Cel- 

 tic word meaning neighbor or brother), also Aryan 

 tribes, who appeared at the Black Sea about 1000 B. C, 

 in Switzerland and Belgium about 100 B. C. These 

 were followed by the Slovenes, Slovaks, or Wends, crowd- 

 ing on behind, disputing and taking possession of the 

 lands left free by or conquered from the Germani. 

 Through these migrations the whole of Western Europe 

 seems to have been fully peopled about 400 A. D. by 

 these tribes of hunters and herders. The mixture of the 

 different elements of victors and vanquished led to dif- 

 ferentiation into three classes of people, economically 

 and politically speaking, namely the free, the unfree 

 (serfs or slaves), and the freedmen, an important dis- 

 tinction in the development of property rights. 



1. Development of Property Conditions. 



The German tribes who remained conquerors were 

 composed of the different groups of Franks, Saxons, 

 Thuringians, Bajuvarians, Burgundians, etc., each com- 

 posed of families aggregated into communal hordes with 

 an elected Duke (dux, Herzog, Graf, Fiirst), organized 

 for war, each in itself a socialistic and economic organi- 

 zation known as Mark, owning a territory in common, 

 the members or MarJcgenossen forming a republic. Out- 

 side of house, yard and garden, there was no private 

 property; the land surrounding the settlement, known 

 as Alhnende, was o'svned in common but assigned in 

 parcels to each family for field use, first changing from 

 year to year, then becoming a fixed assignment. The 

 outlying woods, known as the Marca or Grenzwald, form- 

 ing debatable ground with the neighboring tribes, was 



