of the forest or in the use of the material. In the latter direction the attempts at reducing the consumption of building timber are of special interest. Building inspectors were to approve building plans and inspect buildings to see that they were most economically constructed; that repairs were made promptly, to avoid the necessity of more extensive ones; that new buildings replacing old ones were not built higher than the old ones. In Saxony, as early as 1560, it was ordered that the whole house must be built of stone, while elsewhere, the building of stone base walls and the use of brick roofs instead of shingles was insisted upon.
Even the number of houses in any community was restricted. Fences were to be supplanted by hedges and ditches. Economies in charcoal burning, in potash manufacture for glass works, and in the turpentine industry were prescribed, and about 1600, the burning of potash for fertilizer was forbidden entirely; but these laws proved unavailing. Even in fuel-wood a saving was to be effected by using only the poorer woods and windfalls, by instituting public bake ovens (still in use in Westphalia), by improving stoves, restricting the number of bathing rooms, etc.
The consumption of fuelwood seems to have been enormous, for we find record of 200 cords used by one family in a year and of 1,200 cords or more used by the Court at Weimar during the same time.
The substitution of turf and coal for firewood was ordered in some sections in 1697 and again in 1777, but practically not until 1780 did coal come in as a substitute. Tanbark peeling was also forbidden, or only the use of bark of trees soon to be felled was allowed. For cooperage only the top-dry oak; for coffins only soft-wood, or, according to Joseph II of Austria, no wood, but black cloth was to be used. In some parts of the country the use of oak was restricted, even as early as 1562.
For regulating practices in the forest the restrictions often took only the general form of forbidding devastation, without specifying what that meant.
Then, besides establishing a diameter limit, and regulating pasture in order to protect young growth, excluding sheep and goats entirely, an attempt was made to secure at least orderly procedure in the fellings. Foresters were to designate what was to be cut even for firewood. Marking irons and hammers were employed for this purpose by the middle of the 15th century (usually two markings, by forester and by inspector to check). And this designation by officials extended even into the private forest, where finally no felling was allowed without previous permission and designation by a forester.
The use of the litter by the small farmers had grown to a large extent in these times and it was thought desirable to stop it, but this aid to the poor peasant was so necessary that only regulating the gathering of it could be insisted upon.
It must be understood that all these various attempts at securing a conservative forest use were by no means general but refer to circumscribed territory, and much of it was only paper legislation without securing actual practice.
4. Development of Forest Policy
With the beginning of the 18th century we find, besides these prescriptions against wasteful use, and ordinances regulating the management of the properties of the princes, definite forest policies in some sections, having in view forest preservation and improvement of forest conditions, and also means of providing wood at moderate prices.
Between the years 1515 and 1590, most of the German States had already enacted ordinances which had the force of general law exercising police functions over private forest property, although in Prussia this general legislation did not occur until 1720. The objects in view with this legislation were entirely of a material kind: the conservation of resources. Besides securing the rights of the Landesherr to the chase, it was to secure a conservative use of the princely as well as private forests, since devastation of the latter would require the former to be drawn on extravagantly; it was to stave off a timber famine, and in certain localities to assure particularly the mining industry of their wood supplies. There were, however, concessions made to the privileged and influential classes of forest owners.
By the end of the 18th century, this forest police, owing to the uncontrolled harshness and the grafting practices of the lower officials had become the most hated and distasteful part of the administration.
The argument of the protective influence of forest cover did not enter into this legislation; this argument belongs to the 19th century.
Yet reboisement of torrents had already in 1788, been recognized as a proper public measure in German Austria, although active work in that direction was not begun until nearly a century later.
The rise of prices during the 17th and 18th centuries had been very considerable, doubling, trebling and even quadrupling in the first half of the 18th century. The mercantilistic doctrines of the time led, therefore, to attempts to keep prices low by prescribing rates for wood and in general by restricting and regulating wood commerce.
This was done especially by interdicting sale to outsiders, forbidding export from the small territory of the particular prince; or, at least, giving preference to the inhabitants of the territory as purchasers and at cheaper rates.
Owing to the small size of the very many principalities, the free development of trade was considerably hampered by these regulations. Sometimes also wood imports were prohibited, as for instance, in Wurttemberg, when, in 1740, widespread windfalls had occurred which had to be worked up and threatened to overstock the market.
Wood depots under government control were established in large cities, and the amount of wood to be used per capita prescribed, as in Koenigsberg (1702).
In Berlin, in 1766, a monopoly of the fuel wood market was rented to a corporation, excluding all others except by permission of the company. This was in 1785 supplanted by government administration of the woodyards.
Another such monopoly was created in the “Nutzholzhandelsgesellschaft” (Workwood sales agency) for the export trade of building materials from Kurmark and Magdeburg, which had prior right of purchase to all timber cut within given territory, the idea being to provide cheap material for the industries. This, too, came into the hands of the State in 1771.
In Prussia, to prevent overcharges, the Jews were excluded from the wood trade in 1761.
The exercise of the Forsthoheit (princely supervision), originating in the ban forests, and favored by the mercantilistic and absolutist ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries, gradually grew until the end of the 18th century to such an extent that the forest owners themselves were not allowed to cut a tree without sanction of some forest official, and could not sell any wood without permission, even down to hop-poles, although the large landed property owners vigorously resisted this assumption of supervisory powers. Much discussion and argument regarding the origin of this right to supervision was carried on by the jurists upon the basis of Roman law doctrine, and it was proved by them to be of ancient date. The degree, however, to which this supervision was developed varied considerably in the different parts of the empire, according to different economic conditions. The interference, and the protection of forests appeared more necessary, where advanced civilization and denser population created greater need for it. We find therefore that the restrictive policy was much more developed in the Southern and Western territories than in the Northern and Eastern ones, where the development begins two centuries later.
The oldest attempts of controlling private forest property are found in Bavaria (1516), Brunswick (1590) and Wurttemberg (1614). Here, forest properties were placed either entirely under the supervision of the princely forest administration, or, at least, permission for intended fellings had to be secured. Later, these restrictions were considerably reduced in rigor (Bavaria, 1789).
In Prussia, private forest property remained free from government interference well into the 18th century. An edict by the Great Elector, in 1670, merely inveighs against the devastation of forests by their owners, but refrains from any interference; and the Forstordnung of 1720 also contains only the general injunction to the owners not to treat their forests uneconomically. But, in 1766, Frederick the Great instituted a rigid supervision providing punishment for fellings beyond a special budget determined by experts. Soon after the French revolution, however, unrestricted private ownership was re-established.
Church and cloister property had always been severely supervised, similar to the Mark and other communal forest