Declaration Concerning the Edict of September 14, 1811, Regulating the Relationship of the Manorial Lord to the Peasant Subject Farmer
Article 4: To clarify uncertainties about the concept of peasant holdings, We decree that those farms are subject to the 1811 edict that display all of the following characteristics:
a) their principal purpose is to enable their occupants to sustain themselves as independent farmers;
b) they have been registered in the tax-rolls of their province as specifically peasant properties;
c) they were occupied by identifiable peasant proprietors in their province’s normative year, that is, on February 15, 1763, in the Mark Brandenburg and Pomerania, in Silesia before July 14, 1749, before the year 1752 in East Prussia and associated governmental districts, and before the year 1774 in West Prussia and Ermland;
d) at the time of publication of the Edict of September 14, 1811, their manorial lordship was obligated to maintain them in peasant farmers’ occupancy.
Article 5: Excluded from the category of peasant holdings are, therefore:
a) Holdings occupied by families who are engaging in providing manorial services rather than in maintaining themselves through farming on their own account. If manorial labor services must be rendered from the holding with draught-teams, or if the possessor has previously customarily farmed it with draught-animals, then it ranks as a self-sufficient farm. If the possessor is obliged only to render manual labor services, and if he has kept no draught-animals to cultivate his holding and if none are required to do so, then the holding qualifies as a service-holding.
b) Farm-holdings that were formed from manorial land, whether arable or forest.