Banzendorf is a village in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. Since the end of 2001 it is a component locality (Ortsteil) of the municipality of Lindow, Ostprignitz-Ruppin district.
Geography Banzendorf is located north of Lindow. Banzendorf is a linear village with only few houses situated in the alleys. The village location itself is flat, but there are also some hills in the vicinity of Banzendorf, especially northeast at its outlying hamlet Rudershof. In the southwest of the village Dierberg Heath (Dierberger Heide) is spreading. Banzendorf is directly connected by streets and alleys with Dierberg (Dierberger Weg), Hindenberg (Banzendorfer Straße, forming the main street and district road No. K6604), Lindow (Lindower Weg), Rönnebeck in Brandenburg (Rönnebecker Weg) and Schulzendorf in Ruppin Land (Schulzendorfer Weg).Rönnebeck and Schulzendorf in Ruppin Land are component localities of Sonnenberg in Brandenburg, whereas Dierberg belongs to Rheinsberg since 2003. Hindenberg is another locality of Lindow. In 1993 the 10.17 square kilometres, or 1,017 hectares (ha), of Banzendorf comprised of agricultural area (84.2% of the total), of forests (9.2%), of circulation area (3%), of built-up area and pertaining open space (1.6%), of water bodies (0.6%) and of various other usages (1.4%).N.N., „Statistische Daten“, in: 636 Jahre „casa Banzendorp“: 1365–2000, Banzendorf: Gemeinde Banzendorf, 2000, p. 26.
History
As part of the County of Ruppin Banzendorf's oldest recorded mentioning dates back to 1365 under the name of «casa Banzendorp». In the course of the medieval eastward migrations of Germans Gebhard I, Count of Arnstein had conquered the area around today's Banzendorf and in 1196 he settled in the castle of Ruppin, located in today's Alt Ruppin, a locality of Neuruppin. The comital family, later called counts of Lindow-Ruppin, established the County of Ruppin, of which Banzendorf formed a part. The county was no imperial county, immediately under the emperors, but the counts held it mediately as a subfief of the March of Brandenburg.
By 1220 or 1240 the counts founded a Cistercian nunnery in Lindow and richly enfeoffed it with lands and villages, whose inhabitants became serfs to the nunnery. Also other noble families endowed the nunnery with additional land or revenues from dues (to be performed by serfs) in order to maintain a decent life for the nuns, usually unmarried daughters or childless widows of the same noble families. Banzendorf was one of altogether 18 villages enfeoffed to the nunnery.Werner Dumann, Das Kloster Lindow: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart und die Bedeutung für die Stadt Lindow (11995), Evangelische Kirchengemeinde and Evangelisches Stift «Kloster Lindow» (eds.), Neuruppin: Regional-Verlag Ruppin, 22001, p. 7Friedrich Wilhelm August Bratring, Die Grafschaft Ruppin in historischer, statistischer und geographischer Hinsicht: Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Mark Brandenburg, Berlin: Hayn, 1799, p. 496. However, the Banzendorfers had to render their socages to the counts of Ruppin.
An appointed village mayor (Schultheiß in High German, Dorfschulze, i.e. village bailiff, in the local tradition) in Banzendorf is recorded the first time for the year 1420.N.N., „Historische Daten im Überblick“, in: 636 Jahre „casa Banzendorp“: 1365–2000, Banzendorf: Gemeinde Banzendorf, 2000, pp. 6–16, here p. 6. Then the Lindow Nunnery listed in its records of serfs obliged to perform dues for Banzendorf 14 serf farmer families tilling tenured land and seven cotters (Kossäten; derived from Kate, cottage, and Sate, someone seated on a plot) holding only tiny gardens and earning their livelihood as farmhands. Whereas the feudal rent for the meadows was to paid to the counts of Ruppin.For 1478 the payment is recorded in a deed issued by Countess Jakobine of Ruppin. Cf. N.N., „Historische Daten im Überblick“, in: 636 Jahre „casa Banzendorp“: 1365–2000, Banzendorf: Gemeinde Banzendorf, 2000, pp. 6–16, here p. 6. In 1422 the foreign robber baron Rehmer von Plessen from the close by Duchy of Mecklenburg ravaged the village, then called Banzendorppe, with 30 armed men (among them members of the families of Blücher and Feldberg) also shooting dead the Schulze.
After the reversion of Ruppin county to Brandenburg With the extinction of the comital family in the male line the comital fief was reverted to the liege lord, the prince-elector of Brandenburg in 1524. After the Marcher electors had adopted Lutheranism in 1539 officials of the new Lutheran state church assessed in Banzendorf that there was a pastorate endowed with two Hufen (1 Marcher Hufe then measured about ) for maintaining the pastor and his family. Banzendorf's population adopted Lutheranism in the course of the Reformation.
In 1541/1542 the highly indebted elector secularised the nunnery and took its fiefs. The former fiefs of the nunnery were now administered by the electoral Amt Lindow, a fiscal unit, collecting the dues and rents previously paid to the nuns and wielding the latter's former patrimonial privileges including the advowson of Banzendorf Village Church. On the occasion of the electoral takeover the serfs were counted. There were - their family members not separately mentioned - one Schultheiss, one innkeeper (Krüger), 15 farmers (Hüfner) holding tenured land measuring at least one Hufe, seven cotters, one smith, one cowherd and one shepherd.N.N., „Historische Daten im Überblick“, in: 636 Jahre „casa Banzendorp“: 1365–2000, Banzendorf: Gemeinde Banzendorf, 2000, pp. 6–16, here p. 8.
In the Thirty Years' War the warfaring parties (such as Danish and imperial troops in 1627, Swedish troops in 1635) ravaged Banzendorf several times and in 1631 the plague killed even more people. Jeremias Ludewig recalled that as a choir boy he had to sing at about 800 funerals in several villages. The Catholic League invaded and ravaged the area in 1638. On 18 October the Leaguist General Matthias Gallas robbed and burnt the Lindow Convent.Werner Dumann, Das Kloster Lindow: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart und die Bedeutung für die Stadt Lindow (11995), Evangelische Kirchengemeinde and Evangelisches Stift «Kloster Lindow» (eds.), Neuruppin: Regional-Verlag Ruppin, 22001, p. 8. 28 further villages in the area were ravaged and burnt. Many of the survivors fled the area in order to find a survival elsewhere.
So in 1652 according to the Landesvisitation 13 out of Banzendorf's 25 farmsteads were vacant. In 1660 the farmers of Banzendorf practised a two-year crop rotation as part of the Flurzwang. In 1665 the bigger part of the village burnt down, including the pastorate. Afterwards no new pastor was appointed but the Dierberg pastor additionally served in Banzendorf. In 1687 still ten farmsteads were vacant, and only in 1773 all farms had been settled again. In 1688 the village counted 54 residential buildings, 90 agricultural and production buildings, among them two brick bakeries and a mill, and five buildings serving public purposes.
The Marcher electors, vassals of the Holy Roman Empire, were since 1618 also ruling as Dukes of Prussia as vassals of Poland. After Prussia had regained its souzerainty from Poland in 1657, the dukes upgraded themselves to Prussian king in 1701. With kings ranking higher than electors the name of that foreign country and the royal title started being used even for the rulers' possessions within the Empire. In 1709 the Banzendorf church was officially downgraded to an affiliate of the Dierberg church. By a reform of the local jurisdiction Banzendorf became the seat of a local court (Schulzengericht) presided over by the Schulze. In 1748 and 1753 Banzendorf, like all agriculture in the area, suffered from misharvests with potatoes. Banzendorf's Schulze Ernst Christian Köhler, who had been granted the licence to develop and settle the new neighbouring village of Hindenberg, was sued for having brewed beer and sold it along with liqueurs between 1754 and 1759, which he would have only been allowed to do after having completed the settling of Hindenberg. The immediate liege lord of the Banzendorf peasants was the respective ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia.
In 1761 and again in 1762 farmers of Wulkow near Neuruppin demanded the meadows in the close by Neukammerluch wetlands (since 2003 a part of Neuruppin), which, however, were assigned to the Schulze of Banzendorf. In 1764 Banzendorf was reassigned to Amt Rheinsberg, another fiscal unit seated in Rheinsberg. Two years later the Amt Rheinsberg counted 31 hearthes and 185 inhabitants in Banzendorf.Friedrich Wilhelm August Bratring, Die Grafschaft Ruppin in historischer, statistischer und geographischer Hinsicht: Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Mark Brandenburg, Berlin: Hayn, 1799, p. 497. On 25 May 1773 a herdsman's home burnt down. On 9 January 1782 two farms burnt down in Banzendorf. Two years later on 2 March a fire destroyed two other farms, which were reconstructed in the following years. In 1798 Banzendorf counted twelve full farmers (reaching at least the minimum farmland holding), one half farmer, four full cotters and 31 Hufen of land altogether, among them two of the pastorate, mostly classified second degree soil quality. The population pyramid of that year was severely distorted, 127 inhabitants above the age of 14, among them 34 without marriage permission, had 93 children under 14.N.N., „Historische Daten im Überblick“, in: 636 Jahre „casa Banzendorp“: 1365–2000, Banzendorf: Gemeinde Banzendorf, 2000, pp. 6–16, here p. 10. Thus - roughly calculating, leaving aside possible child deaths and further children born in the considered period – within the following 14 years all these children came into working age almost doubling the labour force intown, without any reason to expect an economic growth allowing for a livelihood acceptable for them, or let alone a similar number of deceasing adults leaving behind their positions. The upcoming Napoleonic wars then would absorb and exhaust many of the young men, a phenomenon also called infanticide déféré by Gaston Bouthoul.Cf. Gaston Bouthoul, La surpopulation: l’inflation démographique, Paris: Payot, 1964, p. 221. In 1798 the livestock comprised 68 horses, 70 oxen, 44 cows, 29 calves, 67 young cattle and 595 sheep.Friedrich Wilhelm August Bratring, Die Grafschaft Ruppin in historischer, statistischer und geographischer Hinsicht: Ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Mark Brandenburg, Berlin: Hayn, 1799, pp. 496seq. The Marcher public fire insurance (Feuersocietät) counted in 1799 31 hearthes (homesteads) which were all insured with a total amount assured of Rixdollar 9,850.
Since the liberation of the serfs In 1799 the king as their landlord had unilaterally abolished most of the personal labour duties of the peasants in the royal demesnes, so also relieving the Banzendorfers, without demanding any compensation.Peter Brandt in collaboration with Thomas Hofmann and Reiner Zilkenat, Preußen: Zur Sozialgeschichte eines Staates; eine Darstellung in Quellen, edited on behalf of Berliner Festspiele as catalogue to the exhibition on Prussia between 15 May and 15 November 1981, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981, (=Preußen; vol. 3), p. 100. In 1800 the serfs of Banzendorf paid their remaining dues, meanwhile monetarised, to the demesne administration of Amt Zechlin in . Two years later the Amt Zechlin ordered the formation of local funds for the poor (Ortsarmenkasse), providing since also for Banzendorf's poor a minimum support. In a dispute with their pastor in 1804 the parishioners of Banzendorf and neighbouring Dierberg refused to deliver him their due renders.