A Hufner, also spelt Hüfner, was a farmer in medieval Europe who managed one or more oxgangs (German: Hufe) as his own property.
An oxgang or bovate is an old land measurement formerly used in Scotland and England as early as the 16th century sometimes referred to as an oxgait. It averaged around 20 English acres, but was based on land fertility and cultivation, and so could be as low as 15.
An estate in land is an interest in real property that is or may become possessory.
The actual names of these members of the farming community varied from region to region. In the Low Saxon dialect region the term Hovener or Hofener was used, in the Central German region they were mainly known as Hufner or Hüfner and in the Upper German region as Huber. In many areas, completely different names were also used, such as Ackermann, Pferdner or, in the Upper Saxon region, even besessene Mann or besessene Männer. (Note: Pferdner actually refers to a similar type of farmer who owned and managed one or more horse teams (pferdegespannen).[citation needed] This may be regional, as the name appears more rarely than the variants of Hufner.)[citation needed]
West Low German, also known as Low Saxon is a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark. It is one of two groups of mutually intelligible dialects, the other being East Low German dialects.
Central German is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Upper German is a family of High German languages spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area.
The Hufner was a full member of the community of farmers; he had a say in that community and was allowed to use the commons. In the social hierarchy of the village the Hufners, as full farmers (Vollbauern) and owners of a farmstead with, depending on the region, 30 to 100 morgens of land, ranked above the gardeners and the tenant farmers or Häuslern.
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can be also defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.
A morgen was a unit of measurement of land area in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the Dutch colonies, including South Africa and Taiwan. The size of a morgen varies from 1⁄2 to 21⁄2 acres, which equals approximately 0.2 to 1 hectare. It was also used in Old Prussia, in the Balkans, Norway and Denmark, where it was equal to about two-thirds of an acre (0.27 ha).
A tenant farmer is one who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying amounts of capital and management. Depending on the contract, tenants can make payments to the owner either of a fixed portion of the product, in cash or in a combination. The rights the tenant has over the land, the form, and measure of the payment varies across systems. In some systems, the tenant could be evicted at whim ; in others, the landowner and tenant sign a contract for a fixed number of years. In most developed countries today, at least some restrictions are placed on the rights of landlords to evict tenants under normal circumstances.
A host of surnames are derived from these occupational names and their regional variations. The most common of these is the name Huber,[1] which, in the German-speaking world, is one of the five to ten most common surnames and is especially widespread in South Germany, Switzerland and Austria. As a result of regional variations in pronunciation of the surname Huber, other surnames have developed including Huemer, Humer, Haumer, Huebmer and Hueber. Also common are the forms Höf(f)ner and Hüb(e)ner.
___NOTOC___ Huber is a surname of German language origin. It derives from the German word Hube meaning hide, a unit of land a farmer might possess. It is in the top ten most common surnames in the German-speaking world, especially in Austria and Switzerland where it is the surname of approximately 0.3% of the population.
Hueber is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Hübner is a Germanic surname, sometimes spelled Huebner or Hubner.
The Hufner had the same social standing as the driver (Einspänner), the owner of a horse and carriage; both were liable for socage.[2]
Socage was one of the feudal duties and hence land tenure forms in the feudal system. A farmer, for example, held the land in exchange for a clearly defined, fixed payment to be made at specified intervals to his feudal lord, who in turn had his own feudal obligations, to the farmer and to the Crown. In theory this might involve supplying the lord with produce but most usually it meant a straightforward payment of cash, i.e., rent.
Heide Wunder: Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutschland (= Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 1483). Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1986, ISBN3-525-33473-7.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
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