Rising Rents in Sixteenth-Century Germany: A Case Study of Memmingen

The German Peasants’ War of 1525 was the greatest revolt in Europe between the overthrow of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution. One central issue was excessive peasant rents. Nevertheless, a significant current in the historical literature today alleges that rents did not rise prior to or after the Peasant War. Rich documentation from the Memmingen archives shows that in fact rents rose from the time documentation begins, 1448, and continuously throughout the 1500s and into the early 1600s. The grinding inflationary spiral, the notorious “price revolution,” means that this must have been true of all of Germany—all lords had to be raising rents furiously or go under; many did both. Rents and war taxes rose to the point that they broke the back of the economy; farmers could not maintain the soil or themselves. This explains the declining grain yields, falling population, economic collapse, famines, plagues, witch hunts, and Thirty Years’ War.