Editing Peasant (section)

==Early modern Germany==
[[File:Unbekannter Meister 18-19 Jh Feiernde Bauern.jpg|thumb|"''Feiernde Bauern''" ("Celebrating Peasants"), artist unknown, 18th or 19th century]]

In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the village well into the 19th century. They belonged to a corporate body and helped to manage the community resources and to monitor community life.<ref>Sagarra, Eda (1977) ''A Social History of Germany: 1648–1914''. Methuen young books. pp. 140–154. {{ISBN|978-0416776201}}</ref> In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels of land. A peasant is called a "Bauer" in German and "Bur" in [[Low German]] (pronounced in English like ''boor'').<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wedgwood|first=Hensleigh|author-link=Hensleigh Wedgwood|title=English Etymologies|journal=Transactions of the Philological Society|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3924121;view=1up;seq=127|year=1855|issue=8|pages=117–118}}</ref>

In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents and obligatory services to the landlord—typically a nobleman.<ref>The monasteries of Bavaria, which controlled 56% of the land, were broken up by the government, and sold off around 1803. Nipperdey, Thomas (1996) ''Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck: 1800–1866''. Princeton Univ Press. p. 59. {{ISBN|978-0691636115}}</ref> Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the decisions, and tried to arrange advantageous marriages for his children. Much of the villages' communal life centered on church services and holy days. In Prussia, the peasants drew lots to choose conscripts required by the army. The noblemen handled external relationships and politics for the villages under their control, and were not typically involved in daily activities or decisions.<ref>For details on the life of a representative peasant farmer, who migrated in 1710 to Pennsylvania, see Bernd Kratz, he was a farmer, "Hans Stauffer: A Farmer in Germany before his Emigration to Pennsylvania", ''Genealogist'', Fall 2008, Vol. 22 Issue 2, pp. 131–169</ref>