Village

A village is usually defined as a manageable group settlement with a low division of labour, which in its origins was characterised by an agricultural settlement, economic and social structure. The basis of prosperity originally came from access to water and wood and the economic sector of agriculture. There were also pure fishing villages, villages of raftsmen and itinerant traders. In areas with a pronounced cottage industry structure there were, for example, also weaving villages. Pottery villages were unique in their respective regions.

Smaller group settlements are regionally also called hamlets or Bauerschaft. Scattered settlements are not called villages in some areas, but in northwestern Germany as Bauerschaft, in the Lower Rhine as Honnschaft. Even smaller settlements with only one or two households are called Einzelelsiedlung, Einzelgehöft, in Southern Germany and the German-speaking Alpine countries Einöde or Einödshof.

Traditionally, the village - also in distinction to the smaller hamlet - represented a political unit as a community of farmers. Before the creation of local councils in the 19th century, the Schultheiss, Bürgermeister, Ortsvorsteher and Dorfschulzen existed in German-speaking countries. As a result of the territorial reforms of the 1970s to 1990s, villages in Germany are for the most part no longer territorial entities, but have been combined into rural municipalities or incorporated into neighboring towns. A compromise with remnants of independence of the villages are some Samt- and Verbandsgemeinden.

In Bavaria, in accordance with the resolution of the State Ministry of the Interior of 18 October 1950 (No. I B1 - 68a 1), any settlement with ten or more residential buildings which is not a town is in principle regarded as a village. Larger villages with a stronger division of labor and individual urban functions are called markets in southern Germany, especially in Bavaria. In northern Germany, especially in Lower Saxony, they are called patches. In Hesse the designation "Marktflecken" is common for this.

In Austria, a village is also a closed place with ten or more buildings, with historical structure and some infrastructure like church or inn. Smaller enclosed places and places without any infrastructure are classified as hamlets, rotte or scattered houses, modern new developments as a group of houses. The term market for larger villages is, comparable to Southern Germany, equally common.

In France, Switzerland and Namibia, very many villages are separate territorial entities.

Etymology

The oldest record of the word village, thaurp, is found in the Gothic Bible translation of Wulfila, where it denotes a fenced area (e.g. pen, enclosure). Such an enclosure served to protect livestock (horse, cattle, goat, sheep, pig, chicken, goose, duck, etc.) from predators, such as the wolf. This meaning can also be assumed for the North Frisian terp, the Old Frisian therp, as well as the Alemannic village, so the word was not originally intended to indicate the difference between a single and a group settlement. In Swedish, the term torp stands for a lonely, small farm. Torp has the same linguistic origin from the common Germanic word as the Old High German dorf, the Old English or Old Saxon thorp, the Anglo-Saxon thorpe, the Old Icelandic þorp and the Dutch dorp. In Southern Jutish, village means trop. Also the suffix -trup - with all its variants - always means "-dorf" in the North and West Germanic languages; but in the original sense of single farm.

Historically grown village forms

Villages are classified according to ground plan, location, socio-economic function and mode of economy. Roughly speaking, a distinction is made between unregulated and regulated village layouts, the latter only occurring in the case of controlled and well thought-out planning (colonisation). The most common village forms are the cluster villages, the row villages and the street villages. Special features and parallels are discussed in the individual sections. Pure village forms are rarely found, with the exception of the Rundlinge.

In connection with the village forms are the field forms. In the 20th century at the latest, German villages began to experience processes of urban sprawl, fields were cleared and combined to form large plots ("Verkoppelung").

Closed village forms

Haufendorf

A cluster village is an enclosed built-up village with irregular plot layouts and often different sized farmsteads, often surrounded by a village green. Haufendörfer differ from most other village forms in that they were laid out unplanned. A large part of the Haufendörfer developed in connection with the medieval Gewanneflur, with which each farmer cultivated strips of different fields and the situation of these field strips also changed again and again. The land of such villages was divided into a village centre, arable land and common land.

Compact Village

A compact village is the extreme case of a cluster village. The houses were built close together or next to each other in order to save space in precarious topographical conditions. Compact villages are typically found in the Romansh-speaking parts of the Alps, for example in the northern canton of Ticino.

Street Village

A street village is a linear, usually double-lined village, whose houses or farmsteads line a street (in former times a route) in a dense arrangement. Typically, today's individual houses or farmsteads are arranged gable-ended to the street. A street branching off from the main street is often a cul-de-sac.

Angerdorf

An Angerdorf is a village whose most prominent feature is the Anger, a central, elongated circular square owned by the community, usually with a pond (firewater pond) or well. Anger villages occur in Central Europe mainly on ground moraine plates and in loess areas, in Germany mainly in East and East-Central Germany.

Roadside village

The street village is a street village, whose village street widens at one point or also in greater length to an Anger and then continues. In the German-speaking world, Anger villages are typical of north-eastern Austria and parts of the Mark Brandenburg. There are also Anger villages in northern England, as well as in France in the Barrois. Characteristic of the layout of Brandenburg roadside Anger villages in the Frederician period is the juxtaposition of the residential buildings along the road, usually with a central entrance or passageway and, if necessary, an additional side courtyard entrance.

Rundling, Rundplatzdorf, Rundweiler

A Rundling, Rundplatzdorf or also regionally called Rundweiler, is a rural settlement in round form, whose distribution is essentially limited to the former German-Slavic border region, i.e. west and east of the Saale and Elbe, e.g. in the Hanoverian Wendland. They all belong to the square villages. Rundlings are often situated on spurs which project into the lowlands of the glacial valleys. The square in the middle was originally only connected to the general traffic network by a path. A few farms are arranged around the square. Adjacent to this is a strip meadow. It is unclear whether the circular shape was chosen for safety reasons or in adaptation to the predominant livestock farming.

A typical example is Bugk (Slav. bug or buk, Engl. "beech") in the Oder-Spree district of Brandenburg. Emerging from a star of a path, situated on a barely perceptible hill in damp, marshy terrain, the village centre represents a Slavic round place village. Rundlings are of Slavic origin and are frequently found in eastern Germany.

A special feature is the Wurtendorf. It belongs to the settlements whose homesteads are aligned with a central (village) square. The Wurtendorf usually developed on a mound of earth heaped up by humans, which served as a settlement site for an individual or group settlement. The mound was intended to protect the village from storm surge or high water. This type of settlement occurs mainly on the marshland coasts, sometimes also along river courses. Sausage villages developed mainly in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Row village

Row villages are created by building a settlement along an elongated topographical object such as a stream, ditch or dike. If, on the other hand, the settlement lies along a road or path, it is called a street village.

Row villages and street villages often offer the possibility of expanding the settlement at both ends.

Zeilendorf

A row village consists of a row of houses or courtyards that are regularly and linearly lined up.

Colonist villages in Brandenburg

The Brandenburg colonist villages came into being after 1157 in the course of the settlement policy pursued by Albrecht the Bear and his son Otto I. The first two margraves of Brandenburg successfully attempted to Christianize the Mark of Brandenburg, which was still largely inhabited by Slavs. With this policy, the first two margraves of Brandenburg successfully attempted to Christianize and stabilize the Mark Brandenburg, which had been conquered and founded in 1157 and was still largely inhabited by Slavs. The colonists came mainly from the Altmark and from Flanders. The villages were usually laid out as row villages or round villages with forest, meadow and field heaps, occasionally there were triangular cul-de-sac villages like Gröben near Ludwigsfelde. A typical example is Elsterwerda.

Open village forms

In open village forms, the possibility of mutual protection of the villagers, but also the danger of a fire catastrophe was lower than in closed ones. Where each farmer permanently cultivates an area of land that is as contiguous as possible, it shortens the distances associated with everyday work if the homestead is located on the edge or in the middle of the area of land.

During the planned reclamation of areas that were not or hardly used for agriculture and were often wooded, each farmer was permanently allocated a contiguous area, the Hufe. This is how, for example, the forest hoof villages east of the Saale came into being.

Scattered settlement

A scattered settlement is an unenclosed settlement consisting of widely scattered farms and hamlets without an actual village centre. Typical scattered settlement areas are the western part of Lower Saxony (for example the Münsterland), the Black Forest and the pre-Alpine and Alpine regions (here, for example, the Walser colonies). Between the Weser and the Ems, scattered settlement has always been widespread; in parts of the Allgäu and the Black Forest, on the other hand, it was only introduced in the early modern period in order to improve agricultural yields.

Large parts of Canada and the USA consist of scattered settlements.

Hoofdörfer

Hoofed villages are special forms of the row village as Hagenhufendorf, Marschhufendorf, Moorhufendorf, Waldhufendorf and Straßendorf. The latter restricts the topographical objects to streets and roads. The delimitation of the term is not sharply defined.

Settlements at crystallization points

Church Village

In areas with traditional scattered settlements, people who did not earn their living from agriculture, or not only from agriculture, were happy to settle next to a church. If the church is a parish church, then the term parish village applies.

Market town

Where markets were held regularly in a convenient location, which in feudal times was only possible with the permission of the authorities, traders and craftsmen settled. In this way settlements arose which were not infrequently larger than pure farming villages. Several of these minority towns were later granted city rights.

Railway settlement

Railway settlements were built mainly in the second half of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th century. An essential prerequisite was the existence of railway stops and their network development as a component of the infrastructure.

Hagenhufendorf


simplified example of a village with forest hooves


Scattered settlement Rüte (2013)


The row village of Surrein follows the Vorderrhein


Example of a roundel with two access roads


Goldenbow, village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania


Example of a street village


The village of Marthalen (1923)


The compact village of Ronco sopra Ascona (1946)