History Of The Bannwald Already according to Roman Law, territory not belonging to any estate or private owner was considered public property. Roman law and Roman administrators were kept on by the Merovingian kings. The Franconian kings, who considered themselves the successors to the Roman emperors, likewise declared any unplowed land in their conquered territories as royal property which they could use exclusively for themselves. When they imposed certain restrictions on forests, initially for military reasons, later for their own hunt, they created a banned forest or Bannwald. Indeed, the first to do so (before the Franconians) were the Merovingian kings who created these bans as protected military buffer zones, which were moved along with the expanding outposts of their territorial conquests. In Tyrol banned forests are documented in the 8th century, in order to protect the nests of falcons and hawks used for the hunt. Thus, the sacred forests of the pagan era were transformed into the banned forests of the king. Under the Franconian and later kings, high penalties were imposed on penetrators in order to keep the newly created borders safe. Later the ban was used to reserve these same forests mostly for the royal hunts. While early on only public (ie royal) areas could be put under ban( in German: Bannlegung), soon also private property was affected such as the donation of banned forests to the bishop of Brixen by king Arnulf in 892 and also later by king Heinrich II in 1004. Throughout the centuries, and particularly when the influence of royal power started to diminish, these forests became important natural reserves and are forming the vast stock of todays ecological Bannwald regions in Southern Germany and Austria.

Naive Guesses Real Roots Of The Name Panholz Place Names Meaning of PANHOLZ History of Bannwald
Linguistic Roots Of The Name First Mention Of A Place The Panholzers Of America The Panholzers Of Austria The Home Page Of Peter Panholzer
Map Of PANHOLZ Place Names Related Spellings The Bairisch Language The Importance of Bann Pan Mail
Sources, Credits
RETURN TO HOME PAGE