Open Access

R. Johanna Regnath

• Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the early modern period domestic pigs were driven into the forest in autumn to fatten them with acorns and beechnuts. During the rest of the year, they mostly had to look after themselves for food from waste and in the pastures. The animals were more like wild boars than modern pigs. Only a small part of the mast rights was sold freely. Far more often there were a multitude of precise regulations for autumn fattening "according to old custom" as to who was allowed to bring how many animals into which forests at what price. The unfree farmers had the right to drive their pigs into the forests of their noble or clerical masters, some of them even tax-free. These pigs were a central part of the subsistence economy, as they constituted a reliable source of food in winter with relatively little effort and regardless of the success of the grain harvest. lt was based on the concept of the "Notdurft", the idea that every household had the right to receive the supplies necessary for a lifestyle befitting one's rank - but nothing more. These rules reflected the social structures: interdependencies within the framework of the manorial system and an accepted social inequality that was softened and