The Bergregal () was the historic right of ownership of untapped mineral resources in parts of German-speaking Europe; ownership of the Bergregal meant entitlement to the rights and royalties from mining. Historically, it was one of those privileges that constituted the original sovereign rights of the king.
In addition to the Bergregal, another important sovereign privilege was the Münzregal or minting rights, which was a consequence of the Bergregal since coins were minted near the mines from which their metal was obtained.
History
In the early days of the Roman Empire, the landowner had the right to extract minerals. The reason behind this was that mineral resources were seen as "fruit of the soil" which were deemed to belong the landowner. The first regalia, or royal privileges, emerged in the first millennium, but there was still no Bergregal governing mining rights as part of the laws regulating property. Emperors and kings, the nobility or clerics who ruled over a territory, established this right for themselves, based on their ownership of land and the mineral resources found therein. This was easy for the king or territorial princes because, as a rule, they were the actual landowners. But it was often political and economic circumstances rather than law and statute that were instrumental in the establishment of the Bergregal.
The Emperor, Barbarossa, had the Bergregal recorded in writing for the first time in Germany as part of the Roncaglian Constitution in 1158. This effectively removed the right to extract minerals from the landowner who, from then on, had to purchase such rights from the king. As a result of the Roncaglian Constitution, mining rights passed over time into the hands of the territorial lords. This led to arbitrary presumptions of rights by these territorial princes. Because of Kleinstaaterei – the plethora of minor states – and the special position of ecclesiastical principalities in the Holy Roman Empire, enforcement of the Bergregal by the emperor was virtually impossible. and so, in many cases, it was given to the princes. For example, Frederick I vested this privilege in Otto the Rich, the Margrave of Meissen. Likewise, the Bishop of Chur was given the Bergregal in 1349 and the King of Bohemia already received these rights even before the Golden Bull was issued.
In 1356, the Golden Bull finally enshrined in writing that these rights were ultimately held, not by the emperor, but by the seven electoral princes (the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg) as his territorial lords. Existing grants of rights to lower-ranking lords were unaffected. In general, the electoral princes were keen to retain the Bergregal for themselves.
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, saw the rights of the Bergregal pass from the electoral princes to the lesser nobility. To enforce their mining rights, the territorial lords had mining regulations enacted, the so-called Bergordnung, which regulated in detail the mining activities, the duties or tithes (the Zehnt), the structure of the mining authorities and the privileges of the miners themselves.
In the 19th century the Bergregal in the German states was gradually superseded by mining acts or Berggesetze. In Prussia, the Bergregal was ended by the General Mining Act for the Prussian States (Allgemeine Berggesetz für die Preußischen Staaten) or ABG of 24 June 1865. Landowners' rights were removed and mining regulations were clearly defined in the Berggesetz. This process began with the Napoleonic conquests, when French law was temporarily enacted in many parts of Germany, and was largely completed with the adoption of the General Mining Act of the Kingdom of Saxony (Allgemeinen Berggesetzes für das Königreich Sachsen) on 16 June 1868.
Legal implications and exercise
As a result of the Bergregal, there was a legal separation of property ownership and mining rights. Local landowners were only left with exploration and mining rights for a few unimportant minerals. The territorial prince, on the other hand, had three options by which he could exercise his rights under the Bergregal:
He could reserve the right to mine for himself (self-profit) He could award mining rights to a third party (transfer of profit) He could give everyone the right to mine (alienation of the Bergregal to third parties)