A burgher was called a city dweller in medieval Western Europe, mainly in Germany. These people left peasant labor and made their craft their main occupation.
At the turn of the X-XI centuries in Europe, there were massive escapes from the villages of artisans, dissatisfied with the high rent of the feudal lords. These people settled at the intersection of the main roads, near convenient sea harbors, near river crossings, and practiced their craft. Over time, the settlements expanded, both peasants and merchants came to the artisans for the necessary products. This is how cities were founded with the first burghers.
Development of burghers
Craftsmen owned workshops and workshops, produced their own products and had their own money. At an early stage of urban development, the urban community freely accepted new residents into its composition, helping the feudal-dependent peasants to acquire freedom. Gradually, burghers became an influential force in society. Personal freedom, exclusive jurisdiction of the city court and the right to dispose of one's property were the obligatory signs of a burgher state. Medieval cities were small in size, rarely when the number of inhabitants exceeded ten thousand people. But in each settlement there was a senior burgher - burgomaster, head of self-government.
Burger lifestyle
The life of urban artisans proceeded in workshops, workshops, ateliers, in city markets. They had a well-groomed house and economy, the children of burghers from an early age were involved in work, helping their parents. Schools were opened, accessible to the children of all townspeople. Children were taught not only to read, write and count, but also to draw up business papers, paid great attention to the study of measures and weights.
The burghers were economically interested in centralizing the country and, in most cases, supported the royal power against the large feudal lords. They actively participated in anti-feudal demonstrations, together with the peasants. It was the burghers that contributed to the development of commodity-money relations and the creation of urban culture, preparing the ground for the humanist movement of the Renaissance. Over time, some artisans became wealthy and managed to enter the emerging bourgeois class, while others, on the contrary, went bankrupt and went to work for hire. By the 18th century, not all townspeople began to be called burghers, but only the middle, economically successful, strata of the urban population. The burghers gradually separated into an estate community and began to have political weight. In modern everyday life, a burgher is a person of established views, afraid of change, a philistine, a bourgeoisie.