Dutch term – Grootburger and Kleinburger

A burger is a burgher, a resident of the town with certain rights. Some towns had different levels of burghership, the grootburger [large burgher] and the kleinburger [small burgher]. The rights associated with each status depend on the location and period.

Example: Burghers in Deventer

This example is a translated abstract from information provided by the Historisch Centrum Overijssel, location Deventer.

The city of Deventer in Overijssel recognized residents and burghers. Residents could only live in the city, while burghers had additional rights:

• Trade in the city
• Exemption from tolls
• Use of the city meadows along the IJssel river.

In 1545, the city of Deventer was growing and the number of people grazing their cattle on the city meadows was getting too large. The city divided the burgher rights into two categories. Grootburgers were allowed to use the meadows while kleinburgers were not. By 1560, a burgher orphanage was erected but only for the orphans of grootburgers. Other children were taken care of by the poor administration or were admitted to the Kinderhuis [children’s house], established in 1679.

View of Deventer, 1615. Credits: Claes Jansz. Visscher, collection Rijksmuseum (public domain).

In the 1800s, fewer people had cattle so being a grootburger had less value. In 1866, the city decided to stop granting new grootburger rights. The people who still had the rights could choose between an annual payment of thirty guilders or the use of the meadow for one horse.

Today’s grootburgers have to meet the following criteria:

• They must descend in the strict male line from the families who were registered as grootburgers in Deventer in 1866.
• They have to be born in Deventer.
• They have to have their own household. For women, the rights become dormant upon marriage. They can only claim their rights if they are single, divorced, or widowed.
• If they lived elsewhere, they have wait a year after returning to Deventer before claiming their rights.

At this moment, there are 116 grootburgers in 30 families. At least one grootburger uses his right to have a horse use the meadows. The others get 13.61 euros, the equivalent of 30 guilders, per year.