23. Brunner ignored the word “feudalism” altogether, Kaminsky and Melton, “Land” and Lordship, note 78 in their introduction. Although all would admit the importance of the autogenous rights of the magnates in Germany and the widespread existence of allodial property, vassalage was not unknown there, and, it might be added, allodial holdings were not at all uncommon in the west. See, for example, Lewis, A. R., The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society (718–1050) (Austin, 1965).Google ScholarFleckenstein, , Early Medieval Germany, trans. Smith, B. S. (Amsterdam, 1978), 88Google Scholar, makes the excellent point that the “feudal system” might more properly be called allodialism. Nevertheless, the adjective feudal and the noun Lehnwesen appear regularly in German historical writing, including Fleckenstein's, “Die Grundlegung der europäischen Einheit,” reprinted in Fleckenstein, Ordnungen und formende Kräfte, 142–43, where he singles out feudalism (Lehnwesen) as one of the most important “general European characteristics” (gesamteuropäische Züge) of the Middle Ages. Fuhrmann, Germany, 33, writes, “The king's power depended largely on the feudal relationship.” See also Keller, Zwischen regionaler Begrenzung, 70. It is certainly difficult to deny that vassalage was at least almost as common in Germany as in France. It might also be noted that “feudalism” (classically defined) never really existed anywhere in medieval Europe. See, for example, Brown, E.A.R., “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” American Historical Review 79 (1974): 1063–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is fallacious to set up a static definition of feudalism based on the presumption of plenitude of fiefs in France and England and, then, to argue from the evidence of widespread allodial holdings east of the Rhine that medieval Germany was somehow different from its western European neighbours because “classic” feudalism did not exist in the Ottonian Reich, In this regard, see Werner, “Important Noble Families,” 144–45, who has gone so far as to argue that the autogenous rights of the nobility actually originated in Roman Gaul and spread from there to Germania libra, not the other way around as earlier scholars believed. Werner, it is necessary to add, stresses the dependence of the early medieval monarchy on the nobility in both Germany and in France. FOr important literature on feudalism orginating from the former German Democratic Republic, see Müller-Mertens, E., Die Reichsstruktur im Spiegel der Herrschaftspraxis Ottos des Grossen: Mit historiographischen Prolegomena zur Frage Feudalstaat auf deutschem Boden, seit wann deutscher Feudalstaat? (Berlin, 1980)Google Scholar, and Herrmann, J., “Allod und Feudum als Grundlagen des west-und mitteleuropäischen Feudalismus und der feudalen Staatsbildung,” in Beriträge zur Entstehung des Staates, ed. Herrmann, and Sellnow, I. (Berlin, 1973), 164–201.Google Scholar