anja amend-traut action and asserting any claim or demand or the like, be it in court or out of court.” ([D]ergestalten und also, daß ich nun und nimmer mehr wegen solcher meiner überlassung in Königl. Preußische dienste, einige Klage, Anspruch, forderung, oder sonsten etwas zu keiner zeith jemahles wieder gerichtl. oder außer gerichtlich erheben, formiren, oder vornehmen[…] wolle.)120 The involvement of judicial bodies in these proceedings is informative, because the intentions pursued by the parties with the declarations must be distinguished from the question of whether the judiciary acknowledged the procedural effect of renunciations. For the Middle Ages, this can at least not uniformly be answered.121 And empirical studies, safe for individual studies,122 do also not exist for the practice of court rulings in the early modern age. 1. Only by exception, the Imperial Chamber Court or any other official authority did influence the litigants to reach amicable agreements. On the other hand, after entry of appearance the adverse party regularly had to cooperate in the dispute resolution. A unilateral declaration thereon was not sufficient. 2. On the whole, the examined files reflect a practice being friendly towards amicable settlements. In case of obvious lack of admissibility of a legal remedy, the parties were anyway willing to resolve swiftly the dispute. With regard to the enforceability of rights or claims under substantive law, the high willingness to resolve amicably the matter was presumably owed to the fact that the disputing parties realised that they could achieve a better result by themselves than by relying on the administration of justice by Imperial Chamber Court judges.123 The bequeathed complaints about lack of legal protection before the highest court of the Empire are especially related to the long duration of proceedings and 120 HStAStuttgart, C3, fascicle no. 3635, letter of 11 February 1752, without [Q]. 121 Schlosser, Hans 1990, pp. 102-103. 122 Amend-Traut, Anja 2013 pp. 91-116. 123 In this sense also already Haas, Damian Ferdinand 1786, p. 182. 107 Conclusion
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