Post Your Answer
2 years ago in Legal History By Jennifer
How long was a Spann as a unit of measurement in the Habsburg territories during the seventeenth century, and how did it relate to other common units?
I'm creating a glossary for a translated volume of Habsburg legal texts. I need to explain the Spann not just with a metric equivalent, but in its contemporary context. Was it a subdivision of a Werkelle or a Klafter? Was it used for land, cloth, or both? How many Spann made a Shoe (Wiener Schuh)? I'm looking for its place in the measurement hierarchy to give readers an intuitive sense of its scale.
All Answers (1 Answers In All)
By Kumar Answered 1 year ago
Within the 17th-century Habsburg system, the Spann was a small, hand-based unit. Crucially, it was a subdivision of the Werkelle (work-ell), used for measuring cloth and small land plots. While regional variation existed, a common relationship was: 1 Wiener Klafter (fathom) = 6 Wiener Werkellen = 72 Wiener Spann. Given a Wiener Schuh (foot) was about 31.6 cm, and there were typically 12 Spann in a Schuh, this confirms the Spann length of ~2.63 cm per Spann in that specific Viennese system. However, I must stress that the Werkelle itself could vary, so the Spann derived from it was not a fixed, standalone standard but a proportional part of a larger, locally defined unit. Always define it relationally in your glossary.
Reply to Kumar
Related Questions