freehold

Which translation, when

Why

Freehold is best rendered Volleigentum, with a caveat about structure. English land law does not know Eigentum in the continental sense: all land is held of the Crown, and what a person holds is an estate. Freehold, today the fee simple absolute in possession, is the estate of indefinite duration, the nearest thing to owning the land outright. German Eigentum, § 903 BGB, by contrast, is direct and unitary, the owner dealing with the thing at will and excluding others, with no tenure standing above it. For most translation the freeholder is, in practical effect, the owner, so Volleigentum or Eigentum conveys the position; the caveat is that the English structure is one of estates and tenure, not of absolute ownership. The distinction that must survive translation is the one inside English law, between freehold and leasehold: the first is held indefinitely, the second is a time-limited estate that falls back to the freeholder. So Volleigentum carries freehold adequately, provided it is not also used for a leasehold and provided the tenurial structure is understood rather than assumed away.

Typical mistakes

• English law grants estates, not Eigentum; freehold is the strongest estate and maps to Volleigentum in practical effect, but the two rest on different structures, so asserting they are identical overstates the fit.
• Freehold must be kept apart from leasehold: the first is held indefinitely, the second is time-limited and reverts, so rendering both as Eigentum erases the distinction.
• A freeholder holds ownership, not mere possession, so a possession word misstates it.

What matters

Rendering an English land title, the translation should use Volleigentum or Eigentum for freehold as the practical equivalent of full ownership, while signalling that English law works through estates rather than Eigentum and that freehold stands against a time-limited leasehold. Treating the two estates alike, or reading tenure as identical to German ownership, misleads.

Examples