Manorialism or Seigneurialism was the organizing principle of rural economy an society widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe;was characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in labor (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), produce ("in kind") or, rarely, money. In the Eastern parts of Prussia, the Rittergut manors of Junkers remained until World War II.