Imperial cities in the Holy Roman Empire, 1648

In the Holy Roman Empire, a free imperial city (German: freie Reichsstadt) was a city formally ruled by the emperor only—as opposed to the majority of cities in the Empire, which were governed by one of the many princes of the Empire, such as dukes or prince-bishops. Free Cities also had independent representation in the Reichstag of the Holy Roman Empire.

There was distinction on paper made between Reichsstädte (Imperial Cities) and Freie Städte (free cities). Imperial Cities were those formally ruled by secular princes. As vassals of the Emperor, they paid taxes to the Emperor and had to supply troops for his military campaigns.

Free Cities were those formally ruled by a prince-bishop. They were not required to pay Imperial taxes or raise troops except during a Crusade, and had other additional rights and privileges (which varied greatly among them). The Free Cities gained independence from their prince-bishops during the High Middle Ages. Examples are Basel (1000), Speyer (1111), Worms (1184), Mainz (1244, revoked 1462), Regensburg (1245), Strasbourg (1262) and Cologne (1288).

But over time, the difference became more and more blurred so that the "Free and Imperial Cities" were collectively known in the Diet as "Free Imperial Cities". What mattered more was the difference in wealth: rich cities, such as Lübeck or Augsburg, were genuinely self-ruling enclaves within the Empire. They waged war and made peace, controlled their own trade and permitted little interference from outside. In the later Middle Ages, many Free Cities formed Städtebünde (city leagues), such as the Hanseatic League. (Some members of these alliances were never Free Cities and joined with the permission of their territorial rulers.)

The cities gained (and sometimes lost) their freedom through the vicissitudes of medieval power politics. Some favored cities gained a charter by gift. Others purchased one from a prince in need of cash. Some won it by force of arms, others took it during times of chaos. Some cities became free through the extinction of dominant families, like the Hohenstaufen. Free Cities also lost their privileges. Some voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of a territorial magnate. Some, like Donauwörth in 1607, were stripped of their privileges by the Emperor for genuine or trumped-up reasons. Some were sold by the Emperor, such as Mühlhausen, Duisburg, and Offenburg.

Free and Imperial cities were not officially admitted as a Reichsstand to the Reichstag until 1489, and even then their votes were usually considered only advisory compared to the Benches of the Kurfürsten (Electors) and the Princes. The leagues of cities divided themselves into two groups, or benches, in the Imperial Diet, the Rhenish Bench and the Swabian Bench. By the time of the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the cities constituted a formal third "college" in the Diet. The most powerful Free Cities included Augsburg, Bremen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lübeck, and Nuremberg.

The number of Free Cities varied greatly over the centuries, as did their geographic distribution. In general, there were more Free Cities in areas where there were many small domains than in areas where individual princes held large territories. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica mentions a list drawn up in 1422 with 75 free cities, and another drawn up in 1521 with 84. Territorial consolidation gradually shrank the number to the 51 cities present at the 1792 Reichstag towards the end of the Empire. Most were in the southwest and Franconia, some in the north and west, none in the east. Some were former members of the Hanseatic League.

In the 16th and 17th century, a number of Free Cities were separated from the Empire due to external territorial change. Henry II of France seized the free cities connected to the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun and Toul. Similarly, Louis XIV of France seized many cities based on claims produced by his Chambers of Reunion. That way, Strasbourg and the ten cities of the Décapole were annexed. Also, when the Old Swiss Confederacy gained its independence from the Empire in 1648, the Swiss Imperial Cities of Basel, Bern, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, and Zürich left the Empire as cantons of the confederacy.

With the rise of Revolutionary France in Europe, this trend accelerated enormously. First between 1789 and 1792 the areas west of the Rhine were annexed by the revolutionary armies ending the long tradition of free cities as diverse as Cologne, Aachen, Düren, Speyer and Worms. Then, the Napoleonic Wars led to the reorganization of the Empire in 1803 (see German Mediatisation), where all of the free cities but six — the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck, and the cities of Frankfurt, Augsburg, and Nuremberg — were eliminated. Finally, Napoléon dissolved the Empire in 1806. By 1811, all of the free cities had been eliminated — Augsburg and Nuremberg had been annexed by Bavaria, Frankfurt had become the center of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt, a Napoleonic puppet state, and the three Hanseatic cities had been directly annexed by France as part of its effort to enforce the Continental Blockade against Britain. Hamburg and Lübeck with surrounding territories formed the département Bouches-de-l'Elbe, and Bremen the Bouches-du-Weser.

When the German Confederation was established in 1815, Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen and Frankfurt were once again made free cities. Frankfurt was annexed by Prussia in consequence of the part it took in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The three Hanseatic cities remained as constituent states of the new German Empire, and retained this role in the Weimar Republic and into the Third Reich, although under Hitler this status was purely notional. Due to Hitler's distaste for Lübeck^[1] and the need to compensate Prussia for its territorial losses under the Greater Hamburg Act, it was annexed to the latter in 1937. In the Federal Republic of Germany which was established after the war, Bremen and Hamburg became constituent states (Länder), a status which they retain to the present day. Berlin, which had never been a free city in its history, also received the status of a state after the war due to its status in divided post-war Germany.

See also[link]

• List of Free Imperial Cities
• Imperial immediacy
• Lübeck law
• Free city (antiquity)
• Royal free city

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.

v t e Free Imperial Cities of the Holy Roman Empire   As of 1792 Aachen Aalen Augsburg Biberach Bopfingen BremenH Buchau Buchhorn CologneH Dinkelsbühl DortmundH Eßlingen Frankfurt Friedberg Gengenbach Giengen GoslarH HamburgH Heilbronn Isny Kaufbeuren Kempten Kessenich Leutkirch Lindau LübeckH Memmingen Mühlhausen MülhausenD, S Nordhausen Nördlingen Nuremberg Offenburg Pfullendorf Ravensburg Regensburg Reutlingen Rothenburg RottweilS Schwäbisch Gmünd Schwäbisch Hall Schweinfurt Speyer Überlingen Ulm Wangen Weil Weißenburg in Bayern Wetzlar Wimpfen Windsheim Worms Zell Free Imperial Cities as of 1648   Cities that lost Imperial immediacy or gained independence before 1792 BaselS BernS Besançon Brakel Cambrai Diessenhofen Donauwörth Duisburg Düren Gelnhausen HagenauD Herford KaysersbergD KolmarD Konstanz LandauD Lemgo LucerneS Mainz Metz MunsterD ObernaiD Pfeddersheim Rheinfelden RosheimD St. GallenS Sarrebourg SchaffhausenS Schmalkalden SchlettstadtD SoestH SolothurnS Straßburg Toul TurckheimD Verden Verdun Warburg Weißenburg in ElsaßD ZürichS D Member of the Décapole H Member of the Hanseatic League S Member or associate of the Swiss Confederacy.

Imperial City may refer to:

Places[link]

• Imperial City, Beijing, the central section of Beijing
• Imperial City (Huế), a walled fortress and palace in the former capital of Vietnam.
• Free imperial city, city formally responsible only to the emperor in the Holy Roman Empire,.
• Cusco, an ancient Inca city in Peru often cited as The Imperial City

Fictional[link]

• Coruscant (during the reign of the Galactic Empire), a fictional planet in the center of the Star Wars galaxy
• Imperial City, Cyrodiil, the fictional capital of the Empire of Tamriel featured in the Elder Scrolls role-playing game series

Other[link]

It can also be a generic term for a major city that dominates the economic activities of a large region and which also builds impressive public and private structures and cultural institutions, even if it possesses a democratic government within the framework of a larger republic (for example, as described in the book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin).

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

1226 deed issued by Emperor Frederick II granting Imperial immediacy to the City of Lübeck

Imperial immediacy (German: Reichsfreiheit or Reichsunmittelbarkeit) was a privileged feudal and political status, which the estates of the realm such as an imperial city, a religious entity, a feudal principality, or a minor lordship could attain within the Holy Roman Empire. A reichsfrei city, abbey or territory was under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Imperial Diet (Reichstag), without any intermediary liege lord(s). In modern terms, it would be understood as a form of sovereignty.

Gradations[link]

Several immediate estates held the privilege to attend the Reichstag meetings in person including an individual vote (votum virile):

• the seven Prince-electors designated by the Golden Bull of 1356
• the other Princes of the Holy Roman Empire
  • secular: Dukes, Margraves, Landgraves etc.
  • ecclesiastical: Prince-Bishops and Prince-Provosts.

They formed the Imperial Estates together with those Counts and Barons, Imperial prelates and Imperial cities who only held a collective vote (votum curiatum).

Further immediate estates not represented in the Reichstag were the Imperial Knights as well as several abbeys and minor localities, the remains of those territories, which in the High Middle Ages had been under the direct authority of the Emperor and mostly had been given in pledge to the princes meanwhile.

Advantages and disadvantages[link]

Some additional advantages could include the right to collect taxes and tolls, hold a market, mint coins, bear arms, and conduct legal proceedings. The latter could include the so called Blutgericht (or "blood justice") through which capital punishment could be administered. These rights depended on the legal patents granted by the emperor.

Some disadvantages could include the direct intervention by imperial commissions, such as those that happened in several of the southwestern cities after the Schmalkaldic War and the potential restriction or outright loss of previously held legal patents. Other disadvantages could include the loss of all immediate rights, if the Emperor and/or the Imperial Diet could not defend those rights against outside aggression, such as that which occurred in the French Revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 required the emperor to renounce all claims to the portions of the Holy Roman Empire left of the Rhine. At the last meeting of the Imperial Diet (German: Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) in 1802-03, also called the German Mediatisation, most of the free imperial cities and the ecclesiastic states lost their imperial immediacy and were absorbed by several dynastic states.

Problems in understanding the Empire[link]

The Holy Roman Empire in 1789. Each of these states (different colors) on the map would have had a specific set of legal rights that governed its social, economic, and juridical relationships between the state and the emperor, and among the states themselves.

Understanding the practical application of the rights of immediacy makes the history of the Holy Roman Empire particularly difficult to understand, especially among modern historians. Even such contemporaries as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottlieb Fichte called the empire a monstrosity. Mid-19th century historians wrote of the Empire as something neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire, and in comparison to the British "empire", saw its German counterpart as an abysmal failure that reached its pinnacle of success in the early Middle Ages and declined thereafter.^[1] For nearly a century after the publication of James Bryce's monumental work The Holy Roman Empire (1864), this view prevailed among most English-speaking historians of the Early Modern period, and contributed to the development of the Sonderweg theory of the German past.^[2]

Citations[link]

See also[link]

• Imperial Abbey
• Imperial Estate
• Free Imperial City
• List of states of the Holy Roman Empire
• Mediatization

References[link]

• Braun, B.: Reichsunmittelbarkeit in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2005-05-03. URL last accessed 2006-11-29.
• Bryce, James (1838-1922), Holy Roman Empire, London, 1865.
• Sheehan, James, German History 1770-1866, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989.