Imperial immediacy

Being rich immediately, also rich free the Holy Roman Empire were those persons and institutions referred to, which were subject to no other rule, but were immediately and directly subordinate to the emperor in the late medieval and early modern. They were labeled as rich immediate objects or Immediatstände.

People

There are three groups of direct imperial people or entities:

The first group included the electors, the other princes of the empire and the direct imperial prince-bishops. The second group were the direct imperial counts and lords, the imperial cities and the direct imperial abbots and abbesses. All together formed the imperial estates.

Immediately Empire - but not belonging to the estates of the empire - were the Imperial Knight, a number of monasteries (especially nunneries ) and some free places or villages Empire. These rich people were the remaining immediate direct vassals of the emperor, who had formed the Crown Estate in the Middle Ages and much more numerous than at the end of the empire. In many cases, the imperial immediacy of a place or monastery was controversial, because the neighboring princes sought to rich immediate areas to join their territories.

End

With the Imperial Diet of 1803 the imperial immediacy of the Prince Bishops, rich monasteries and (with few exceptions) and the imperial cities was completed, that is, this far -reaching immediate supernatants were mediated. In the following years most knighthoods, counties and minor principalities lost the imperial immediacy and the country's domination of larger principalities were subordinated. With the dissolution of the empire in 1806, the institution of imperial immediacy heard then finally to exist.