Talk:Free imperial city

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Should it not be "Free Imperial City"? --128.176.76.160 16:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• There is no reason to capitalize the "I" in the word "imperial" "C" in the word "city" in this article. It is not a name of a particular city (like Mexico City) and the adjective "imperial" is not and integral part of a name for something (like Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino), but both are merely constituents of a term for a type of city. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 00:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whether to use capitalization or not is indeed problematic. In his English-language book (Society and Politics in Germany, 1500-1750), the German G. Benecke does not capitalize at all ("attempt to become an imperial free town"; "an imperial town") and don't even use the word city anywhere ("great towns like Nuremberg"), but he very seldom refers to that type of city anyway.

Recent English-language historians of the HRE who have dedicated sections/chapters on Free Imperial Cities tend to capitalize everything (Gagliardo: "the Imperial City of Weztlar"; "former Imperial Cities"); Whaley ("The Free and Imperial Cities" "the survival as independent entities of Imperial Cities, Imperial Counts, and Imperial Knights is to a large extend...;"The Imperial Cites, roughly fify of which remained after 1648"). But in a fairly recent article dedicated to those cities,C. Scott Dixon does not capitalize ("the imperial city of Nuremberg"; "the imperial cities").

I noticed that the word "Free" is often added at the beginning or used in the title of a chapter, but after that it disappears ("the Imperial Cities"). Maybe we could do the same. --Lubiesque (talk) 14:44, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article indicates that one city, after loosing its rights "was able to regain its immediacy." Should this be immediately, eventually, or is immediacy a technical term? Stifynsemons (talk) 04:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I had to guess, I would posit this use of "immediate" means "umediated", i.e., directly ruled by the emperor, which is a rather arcane (but correct, I think) meaning of "immediate". But I don't know. mkehrt (talk) 08:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My hometown Rostock was a `Mediat-Stadt´ (mediat city), which means that it had to appeal to the Duke of Mecklenburg first before it could go further and appeal to the `Reichsversammlung´ (Estates of the Holy roman empire of the german nation) and later to the emperor himself. But it was not ruled by anyone but the city-council. Free imperial cities - like Lübeck - were souvereigns by themselves and could reject any propositions, threats and orders (or whatsoever) from outsiders. Only the `Reichstag´ could state their unlawfullness in certain affairs and force a `Reichsschluss´ (conclusive act of the estates) to urge them.

Before You ask: I am a historian.--139.30.128.38 (talk) 10:26, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mortgaged cities: Gelnhausen

The list Lost imperial immediacy or no longer part of the Holy Roman Empire by 1792 in Template:Free imperial cities includes Gelnhausen, which is a good example for this case. While looking whether it had imperial immediacy in the 17th century I found (History of Gelnhausen [de]) that it was continually mortgaged by the emperor from 1349 to 1803 to changing creditors. Additionally, the German version of this article (Freie Reichsstadt)'s entry for Gelnhausen says "protracted struggles from 1600 to about 1750 about the legal status of the town's immediacy". This was by far not the only such case, as stated in Reichspfandschaft [de] (which sadly lacks an exhaustive list).

Contradictory imperial documents: Essen

For the city of Essen there exist two imperial charters concerning immediacy, issued only five years apart (in 1372 and 1377), that first confirmed possession of the town, including immediacy, to the Princess of Essen Abbey and then to Essen city council. This created an unclear legal situation and recurring disputes until the Empire's dissolution in 1803.

Given time I'd like to do some sources work and add a new section "Disputed cases" (or similar).
I would appreciate some help with that endeavour. ΟΥΤΙΣ (talk) 07:04, 15 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the Holy Roman Empire, the collective term free and imperial cities (German: Freie und Reichsstädte), briefly worded free imperial city (Freie Reichsstadt, Latin: urbs imperialis libera), was used from the fifteenth century to denote a self-ruling city that had a certain amount of autonomy and was represented in the Imperial Diet.[1] An imperial city held the status of Imperial immediacy, and as such, was subordinate only to the Holy Roman Emperor, as opposed to a territorial city or town (Landstadt) which was subordinate to a territorial prince – be it an ecclesiastical lord (prince-bishop, prince-abbot) or a secular prince (duke (Herzog), margrave, count (Graf), etc.). 112.198.112.253 (talk) 14:22, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]