Imperial Estate
Open-knowledge reference entry
An Imperial Estate (Latin: Status Imperii; German: Reichsstand, plural: Reichsstände) was an entity or an individual of the Holy Roman Empire with representation and the right to vote in the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). Rulers of these Estates were able to exercise significant rights and privileges and were "immediate", meaning the only authority above them was that of the Holy Roman Emperor. They were thus able to rule their territories with a considerable degree of autonomy.
The system of imperial states replaced the more regular division of Germany into stem duchies in the early medieval period.
The old Carolingian stem duchies were retained as the major divisions of Germany under the Salian dynasty, but they became increasingly obsolete during the early high medieval period under the Hohenstaufen, and they were finally abolished in 1180 by Frederick Barbarossa in favour of more numerous territorial divisions. From 1489, the Imperial Estates represented in the Diet were divided into three chambers, the college of prince-electors (Kurfürstenkollegium/den Kurfürstenrat), the college of imperial princes (Reichsfürstenrat) and the college of imperial cities. Counts and nobles were not directly represented in the Diet in spite of their immediate status, but were grouped into "benches" (Grafenbänke) with a single vote each.
Imperial Knights and imperial villages had immediate status but were not represented in the Diet.
Composition
Imperial Estates could be either ecclesiastic or secular. The ecclesiastical Estates were led by:
the three clerical Prince-electors: the Archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier;
Prince-Archbishops and Prince-Bishops as well as Prince-Abbots and Prince-Provosts of the Empire;
Imperial Prelates, immediate Priors and Provosts;
Grand Masters of military orders like the Teutonic Knights or Knights Hospitaller.
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This entry incorporates text from “Imperial Estate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.