page_title: Imperial Knight
section_title: Organization
hierarchical_section_title: Imperial Knight / History / Organization
caption_attribution_description: English: first print from book
context_page_description: The Free Imperial knights were free nobles of the Holy Roman Empire, whose direct overlord was the Emperor. They were the remnants of the medieval free nobility and the ministeriales. What distinguished them from other knights, who were vassals of a higher lord, was the fact that they had been granted Imperial immediacy, and as such were the equals in most respects to the other individuals or entities, such as the secular and ecclesiastical territorial rulers of the Empire and the Free Imperial cities, that also enjoyed Imperial immediacy. However, unlike all of those, the Imperial knights did not possess the status of Estates of the Empire, and therefore were not represented, individually or collectively, in the Imperial Diet.They tended to define their responsibilities to the Empire in terms of feudalized obligations to the Emperor, including personal service and strictly voluntary financial offerings paid to the Emperor himself.
  To protect their rights and avoid vassalage to more powerful nobles, they organized themselves into three unions in the late 15th century and into a single body in 1577, and fought to win recognition.
context_section_description: Lacking access to the Imperial Diet, in 1650 the immediate knights organized themselves into three circles (Ritterkreise): the Franconian, Swabian, and Rhenish Circles. The Circles in turn were divided into cantons (Ritterkantone), each of which exercised a high degree of autonomy. Each canon possessed a directorate (Direktorium), led by a director (Ritterhauptmann), who was elected by life, and a council (Ritterräte), whose members were elected for fixed terms. The director and councilors were knights themselves, but the daily activities of the Direktorium were carried out by legal experts (Konsulenten) and committees (Ausschüsse) staffed by non-nobles.
  The Knights as a group were governed by the General Directorate (Generaldirektorium). This exercised the jus retractus, the right to buy back any land sold to a non-knight for the original price within three years, and the just collectandi, the right to collect taxes for the upkeep of the knightly order, even on estates that had been sold to non-knights. The knights also had the right to tax their subjects directly, and also possessed the feudal rights to the corvée and the bannum. The knights' reputation for heavy taxes (the maligned Rittersteuer) and high judicial fines rendered them an anachronism in the eyes of imperial reformers.
  From 1577 on, the Imperial Knights met in a congress called the Generalkorrespondenztag ("General Correspondence Diet"), but the Circles and especially the Cantons became somewhat more important as their proximity meant that their interests were more closely aligned. Some immediate imperial fiefs, however, fell outside the structure of the Circles and their Cantons. The autonomous barony (Freiherrschaft) of Haldenstein (in modern-day Switzerland) is an example.
  By the late eighteenth century, the organization of the circles was as following:
  Franconian Circle (six cantons)
  Odenwald (seat: Kochendorf near Heilbronn)
  Steigerwald (seat: Erlangen)
  Altmühl (seat: Wilhermsdorf near Emskirchen)
  Baunach (seat: Nuremberg)
  Rhön-Werra (seat: Schweinfurt)
  Gebürg (seat: Bamberg)
  Swabian Circle (five cantons)
  Danube (seat: Ehingen)
  Hegau-Allgäu-Bodensee (seat: Radolfzell)
  Kocher (seat: Esslingen)
  Kraichgau (seat: Heilbronn)
  Neckar-Schwarzwald (seat: Tübingen)
  (Note: The semi-autonomous District Ortenau was affiliated with canton Neckar-Schwarzwald. District Ortenau served as the chief organizational connection to the empire for the Alsatian immediate nobility that had been absorbed by the French reunions of the seventeenth century.)
  Rhenish Circle (three cantons)
  Upper Rhine (seat: Mainz)
  Middle Rhine (seat: Friedberg)
  Lower Rhine (seat: Koblenz)
caption: The Franconian Circle from Des heiligen Römischen Reichs ohnmittelbahr = Freyer Ritterschafft Der Sechs Ort in Francken, 1720
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