page_title: Giengen
section_title: Protestant Reformation
hierarchical_section_title: Giengen / History / Free Imperial City (1395–1803) / Protestant Reformation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Brenz River at Giengen, circa 1910. Postcard postally used in 1915.
context_page_description: Giengen is a former Free Imperial City in eastern Baden-Württemberg near the border with Bavaria in southern Germany. The town is located in the district of Heidenheim at the eastern edge of the Swabian Alb, about 30 kilometers northeast of Ulm on the Brenz River.
  Giengen is the hometown of the Margarete Steiff corporation, who invented the teddy bear.
  Positioned on the Nuremberg-Ulm-Constance route, one of the main feeder routes of the Compostella Trail, Giengen is visited each year by an increasing number of walking pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella.
context_section_description: Like almost all the other Imperial Cities, Giengen was profoundly transformed by the Protestant Reformation, which made its way into the city-states before it did into the secular and ecclesiastical principalities of the Empire.
  Even before the advent of the Reformation, there had been much discontent against the pervasive influence of the Church, particularly in the Free Imperial Cities that, while largely independent politically, had to contend with the control of the Church in religious matters such as tithes, ecclesiastical tribunals, etc., not counting the fact that religious property and the clergy, both secular and regular, were largely exempted from taxation and civic control. Therefore, a final break with Rome and the local bishop—in the case of Giengen, the Bishop of Augsburg—meant the end of a severe irritant and a significant increase in the political reach of the new Protestant cities and princes who, from then on, will have full control over the reformed clergy, tithes and religious regulations and foundations.
  One Kaspar Pfeiffelmann was the first Protestant preacher to preach in Giengen, more specifically at the hospital church in 1528.  In 1531, after having been repeatedly requested by local burghers to hire a permanent Evangelical (Lutheran) preacher, the town Council finally hired preacher and reformer Martin Rauber. The City officially adopted the new Lutheran doctrine in 1537. Later that year, the famous reformer and theologian Martin Bucer from Strasburg visited Giengen. Catholic service was prohibited in 1556 and soon after, following the general trend already well underway in the other Free Cities, Giengen abandoned its conversion policy that relied on quiet persuasion and decreed that all Nonconformists such as the Anabaptists – deemed too radical and a threat to social order and religious peace – had to leave the city if they refused to convert to Lutheranism. 
  The city suffered heavily during the Thirty Years' War and was looted and ransomed repeatedly by Swedish, Imperial/Spanish and French troops and in 1634 a devastating fire destroyed much of the city. The last soldiers billeted in the city left in August 1650, more than a year after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. Life very slowly went back to normal and money was found to rebuild the schools and churches. The visiting Duke of Württemberg was wined and dined during a visit in 1655: the tiny independent city-state was entirely surrounded by Württemberg territory and good relations with the dukes were important. The population of Giengen, which has stood at close to 2000 on the eve of the War in 1618, was back to 1200 in 1651 and to 1700 in 1671. From the year of the fire to 1672, some 206 individuals - 95 from the area, 20 from Ulm, 29 from Bavaria and 62 from the rest of the Empire - have purchased Giengen's citizenship (Bürgerrecht). A new tax code adopted by the Town Council in 1677 caused considerable popular discontent and following a complaint to the Aulic Council, an imperial commission composed of the count of Oëttingen and members of the Town Council of Ulm, Giengen's powerful neighbor to the south, ruled that the guilds should be involved in the decision process on taxation. The rule was to remain in force until Giengen ceased to be a Free Imperial City in 1802.
caption: The Brenz River at Giengen, circa 1910
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