page_title: German mediatisation
section_title: End of the free imperial cities
hierarchical_section_title: German mediatisation / Final Recess of February 1803 / Consequences / End of the free imperial cities
caption_attribution_description: English: Shooting target from 1802 or 1803 showing Württemberg soldiers parading in front of the town hall of Schwäbisch Hall. Württemberg peacefully occupied and annexed that city in 1802. Like nearly all the other free Imperial cities, Hall lost its independence in the course of the German mediatization of 1802-1803. Deutsch: Inbesitznahme der Reichsstadt Hall durch württembergisches Militär, Schützenscheibe der Schützenmeister Johann Georg Haag, J. G. Spaehmann und Johann Friedrich Groß (zeigt Rathaus und Marktplatz), 1802. Inschrift: Was Menschen Eigensinn getrent; doch die Natur verband; Dies gab der Genius der Zeit – dem theuren Vaterland! Nicht mit Hochgewitters Stürmen zogen Friedrichs Krieger ein: Ihre Losung ist das Streben, – Ihres Herrschers werth zu sein! ø 61,5 cm Keckenburgmuseum Schwäbisch Hall
context_page_description: German mediatisation was the major territorial restructuring that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany and the surrounding region by means of the mass mediatisation and secularisation of a large number of Imperial Estates. Most ecclesiastical principalities, free imperial cities, secular principalities, and other minor self-ruling entities of the Holy Roman Empire lost their independent status and were absorbed into the remaining states. By the end of the mediatisation process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to just 39.
  In the strict sense of the word, mediatisation consists in the subsumption of an immediate state into another state, thus becoming mediate, while generally leaving the dispossessed ruler with his private estates and a number of privileges and feudal rights, such as low justice. For convenience, historians use the term mediatisation for the entire restructuring process that took place at the time, whether the mediatised states survived in some form or lost all individuality. The secularisation of ecclesiastical states took place concurrently with the mediatisation of free imperial cities and other secular states.
context_section_description: The 51 free imperial cities had less to offer in the way of territory (7,365 square kilometres (2,844 sq mi)) or population (815,000) than the ecclesiastical states but the secular princes had long resented the independence of the ones enclaved within their territory. With a few exceptions, they suffered from an even worse reputation of decay and mismanagement than the ecclesiastical states.
  A few imperial cities had been included in some of 18th century stillborn secularisation plans, chiefly because they were either contiguous to or enclaved within a prince-bishopric targeted for secularisation. While the secret compensation provisions of the treaties of 1796 with Prussia, Baden and Württemberg targeted only ecclesiastical territories, by the time the Congress of Rastatt opened in late 1797, there were widespread rumors about the abolition of at least some cities. Alarmed by such rumors, the imperial cities of the Swabian Circle, where about half of all the imperial cities were located, held a special conference at Ulm in early March 1798 to examine the situation, for which they felt helpless. However, given that it was expected from the start that the handful of the largest and wealthiest cities would maintain their independence, the expected mediatisation of the imperial cities did not raise much public interest. The survival of an imperial city often hung by a thread: while Regensburg and Wetzlar, seats of the Imperial Diet and the Imperial Cameral Tribunal respectively, were still on the short list of imperial cities that were to survive in the June 1802 general compensation plan, they were secularized a few months later in order to beef up the newly created Principality of Aschaffenburg that was to constitute the territorial base of Archbishop von Dalberg, the Imperial Archchancellor. In the end, only Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Frankfurt, Augsburg, and Nuremberg survived mediatisation in 1803.
caption: Mediatisation of Schwäbisch Hall in contemporary imagery
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