Talk:Free imperial city

message: Should it not be "Free Imperial City"? --128.176.76.160 16:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
thread_title: What does "regaining its immediacy mean"

message: 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)
thread_title:  Complicated cases, two examples 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Free imperial