German mediatization

German mediatisation (; ) was the major redistribution and reshaping of territorial holdings that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany by means of the subsumption and secularisation of a large number of Imperial Estates, prefiguring, precipitating, and continuing after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. 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 by the remaining states. By the end of the mediatisation process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to 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 persisted 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.

The mass mediatisation and secularisation of German states that took place at the time was not initiated by Germans. It came under relentless military and diplomatic pressure from revolutionary France and Napoleon. It constituted the most extensive redistribution of property and territories in German history prior to 1945.Whaley, J., ''Germany and the Holy Roman Empire (1493–1806)'', Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 620.

Background

Although most of its neighbors coalesced into relatively centralized states before the 19th century, Germany did not follow that path. Instead, the Holy Roman Empire remained a feudal patchwork comprising "polyglot congeries of literally hundreds of nearly sovereign states and territories ranging in size from considerable to minuscule". From a high of nearly four hundred – 136 ecclesiastical and 173 secular lords plus 85 free imperial cities – on the eve of the Reformation, this number had only reduced to a little less than 300 by the late-18th century. The traditional explanation for this fragmentation () has focused on the gradual usurpation by the princes of the powers of the Holy Roman Emperor during the Staufen period (1138–1254), to the extent that by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Emperor had become a mere . In recent decades, some historians have maintained that the fragmentation of Germany was not to be found in the misfortunes, weakness or mistakes of imperial dynasties, but rather in the huge geographical extent of the Empire and the vigor of aristocratic and ecclesiastical rule in its localities. Successive imperial dynasties were compelled to accept a set of circumstances that could not be reversed until the 19th century: that the autonomous rule of the bishops, abbots, and secular princes, interspersed with independent city-states and lands of the imperial knights, constituted the German political structure, in other words, local sovereignty under the Emperor's suzerainty. Already in the 12th century, the secular and spiritual princes did not regard themselves as the Emperor's subordinates, still less his subjects, but as rulers in their own right – and they jealously defended their established sphere of predominance. At the time of Emperor Frederick II's death in 1250, it had already been decided that the '' regnum Teutonicum'' was "an aristocracy with a monarchical head".

Among those states and territories, the ecclesiastical principalities were unique to Germany. Historically, the Ottonian and early Salian Emperors, who appointed the bishops and abbots, used them as agents of the imperial crown – as they considered them more dependable than the dukes they appointed and who often attempted to establish independent hereditary principalities. The emperors expanded the power of the Church, and especially of the bishops, with land grants and numerous privileges of immunity and protection as well as extensive judicial rights, which eventually coalesced into a distinctive temporal principality: the Hochstift. The German bishop became a "prince of the Empire" and direct vassal of the Emperor for his ''Hochstift'', while continuing to exercise only pastoral authority over his larger diocese. The personal appointment of bishops by the Emperors had sparked the investiture controversy in the 11th century, and in its aftermath the emperor's control over the bishops' selection and rule diminished considerably. The bishops, now elected by independent-minded cathedral chapters rather than chosen by the emperor or the pope, were confirmed as territorial lords equal to the secular princes.

Secularisation

Early secularisations

The register prepared for the 1521 Imperial Diet of Worms listed as ecclesiastical Estates three ecclesiastical electors, four archbishops, 46 bishops and 83 lesser prelates (imperial abbots and abbesses) compared to 180 secular lords. By 1792 only three electors, one archbishop, 29 bishops and prince-abbots, and 40 prelates remained, alongside 165 secular Estates. The decline had started well before the Reformation, which only accelerated the trend for secular rulers to incorporate into their territories the material assets of Church fiefs. Many of the ecclesiastical Estates recorded in the 1521 register were already disappearing this way, including 15 prince-bishoprics. In the course of the Reformation, several of the bishoprics in the north and northeast were secularized and transformed into secular duchies, mostly to the benefit of Protestant princes. In the later sixteenth century the Counter-Reformation attempted to reverse some of these secularisations, and the question of the fates of secularized territories became an important one in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). In the end, the Peace of Westphalia confirmed the secularisation of a score of prince-bishoprics, including the archbishoprics of Bremen and Magdeburg and six bishoprics with full political powers, which were assigned to Sweden, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. On the other hand, Hildesheim and Paderborn – under Protestant administration for decades and given up for lost – were restored as prince-bishoprics. In addition, the Peace conclusively reaffirmed the imperial immediacy, and therefore the de facto independence, of the prince-bishops and imperial abbots, free imperial cities, imperial counts, as well as the imperial knights. According to one authority, the sixty-five ecclesiastical rulers then controlled one-seventh of the total land area and approximately 12% of the Empire's population, perhaps three and a half million subjects.

Owing to the traumatic experience of the Thirty Years' War and in order to avoid a repetition of this catastrophe, the German rulers great or small were now inclined to value law and legal structures more highly than ever before in the history of the Empire. This explains in good part why medium and small states, both ecclesiastical and secular, were able to survive and even prosper in the vicinity of powerful states with standing armies such as Brandenburg/Prussia, Bavaria and Austria.

18th-century secularisation plans

While no actual secularisation took place during the century and a half that followed the Peace of Westphalia, there was a long history of rumors and half-baked plans on possible secularisations. The continued existence of independent prince-bishoprics, an anomalous phenomenon unique to the Holy Roman Empire, was increasingly considered an anachronism especially, but not exclusively, by the Protestant princes, who also coveted these defenceless territories. Thus, secret proposals by Prussia to end the War of the Austrian Succession called for increasing the insufficient territorial base of the Wittelsbach Emperor Charles VII through his annexation of some prince-bishoprics. In 1743, Frederick II's minister Heinrich von Podewils wrote a memorandum that suggested giving to the Wittelsbach Emperor the bishoprics of Passau, Augsburg and Regensburg, as well as the imperial cities of Augsburg, Regensburg and Ulm. Frederick II added the archbishopric of Salzburg to the list and Charles VII went as far as adding the bishoprics of Eichstätt and Freising. The plan caused a sensation, and outrage among the prince-bishops, the free imperial cities and the other minor imperial estates, and the bishops discussed raising an army of 40,000 to defend themselves against the Emperor who contemplated grabbing ecclesiastical land that his coronation oath committed him to protect. Although the sudden death of Charles VII put an end to this scheming, the idea of secularisation did not fade away. It was actively discussed during the Seven Years' War, and again during Joseph II's maneuverings over the Bavarian inheritance and during his later exchange plan to swap Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands, which included a secret provision for the secularisation of the Archbishopric of Salzburg and the Provostry of Berchtesgaden. Yet, none of these projects ever came close to be implemented because, in the end, key actors appreciated that the secularisation of one single prince-bishopric would open a Pandora's box and have severe repercussions on the institutional stability of the Empire.

Impact of the French Revolution

By the late 18th century, the continued existence of the Holy Roman Empire, despite its archaic constitution, was not seriously threatened from within its limits. An external factor – the French Revolution and the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte – brought about its demise.

The outbreak of the French Revolution had immediate repercussions in Germany. From July 1789, a steady stream of French émigrés began pouring in Germany. While most neighboring secular rulers, such as the Palatine Elector, the Margrave of Baden and the Duke of Württemberg, remained cautious, even following the confiscation of their property and jurisdictions in Alsace, the ecclesiastical rulers, who in addition to Church property had seen their diocesan rights abolished in that province, showed no such restraint. The Archbishop-Elector of Mainz offered hospitality to the Comte d'Artois, and the Prince of Condé and their presence attracted many others. The Archbishop-Elector of Trier

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