Charles VII was Prince-Elector of Bavaria from 26 February 1726 and Holy Roman Emperor from 24 January 1742 to his death. He was also King of Bohemia from 1741 to 1743. Charles was a member of the House of Wittelsbach, and his reign as Holy Roman Emperor thus marked the end of three centuries of uninterrupted Habsburg imperial rule, although he was related to the Habsburgs by both blood and marriage.
The Treaty of Lunéville was signed in the Treaty House of Lunéville on 9 February 1801. The signatory parties were the French Republic and Emperor Francis II, who signed on his own behalf as ruler of the hereditary domains of the House of Austria and on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire. The signatories were Joseph Bonaparte and Count Ludwig von Cobenzl, the Austrian foreign minister. The treaty formally ended Austrian and Imperial participation in the War of the Second Coalition and the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as the Imperial Kingdom of Italy.
During the early modern period, the Holy Roman Empire was divided into imperial circles, administrative groupings whose primary purposes were the organization of common defensive structure and the collection of imperial taxes. They were also used as a means of organization within the Imperial Diet and the Imperial Chamber Court. Each circle had a circle diet, although not every member of the circle diet would hold membership of the Imperial Diet as well.
Imperial Reform is the name given to repeated attempts in the 15th and 16th centuries to adapt the structure and the constitutional order of the Holy Roman Empire to the requirements of the early modern state and to give it a unified government under either the Imperial Estates or the emperor's supremacy.
King of the Romans was the title used by the king of East Francia following his election by the princes from the reign of Henry II (1002–1024) onward.
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger FBA is a German historian. She mainly researches the early modern period and has held the chair for early modern history at the University of Münster. Stollberg-Rilinger is one of the leading representatives of research that examines the constitutional history of the Holy Roman Empire on the basis of symbolic-ritual forms of communication. Her work on rituals, symbolic communication and ceremonial influenced research on the exercise of power in the pre-modern era.
The Leipzig Book Fair Prize is a literary award assigned annually during the Leipzig Book Fair to outstanding newly released literary works in the categories "Fiction", "Non-fiction" and "Translation". The Leipzig Book Fair Prize has been awarded since the Deutscher Bücherpreis was ceased in 2005, and is one of the most important literary awards in Germany. The winner in each category is awarded €15,000.
The Treaty of Pyritz settled claims of the House of Pomerania and the House of Hohenzollern regarding the legal status and succession in the Duchy of Pomerania on 26 and 28 March 1493. John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg of the Hohenzollern renounced the Electorate of Brandenburg's claims to hold the Pomeranian duchy as a fief on 26 March in Pyritz. In turn, Bogislaw X, Duke of Pomerania acknowledged Brandenburgian succession in his duchy in case of the extinction of his dynasty on 28 March in Königsberg. The treaty was the most important achievement of Bogislaw X's foreign policy. It was confirmed and amended when a final settlement between the two houses was reached in the Treaty of Grimnitz in 1529.
The Treaty of Grimnitz was the final settlement of a long-standing dispute between the House of Pomerania and the House of Hohenzollern regarding the legal status and succession in the Duchy of Pomerania. It renewed and amended the Treaty of Pyritz of 1493.
Michael Epkenhans is a German military historian known for his works dealing with the German Imperial Navy. He was the director of the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung in Friedrichsruh from 1996 to 2009. In February 2009 he became the director of research for the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt der Bundeswehr in Potsdam. Following a reorganisation in 2013, the organisation became the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr.
The Imperial Diet was the deliberative body of the Holy Roman Empire. It was not a legislative body in the contemporary sense; its members envisioned it more like a central forum where it was more important to negotiate than to decide.
The Army of the Holy Roman Empire was created in 1422 and came to an end when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Ewiger Landfriede of 1495, passed by Maximilian I, German king and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was the definitive and everlasting ban on the medieval right of vendetta (Fehderecht). In fact, despite being officially outlawed, feuds continued in the territory of the empire until well into the 16th century.
Imperial Army or Imperial Troops was a name used for several centuries, especially to describe soldiers recruited for the Holy Roman Emperor during the early modern period. The Imperial Army of the Emperor should not be confused with the Army of the Holy Roman Empire, which could only be deployed with the consent of the Imperial Diet. The Imperialists effectively became a standing army of troops under the Habsburg Emperors from the House of Austria, which is why they were also increasingly described in the 18th century as "Austrians", although its troops were recruited not just from the Archduchy of Austria but from all over the Holy Roman Empire.
Circle troops were the contingents of soldiers that the Imperial Circles (Reichskreise) actually placed at the disposal of the Army of the Holy Roman Empire or Reichsarmee. Following the Imperial Defence Order (Reichsdefensionalordnung), all imperial circles in the empire were obliged to provide contingents of troops, although not all did so in the event. The Imperial Register (Reichsmatrikel) laid down how many troops the individual Imperial States had to make available to the Reichsarmee.
The Imperial Register was a list of the Imperial Estates of the Holy Roman Empire that specified the precise numbers of troops they had to supply to the Army of the Holy Roman Empire and/or the financial support they had to make available to sustain the Army. An entry in the register was often viewed as an important indicator of the imperial immediacy of an imperial estate, although that was not always undisputed. The importance of the register for historical research lies in the fact that all Estates were recorded in it. However, it also contains obvious errors.
The Circle Colonel was an office in the Imperial Circles of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the Early Modern Period.
The itio in partes was a procedure of the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire between 1648 and 1806. In this procedure, the members of the diet divided into two bodies (corpora), the Corpus Evangelicorum and the Corpus Catholicorum, irrespective of the colleges to which they otherwise belonged. That is, the Protestant (Evangelical) members of the College of Electors, the College of Princes and the College of Cities gathered together separately from the Catholic members of the same. The two bodies then negotiated with each other, but debated and voted among themselves. A decision was reached only when both bodies agreed. The itio in partes could be invoked whenever there was a unanimous vote of one body. At first, it could only be invoked in matters affecting religion, but gradually this requirement was dropped.
The proclamation of the German Empire, also known as the Deutsche Reichsgründung, took place in January 1871 after the joint victory of the German states in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of the November Treaties of 1870, the southern German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, with their territories south of the Main line, Württemberg and Bavaria, joined the Prussian-dominated "North German Confederation" on 1 January 1871. On the same day, the new Constitution of the German Confederation came into force, thereby significantly extending the federal German lands to the newly created German Empire. The Day of the founding of the German Empire, January 18, became a day of celebration, marking when the Prussian King William I was proclaimed German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, France.
The Swabian College of Imperial Counts was the gathering of the Imperial Counts and Imperial Lords of Swabia to safeguard their interests in the Imperial Diet, especially at its Imperial Council and in the Circle of Swabia.
