Insurance file
An insurance file was created when princes changed their denomination in the 17th and 18th centuries to secure the country's existing creed. For the special case, it affirmed what the normal year regulation of the Peace of Westphalia had generally stipulated in 1648, namely the ineffectiveness of the principle Cuius regio, eius religio of 1555.
Nassau victories
Count Johann VIII of Nassau-Siegen converted from the Reformed to the Roman Catholic denomination in 1608 . In order to reverse his disinheritance initially pronounced by his father, he signed an act of insurance on December 31, 1617 to preserve the Reformed denomination in Nassau-Siegen after he took office. He didn't do it later.
Saxony
Elector Friedrich August I (* 1670; † 1733) converted to the Roman Catholic denomination in 1697 in order to be elected as King of Catholic Poland . His Protestant homeland, Saxony , remained Protestant , which was secured with an insurance file.
Württemberg
Prince Karl Alexander von Württemberg (* 1684; † 1737 ) was a successful military leader in the imperial service. To improve his career opportunities, he converted to the Catholic faith in 1712. The Hereditary Duke of Württemberg died in 1731, so that he succeeded in the line of succession. In order to be able to become duke in the Protestant Württemberg in 1733, he signed an act of insurance.
Hessen-Kassel
The best-known act of insurance is the one for Hessen-Kassel from 1754. After it became known that the Hereditary Prince Friedrich had converted to the Roman Catholic denomination , which had already taken place in 1749, Frederick's father, the reformed Landgrave Wilhelm VIII , forced his son, together with the Hessian estates , to to sign the insurance file.
With guarantees from England and Denmark , as well as the Corpus Evangelicorum - the evangelical imperial estates - it became an international political matter and played a role in the diplomatic history of the Seven Years' War . It further strengthened the traditionally good relations between Hessen-Kassel and England, which prepared the political climate for the provision of Hesse-Kassel troops for England in the American War of Independence .
literature
- Reinhard Dietrich : The state constitution in Hanau. The position of the lords and counts in Hanau-Münzenberg based on the archival sources (= Hanauer Geschichtsblätter , vol. 34). Hanauer Geschichtsverein, Hanau 1996, ISBN 3-9801933-6-5 , pp. 208ff.