Free town

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With free city or free city are cities called that managed themselves, regardless of the federal structure of the surrounding area, in which certain political order they are embedded.

middle Ages

Originally, this was the name given to the cities that were able to free themselves from the rule of their (arch) bishops in the course of the 13th and 14th centuries in often protracted battles. They had almost all the rights of public authority , self- taxation , military exemption , and mostly also jurisdiction . Examples are Cologne , Soest , Mainz (until 1462), Augsburg , Worms , Speyer , Strasbourg and Basel .

In contrast to the imperial cities , the free cities owed the emperor neither taxes nor compulsion to obey and could not be pledged by the empire. They could only be used to defend the city and for crusades .

Royal free cities in Hungary are cities with the right to self-government , from 1405 on participation in the Reichstag of privileged cities. Examples are: Eisenstadt and Rust (today both in Austria ), as well as Sopron (Ger. Ödenburg, today in Hungary).

Early modern age

Since the Free Cities formed a group together with the Imperial Cities on the Perpetual Reichstag or in the City College of the Reichstag, they were summarized under the heading of Free and Imperial Cities . In the course of a linguistic blurring, the term Free Imperial City emerged .

The free cities and imperial cities that came from the Holy Roman Empire to the Old Confederation between the 14th and 16th centuries (e.g. Zurich , Bern , Solothurn , Basel; de jure 1648) were usually Swiss city ​​centers within Switzerland . They formed almost independent city ​​republics , some with extensive national territories (from which today's cantons grew).

Those free cities and imperial cities that came to France from the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the 18th century (e.g. Colmar 1648, Strasbourg 1681; cf. the League of Ten , but also numerous imperial villages in northern Alsace ) were referred to as free cities in France . They had retained many of their rights, but were embedded in the French administrative organization (authorities of the French province of Alsace, authorities of the central government in Paris ).

19th century

The free imperial cities that remained after the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1803 must be distinguished from these medieval city republics , of which Augsburg and Nuremberg were annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1805 and 1806 respectively.

In the Peace of Tilsit , Napoleon forced the separation of Danzig, among many other cessions. Gdansk and its immediate surroundings as well as the Hel Peninsula were declared as an autonomous area as a Free City . In truth, Danzig was completely dependent on France. The Free and Hanseatic Cities of Hamburg and Lübeck and the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen were integrated into the heart of the French Empire by Napoleon I in 1810 to strengthen the continental barrier from the Rhine Confederation , but were recognized as Free Cities by the Congress of Vienna along with Frankfurt am Main . As sovereign city-states under international law , they joined the German Confederation on June 8, 1815 . In addition, Krakow was declared a Free City by the Congress of Vienna , but after the Polish uprising of 1846 it was incorporated into Austrian Galicia .

The Free City of Frankfurt fell to Prussia as a result of the German War in 1866 , while Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck joined the North German Confederation as member states and finally became part of the German Empire in 1871 as federal states . In contrast to Lübeck, which had already joined the German Customs Union in 1868 , Bremen and Hamburg remained under customs law until the creation of their own free port areas in 1888.

20th century

With the DC circuit by the Nazis in 1933 and the state parliaments of the three free Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck were first overthrown. After the establishment of Reich governors and the “Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich” in 1934, federalism in the German Reich and with it the statehood of the city-states was ended. Lübeck was incorporated into the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein in the course of the Greater Hamburg Act in 1937 with the loss of all exclaves and now, like the other two Free Cities, only bore the title of Hanseatic City of Lübeck .

A special case is the name Free City for Danzig , when it was under the sovereignty of the League of Nations from 1920 to 1939 .

After the end of the war, the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg were re-established as states of the Federal Republic of Germany under the old names . The Hanseatic City of Lübeck also wanted to regain its statehood as the Land Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck , which it had lost in 1937/38 . The motion to carry out a referendum on the formation of a new state, Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck , was rejected by the Lübeck judgment in 1956.

The use of the designation free or free city in the past and present extended beyond the purely political-geographical sense. For example, on November 27, 1958, the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev demanded in a note to the Western powers , the so-called Khrushchev ultimatum , to convert West Berlin into a “(demilitarized) Free City of West Berlin”, independent of the Federal Republic and the West Victorious powers should be. These refused (→  three-state theory ).

Furthermore, a Copenhagen district is called Freetown Christiania without a corresponding historical background.

literature