Perpetual Reichstag
The Perpetual Diet was from 1663 to 1806 the term for the objects representing the Holy Roman Empire . He met in Regensburg .
While the Reichstag previously met at irregular intervals in different cities, from 1594 it was only held in the Reichssaal of the Regensburg town hall and finally not dissolved in 1663, after which it was referred to as the Perpetual Reichstag .
The last meeting of the Perpetual Reichstag took place in March 1803 with the adoption of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , which ordered the reorganization of the empire until 1806, the final dissolution of the empire took place.
history
The Reichstag of 1663 was not planned in advance as "perpetual". They met on January 20, 1663 to discuss the danger posed by the Turks on the eastern border of the empire . Emperor Leopold I needed money for the defense. In addition, the long-smoldering dispute between the princely party and the electors was an issue. The princes united in the princely party pressed for participation in the elaboration of the electoral surrender , Latin ius adcapitulandi , and the election of a king . In essence, it was about the question of whether the electors were allowed to exclusively negotiate the surrender with the future emperor and thus effectively change the imperial constitution without the Reichstag being involved with what, in the opinion of the princes, sole legislative competence.
Due to the long debates in the Reichstag, a capitulation should be passed for the sake of simplicity, which should then apply to all later kings and emperors, a capitulatio perpetua . This dispute, which ostensibly negated the elector's claim to leadership, was also of fundamental importance. Because in such a surrender all possible questions could theoretically be settled, such as the modalities of the declaration of imperial ban . The dispute over the election surrender was therefore a dispute over the right to pass laws and their content. In addition, the Reichstag was supposed to discuss any remaining problems of the Thirty Years' War , which had not been completely resolved in the last Reichstag of the previous Reichstag of 1653.
From this now grew the permanence of the Reichstag. In the third year of the Reichstag the emperor urged the estates to hurry up. In the fifth year, the estates urged the emperor to name a deadline. When this final date approached in the sixth year, it was decided to postpone the date again in order not to part with the whole nation of insult and shame . Ultimately, you came to terms with the fact that you would sit together longer. When the defense of the western imperial border against France came on the agenda in the 1670s, the meeting had long since become a permanent one, even if one was still hoping for a reputable imperial farewell . Since there was no longer any formal termination of the Reichstag, resolutions were no longer made in imperial farewells - the last farewell of 1654 went down in history as the last imperial farewell - but adopted in the form of imperial conclusions.
It is noteworthy that since the conversion of the Reichstag into the Perpetual Reichstag, the princes themselves were hardly represented, but were represented by so-called comitial envoys - so it was largely a congress of envoys. The emperor himself was represented by imperial principal commissioners , who from 1748 belonged continuously to the Thurn und Taxis family . Regensburg also became the seat of around 70 comitial embassies from foreign countries.
When the plague that broke out in Europe in 1713 also struck Regensburg, the Perpetual Reichstag was held temporarily in Augsburg in 1713 and 1714 . From 1740 the two largest territorial complexes of the empire, the Archduchy of Austria and Brandenburg-Prussia , began to grow more and more out of the imperial association. The two Silesian Wars Prussia won and received Silesia, while the War of the Austrian Succession ended in Austria's favor. During the War of Succession, a Wittelsbacher came to the throne with Charles VII , which triggered the relocation of the meetings to Frankfurt am Main .
In the First Coalition War between 1792 and 1797, the empire was also a participant in the war against revolutionary France. After the defeat in the First Coalition War, Emperor Franz II acted in his capacity as King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria and ceded territories of his hereditary lands to revolutionary France. However, he had also given the promise to cede territories of the empire on the left bank of the Rhine . The Rastatt Congress , which met from 1797 to 1799, was supposed to bring about the implementation of these resolutions of the Peace of Campo Formio . To this end, the Reichstag sent a Reich deputation . In view of the paradoxical situation that the two largest and most powerful imperial estates had already made peace with Prussia and Austria, the Reich Deputation was forced to agree to the cession and compensation plan. Their task was only to decide which secular princes should be compensated and which spiritual territories should serve as disposal assets. When the Second Coalition War against France broke out, the Rastatt Congress was broken off in 1799 and no legally binding peace was reached. The Second War of the Coalition was ended in 1801 by the Peace of Lunéville, in which Franz II, now as head of the empire, also agreed to the cession of the areas on the left bank of the Rhine. In this peace, however, no precise determinations were made for the upcoming “compensations”. The Reichstag agreed to the peace and, at its session on February 25, 1803, approved the negotiated Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , which was one of its most far-reaching resolutions and sealed the ongoing decline of the Holy Roman Empire during the first three Napoleonic Wars (1800-1806).
On August 11, 1804, in response to French pressure, Emperor Franz II announced, in addition to his title as Holy Roman Emperor, "for Us and Our Successors [...] to accept the title and dignity of hereditary Emperor of Austria", which became the Reichstag not officially involved in this step. Nevertheless, he continued to work until the empire was dissolved in 1806. On 12 July 1806, however, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, Cleves-Berg and other principalities with the signing of established Kurmainz, Bavaria Act of Confederation, in Paris the Rhine Confederation , served as the protector Napoleon, and declared on August 1, the exit from the realm. On August 6, the emperor announced the renunciation of the imperial crown. The abdication states that the emperor no longer sees himself in a position to fulfill his duties as head of the empire, accordingly he declared:
"That we see the bond which has bound us to the state body of the German Reich as broken, that we see the imperial head office and dignity as extinguished through the unification of the confederate Rhenish estates, and that we are thereby of all our obligations towards the German Reich look at them counted, and put down the imperial crown and imperial government that has been worn because of it, as is done here. "
The envoy of the Reichstag in Regensburg broke up in the aftermath without taking another decision.
literature
- Walter Fürnrohr : The Perpetual Reichstag in Regensburg. The Parliament of the Old Kingdom, for the 300th anniversary of its opening in 1663 . In: Negotiations of the Historical Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg , Volume 103, 1963, pp. 165–255 ( online ; PDF; 7.7 MB). New edition: 2nd edition. Laßleben, Kallmünz 1987, ISBN 3-7847-1107-3 .
- Karl Härter : The Perpetual Reichstag (1663–1806) in historical research . In: Zeitblicke 11 (2012), No. 2 = Michael Rohrschneider (Ed.): The Perpetual Reichstag in the 18th Century. Balance sheet, new approaches and research perspectives. For the 350th anniversary of the opening of the Perpetual Reichstag ( online ; PD0; 218 KBF).
- Peter Claus Hartmann : Cultural History of the Holy Roman Empire 1648–1806. Constitution. Religion. Culture . Böhlau, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78684-9 .
- Christoph Meixner: Music theater in Regensburg in the age of the everlasting Reichstag (= music and theater. 3). Studio.Verlag, Sinzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-89564-114-5 .
- Gerhard Oestreich : Constitutional history from the end of the Middle Ages to the end of the old empire . In: Herbert Grundmann (Ed.): Gebhardt Handbook of German History . Volume 11. dtv, Munich 1974 a. ö., ISBN 3-423-59040-8 .
- Anton Schindling : The beginnings of the everlasting Reichstag in Regensburg. Class representation and statecraft after the Peace of Westphalia (= publications of the Institute for European History Mainz, Department Universal History 143; contributions to the social and constitutional history of the Old Reich. 11). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1991, ISBN 3-8053-1253-9 (partly at the same time: Würzburg, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1982/83).
- Klemens Unger (ed.): Regensburg at the time of the everlasting Reichstag. Cultural-historical aspects of an era in the city's history . Accompanying volume to the exhibition "Of Princes, Citizens and Hanswursten ..." Regensburg at the time of the Perpetual Reichstag, Historisches Museum Regensburg, 2013–2014. Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-7954-2807-5 .
Web links
- Reichstag Museum in the Old Town Hall
- Satyrical description of the Reichstag in Regensburg as a digitized version of the Bamberg State Library
- Rooms of the Perpetual Reichstag in the Old Town Hall in Regensburg - online collection in the bavarikon culture portal
Remarks
- ↑ a b quoted from Johannes Burkhardt : The Thirty Years War , Frankfurt a. M 1992, ISBN 3-518-11542-1 , p. 116
- ↑ sehepunkte - Review Journal for the Historical Sciences - 6 (2006), No. 9
- ^ Declaration by Emperor Franz II about the resignation of the German imperial crown . In: Collection of sources on the history of the German Imperial Constitution in the Middle Ages and Modern Times , edited by Karl Zeumer, pp. 538–539, here p. 538 (full text on Wikisource ).