Regensburg Electoral Congress (1636/37)

The Regensburg Electoral Congress took place from September 1636 to February 1637 during the Thirty Years' War . The choice of Ferdinand III was of particular importance . to the Roman-German king .

background

Between 1613 and 1640 there were no diets in the Holy Roman Empire . During this time, Kurfürstentag took their place as a form of class representation. In 1620 and 1627, electoral days were held in Mühlhausen, in 1630 and 1636/37 in Regensburg and in 1640 in Nuremberg, at which the emperor met with the seven most important imperial princes or their representatives. The collegiate day convened in Regensburg in 1636 took place against the background of the political situation that had been created by the Peace of Prague (1635) : on the one hand, the peace agreement between the emperor and the elector of Saxony, to which most of the Protestant estates joined denominational opposition resigned in the empire; on the other hand, the Thirty Years' War had finally expanded into a European power conflict through France's open entry into the war in May 1635. The conclusion of peace in the empire was the prerequisite for the election of his son Ferdinand (III), which Emperor Ferdinand II had been striving for for years. At the same time, the question arose as to how the peace found in the Reich could also be extended to the European power conflict. The election of the king and the question of peace were the focus of the Regensburg deliberations.

course

The Elector's Day was convened by Anselm Casimir , Elector of Mainz, on March 6, 1636, on June 7 of that year in Regensburg. The meeting was not actually opened until September 15, 1636 with the reading of the imperial proposition , and officially closed on February 23, 1637.

The participants in the meeting were: Emperor Ferdinand II., Already seriously ill, who had been brought back to Vienna shortly before his death on February 15, 1637 and whose main interest was the succession plan. Also present in person were Anselm Casimir von Mainz and Ferdinand von Bayern , the Elector of Cologne and brother of the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I , who was also present and who had left Regensburg from the end of September to December 7th because of the birth of the heir to the throne Ferdinand Maria ; Ferdinand von Köln and Maximilian von Bayern put the peace treaty with France at the center of their interests. The Protestant electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, Johann Georg I and Georg Wilhelm , were represented by envoys , whereby the Saxon was mainly interested in the amnesty of the imperial estates excluded in the Peace of Prague, the Brandenburg primarily in the settlement with Sweden. The pro-France Elector of Trier, Philipp Christoph von Sötern , who was arrested and interned by Spanish mercenaries in March 1635 , was neither present nor represented .

On the peace question, the assembly decided that the agreements of the Prague Peace could no longer be put up for discussion and that the emperor should be given a deputation from the Kurkolleg as a representative of the Reich for the upcoming negotiations at the Cologne Peace Congress . This was justified by the fact that the emperor was only allowed to start wars with the consent of the electors and consequently could only make peace with their consent. Specifically, it was agreed that two electoral deputations should be formed: one consisting of Kurköln and Kurbrandenburg for the peace negotiations with France, the other from Kurmainz and Kurbrandenburg for the negotiations with Sweden. Whether the electoral deputations should only assist the emperor or - as was later the case at the Westphalian Peace Congress - were entitled to vote, remained undetermined at this point in time.

Ferdinand III was elected Roman King on December 22, 1636 in Regensburg Cathedral unanimously (without the Trier vote and with the abstention from the Bohemian vote led by Ferdinand), although the Protestant electors were dissatisfied with the treatment of the amnesty question. According to tradition, Ferdinand was immediately committed to an election surrender, which emphasized the power of the electors. After the death of Ferdinand II, Ferdinand ascended to the throne on February 15, 1637.

literature

• Dieter Albrecht : Maximilian I of Bavaria 1573–1651. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998 (pp. 952-961).
• Heiner Haan: The Regensburg Electoral Congress of 1636/37. Aschendorff, Münster 1967.