Rhenish knight circle
The Rheinische Ritterkreis was the union of the imperial knights of the Rhineland in the Holy Roman Empire .
History and structure
The Rhenish imperial knights had belonged to the Free Imperial Knighthood since 1577 together with the Swabian and Franconian knights . Since 1651/1652 the Rhenish knights had their own constitution.
In total, the Rhenish Knighthood comprised around 360 member territories. However, this was only mastered by about 60 families. The number of its inhabitants was around 90,000.
Like the rest of the knightly circles, the Rhenish district was divided into cantons: the canton of Upper Rhine Current , based in Mainz , the canton of Middle Rhine Current , based in Friedberg and the canton of Lower Rhine Current , based in Koblenz .
After the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, the knights on the left bank of the Rhine became part of France . In the course of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the mediation in 1805/1806, the knighthoods - and with them the Rhenish knight circle - ceased to exist.
See also
literature
- Georg Friedrich Böhn: Inventory of the archive of the Lower Rhine Imperial Knighthood. Koblenz 1971 (publications of the Rhineland-Palatinate State Archives Administration, vol. 11).
- Wilfried Beutter: Rheinischer Ritterkreis . In: Gerhard Taddey (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German history . People, events, institutions. From the turn of the times to the end of the 2nd World War. 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-520-80002-0 , p. 1046.