FACTOID #53: If you thought Antarctica was inhospitable, think again - its land area is only ninety-eight percent ice. Reassuringly, the other 2% is categorised as "barren rock".
The Reichsfreiheit or Reichsunmittelbarkeit (adjectives reichsfrei, reichsunmittelbar) was a special, privileged status a city or region could attain in the Holy Roman Empire. It is translated as imperial immediacy. A reichsfrei city or territory was under the direct authority of the emperor, without any intermediary liege lords. Advantages were that reichsfrei regions had the right to collect taxes and tolls themselves, and held juridical rights themselves. De facto Reichsfreiheit corresponded to a semi-independence with a far-reaching autonomy. This page is about the Germanic empire. ...
Imperial abbeys (German: Reichsabteien, also Reichsklöster and Reichsstifte) were religious houses within the Holy Roman Empire which for some period during their existence had the status of Reichsunmittelbarkeit ("imperial immediacy"): that is, such houses were answerable directly to the Emperor and were thus sovereign territories (however small), independent of other lordships.
Most however (and many of these religious houses had only very small territories) were Imperial prelates (Reichsprelaten) and as such participated in a single collective vote in the Reichstag as members of the Bench of Prelates, later divided into the Swabian College of Imperial Prelates and the Rhenish College of Imperial Prelates.
If no date is specified for the end of Reichsunmittelbarkeit, it is the same as the date of secularisation or mediatisation.
Among the many principalities of Germany were a number of Ecclesiastical Territories were ruled by an Abbess with the title of Princess-Abbess (Fürstäbtissin or Reichsäbtissin).
The Imperial Immediacies (Reichsfreiheit or Reichsunmittelbarkeit) held a privileged feudal and political status under the direct authority of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Imperial Diet, without any intermediary Liege lord(s) and therefore had the right to collect taxes and tolls and held juridical rights themselves.
Reichsunmittelbarkeit) and was placed directely under the emperor.
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