Prince-elector

• 1. Introduction

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  A Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire held a title considered second only to the emperor himself, above kings and the highest dukes. These men chose who would rule over one of history's most complex political structures. They negotiated contracts with candidates before elections, held ceremonial offices at coronations, and during any gap in imperial rule, two of them stepped in to govern the entire empire. How did a group of German princes come to hold such power? Why did the composition of their college shift so dramatically over five centuries? And what became of them after the empire they served simply ceased to exist?

• 2. Rights and Privileges

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  Electors were rulers of Reichsstände, the Imperial Estates, and held precedence over every other imperial prince. Until the 18th century, they alone could be addressed as Durchlaucht, meaning Serene Highness. In 1742, the electors' title was elevated to the superlative Durchlauchtigste, Most Serene Highness, while the other princes were promoted to the rank the electors had previously held.

  The Golden Bull of 1356 granted electors the Privilegium de non appellando, which barred their subjects from appealing to any higher imperial court. That privilege was not exclusive to electors; many of the larger imperial estates eventually received it as well. Electors also held the right to enter into alliances and to manage their own dynastic affairs without imperial interference.

  In the Imperial Diet, electors sat in a separate body called the Council of Electors. Most also held seats in the Council of Princes, because they controlled multiple territories or ecclesiastical offices. A single elector could cast multiple votes in that second council. In 1792, the Elector of Brandenburg held eight votes in the Council of Princes, the Electors of Bavaria and Hanover held six each, and Bohemia held three. Together, the electors commanded twenty-nine of the hundred votes in the Council of Princes that year, giving them influence far beyond their formal electoral role.

  The Archbishop of Mainz presided over the Catholic body in the Diet, the corpus catholicorum, while the Elector of Saxony led the Protestant corpus evangelicorum. That religious division was grounded in the Peace of Westphalia and was tied to the official religion of each state, not to the personal faith of its ruler.

• 3. How Elections Worked

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  The Archbishop of Mainz summoned the electors within one month of an emperor's death, and they were required to meet within three months of receiving that summons. In practice, many emperors arranged for their successors to be elected during their own lifetimes, so there was often no interregnum at all. When a gap did open, two imperial vicars divided the empire between them: the Elector of Saxony governed regions under Saxon law, including Saxony, Westphalia, Hannover, and northern Germany, while the Elector Palatine oversaw the rest, including Franconia, Swabia, the Rhine, and southern Germany.

  Frankfurt served as the regular site of elections from the 14th century onward. Other cities hosted the ceremony as well: Cologne in 1531, Regensburg in 1575 and again in 1636, and Augsburg in 1653 and 1690. The deliberations took place at the city hall, but the actual voting occurred in the cathedral. In Frankfurt, a dedicated electoral chapel called the Wahlkapelle was used for the vote itself. Under the rules of the Golden Bull, a simple majority sufficed to elect a king. Each elector cast exactly one vote, and any elector was free to nominate and vote for himself.

  From the 16th century forward, electors drafted a document called the Wahlkapitulation before confirming a king-elect. Translated loosely as an electoral capitulation, it functioned as a binding contract: the candidate conceded rights and powers to the electors and other princes. Only after swearing to abide by it did a candidate formally become King of the Romans.

  Charles V, elected in 1519, was the last emperor actually crowned by the pope, which happened in 1530. Every emperor after him took the title Elected Emperor of the Romans at the moment of his coronation as king, bypassing the papal ceremony entirely.

• 4. From Custom to Constitution

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  The right to elect a monarch had ancient roots in Germanic tribal practice, where free men chose leaders for ad hoc coalitions. Over time that broad suffrage narrowed sharply. By the election of Lothar III in 1125, only a small group of eminent nobles chose the monarch, then submitted their choice to the remaining magnates for approval. The practice of seeking that wider ratification soon disappeared entirely.

  A letter from Pope Urban IV in 1265 described as "immemorial custom" the arrangement under which seven princes held the right to elect the king. He was referring to the election of 1257, which had produced not one but two rival kings simultaneously. The seven were three archbishops, those of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne, alongside the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg.

  The Declaration of Rhense in 1338 formalized a significant shift: election by the majority of electors automatically conferred the royal title without any requirement for papal confirmation. The Golden Bull of 1356 then codified the entire structure, named the seven electors explicitly, and resolved the ongoing disputes among them. It also established rules for elections, the treatment of electorates, and the privileges of the electors themselves. The college's composition held firm for roughly three centuries, with one internal adjustment: the Saxony seat transferred in 1547 from the senior Ernestine branch of the Wettin family to the junior Albertine branch, a consequence of the Schmalkaldic War.

• 5. A College in Motion

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  In 1623, the Elector Palatine Frederick V fell under imperial ban after taking part in the Bohemian Revolt, an early phase of the Thirty Years' War. His electoral seat passed to the Duke of Bavaria, from a junior branch of the same Wittelsbach family. The dignity was granted to the duke personally at first, but it later became hereditary along with the duchy itself.

  The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 created a new electoral post for the Count Palatine of the Rhine, bringing the total to eight. The two Wittelsbach lines had grown far enough apart that holding seats simultaneously was no longer seen as a dynastic threat. A new disruption came in 1685, when a Catholic branch of the Wittelsbach family inherited the Palatinate, upsetting the religious balance of the college. To restore that balance, a Protestant electoral post was created in 1692 for the Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, who became the Elector of Hanover. The Imperial Diet formally confirmed that creation in 1708.

  The Elector of Saxony converted to Catholicism in 1697 to become King of Poland, yet his electoral post remained officially Protestant. He even continued to lead the Protestant body in the Reichstag, the corpus evangelicorum, despite his personal faith.

  Napoleon's wars dismantled much of what remained. The Treaty of Luneville in 1801 ceded the Rhine's left bank to France, abolishing the archbishoprics of Trier and Cologne and relocating the remaining spiritual elector from Mainz to Regensburg. In 1803, new electoral posts were created for the Duke of Wurttemberg, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and the Duke of Salzburg, raising the total to ten. None of these new electors ever cast a vote. The Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806 before their appointments could be confirmed by the emperor.

• 6. High Offices and Ceremony

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  Every elector held what was called a High Office of the Empire, a Reichserzamt, analogous to a cabinet post but in practice almost entirely ceremonial. The three archbishops became Archchancellors: Mainz for Germany, Cologne for Italy, and Trier for Burgundy. The secular electors received heraldic augmentations to their coats of arms that marked their offices.

  The King of Bohemia was Arch-Cupbearer; a simple gold crown appeared on his arms. The Elector of Saxony was Arch-Marshal, shown by two crossed swords. The Elector of Brandenburg served as Arch-Chamberlain, marked by a gold scepter. The offices of Arch-Steward and Arch-Treasurer shifted between electors as political fortunes changed, particularly after the Elector of Bavaria replaced the Elector Palatine in 1623.

  Electors only discharged their ceremonial duties in person during coronations, where they bore the imperial crown and regalia. At all other times their offices were represented by hereditary deputies. The Arch-Marshal was represented by the Count of Pappenheim as Hereditary Marshal; the Arch-Chamberlain by the Count of Hohenzollern; the Arch-Treasurer by the Count of Sinzendorf. The Count of Waldburg served as Hereditary Truchsess, and the family incorporated that word into their surname, styling themselves Truchsess von Waldburg.

  After 1803, the Duke of Wurttemberg received the formerly dormant office of Arch-Bannerbearer and promptly assigned the Count of Zeppelin-Aschhausen as his hereditary deputy. The office was planned but never formally created before the empire dissolved.

• 7. Life After the Empire

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  When the Holy Roman Empire was abolished in August 1806, its former electors did not simply vanish. Most upgraded their titles to match the new European order. The Electors of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Saxony declared themselves kings. The Electors of Baden, Regensburg, and Wurzburg became grand dukes.

  The Elector of Hesse-Kassel took a different path. He kept the title of Elector even after the office became meaningless, arguing that it outranked the title of Grand Duke in prestige. The Congress of Vienna accepted Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Saxony as kingdoms and recognized Baden as a grand duchy, but the Elector of Hesse-Kassel's attempt to be recognized as King of the Chatti was blocked at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. European powers listed him instead among the grand dukes as a Royal Highness, which he rejected. He remained an Elector ruling over a territory called an Electorate with no emperor left to serve, until 1866, when Hesse-Kassel backed the losing side in the Austro-Prussian War and was absorbed into Prussia.

  The King of Great Britain, still at war with Napoleon, continued to style himself Elector of Hanover, and the Hanoverian government operated from London during those years. When peace returned, the Hanoverian elector declared himself King of Hanover at the Congress of Vienna, finally joining his peers in adopting a new title fitting the post-imperial world. The office of Prince-elector had lasted roughly five and a half centuries. Its last formal traces disappeared with Prussia's annexation of Hesse-Kassel.