Holy Roman Emperor - Succession

Succession

Successions to the kingship were controlled by a variety of complicated factors. Elections meant the kingship of Germany was only partially hereditary, unlike the kingship of France, although sovereignty frequently remained in a dynasty until there were no more male successors. Some scholars suggest that the task of the elections was really to solve conflicts only when the dynastic rule was unclear, yet the process meant that the prime candidate had to make concessions, by which the voters were kept on side, which were known as Wahlkapitulationen (election capitulations).

The Electoral council was set at seven princes (three archbishops and four secular princes) by the Golden Bull of 1356. It remained so until 1648, when the settlement of the Thirty Years' War required the addition of a new elector to maintain the precarious balance between Protestant and Catholic factions in the Empire. Another elector was added in 1690, and the whole college was reshuffled in 1803, a mere three years before the dissolution of the Empire.

After 1438, the Kings remained in the house of Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine, with the brief exception of Charles VII, who was a Wittelsbach. Maximilian I (Emperor 1508-1519) and his successors no longer travelled to Rome to be crowned as Emperor by the Pope. Therefore, they could not technically claim the title Emperor of the Romans, but were mere "Emperors-elect of the Romans", as Maximilian named himself in 1508 with papal approval. This title was in fact used (Erwählter Römischer Kaiser), but it was somewhat forgotten that the word "erwählt" (elect) was a restriction. Of all his successors, only Charles V, the immediate one, received a papal coronation. Before that date in 1530, he was called Emperor-elect too.