Imperial State - Imperial Diet

Imperial Diet

From 1489 onwards, the Imperial Diet was divided into three collegia: the Council of Electors, the Council of Princes and the Council of Cities. Electoral states belonged to the first of the aforementioned councils; other states, whether ecclesiastical or secular, belonged to the Council of Princes.

Votes were held in right of the states, rather than personally. Consequently, an individual ruling several states held multiple votes; similarly, multiple individuals ruling parts of the same state shared a single vote. These rules were not formalized until 1582; prior to this time, when multiple individuals inherited parts of the same state, they sometimes received a vote each. Votes were either individual or collective. Princes and senior clerics generally held individual votes (but such votes, as noted above, were sometimes shared). Prelates (abbots and priors) without individual votes were classified into two benches — the Bench of the Rhine and the Bench of Swabia — each of which enjoyed a collective vote. Similarly, Counts and Lords were grouped into four comital benches with a collective vote each — the Upper Rhenish Bench of Wetterau, the Swabian Bench, the Franconian Bench and the Westphalian Bench.

No elector ever held multiple electorates; nor were electorates ever divided between multiple heirs. Hence, in the Council of Electors, each individual held exactly one vote. Electors who ruled states in addition to their electorates also voted in the Council of Princes; similarly, princes who also ruled comital territories voted both individually and in the comital benches. In the Reichstag in 1792, for instance, the Elector of Brandenburg held eight individual votes in the Council of Princes and one vote in the Bench of Westphalia. Similarly, among ecclesiastics, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order held one individual vote in the Council of Princes and two in the Bench of the Rhine.