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In the Holy Roman Empire, imperial immediacy ( or Reichsfreiheit) was the status of an individual or a territory which was defined as 'immediate' (unmittelbar) to Emperor and Empire (Kaiser und Reich) and not to any other intermediate authorities, while one that did not possess that status was defined as 'mediate' (mittelbar). Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, Volume II, Oxford University Press, 2012, Glossary, p. 652.
The possession of this imperial immediacy granted a constitutionally unique form of territorial authority known as "territorial superiority" (Landeshoheit) which had nearly all the attributes of sovereignty, but fell short of true sovereignty since the rulers of the Empire remained answerable to the Empire's institutions and basic laws. In the early modern period, the Empire consisted of over 1,800 immediate territories, ranging in size from quite large such as Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, and Brandenburg, down to the several hundred tiny immediate estates of the Imperial knights of only a few square kilometers or less, which were by far the most numerous.
The position of the princes with regard to the crown had strengthened progressively since the reign of Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190) who restricted the immediate crown vassalage to the archbishops, bishops and imperial abbots, roughly ninety of them, and to distinguish most dukes and a selection of reliable margraves, landgraves and counts as maiores imperii principes ("greater princes of the empire"). They were intended to be the only direct vassals, apart from the Imperial ministeriales who did homage within the royal household, and the royal towns which offered collective fealty. Benjamin Arnold, Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany, Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 34. From the thirteenth century onward, the growing exclusiveness of the princes derived from their determination to enforce their preeminence and make the other lords feudally dependent on themselves, and to incorporate them into their own territorial lordships, thus making them 'mediate' by cutting them off from direct legal relationship with the crown. Alfred Haverkamp, Medieval Germany, 1156–1273, Oxford University Press, 1988 (translation), p. 274.
During the High Middle Ages, and for those bishops, abbots, and cities then the main beneficiaries of that status, immediacy could be exacting and often meant subjection to the fiscal, military, and Hospitium demands of their overlord, the Emperor. However, from the mid-13th century onwards, with the gradually diminishing importance of the Emperor, whose authority to exercise power became increasingly limited to the enforcement of Legislation promulgated by the Imperial Diet, entities privileged by imperial immediacy eventually found themselves vested with considerable rights and powers previously exercised by the emperor.
They formed the , together with 99 immediate counts, 40 (abbots and abbesses), and 50 Imperial cities, each of whose "banks" only enjoyed a single collective vote (votum curiatum).
Further immediate estates not represented in the Imperial diet were the as well as several abbeys and Imperial village, the remains of those territories which in the High Middle Ages had been under the direct authority of the Emperor and since then had mostly been given in pledge to the princes.
At the same time, there were classes of "princes" with titular immediacy to the Emperor which they exercised rarely, if at all. For example, the Bishops of Chiemsee, Gurk, and Seckau (Sacken) were practically subordinate to the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, but were formally princes of the Empire.
As pointed out by Jonathan Israel,Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806, Ch. 4, p. 66. the Dutch province of Overijssel in 1528 tried to arrange its submission to Emperor Charles V (who was also King of Spain) in his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor rather than as Duke of Burgundy. If successful, that would have evoked Imperial immediacy and would have put Overijssel in a stronger negotiating position, for example giving the province the ability to appeal to the Imperial Diet in any debate with Charles. For that reason, the Emperor strongly rejected and blocked Overijssel's attempt.
Disadvantages might include direct intervention by imperial commissions, as happened in several of the southwestern cities after the Schmalkaldic War, and the potential restriction or outright loss of previously held legal patents. Immediate rights might be lost if the Emperor and/or the Imperial Diet could not defend them against external aggression, as occurred in the First Coalition and the Second Coalition. The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 required the emperor to renounce all claims to the portions of the Holy Roman Empire west of the Rhine. At the last meeting of the Imperial Diet () in 1802–03, also called the German mediatisation, most of the free imperial cities and the ecclesiastic states lost their imperial immediacy and were absorbed by several dynastic states.
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