Corpus separatum (Fiume)
| City of Fiume and its District | ||||||||||
| Fiume város és kerülete (Hungarian) Stadt Fiume mit Gebiet (German) Città di Fiume e dintorni (Italian) Grad Rijeka i okolica (Croatian) |
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| of the Kingdom of Hungary Part of the Illyrian Provinces (1809–1816) and the Kingdom of Illyria (1816–1822) Part of the Kingdom of Croatia (1849–1868) |
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Motto Indeficienter "Inexhaustible" |
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 Territory of the corpus separatum before 1918.
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| Capital | Fiume (Rijeka) | |||||||||
| Languages | Italian, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian, German | |||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholic, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism | |||||||||
| Political structure | ||||||||||
| Governor | ||||||||||
| • | 1779–1783 | József Majláth | ||||||||
| • | 1917–1918 | Zoltán Jekelfalussy | ||||||||
| Historical era | Late modern Europe/WWI | |||||||||
| • | Established | 23 April 1779 | ||||||||
| • | French occupation | 5 April – 17 October 1797 | ||||||||
| • | French occupation | 3 October 1805 – 1806 | ||||||||
| • | Incorporation into Croatia | 31 August 1848 | ||||||||
| • | Settlement of 1868 | 17 November 1868 | ||||||||
| • | Termination of Hungarian suzerainty | 29 October 1918 | ||||||||
| • | Treaty of Trianon | 4 June 1920 | ||||||||
| Area | ||||||||||
| • | 1869 | 19.57 km² (8 sq mi) | ||||||||
| • | 1900 | 21 km² (8 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | ||||||||||
| • | 1869 est. | 17,884 | ||||||||
| Density | 913.8 /km² (2,366.9 /sq mi) | |||||||||
| • | 1880 est. | 20,981 | ||||||||
| Density | 1,072.1 /km² (2,776.7 /sq mi) | |||||||||
| • | 1890 est. | 29,494 | ||||||||
| Density | 1,507.1 /km² (3,903.4 /sq mi) | |||||||||
| • | 1900 est. | 38,057 | ||||||||
| Density | 1,812.2 /km² (4,693.7 /sq mi) | |||||||||
| • | 1910 est. | 49,806 | ||||||||
| Density | 2,371.7 /km² (6,142.7 /sq mi) | |||||||||
| Currency |
Forint (1779–1892) Korona (1892–1918) |
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| Today part of |
 Croatia
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Corpus separatum, a Latin term meaning "", refers to the status of the City of Fiume (modern Rijeka, Croatia) while given a special legal and political status different from its environment under the rule of the Kingdom of Hungary. Formally known as City of Fiume and its District (Hungarian: Fiume város és kerülete), it was instituted by Empress Maria Theresa in 1779, determining the semi-autonomous status of Fiume within the Habsburg Monarchy until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 – the longest-lasting known case of an actually implemented corpus separatum ever.
Maria Theresa, with her sovereign decision of 2 October 1776, gave up possession of Fiume, which for a long time was administrated with the adjacent hereditary Inner Austrian fiefs of the Habsburgs within the Holy Roman Empire, and gave it to the Kingdom of Hungary, of which she was also queen, with a view of fostering trade. Since Hungary proper was some 500 kilometres (310 mi) away, the city was initially annexed to the Habsburg Kingdom of Croatia, whose territory began east of the city walls. Croatia was ruled in personal union with Hungary since 1102, and with it formed the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen.
Two and a half years later, Maria Theresa, in her capacity as Queen of Hungary, by a royal rescript dated 23 April 1779, made the City of Fiume directly subject to the Hungarian Crown as a corpus separatum (that is, not as a part of Croatia, which was in a personal union with Hungary). Since Fiume had to serve a similar function for Hungary as Trieste did for the Habsburg lands, the Hungarian estates (and probably the Queen) wanted to grant the City a similar degree of institutional autonomy to that already enjoyed by Trieste. According to Maria Theresa's rescript, Fiume was created a corpus separatum - that is, a political body with greater autonomy than a Free imperial city or a Hungarian county, and a territory comparable to the other partes adnexae constituting the Crown of St Stephen. The city's position was thus comparable to those of the regna: as Trieste was considered to be a crown land of the Austrian hereditary lands (Erblande), so Fiume was considered to be a pars adnexa to the crown.
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Wikipedia