List of states of the Holy Roman Empire

This list of states which were part of the Holy Roman Empire includes any territory ruled by an authority that had been granted imperial immediacy, as well as many other feudal entities such as lordship, sous-fiefs and allodial fiefs.

The Holy Roman Empire was a complex political entity that existed in central Europe for most of the medieval and early modern periods. It should be mentioned that the states that composed the Empire, while enjoying a unique form of territorial authority (called Landeshoheit) that granted them many attributes of sovereignty, were never fully sovereign states as the term is understood today. In the 18th century, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of approximately 1,800 such territories, the majority being tiny estates owned by the families of Imperial Knights. This page does not directly contain the list, but it discusses the format of the various lists, and offers some background to understand the complex organisation of the Holy Roman Empire. The lists themselves can be accessed via the alphabetical navigation box at the top of this page; each letter will lead the reader to a page where states of the Empire which began with that letter are listed. For a more complete history of the empire, see Holy Roman Empire.

While any such list could never be definitive, the list attempts to be as comprehensive as possible. It is sorted alphabetically and split into separate articles linked in the box below.

There is also a separate list of Free Imperial Cities, as well as a list of participants in the Imperial Diet as of 1792.

Note that in the "Circle" column, "n/a" denotes a state that had ceased to exist before the Reichsreform.

Other abbreviations used in the list are:

The "Notes" column shows, in capsule form,

The following excerpt from François Velde's Unequal and Morganatic Marriages in German Law provides an excellent overview on what an Estate (or State) of the Empire is. For his purpose, the author deals only with the hereditary territorial rulers but it should be remembered that the Estates also included a substantial number of non-hereditary territorial rulers such as the ecclesiastical states (prince-bishoprics and imperial abbeys) and free imperial cities.

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