Reichsstadt – Imperial City and other Augsburg, Germany General Tips

Favorite Thing: Augsburg owed its wealth and political influence to its status as Reichsstadt (Imperial City). The only governor the city had to accept was the emperor himself, which actually meant political independence. Augsburg was not subdued to any prince and also not to the bishop who resided in its walls. The magistrate was the government. The city owned and ruled a territory of its own in the surroundings.

The Holy Roman Empire Of German Nation was no centralized state like the kingdoms of England or France. It was more like a loose association of states who cooperated (or not) under one common head in matters that concerned the whole empire but otherwise acted like independent states.

The gable of the city hall bears the heraldic symbol of the double-headed black eagle, the imperial coat of arms, to show this status. The gallery of Roman and Christian emperors in the Golden Hall, the Augustus fountain in the main square – all these refer to the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and Augsburg’s position in it.


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Favorite Thing: The Reformation in the early 16th century had actually aimed at a reform of the one Church - the result was separation, fights and finally war between the different confessions. The Augsburg Religion Peace Treaty of 1555 ended the war and accepted the Lutherans as a church with equal rights as the Catholics. The peace treaty also confirmed the right of the princes to decide about the confession of their entire territory and population.
As exceptions from this rule, the peace treaty, which had the legal value of a constitutional law, accepted those imperial cities where both Catholics and Protestants had been living side by side for decades - Augsburg and Regensburg being the most important among them.
In Augsburg, the three former monastery churches of St Ulrich and Afra, Holy Cross and St George were returned to the monastic orders. The protestants built new churches of their own next to them on the same site. The phenomenon of the double churches is a specialty of Augsburg.

Fondest Memory: Two examples of these double churches are still visible: the towering St Ulrich and Afra with the much smaller protestant Ulrichskirche at the southern end of Maximilianstraße, and the two churches of the Holy Cross in the northwest of the old town.

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