German mediatisation in the context of "Prince-Bishopric of Brixen"

The Electorate of Trier (German: Kurfürstentum Trier or Kurtrier; French: Trèves) was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire that existed from the end of the 9th to the early 19th century. It was the temporal possession of the prince-archbishop of Trier (Erzbistum Trier) who was, ex officio, a prince-elector of the empire. The other ecclesiastical electors were the archbishops (in the secular context called simply electors) of Cologne and Mainz.

The capital of the electorate was Trier; from the 16th century onward, the main residence of the Elector was in Koblenz. The electorate was secularized in 1803 in the course of the German mediatisation.

The County of Rietberg (German: Grafschaft Rietberg) was a state of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the present-day German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was situated on the upper Ems in Westphalia, between the Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn and the Prince-Bishopric of Münster. It existed as an independent territory from 1237 to 1807, when it was mediatised to the Kingdom of Westphalia.

The House of Castell is a German noble family of mediatised counts of the old Holy Roman Empire. In 1901, the heads of the two family branches, Castell-Castell and Castell-Rüdenhausen, were each granted the hereditary title of Prince by Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria.

Kleinstaaterei (German: [ˌklaɪnʃtaːtəˈʁaɪ], lit. 'small-state-ery') is a pejorative term coined in the early nineteenth century to denote the territorial fragmentation of Germany. While the term referred primarily to the territorial fragmentation of the German Confederation, it is also applied by extension to the even more extreme territorial fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire. In this period, Germany was split into a great number of nearly sovereign small and medium-sized secular and ecclesiastical principalities and free imperial cities, some of which were little larger than a single town or the surrounding grounds of the monastery of an Imperial abbey. Estimates of the total number of German states at any time during the 18th century vary, ranging from 294 to 348, or more. However, the number of states rapidly decreased with the onset of German mediatisation in the early 19th century.

Territorial fragmentation was compounded by the fact that, due to the haphazard territorial formation of many states or the partition of dynastic states through inheritance, a very large number of Holy Roman Empire states were constituted of non-contiguous parts, which resulted in many enclaves and exclaves.

The Prince-Bishopric of Trent (Latin: Episcopatus ac Principatus Tridentinus; German: Hochstift Trient, Fürstbistum Trient, Bistum Trient) was an ecclesiastical principality roughly corresponding to the present-day Northern Italian autonomous province of Trentino. It was created in 1027 and existed until 1803, when it was secularised and absorbed into the County of Tyrol held by the House of Habsburg. Trent was a Hochstift, an Imperial State under the authority of a prince-bishop at Trento.

Morganatic marriage, sometimes called a left-handed marriage, is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which in the context of royalty or other inherited title prevents the principal's position or privileges being passed to the spouse or to any children born of the marriage. The concept is most prevalent in German-speaking territories and countries most influenced by the customs of the German-speaking realms.

Generally, this is a marriage between a man of high birth (such as from a reigning, deposed or mediatised dynasty) and a woman of lesser status (such as a daughter of a low-ranked noble family or a commoner). Usually, neither the bride nor any children of the marriage has a claim on the husband's succession rights, titles, precedence, or entailed property. The children are considered legitimate for all other purposes and the prohibition against bigamy applies. In some countries, a woman could also marry a man of lower rank morganatically.

The mediatised houses (or mediatized houses, German: Standesherren) were ruling princely and comital-ranked houses that were mediatised in the Holy Roman Empire during the period 1803–1815 as part of German mediatisation, and were later recognised in 1825–1829 by the German ruling houses as possessing considerable rights and rank. With few exceptions, these houses were those whose heads held a seat in the Imperial Diet when mediatised during the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806–07, by France in 1810, or by the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. The mediatised houses were organised into two ranks: the princely houses, entitled to the predicate Durchlaucht (Serene Highness), which previously possessed a vote on the Bench of Princes (Furstenbank); and the comital houses that were accorded the address of Erlaucht (Illustrious Highness), which previously possessed a vote in one of the four Benches of Counts (Gräfenbank). Although some forms of mediatisation occurred in other countries, such as France, Italy, and Russia, only designated houses within the former Holy Roman Empire were legally mediatised houses.

The Almanach de Gotha (German: Gothaischer Hofkalender, pronounced [ˈɡoːtaɪʃɐ ˈhoːfkaˌlɛndɐ]) is a directory of Europe's royalty and higher nobility, also including the major governmental, military and diplomatic corps, as well as statistical data by country. First published in 1763 by Carl Wilhelm Ettinger (de) in Gotha in Thuringia, Germany at the ducal court of Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, it came to be regarded as an authority in the classification of monarchies and their courts, reigning and former dynasties, princely and ducal families, and the genealogical, biographical and titulary details of Europe's highest level of aristocracy. It was published annually from 1785 until 1944 by Justus Perthes Publishing House in Gotha.

In 1992, the family of Justus Perthes re-established its right to use the name Almanach de Gotha. In 1998, a London-based publisher, John Kennedy, acquired the rights for use of the title of Almanach de Gotha from Justus Perthes Verlag Gotha GmbH, then a fully owned subsidiary of Ernst Klett Schulbuchverlag GmbH, Stuttgart. The last edition produced by Justus Perthes was the 181st, produced in 1944. After a gap of 54 years the first of the new editions (the 182nd) was published in 1998 with English, the new diplomatic language, used as the lingua franca in the place of French or German. Perthes regards the resultant volumes as new works, and not as a continuation of the editions which Perthes had published from 1785 to 1944. Two volumes have been printed since 1998, with Volume I containing lists of the sovereign, formerly sovereign and mediatised houses of Europe, and a diplomatic and statistical directory; and Volume II containing lists of the non-sovereign princely and ducal houses of Europe.