A ''Grafschaft'' was originally the name given to the administrative area in the
Holy Roman Empire over which a count, or ''
Graf'', presided as
judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
. It is often, therefore, translated as 'county'. The term has survived as a placename in German-speaking countries, for example,
in Germany and
in Switzerland.
According to the early Saxon legal document, the ''
Sachsenspiegel'' which dates to around 1230, the ''Graf'' or count is a special judge (''Sonderrichter'') who, in the name of the king may preside at a juridical court, in certain cases, under the
king's ban {{Short description, Exercise of royal jurisdiction
''Königsbann'', literally king's ban ( lat, bannus, more rarely ''bannum'', from the OHG: ''ban''), was the exercise of royal jurisdiction in the Holy Roman Empire.
A specific ban (German: ''Ban ...
, i.e. king's authority. The type of 'ban' cases derived from the nature of the kingdom:
From that followed the exclusive responsibility of the king – and thus the count – to deal with allegations against the nobility. As part of the court "under the king's ban" there was a bench of jurors made up of the nobility, the ''Schöffenbarfreien''. The area of the county was roughly that of modern rural German districts or counties (''
Landkreise
In all German states, except for the three city states, the primary administrative subdivision higher than a '' Gemeinde'' (municipality) is the (official term in all but two states) or (official term in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia ...
n''). On the emergence of states in the
Late Middle Ages, the acquisition and thus
mediatisation of the counties by the
territorial prince
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, particularly belonging or connected to a country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually either the total area from which a state may extract power resources or a ...
s played an important role. The beginning of the late medieval trend towards large
territorial lordships in the 14th century was simultaneously the end of the ''Grafschaft'' of the late and high Middle Ages.
In 1521 there were 144
imperially immediate
Imperial immediacy (german: Reichsfreiheit or ') was a privileged constitutional and political status rooted in German feudal law under which the Imperial estates of the Holy Roman Empire such as Imperial cities, prince-bishoprics and secular pri ...
''Grafschaften'' in the
Holy Roman Empire, the so-called
imperial counties or ''Reichsgrafschaften''.
Several rural ''
Landkreise'' in
Lower Saxony, whose territorial history goes back to the ''Grafschaften'', bear this title in their official names; after the municipal reforms at the end of the 1970s, only the county of
Landkreis Grafschaft Bentheim retains the name.
Not to be confused with ''Grafschaften'' are the ''
Markgrafschaften'' ("margraviates"), ''
Pfalzgrafschaften'' ("counties palatine") or ''
Landgrafschaften'' ("landgraviates"), which had the same status as
duchies
A duchy, also called a dukedom, is a medieval country, territory, fief, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess, a ruler hierarchically second to the king or queen in Western European tradition.
There once existed an important difference between " ...
. The present-day German federal states of
Brandenburg and
Saxony were once margraviates;
Thuringia and
Hesse were landgraviates.
See also
*
Graf,
Markgraf
Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or of a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the Emp ...
,
Landgraf,
Pfalzgraf,
Reichsgraf
Imperial Count (german: Reichsgraf) was a title in the Holy Roman Empire. In the medieval era, it was used exclusively to designate the holder of an imperial county, that is, a fief held directly ( immediately) from the emperor, rather than from ...
,
Gaugraf
External links
*
{{Authority control
Subdivisions of the Holy Roman Empire
