Free City of Frankfurt

The Free City of Frankfurt was a sovereign city-state on the Main whose privileges dated from 1372, when Frankfurt was declared an imperial free city directly subject to the Holy Roman Emperor. It hosted imperial elections and, from 1562, coronations, and it survived the mediatisation of 1803. After the Holy Roman Empire's collapse in 1806 the city passed to Karl Theodor von Dalberg, first as the Principality of Frankfurt and then as part of the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt. The Congress of Vienna restored its pre-Napoleonic constitution in 1815, making it a sovereign city-state and a member of the German Confederation; the Federal Assembly met there. Frankfurt was annexed by Prussia after the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, ending its independence. Its banking houses and liberal press made it one of the most cosmopolitan of the German states. In 1848 it hosted the Frankfurt Parliament, the first freely elected German national assembly, which met in St Paul's Church until the Prussian king refused the imperial crown in 1849.