Kempten Prince-Abbacy

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The Imperial Abbey of Kempten or Princely Abbey of Kempten is an ecclesiastical state of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Princely Abbey is the second largest ecclesiastical Imperial State of the Swabian Circle by area, after the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg. It stretchs along the Iller River in the Allgäu region, from Waltenhofen in the south to Legau and Grönenbach in the northwest, and up to Ronsberg and Unterthingau in the east.

The Imperial city of Kempten itself formed an Imperial State in its own right and an enclave within the abbey’s territory. The Princely Abbey of Kempten covers approximately 390 square miles and included some 85 villages and hundreds of hamlets and farms, making it one of the largest Imperial abbeys, having some 42,000 subjects.

Audogar, first abbot of Kempten The abbey had financial and political support from the ruling Carolingian dynasty, mainly from Hildegard of Vinzgouw, the second wife of Charlemagne, and her son Louis the Pious. It soon became one of the more prominent monasteries in the Carolingian Empire.

The status of Imperial immediacy was confirmed by King Henry IV of Germany. The Kempten abbots assumed the title of a Prince-abbot.

By a privilege granted by King Rudolph I, the town of Kempten has freed itself from the authority of the abbot and became a Free imperial city, starting a long rivalry. When during the German Peasants’ War in the Kempten Prince-abbot had to seek shelter within the city walls, he was forced to sell his last property rights in the Imperial City in the so-called “Great Purchase”, marking the start of a tense co-existence of two independent estates bearing the same name next to each other.