Privilegium Minus elevates Austria

1156

Barbarossa ended a long Bavarian-Austrian quarrel by detaching Austria from Bavaria and raising it to a duchy whose ruler could inherit in the female line. The obscure dynastic tweak created a new political unit that would matter for the next seven hundred years. The privilege also granted Austria's duke the extraordinary right to hold his fief without attending imperial diets, a concession that made the duchy uniquely autonomous within the empire.