Salzburg Protestants

The prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical state within the Holy Roman Empire. The official religion was Roman Catholicism, and the state was ruled by a Prince-Archbishop. However, Lutheranism had gained a toehold in Salzburg, mostly in the Alpine mountains and valleys outside the city. In the early 16th century, Lutheran ideas quickly spread throughout the Salzburg lands along with miners recruited from Saxony by Archbishop Matthias Lang von Wellenburg (d. 1540). The mountain peasants were also in the habit of seeking seasonal work elsewhere in Germany, where they came into contact with the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. Literacy was widespread, and many Salzburgers owned Protestant books that had been brought in by travelers. Counter-Reformation measures were already taken by Wellenburg himself, but also by his successors, such as Wolf Dietrich Raitenau and Mark Sittich von Hohenems. Under the terms of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg signed by Emperor Charles V, the principle of Cuius regio, eius religio applied within the Empire. The ruler of each state could determine which religion could be practiced publicly in his territory. Dissenters only had the right to practice their religion privately or move to another state where it was the official religion. A three-year grace period was granted to sell off property and wind up one's financial affairs before emigrating. == Defereggen Valley expulsion ==

In 1684, Prince-Archbishop Max Gandolph von Küenburg decided to expel the Protestants living in the remote Defereggen Valley, after receiving complaints from Matrei that a seller of Catholic tokens had been mistreated. The Deferegger Protestants were forced to leave during winter, without the stipulated three-year grace period. All children under the age of 15 were forced to remain in Salzburg to be raised as Catholics, and the parents were taxed a portion of their possessions to pay for this Catholic education. In response, the Protestant body in the Reichstag protested that this expulsion violated both the Peace of Augsburg and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. However, the Prince-Archbishop insisted that the expelees were not true Protestants, but rather heretics who were not entitled to the protections given to Protestants under the treaty. Contemporary documents capture the expulsion of 621 adults and 289 children from the Defereggen Valley. After five years of wrangling, Emperor Leopold I intervened and instructed Kuenburg's successor, Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun, to give the children the choice of joining their parents in exile. However, only fourteen of them accepted this offer. == Final expulsion in 1731 ==

In 1731, Prince-Archbishop Leopold Anton von Firmian decided to expel all remaining Protestants living in Salzburg. The expulsion edict was issued on 31 October 1731, the 214th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. Modeled after the Deferegger expulsion, von Firmian's edict ordered Protestants to leave Salzburg within eight days, leaving behind all children under the age of 12. Single men and women without land holdings were rounded up in November by Austrian troops and escorted out of Salzburg. Emperor Charles VI, who needed the support of the Protestant states to secure the Austrian succession, wrote a personal letter to von Firmian, asking him to comply with the Peace of Augsburg by allowing the Protestants to leave under reasonable terms and even to remain for three years if they wished. Several hundred Salzburgers died in the trek across Germany. The first Salzburg Protestants reached Königsberg on 28 May 1732. About 16,000 to 17,000 arrived in East Prussia, where they were settled in the Lithuania Minor region, mainly in the area of Gumbinnen (present-day Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast). King Frederick William I personally greeted the first group of immigrants and sang Protestant hymns with them. About 800 Protestants, mainly miners from Dürrnberg, emigrated to the Dutch Republic, where some of them settled around Cadzand. == Aftermath ==

The expulsion of the Salzburg Protestants created a sensation in the Protestant states of Europe. At least 300 different books and pamphlets were written about the migration in 1732–1733, celebrating the faith and perseverance of the Salzburgers. Later, Goethe's poem Hermann and Dorothea would adapt a story from the Salzburg migration to the contemporary setting of the French Revolution. Prussia dispatched Baron Erich Christoph von Plotho to Salzburg to sell the lands that the Protestants had left behind, valued at about 2.5 million Prussian thalers. He was able to sell the properties only at severely depressed prices of one-quarter to one-half the assessed value. Only a small portion of the sales price was paid in cash, and a 10% emigration tax was paid to the Archbishopric. In total, about 300,000 thalers were recovered from the Salzburg properties. Following the Salzburg example, Emperor Charles VI adopted the policy of expelling Protestants from his adjacent Salzkammergut territories from 1734 onwards. As he had no intention to lose any subjects to the Prussian king, he had about 4,000 refugees resettled in the Habsburg crown lands of Transylvania and Hungary. The 1781 Patent of Toleration, issued by Emperor Joseph II, put an end to the Counter-Reformation measures. Nevertheless, still in 1837, the Salzburg archbishop Friedrich Johannes Jacob Celestin von Schwarzenberg urged Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria to expel several hundred Protestants from the Tyrolean Zillertal. In 1966, Archbishop Andreas Rohracher expressed regret about the expulsions. ==Notable descendants==

• Agnes Miegel (1879–1964), author • Franz Schlegelberger (1876–1970), German jurist • Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), rocket scientist ==References==