ABSTRACT
Kingship in the medieval East Frankish-German Empire became the victim over time of a struggle against unfavourable popes and unruly princes. The majority of German historians in the nineteenth century, who were Prussian- and Protestant-oriented, sided with the kings. The princes appeared to them as outright villains. The foundation and development of their lordship in the high and late Middle Ages was regarded as a usurpation of what were originally royal rights. The phenomenon of contemporaneity was especially clear in research on the most important change in princely lordship in Frederick Barbarossa's time. Both Edmund E. Stengel and Heinrich Koller agreed that the initiative lay with Frederick Barbarossa and that the establishment of an imperial princely class was against his interests. Koller was of the opinion that the clear disparity in number between the ecclesiastical and secular imperial princes was an indication of Barbarossa's goal to develop a 'counterweight' to the secular princes with the help of the ecclesiastical princes.
