The Treaty of Tübingen was a treaty with long-reaching legal consequences signed in the Duchy of Württemberg between its Duke, Ulrich, and the Estates of Württemberg. The treaty concluded the Poor Conrad revolt against Ulrich and annulled his recent taxes on the populace of the Duchy, while the Estates of his realm agreed to liquidate his substantial debts.
Background
Württemberg was a minor state in the Holy Roman Empire that had existed as a County from the late 11th century. Its rulers grew increasingly powerful over the Middle Ages by accumulating territory in Swabia and Imperial rights. By the 1270s, it was able to scuttle the efforts of the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph I, to restore the Duchy of Swabia. After acquiring Teck, seat of the defunct Duke of Teck and formerly a possession of the House of Zähringen, Württemberg had a case for elevation to ducal status. In 1495, at the Diet of Worms, Emperor Maximilian I made Württemberg a Duchy in what would be the final such elevation of an Imperial Count to a title other than "Prince". Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor from 1440 to 1493, made extensive reform to the medieval structure of the Holy Roman Empire by politically reorganizing it. One such reorganization was the ordering of its princes, prelates, and cities into the Imperial Estates, which shared power with the Emperor. This would be mirrored in several of its territories, like Württemberg, which established its own Estates in 1457. The Count at the time of Württemberg's elevation to ducal status was Eberhard V, who had reunited the County in 1480 after it had divided between two branches of the House of Württemberg. Eberhard V died in 1495, leaving the Duchy − and 300,000 florins of debt − to his cousin, Duke Eberhard II. Eberhard was not popular or a skilled administrator and was deposed in March 1498 by the personal intervention of Maximilian I. This left a nine-year-old, Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg. The Estates formed a four-man regency council to rule for Ulrich until Maximilian I declared Ulrich of age in 1503, violating the 1492 's stipulation that the Duke reached majority at age 20. The young Duke opened his reign with a successful campaign during the War of the Succession of Landshut, but also began accumulating massive debts. By 1514, the Duchy owed more than a million florins. To repay that debt Ulrich legislated a 6% wealth tax, which was so unpopular it never passed into law, and then an indirect tax on consumables that badly effected the Duchy's lower classes. The 1514 Poor Conrad revolt was one of the Bundschuh peasant revolts in southwest Germany between 1493 and 1517.
Aftermath
Until its annulment in 1805, the Treaty of Tübingen acted as a kind of written constitution for the Duchy. The treaty, which transformed the Estates of the Duchy into a check on ducal power, was for a time regarded by scholars as a "Württemberger Magna Carta", though this comparison has been discredited. Theologian and historian Hellmut G. Haasis described the treaty as being a "shambles" that made no real progress toward a democratic state. Because of Tübingen's role in ending the Poor Conrad revolt, Ulrich awarded the citythe right to bear the Ducal stag antlers on its coat of arms above its blazon on 18 August 1514.
