Magdeburg

The Prince-Archbishopric of Magdeburg was an ecclesiastical state on the Elbe. In 1337 Archbishop Otto of Hesse held the see; the city had paid him homage in 1333 after citizens murdered his predecessor Burchard III in 1325.

Magdeburg embraced the Reformation, but Tilly's army stormed and sacked the Protestant city in 1631 during the Thirty Years' War. The Peace of Westphalia promised the see to Brandenburg in 1648. When its last administrator died in 1680, it was secularized as the Duchy of Magdeburg under the Hohenzollerns.