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After the death of Frederick II in 1250, none of the dynasties worthy of producing the king proved able to do so, and the leading dukes elected several competing kings. The time from 1246 (beginning with the election of Heinrich Raspe and William of Holland) to 1273, when Rudolph I of Habsburg was elected king, is commonly referred to as the Interregnum.
The difficulties in electing the king eventually led to the emergence of a fixed collegiate of electors, the Kurfürsten, whose composition and procedures were fixed in the Golden Bull of 1356. This development maybe symbolizes best the emerging duality between Kaiser und Reich, emperor and realm, who were no longer considered identical. This is also revealed in the way the post-Stauffen kings attempted to sustain their power. While earlier, the Empire's strength (and finances) greatly relied on the Empire's own lands, the so-called Reichsgut, which always belonged to the respective king (and included many Imperial Cities), its relevance faded after the 13th century (even though some fractions of it did remain until the Empire's end in 1806). Instead, the Reichsgut was increasingly pawned to local dukes, sometimes to raise money for the Empire, but more frequently as a reward for faithful duty or in an attempt to civilize stubborn dukes. It seems that the direct governance of the Reichsgut no longer matched the needs of either the king or the dukes.
Instead, the kings, beginning with Rudolph I of Habsburg, increasingly relied on the lands of their respective dynasties to support their power. As opposed to the Reichsgut, which was mostly scattered and difficult to administrate, the territories were comparably compact and thus easier to control. In 1282, Rudolph I thus lent his own Austria and the Steiermark to his own sons.
With Henry VII, the house of Luxembourg entered the stage. In 1312, he was crowned as the first holy roman emperor since Frederick II. After him all kings and emperors relied on the lands of their own family (Hausmacht): Louis IV of Wittelsbach (king 1314, emperor 1328–1347) relied on his lands in Bavaria; Charles IV of Luxembourg, the grandson of Henry VII, drew strength from his own lands in Bohemia. Interestingly, it was thus increasingly in the king's own interest to strengthen the power of the territories, since the king profited from such a benefit in his own lands as well.
The 13th century also saw a general structural change in how land was administered. Instead of personal duties, money increasingly became the common means to represent economic value in agriculture. Peasants were increasingly committed to pay tributes for their lands; the concept of "property" more and more replaced more ancient forms of jurisdiction, although the two were still very much tied. In the territories (not at the level of the Empire), power became increasingly bundled: who owned the land had jurisdiction, from which other powers were derived. (It is important to note however that jurisdiction, at this time, was not assumed to include legislation, which practically did not exist until well into the 15th century. Court practice heavily relied on traditional customs or rules described as such.)
It is during this time also that the territories began to transform themselves into predecessors of modern states. The process varied greatly among the various lands and was most advanced in those territories that were most identical to the lands of the old Germanic tribes, such as in Bavaria; it was slower in those scattered parts that were founded through imperial privileges.
The "constitution" of the Empire was still largely unsettled at the beginning of the 15th century. Although some procedures and institutions had been fixed, for example by the Golden Bull of 1356, the rules of how the king, the electors, and the other dukes should cooperate in the Empire much depended on the personality of the respective king. It therefore proved somewhat fatal that Sigismund of Luxemburg (king 1410, emperor 1433–1437) and Frederick III (king 1440, emperor 1452–1493) neglected the old core lands of the empire and mostly resided in their own lands. Without the presence of the king, the old institution of the Hoftag, the assembly of the realm's leading men, deteriorated. The Reichstag as a legislative organ of the Empire did not exist yet. Even worse, dukes often went into feuds against each other that, more often than not, escalated into local wars.
At the same time, the church was in crisis too. The conflict between several competing popes was only resolved at the Council of Constance ( 1414– 1418); after 1419, much energy was spent on fighting the heresy of the Hussites. The medieval idea of a unified Corpus christianum, of which the papacy and the Empire were the leading institutions, began to decline.
With these drastic changes, much discussion emerged in the 15th century about the Empire itself. Rules from the past no longer adequately described the structure of the time, and a reinforcement of earlier Landfrieden was urgently called for. During this time, the concept of "reform" emerges, in the original sense of the latin verb re-formare, to regain an earlier shape that had been lost.
When Frederick III needed the dukes to finance war against Hungary in 1486 and at the same time had his son, later Maximilian I elected king, he was presented with the dukes' united demand to participate in an Imperial Court. For the first time, the assembly of the electors and other dukes was now called Reichstag (to be joined by the Imperial Cities later). While Frederick refused, his more conciliant son finally convoked the Reichstag at Worms in 1495, after his father's death in 1493. Here, the king and the dukes agreed on four bills, commonly referred to as the Reichsreform (Imperial Reform): a set of legal acts to give the disintegrating Empire back some structure. Among others, this act produced the Imperial Circle Estates and the Reichskammergericht, (Imperial Chamber Court); structures that would – to a degree – persist until the end of the Empire in 1806.
However, it should take a few more decades until the new regulation was universally accepted and the new court began to actually function; only in 1512 would the Imperial Circles be finalized. The king also made sure that his own court, the Reichshofrat, continued to function in parallel to the Reichskammergericht. It is interesting to note that in this year, the Empire also receives its new title, the Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation ("Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation").
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