Nuncio to Cologne to be competent for all the Empire.[1]Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor sided with the electors, and declared he would recognise nuncios in their "political character" only.[1] Thus, there were two nuncios: one in Cologne, and one in Munich, the division of whose jurisdictions was a matter of contention.[1]
With the Archbishop-Electorates of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier occupied by France and dissolved in 1795 and 1803, respectively, the last nuncio to Cologne,
In the years 1800–1818 the nunciature was suppressed due to Napoléon's pressure on the Vatican. However, after the
Bavarian Concordat (1817) the ties were revitalised in 1818. Thus Austria and the Kingdom of Bavaria maintained their separate relations to the Pope, also after both had joined the German Confederation in 1815, which was no state, but a mere confederacy. Whereas the prevailingly Lutheran or Calvinist German states within the confederacy, disestablished in 1866, had no diplomatic ties with the Holy See.[1] None of the states of the North German Confederation, a confederacy without Austria and Southern Germany, had ties to the Vatican. When most German states, but not Austria, merged with the North German Confederation in order to form the federal united German Empire
in 1871, Bavaria was the only member state with a nunciature.