 At the same time, the abbey finally achieved Imperial immediacy with the abbess receiving a seat and voting rights in the Swabian Circle and the Reichstag.Following the secularisation of ecclesiastical states the territory and property of Söflingen Abbey with its 4000 subjects came under Bavarian rule in 1803.Together with the nuns the last abbess, Bonaventura Seelinger, chose to continue the monastic life but was ejected from the monastery in 1809 when the buildings were used as an army hospital and later as a Royal Bavarian court of law only to be allowed to briefly return in 1810 when, following a border treaty between Württemberg and Bavaria in 1810, the area around Söflingen, together with Ulm, came under the rule of the recently founded Kingdom of Württemberg.