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Maximilian I Joseph
(1756—1825)

Prince-elector of Bavaria (as Maximilian IV Joseph) from 1799 to 1805, king Bavaria (as Maximilian I) from 1805 to 1825, was born on May 27 1756. He was carefully educated under the supervision of his uncle, Duke Christian IV , took service in 1777 as colonel in the French army and rose rapidly to the rank of major-general. From 1782 to 1789 he was stationed Strassburg, but at the outbreak of the revolution he exchanged the French for the Austrian service, taking part in the opening campaigns of the revolutionary wars. On April 1 1795 he succeeded his brother, Charles II and on February 16 1799 became Elector of Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Arch-Steward of the Empire on the extinction of the Sulzbach line with the death of the elector Charles Theodore.

The sympathy with France and with French ideas of enlightenment which characterized his reign was at once manifested. In the newly organized Count Max Josef von Montgelas, who, after falling into disfavour with Charles Theodore, had acted for a time as Maximilian Joseph's private secretary, was the most potent influence, an influence wholly "enlightened" and French. Agriculture and commerce were fostered, the laws were ameliorated, a new criminal code drawn up, taxes and imposts equalized without regard to traditional privileges, while a number of religious houses were suppressed and their revenues used for educational and other useful purposes. In foreign politics Maximilian Joseph's attitude was from the German point of view less commendable. With the growing sentiment German nationality he had from first to last no sympathy, and his attitude throughout was dictated by wholly dynastic, or at least Bavarian, considerations. Until 1813 he was the most faithful of Napoleon's German allies, the relation being cemented by the marriage of his daughter to Eugene Beauharnais. His reward came with the Treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1805), by the terms of which he was to receive the royal title and important territorial acquisitions in Swabia and Franconia to round off his kingdom. The Day="1" Year="1806">January 1 1806.

The new king of Bavaria was the most important of the princes belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine, and remained Napoleon's ally until the eve of Battle of Leipzig, when by the Convention of Ried (October 8, 1813) he made the guarantee of the integrity of his kingdom the price of his joining the Allies. By the first Treaty of Paris (June 3, 1814), however, he ceded Tirol to Austria in exchange for the former duchy of Worzburg. At Congress of Vienna too, which he attended in person, Maximilian had to make further concessions to Austria, ceding the quarters of the Inn and Hausruck in return for a part of the old Palatinate. The king fought hard to maintain the contiguity of the Bavarian territories as guaranteed at Ried but the most he could obtain was an assurance from Metternich in the matter of the Baden succession, in which he was also doomed to be disappointed.

At Vienna and afterwards Maximilian sturdily opposed any reconstitution of Germany which should endanger the independence of Bavaria, and it was his insistence on the principle of full sovereignty being left to the German reigning princes that largely contributed to the loose and weak organization of the new German Confederation. The Federal Act of the Vienna Congress was proclaimed in Bavaria, not as a law but as an international treaty. It was partly to secure popular support in his resistance to any interference of the federal diet in the internal affairs of Bavaria, partly to give unity to his somewhat heterogeneous territories, that Maximilian on May 26 1818 granted a liberal constitution to his people. Montgelas, who had opposed this concession, had fallen in the previous year, and Maximilian had also reversed his ecclesiastical policy, signing on October 24 1817 a concordat with Rome by which the powers of the clergy, largely curtailed under Montgelas's administration, were restored. The new parliament proved so intractable that in 1819 Maximilian was driven to appeal to the powers against his own creation; but his Bavarian "particularism" and his genuine popular sympathies prevented him from allowing Carlsbad Decrees to be strictly enforced within his dominions. The suspects arrested by order of the Mainz Commission he was accustomed to examine himself, with the result that in many cases the whole proceedings were quashed, and in not a few the accused dismissed with a present of money. Maximilian died at Nymphenburg Palace, near Munich, on October 13 1825 and was succeeded by his son Ludwig I.

In private life Maximilian was kindly and simple. He loved to play the part of Landesvater, walking about the streets of his capital en bourgeois and entering into conversation with all ranks of his subjects, by whom he was regarded with great affection. He was twice married: in 1785 to Princess Wilhelmine Auguste of Hesse-Darmstadt, in 1797 to Princess Caroline Friederike of Baden.

German Federal Republic, 1970, Monument of Maximilian I

Liberia, 1971, Maximilian's Squere

YAR, 1970, Monument to Maximilian I

German Federal Republic, 2006.03.02, Munich. Maximilian I Joseph