Bavaria

“ BAVARIA (Ger. Bayern) , a kingdom of southern Germany, next to Prussia the largest state of the German empire in area and population. It consists of two distinct and unequal portions. Bavaria proper, and the Palatinate of the Rhine, which lie from 25 to 40 m. ”

“ In the Palatinate this mimic conflict takes place on the fourth Sunday in Lent. All over Bavaria the same drama used to be acted on the same day, and it was still kept up in some places down to the middle of the nineteenth century or later. While Summer appeared clad all in green, decked with fluttering ribbons, and carrying a branch in blossom or a little tree hung with apples and pears, Winter was muffled up in cap and mantle of fur and bore in his hand a snow-shovel or a flail. ”

“ We have climbed up inside 'The Bavaria,' the enormous bronze statue which towers above the city, and through the eyes of which six people are able to see before them the sweep of land extending to the mountains of the Tyrol. We have visited the hall of the portraits of beautiful women of the country, where one imagines oneself in a sort of Montyon Gallery of love, and where, if her nose be of an heroic cast, the daughter of a shoemaker may find herself side by side with the daughter of a princess. ”

“ I too was in quest of a crown, but not for myself.
[Pg 355]
The country is cut and slashed with heights called Bohemian mountains: paps whose tip is marked by pine-trees and whose swelling outlined by the green of the harvests.
And leave Bavaria.
The villages are scarce. A few fortresses, hungering for prisoners, roost on the rocks like old vultures. Between Zditz and Beraun, the mountains on the right become bald. One goes through a village: the roads are spacious, the posts well equipped; all points to a monarchy that imitates Old France. ”

“ Within ten years Bavaria has been seduced into pouring all its movable wealth into the lap of a woman who had no security to offer, simply because she paid high rates of interest, and covered her banking operations with the flowered robe of priestly confidence. ”

“ The Bavarians themselves long for annexation to Austria, for they know that it is their only road to prosperity. They look with hope and confidence to Maria Theresa, whose goodness and greatness may compensate them for all that they have endured at the hands of their pusillanimous little rulers. The only man in Germany who will oppose the succession of Austria to Bavaria, is Frederick, who is as ready to enlarge his own dominions as to cry 'Stop thief!' when he sees others doing likewise. ”

“ Bavaria is, however, still Bavaria, and if beer attract, the brown brau is as good as ever. The Bavarians were the only Germans who did not Gott-strafe England, America, and the rest, and they are quite pleasant neighbors. The Germans themselves are good walkers, love rucksacks, and the tramp will attract no unpleasant curiosity as in Spain. Switzerland may best be enjoyed afoot. It is common ground for the walkers of all nationalities—a League of Nations center for those who love God’s handiwork in Nature. ”

“ If you don’t drink beer at all, the Bavarian does not think you are merely odd, but he thinks you are in danger in mind and body.
Munich was rebuilt after the great fire, and extended by Emperor Ludwig, the Bavarian. Indeed, the rulers of Bavaria have spared neither pains nor expense to make their capital beautiful and attractive. Artistic buildings and monuments are distributed everywhere. ”

“ But it was the choice of this unlucky tactician to leave Bavaria also behind him, and, approaching the frontiers of France, to take possession of Ulm, Memmingen, and the line of the Iller and Danube, where he fortified himself with great care, as if to watch the defiles of the Black Forest. ”

“ Bavaria now lay exposed to the conqueror; and, for the first time, the tide of war, which had hitherto only beat against its frontier, now flowed over its long spared and fertile fields. Before, however, the king proceeded to the conquest of these provinces, he delivered the town of Augsburg from the yoke of Bavaria ”

“ The torrent of war now poured into Bavaria. Like the banks of the Rhine, those of the Lecke and the Donau were crowded with Swedish troops. Creeping into his fortresses, the defeated Elector abandoned to the ravages of the foe his dominions, hitherto unscathed by war, and on which the bigoted violence of the Bavarians seemed to invite retaliation. Munich itself opened its gates to the invincible monarch, and the fugitive Palatine, Frederick V., in the forsaken residence of his rival, consoled himself for a time for the loss of his dominions. ”

“ No princely race in Europe is of such ancient extraction. ... Bavaria was as yet destitute of towns: Landshutt and Munich first rose into consideration in the course of the 13th century; Ratisbon, already a flourishing town, was regarded as the capital and residence of the Dukes of Bavaria. ... A further accession of dignity and power awaited the family in 1214 in the acquisition of the Palatinate of the Rhine. Duke Ludwig was now the most powerful prince of Southern Germany. ”

“ The Catholic majority in Bavaria is but one sign of many of opposition to the one-sided policy of which Prince Bismarck is the author and expounder. Who knows but that the threatened dissolution of an empire erected on so false and narrow a basis has not already begun in Bavaria? All the sacrifices made to establish the empire—not the least of which were made by Bavaria—the German chancellor, by his determined and senseless religious persecution, would now seem foolishly to ignore. ”

“ Yet in spite of their peculiarities and eccentricities they have always been exceedingly popular with their subjects, as much for their personal charm as for their devotion to the happiness and welfare of their people. The annals of Bavaria have little to record of treason or conspiracy against the princes of the land, but tell much of the loyalty and sacrifices of life and property on the part of the people. ”

“ The chief temporal power which arose in this region was the Palatinate of the Rhine, a power which, like others, went through many unions and divisions, and spread into four circles, those of Upper and Lower Rhine, Westfalia, and Bavaria. ♦Bavaria.♦ This last district, though united with the Palatine Electorate, was, from the early part of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Upper Palatinate. To the south of it lay the Bavarian principalities. These, united into a single duchy, formed the power which grew into the modern kingdom. ”

“ The state has two Roman Catholic universities, Munich and Würzburg, and a Lutheran, Erlangen; in Munich there are a polytechnic, an academy of sciences and an academy of art.
Agriculture.—Of the total surface of Bavaria about one-half is under cultivation, one-third forest, and the remaining sixth mostly pasture. The level country, including both Lower Bavaria (extending northwards to the Danube) and the western and middle parts of Franconia, is productive of rye, oats, wheat, barley and millet, and also of hemp, flax, madder and fruit and vines. ”

“ You do not wish to try a citizen and subject of Bavaria, for a crime which he is said to have committed in his own country, according to the laws of Bavaria, but according to those of a foreign and hostile state? ”

“ The government was inspired by the narrowest clericalism, which culminated in the attempt to withdraw the Bavarian bishops from the jurisdiction of the great German metropolitans and place them directly under that of the pope. On the eve of the Revolution the intellectual and social condition of Bavaria remained that of the middle ages. In 1792 the revolutionary armies overran the Palatinate; in 1795 the French, under Moreau, invaded Bavaria itself, advanced to Munich—where they were received with joy by the long-suppressed Liberals—and laid siege to Ingolstadt. ”

“ The restoration of the reputation of Bavaria in art was chiefly the work of Ludwig I, under whom the capital became one of the most prominent seats of the fine arts in Europe. The religion of the State is Roman Catholicism, over [430] 70 per cent of the population being Roman Catholics. All citizens, whatever their creed, possess the same civil and political rights. The dioceses of Bavaria comprise two Roman Catholic archbishopries, Munich and Bamberg ”

“ The king was silent.
"The great thing would be," he said, after a pause, "to reach Bavaria. If we succeed in this, the army is saved, and will be free to take a part in the great struggle on the fate of Germany. We must know exactly where the Bavarian army is."
"According to what I heard yesterday, the Bavarian outposts are near Eisenach and Gotha," said Count Ingelheim. ”

“ You must know that we do these things differently in Bavaria. On the fair-ground, there is very little to be seen of the fair. There is an inclosure where steam-engines are smoking and puffing, and threshing-machines are making a clamor; where some big church-bells hang, and where there are a few stalls for horses and cattle. But the competing horses and cattle are led before the judges elsewhere; the horses, for instance, by the royal stables in the city. I saw no such general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at your fairs. ”

“ It is impossible to live in this wonder city and not find each day adding to one’s admiration for its kings. The most ardent republicanism cannot withhold this. Their munificent public spirit, grand conceptions, fine taste, good judgment, energetic execution, and practical improvements are made manifest in every direction. Bavaria, and especially this, its capital city, have been subjected to much criticism and no little ridicule on account of their so-termed pretentious development—their egotism in attempting to rival Athens and Rome in the style and magnitude of their public buildings ”

“ Physical Features.—Bavaria proper is bounded on the S. by the Alps, on the N.E., towards Bohemia, by a long range of mountains known as the Böhmerwald, on the N. by the Fichtelgebirge and the Frankenwald, which separate it from the kingdom of Saxony, the principality of Reuss, the duchies of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Meiningen and the Prussian province of Hesse-Cassel. The ranges seldom exceed the height of 3000 or 4000 ft.; but the ridges in the south, towards Tirol, frequently attain an elevation of 9000 or 10,000 ft. On the W. Bavaria is bounded by Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt. ”

“ I have read all the documents by which you have sought to prove that Austria has claims upon Lower Bavaria, because, in 1410, the Emperor Sigismund enfeoffed his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, with this province. I have read further that in 1614 the Emperor Matthias gave to the archducal house the reversion of the Suabian estate of Mindelheim, which subsequently, in 1706, when the Elector of Bavaria fell under the ban of the empire, was actually claimed by the Emperor of Austria. ”

“ As regards soil, Bavaria is one of the most fertile countries in Germany, producing the various cereals in abundance, the best hops in Germany, fruit, wine, tobacco, &c., and having extensive forests. ”

“ Nowhere is red-tape more absurd than when it is being wound by a defeated nation after a great war.
Bavaria is encouraged to think of herself as a separate country. French policy foreshadows an independent State of Southern Catholics. With that in view a French minister plenipotentiary has been sent to Munich, and we British have just followed the French suit by appointing our diplomatic representative also. Bavaria is not supposed to enter into foreign relationships except through the Reich. ”

“ The western parts of Bavaria, on the Wurtemburg frontier, perhaps as Slavonic as the valley of the Naab, differ, in their subsequent history, by having witnessed displacements from the south and west, from the Helvetians of Switzerland, and the Boii of Gaul, rather than from the Germans on the north. The later changes are the same in both cases.
The north-western parts of Bavaria were probably German from the beginning.
South of the Danube the ethnology changes. In the first place the Roman elements increase; since Vindelicia was a Roman Province. What, however, was the original basis? ”

“ There is not a Province in the Empire where Provisions are cheaper, and in the mean time there's a vast Home-Consumption; for besides that the Bavarians love good Eating and Drinking, the Country is very populous; and 'tis computed that the Inhabitants of Munich alone are above 40,000.
Of all the Sovereigns in Europe, next to the King of France, the Elector of Bavaria has the finest Pleasure-Houses, for which he may thank the Elector his Father who had a wonderful good Fancy and Judgment. ”

“ I expect of all the officials of Bavaria, above all from the gallant Bavarian officers and the soldiers of Bavaria, that they will, in remembrance of the solemn oath with which they swore loyalty to me, remain faithful to me and stand by me in this heavy hour.
“Every loyal citizen is called upon to brand Prince Luitpold and the former Ministry as traitors. ”

“ Bavaria and Saxony, still loosely attached to the German confederation, yet ready upon the slightest pretext to part company with their uncongenial neighbours—it would have seemed impossible, a mere Utopian dream, that all these units should be merged in a single Republic, by the far-seeing genius, not of a politician, not of a religious leader, not of a national hero, but of a Tourists’ Agency—and that agency one which had its centre neither in Vienna nor in Prague nor in Munich, but—tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento—in the busy thoroughfare of Ludgate Circus. ”