Bavaria part 3
Prime Minister Lutz felt the time right for removing Ludwig from the throne. He met with Maximilian’s brother Prince Luitpold. Luitpold was concerned for the House of Wittelsbach and for the financial dealings with Ludwig’s creditors. Lutz then created a commission to determine Ludwig’s sanity with Dr. Gudden as chair. Gudden had been retained to provide psychiatric care for the royal family. Four doctors concurred that Ludwig’s behavior gave the impression of insanity, which was enough to remove him as king. Ludwig was imprisoned at Neuschwanstein and then moved to Berg. Late one afternoon, Ludwig asked to walk with Gudden on the grounds. Neither returned alive and both bodies were found in the lake under mysterious circumstances.
Otto became King of Bavaria upon his older brother’s death in 1886, but never truly ruled as King and was by some accounts not even aware that he had become King. Even as a child, he suffered hallucinations. Ludwig had confined Otto to Nymphenburg Palace when he was in his 20s. He often spent weeks not removing his boots and barking like a dog. In his 30s, he was officially declared insane (by the same doctor who later declared Ludwig insane) and was moved to Fürstenried, where he lived within padded walls and screamed at all hours of the day. But he was indeed king for 30 years. He died in 1916. Otto’s uncle, Prince Luitpold of Bavaria, served as Prince Regent for Otto until Luitpold’s death. Luitpold’s son Ludwig then became the next Prince Regent.
The constitution of Bavaria was amended on 4 November 1913 to include a clause specifying that if regency for reasons of incapacity lasted for ten years with no expectation that the king would ever be able to reign, the regent could proclaim the end of the regency and assume the crown himself. The following day, his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, deposed Otto and assumed the title Ludwig III. Otto was permitted to retain his title and honors, which he did until his death in 1916. Ludwig III reigned until the end of the Great War.
Bavaria had six votes in the Bundesrat and sent forty-eight deputies to the Reichstag. The Wittelsbach dynasty was the hereditary ruling family. The Kingdom was a hereditary constitutional monarchy and the Parliament had two chambers. The upper house of the Bavarian parliament (Kammer der Reichsräte) was composed of various royalty, bishops, and appointees. The lower house (Kammerder Abgeordneten) or chamber of representatives consisted of 159 deputies, based on a population split of the census of 1875. Voting was universally secret and direct.
The Prussian Kulturkampfincreased the hostility toward Catholics,as did the 1870 Dogma of Papal Infallibility. Bavaria proclaimed a federal law that expelled the Jesuits on 6 September 1871, and it was extended to the Redemptorists in 1873. Bavarian Sonderrechte,founded on traditional racial and religious antagonism to the Prussians, continued, but was seen officially only in the limitation to display only the Bavarian flag on public buildings on the emperor’s birthday; a provision which was modified to allow the Bavarian and imperial flags to be hung side by side.
The population in 1914 was 7,100,000 of which 70 percent was Catholic. The kingdom was 75,780 km². The capital was Munich. Bavaria had its own army and army corps system. Soldiers were assigned to the Bavarian army corps numbers I through III. Similar to the other kingdoms of Saxony and Württemberg, there were two Bavarian infantry regiments garrisoned in Lorraine. However, due to the treaty of 1870, these were under control of the Bavarian II Corps in peacetime, rather than the corps area in which they were stationed. The Bavarian army formed a separate portion of the army of the German empire, with a separate administration. Bavarian regiments did not participate in the sequential numbering of the Prussian army. The regulations applicable to other sections of the whole German army were observed.