Ludwig I (Baden)

Grand Duke Ludwig I of Baden

Ludwig I of Baden (born February 9, 1763 in Karlsruhe ; † March 30, 1830 there ) was Grand Duke of Baden from December 8, 1818 until his death .

Early years

Ludwig was the third son of Grand Duke Karl Friedrich von Baden and Karoline Luise von Hessen-Darmstadt . Since it was not foreseeable that he would one day become the ruling head of his fatherland, military training made sense for him. In 1787, the young Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia asked to be accepted into his service. As early as September he was commander of the Grenadier Guard Battalion No. 6 of the Prussian Army with the rank of Colonel .

Ludwig got his first practical test in the field in the First Coalition War . Because of his bravery in the battle of Hochheim he was on January 6, a Knight of the Black Eagle defeated and on January 17, 1793 to Major General conveyed. On February 23, 1793 he received the infantry regiment "Jung Bornstedt" from King Friedrich Wilhelm II as chief .

On February 16, 1795 he diminished and returned to Baden. After the Hereditary Prince Karl Ludwig died in an accident in December 1801, Margrave Karl Friedrich raised his son Ludwig for various tasks. In 1802 he sent Ludwig on a diplomatic mission to the Tsar's court in Moscow and then to Paris to negotiate with Napoleon Bonaparte . Ludwig also took part in the royal congress initiated by Napoleon in Mainz (then part of France) in 1804 and in December of the same year, together with the Hereditary Prince Karl, in Napoleon's imperial coronation.

During the period of upheaval that was difficult for Baden, he was also directly involved in government affairs: in 1803 he became minister of war, in 1804 he took on responsibility for the finance and forestry administration of the young Grand Duchy. Baden was an ally of Napoleonic France at this time.

Relationship with Napoleon

Ludwig was initially valued by Napoleon and the French government and was often classified as a "friend" of French politics and was finally involved in late 1805 / early 1806 as a mediator on the French side for the marriage of Prince Elector Karl with Napoleon's adopted daughter Stephanie, which was planned by Napoleon. But when Napoleon visited Karlsruhe in January 1806, he surprisingly asked Ludwig about the state of state finances and forests in his adopted daughter's future home in Baden.In May 1806, Napoleon prompted Ludwig to resign from his financial and forestry responsibilities. At the beginning of 1808, after severe criticism from Napoléon, Ludwig resigned his responsibility for the Baden military and was finally exiled to Salem Castle in 1810 under pressure from Napoléon . He was only allowed to enter Karlsruhe in 1812, after the death of his father.

Reign

Grand Duke Ludwig of Baden

After the death of his nephew, Grand Duke Karl , Ludwig ascended the Baden throne in 1818. In contrast to his supposedly dissolute lifestyle in the early years, he was extremely frugal when it came to keeping the court during his reign. Ludwig, who saw himself as a military man, increased the military budget beyond what was actually needed, but also promoted the development of the country. King Friedrich Wilhelm III. appointed Ludwig on January 29, 1819 General of the Infantry and Chief of the 4th Infantry Regiment (3rd East Prussian) .

Universities

In addition to the venerable University of Heidelberg , which belonged to the Grand Duchy with the Electoral Palatinate in 1803, he also received the University of Freiburg , which before 1805 belonged to Upper Austria . For Baden, which as a margraviate had no university at all, one would have been sufficient. The Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg still bears his name today.

In 1825 he also merged the architecture school founded by Friedrich Weinbrenner with the engineering school founded by Johann Gottfried Tulla , both in Karlsruhe. The Polytechnic University is the direct predecessor of the University of Karlsruhe (today KIT) . Ludwig wrote in the founding deed: “The students should not only acquire their knowledge for their scientific training, but study these sciences for future use in life and for life, be it for architecture or for water and road construction or for mining and for forestry ... " . In addition to Latin and ancient Greek, French, the language of the neighbors, was taught as a subject at the Polytechnic. Karlsruhe is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany.

Churches

Ludwig's church policy is also permanent. He made a major contribution to the fact that the Vatican reorganized the layout of the dioceses after the Napoleonic land consolidation. The ancient diocese of Constance was dissolved in favor of dioceses that were oriented towards the new rulers. Freiburg became the seat of a diocese for Baden and the Hohenzollern Lands , and Rottenburg for Württemberg. Through Ludwig's diplomacy, Freiburg was also awarded the seat of the archbishopric for the Upper Rhine ecclesiastical province, to which the suffragan dioceses Fulda , Mainz , Limburg and Rottenburg were assigned.

Since the former Margraviate of Baden and thus also the House of Baden were Lutheran , but reformed the Electoral Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine , an agreement was necessary here too, since these two confessions had greater theological differences than they did with the Catholic Church. A general synod of the two churches was invited to the Karlsruhe city church on behalf of Ludwig, with the substantial participation of Johann Peter Hebel , where 44 delegates decided on July 26, 1821 to unite the two denominations of the Baden regional church . From 1829 onwards, the still young evangelical community in Freiburg im Breisgau built its first church under the supervision of the Baden building director Heinrich Hübsch . The monastery church of the secularized monastery Tennenbach was torn down stone by stone and rebuilt in Freiburg as the Ludwig Church . The church was named after Grand Duke Ludwig.

Domestic politics

Inside, Ludwig represented an autocratic policy. The liberal constitution of Baden gave the state parliament comparatively great powers. Since Ludwig did not appreciate the constitution, he tried several times to undermine the rights of the Landtag by only rarely convening it or by hindering officials who were also members of the Landtag in their tasks.

• 

  Grand Duke Ludwig I of Baden

• 

  Statue of Ludwig on a fountain in Karlsruhe

With the death of Ludwig through a stroke, the equal descendants of the House of Baden from the first marriage of Grand Duke Karl Friedrich in the male line died out. The regency therefore changed to the descendants from the morganatic second marriage of Grand Duke Karl Friedrich with the much younger lady-in-waiting Luise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg according to a regulation established at the Aachen Congress in 1818 . At Karl Friedrich's personal request, she was made Countess of Hochberg by Emperor Franz II in 1796 and declared entitled to inheritance. Nevertheless it happened, while Ludwig was still alive, that in addition to the countless speculations about the apparently noble descent of the enigmatic Kaspar Hauser , Hauser was in fact the last living Prince of Baden of the old Zähringer line alongside Ludwig. The alleged murder of Hauser in 1833 solidified the rumor, which was subsequently further elaborated.

ancestors

Charles III Wilhelm of Baden-Durlach (1679–1738)

Friedrich Hereditary Prince of Baden (1703–1732)

Magdalena Wilhelmine of Württemberg (1677–1742)

Karl Friedrich Grand Duke of Baden (1728–1811)

Johann Wilhelm Friso of Nassau-Dietz (1687–1711)

Anna Charlotte Amalie of Nassau-Dietz-Oranien (1710–1777)

Marie Luise of Hessen-Kassel (1688–1765)

Ludwig I. Grand Duke of Baden

Ernst Ludwig Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt , (1667–1739)

Ludwig VIII Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (1691–1768)

Dorothea Charlotte of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1661–1705)

Karoline Luise of Hessen-Darmstadt (1723–1783)

Johann Reinhard III. von Hanau (1665–1736)

Charlotte von Hanau-Lichtenberg (1700–1726)

Dorothea Friederike of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1676–1731)

progeny

Ludwig Graf von Langenstein - 1834; Oil painting by the Baden court painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Ludwig had several offspring, but they were out of the question for the line of succession because the respective child mothers were not befitting:

• Ludwig Wilhelm von Steinberg (1797–1871); there is no information about the mother

With Katharina Werner (1799–1850) Ludwig I had the following descendants, see Langenstein (noble family of Baden) :

• Luise Werner (1817-1821)
• Ludwig Wilhelm August, Count of Langenstein and Gondelsheim (1820–1872); he remained childless
• Louise, Countess of Langenstein and Gondelsheim (1825–1900). In 1848 she married the Swedish nobleman Carl Israel, Count Douglas (1824–1898). Numerous descendants of this connection are still alive today. The residence of the Counts of Douglas is Langenstein Castle in Hegau .

literature

• Willy Andreas : History of Baden's administrative organization and constitution in the years 1802–1818. First volume: The structure of the state in the context of general politics. Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1913.
• Annette Borchardt-Wenzel: The women at the Baden court. Piper, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-492-23696-0 .
• Klaus Gerteis :  Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 354 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Uwe A. Oster: The Grand Dukes of Baden (1806-1918). Pustet, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7917-2084-5 .
• Uwe A. Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. Casimir Katz Verlag, Gernsbach 2012, ISBN 978-3-938047-62-0 .
• Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldier leadership . Volume 2, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1937], DNB 367632772 , pp. 362-364, no. 849.
• Friedrich von Weech : Ludwig Wilhelm August, Grand Duke. In: Friedrich von Weech (Ed.): Badische Biographien. First part . Heidelberg 1875, p. 22 f. (Digitized pp. 22. , 23 )
• Friedrich von Weech:  Ludwig I. (Grand Duke of Baden) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 491-493.

Web links

• Descendants of Grand Duke Ludwig I ( Memento from December 3, 2001 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. 2012, pp. 46, 52.
2. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. 2012, p. 57.
3. ^ So the Austrian envoy Schall in Karlsruhe in a letter dated September 11, 1805 (in: Politische Correspondenz Karl Friedrichs von Baden , vol. V, p. 461. Heidelberg 1901) or the Margravine Amalie in a letter from Karlsruhe to Empress Elisabeth from October 2, 1805 (in: Politische Correspondenz Karl Friedrichs von Baden , Vol. VI, p. 244. Heidelberg 1915).
4. ↑ See Ludwig's letter to Sigismund von Reitzenstein of December 26, 1806 (in: Politische Correspondenz , Vol. VI, p. 258ff.) Or the Margravine Amalie's letter of December 31, 1805 to her daughter, Empress Elisabeth (in: Politische Correspondenz , Vol. VI, p. 267)
5. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I , 2012, p. 74.
6. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. 2012, p. 79f.
7. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. 2012, p. 93f.
8. ^ Oster: Grand Duke Ludwig I. 2012, pp. 98f.
9. ↑ s. Edmund von der Becke-Klüchtzner: Stamm-Tafeln of the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Baden: a newly edited book of nobility , Baden-Baden, 1886, p. 456 (online) ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl	Grand Duke of Baden 1818–1830	Leopold