Max von Baden

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Max von Baden, after August 30, 1914

Maximilian Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm Prince and Margrave of Baden (short: Max von Baden , born July 10, 1867 in Baden-Baden ; †  November 6, 1929 in Constance ) was the last Chancellor of the German Empire in 1918 and the last heir to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden .

The relatively liberal applicable prince , a cousin of Emperor Wilhelm II. , Took over the office of Chancellor in the closing stages of World War I on 3 October 1918 and had it until November 9, about five weeks held. Since the war defeat of the German Reich was already established, Max von Baden was during the so-called October reform the parliamentary system of government with maintaining the monarchy formally introduce. For the first time in the history of the Reich, he appointed two representatives of the Social Democrats, who form the majority faction in the Reichstag, to the government cabinet as state secretaries , in addition to some bourgeois-conservative party politicians . This was intended to create trust among the population as well as among the war opponents of the allied powers in order to achieve tolerable peace conditions for Germany.

When the November Revolution triggered by the Kiel sailors' uprising seized the capital of Berlin on November 9 , he wanted to counteract unrest. Without authorization, he announced the emperor's abdication, which Germany's opponents of the war - above all US President Woodrow Wilson - had demanded as a prerequisite for a ceasefire and the initiation of a peace process. His attempt to save the monarchy as such failed. As Reichsverweser , he did not make himself available. Immediately after he had handed over the office of Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert , the chairman of the majority SPD , his party colleague Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed "the German Republic" .

At the time of the Weimar Republic , Max von Baden no longer played a political role. Until his death in 1929, he mainly devoted himself to the reform school Schloss Salem, which he co-founded in 1920 and which still exists today .

Life

Max von Baden, 1900
State coat of arms and inscription “BUILT UNDER MAXIMILIAN PRINZ AND MARGRAVE OF BADEN · 1909” on the manager's
villa of the Kirschgartshausen estate

Max von Baden was born the son of the Prussian general and prince Wilhelm (1829-1897) from the house of Baden and Maria Maximilianowna von Leuchtenberg (1841-1914), a granddaughter of Eugène de Beauharnais and niece of Tsar Alexander II of Russia . After attending a humanistic high school , he studied law and cameralia , a. a. at the University of Leipzig . In 1886 and 1887 he received the corps ribbons of the Rhenania Freiburg , Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg and Suevia Heidelberg . Then he entered the officer's career in the Prussian Army one.

V. l. From right: Prince Max with his cousin Viktoria von Baden with her husband, the Crown Prince and later King Gustav V of Sweden , at Tullgarn Castle , 1890.

When his uncle, Grand Duke Friedrich I , died in 1907, Max became heir to the throne and President of the First Chamber of Baden , since the marriage of his cousin, Grand Duke Friedrich II , remained childless. At the end of April 1903, as a lieutenant colonel, he took command of the 1st Badische Leib-Dragoons Regiment No. 20 . In 1906 Max became a colonel and in the following year he rose to the command of the 28th Cavalry Brigade, where he made it to major general . In 1911 he retired from active military service as Lieutenant General .

Apparently he was also engaged in agriculture. On the Baden Staatsdomäne Kirschgartshausen in Mannheim , the same Hausfideikommiss was ingredient of his family, there are two of him as a client-related inscriptions: "BUILT IN MAXIMILIAN PRINCE AND MARK GRAF VON BADEN · 1909" and "MAXIMILIAN PRINCE U. MARKGRAF TO BADEN · 1911 "

In 1914 he was reactivated and briefly took up his service with the General Staff of the XIV Army Corps , to which the Baden troop contingents were subordinate. But he returned to Baden in October. Wilhelm II promoted him to general of the cavalry in December 1914 . In addition to his assignment to the general command of the XIV Army Corps, Max devoted himself to caring for prisoners of war of all nationalities as honorary president of the Baden Red Cross throughout the war. In 1916 he became honorary president of the German-American POW Aid of the World Federation of Christian Young Men’s Associations (YMCA). He refused to serve at the front, which was interpreted as a failure; he was ridiculed as a "medical general".

Prince Max was considered a liberal aristocrat and increasingly became the focal point of the moderate political camp, which stood in opposition to the ultra-right wing, represented by the Supreme Army Command . As early as 1917 he publicly rejected the resumption of the unrestricted submarine war , which finally led to the entry of the United States of America on April 6, 1917 .

A remarkable ambivalence of personality emerged in 2004 when two young historians discovered a friendly correspondence with the anti-Semite and racial ideologist Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the archives of the Richard Wagner Memorial in Bayreuth . Letters and telegrams from the years 1909 to 1919 contain, on the one hand, numerous anti-Semitic statements by Chamberlain, which the Prince did not contradict. In a letter from 1916 he even stated that the “danger of Judaization” was present to him. At the same time, one of his closest confidants, Kurt Hahn , with whom he founded the Schloss Salem School, was of Jewish origin.

Max von Baden was homosexual , but for dynastic reasons he decided to live as a husband and father. As a result, he was open to blackmail, which at the end of his time as Chancellor had fatal consequences.

Imperial Chancellorship 1918

Berlin, October 3, 1918: The newly appointed Chancellor Max von Baden (1), Vice Chancellor Payer  (2) and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Baron von Radowitz  (3), as they leave the Reichstag building.

When in October 1918 in Berlin - with the impending military collapse in view - they were hastily looking for a credible head of government for the upcoming armistice negotiations, Max von Baden seemed to be the right man. It was hoped that because of his national and international reputation, and because of his opposition to unqualified submarine warfare , he would be accepted by US President Woodrow Wilson , although the appointment of a grand ducal prince was not the best sign of impending democratization . Max von Baden also lacked managers for the difficult tasks.

But also domestically, the Supreme Army Command was prepared to make concessions in order to underpin the credibility of the request. Erich Ludendorff himself called for the empire to be converted into a parliamentary monarchy with the inclusion of the opposition parties, v. a. the Social Democrats, so as not to hand over the request for a ceasefire themselves and to have to take responsibility for the military defeat. Here too, Prince Max von Baden, as a liberal and a member of the Baden Princely House, seemed an acceptable candidate for social democrats and conservatives alike. Still-Chancellor Georg von Hertling proposed him as his successor, and on October 3, 1918, the Kaiser appointed him Chancellor.

On the same day, Max von Baden formed a parliamentary government, to which social democrats, Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer , were appointed for the first time. On October 4th, at the urging of the Supreme Army Command, he forwarded the prepared request for an armistice to Wilson. But he made it clear that he could not believe in a democratization of the German Reich as long as the Kaiser was still in office. Prince von Baden knew that further corrections would be necessary in order to persuade the Allies to give in. So he ended the submarine war and consequently, on October 26th, pushed through the discharge of Ludendorff, the most powerful man in the Reich, from the Supreme Army Command. On October 28, 1918, the changes to the Reich constitution came into force, according to which the Reich Chancellor formally required the confidence of the Reichstag.

During the British conquest of Flanders and the Kiel sailors' uprising , which initiated the November Revolution, Prince Max was ill and could not act. There are various specifications in the specialist literature for the type of illness. According to the non-fiction author Manfred Vasold , he was sick with the Spanish flu . The historian Lothar Machtan , on the other hand, believes in the political background of the disease: In order to get more favorable peace conditions from the Americans and still save the monarchy, Prince Max sought a quick resignation of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm had fled Berlin on October 29 and was now at the headquarters of the Supreme Army Command in Spa, Belgium . He was to be succeeded in office by the underage Kaiser grandson Wilhelm of Prussia , for whom Prince Max wanted to lead the reign as imperial administrator . The party chairman of the majority Social Democrats, Friedrich Ebert, was to become Chancellor . This was initially prevented by Empress Auguste Viktoria , who, as Machtan suspected, threatened by telephone to make the prince's homosexuality public. He then suffered a severe nervous breakdown on November 1 , which his doctors treated by putting him into deep sleep with an opium preparation . Only on November 3, Prince Max resumed his official duties.

Prince and Princess Max von Baden with their children, 1914

After the November Revolution triggered and in the night of November 7th to 8th with the deposition of King Ludwig III. Bavaria was the first German state to be proclaimed a free state (a republic), and the emperor's position could no longer be maintained. In order to at least save the monarchy as such and to appease the revolutionaries, on the late morning of November 9th, 1918, Max von Baden proclaimed the emperor's abdication and the crown prince's resignation . Kaiser Wilhelm had actually only promised to abdicate as Kaiser, but not as Prussian King. The action of Max von Baden was confirmed in writing by Wilhelm II and his son only afterwards (by the Kaiser on November 28, 1918 and by the heir to the throne on December 1, 1918).

Thereupon Max von Baden handed over the Reich Chancellorship to Friedrich Ebert, the chairman of the strongest party in the Reichstag, as he accepted the previous Reich constitution as invalid. Undersecretary of State Theodor Lewald had written his abdication speech , with whom von Baden had a special relationship of trust due to the common old rulers in the Heidelberg connection Rupertia . Ebert asked Max to become Reichsverweser, a kind of provisional head of state, until a national assembly would finally determine the form of government in Germany. Max von Baden refused because the events had already progressed too far.

Following the announcement of the emperor's abdication and the handover of the Reich Chancellorship to Ebert, Scheidemann proclaimed the republic on the afternoon of November 9 from a balcony of the Reichstag.

After the Reich Chancellorship

Max von Baden stayed away from the political debates after the end of the Empire. In December 1918 the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) in Heidelberg and Mannheim offered him a candidacy for the election to the constituent national assembly in Weimar on January 19, 1919. The messenger of the news on December 24, 1918 was the well-known social scientist Max Weber . Max von Baden did not agree to it. Rather, he devoted himself - together with Karl Reinhardt and Kurt Hahn - to founding the Schloss Salem School , which originally had an anti-democratic educational mandate, but was later to contribute to the formation of a new intellectual elite in Germany. For Max von Baden, it was attractive to withdraw a not inconsiderable part of his assets from the tax authorities through the “Margravial School Foundation”. As a side effect, he was able to give his son Berthold a high school education and optimal upbringing.

After the death of his cousin, the former Grand Duke Friedrich II , on August 9, 1928, his son Berthold became the new head of the House of Baden. This was due to the fact that Friedrich had adopted Max's son on August 8, 1927.

After several strokes, Max von Baden died of kidney failure on November 6, 1929 in a hospital in Konstanz.

His estate, which is only accessible to a limited extent, is located in the Margravial Badische Archiv in Salem and was mainly evaluated by the historian Golo Mann .

ancestors

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Karl Friedrich Grand Duke of Baden (1728–1811)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Leopold Grand Duke of Baden (1790-1852)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Luise Karoline von Hochberg (1767–1820)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wilhelm Prince of Baden (1829-1897)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gustav IV Adolf King of Sweden (1778–1837)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sophie of Sweden (1801-1865)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Friederike von Baden (1781–1826)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Max von Baden
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Eugène de Beauharnais , (1781-1824)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maximilian de Beauharnais (1817-1852)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Auguste of Bavaria (1788-1851)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maria Maximilianowna von Leuchtenberg (1841–1914)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Nicholas I Tsar of Russia (1796–1855)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Marija Nikolajewna Romanowa (1819–1876)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Charlotte of Prussia (1798–1860)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Marriage and offspring

From her marriage on July 10, 1900 in Gmunden / Upper Austria to Maria-Luise von Hannover-Cumberland , Princess of Great Britain and Ireland (born October 11, 1879 in Gmunden; † January 31, 1948 in Salem), daughter of Ernst August, Crown Prince of Hanover , had two children:

grandson

Awards

See also

Fonts

  • Memories and documents. EA Dt. Publishing House, Stuttgart 1927, ed. by Golo Mann and Andreas Burckhardt, Klett, Stuttgart 1968.
  • Memories and documents. Volume I. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1927, ed. by Björn Bedey (German Reich - Reich Chancellor Vol. VIII / II), SEVERUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86347-109-5 .
  • Memories and documents. Volume II. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1927, ed. by Björn Bedey (German Reich - Reich Chancellor Vol. VIII / I-II), SEVERUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86347-124-8 .
  • The moral offensive. Germany's fight for its rights. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1921, ed. by Björn Bedey (German Reich - Reich Chancellor Vol. VIII / II), SEVERUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86347-143-9 .
  • A rally by Prince Max von Baden. Reprint from the December 1918 issue of the Prussian Yearbooks digitized

literature

  • Theodor Eschenburg : Prince Max of Baden. In: The Republic of Weimar. Piper, Munich 1984.
  • Lothar Machtan : Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. A biography . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 .
  • Golo Mann : The Last Grand Duke (1973). In: same: night fantasies. Story told. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1982, pp. 79-97.
  • Erich Matthias : The government of Prince Max von Baden. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962.
  • Gerhard A. Ritter (Ed.): The German Revolution 1918/19. Documents. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-596-24300-9 .
  • Gerhard Schulz:  Maximilian. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 475-477 ( digitized version ).
  • Karina Urbach, Bernd Buchner: Prince Max von Baden and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. From the correspondence 1909-1919. in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 52 (2004), pp. 121–177. online (PDF; 2.4 MB)
  • Reinhold Weber , Ines Mayer (eds.): Political Heads from Southwest Germany , (Writings on political regional studies of Baden-Württemberg, Volume 33), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018700-7 , pp. 11-20
  • Konrad Krimm (ed.): The Desireless. Prince Max von Baden and his world. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2016. ISBN 978-3-17-031764-2

Movies

Web links

Commons : Prince Maximilian of Baden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Register book of the University of Leipzig 1886–1887: Leipzig University Archives, Rector M 37.
  2. ^ Kösener Corpslisten 1930: 35, 490; 71, 948; 72, 751
  3. Lothar Machtan: Prince Max von Baden: The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 , p. 249
  4. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 , p. 243ff and p. 253ff.
  5. Urbach / Buchner 2004. For the response to the discovery, see: Claus Donath, Badische Latest News March 15, 2004: Archive link ( Memento from March 3, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 , pp. 154ff and pp. 440–445.
  7. ^ Sönke Neitzel : World War and Revolution. 1914–1918 / 19. be.bra-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 9783898094030 , p. 152
  8. Manfred Vasold: Influenza, plague and cholera. A history of epidemics in Europe. Stuttgart 2008.
  9. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. A biography . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013, pp. 440–445.
  10. Arnd Krüger , Rolf Pfeiffer: Theodor Lewald and the instrumentalization of physical exercises and sport. In: Uwe Wick, Andreas Höfer (Ed.): Willibald Gebhardt and his successors (= series of publications by the Willibald Gebhardt Institute, Volume 14). Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 2012, ISBN 978-389899-723-2 , pp. 120-145.
  11. See Max Weber: Letters 1918–1920. 1st half volume ( Max Weber Complete Edition . Volume II / 10.1), Tübingen 2012, pp. 381–384. (Letter to Max von Baden dated December 28, 1918).
  12. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 , p. 480ff.
  13. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 , p. 514f.
  14. ^ Lothar Machtan: Prince Max of Baden. The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2013. ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 . P. 518.
  15. Lothar Machtan: Prince Max von Baden: The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2013. ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 . P. 514.
  16. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914. Ed .: War Ministry . Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Son . Berlin 1914. p. 355.
  17. Court and State Handbook of the Kingdom of Württemberg 1907. P. 30.
  18. Lothar Machtan: Prince Max von Baden: The last chancellor of the emperor. Suhrkamp Verlag. Berlin 2013. ISBN 978-3-518-42407-0 . P. 246.
  19. ^ Badische Zeitung , Literature , November 20, 2013, Wulf Rüskamp: badische-zeitung.de: Lothar Machtan's biography about Max von Baden (November 25, 2013)