Otto (Bavaria)
Otto Wilhelm Luitpold Adalbert Waldemar von Wittelsbach, King of Bavaria (nickname Otto ; * April 27, 1848 in Munich , † October 11, 1916 in Fürstenried Castle ), was King of Bavaria from June 14, 1886 until his death . Since it because of a mental illness already incapable of governing came to the throne, took from 1886 to 1912 his uncle Luitpold his cousin and 1912-1913 Ludwig as prince regent state affairs for him true. With the accession of the latter to the throne on November 5, 1913, Bavaria had two kings for a few years.
Life
Childhood and youth
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Prince Otto was born on April 27, 1848, two months early, in the Munich Residenz . His parents were King Maximilian II of Bavaria and Marie Friederike of Prussia . Godfather was his uncle, King Otto I of Greece .
Otto had an older brother, the Crown Prince Ludwig . The brothers spent their childhood and youth mainly at Hohenschwangau Castle , in the vicinity of their tutors. They spent their summer holidays between 1853 and 1863 in the royal villa in Berchtesgaden, which was built especially for their father .
On April 27, 1863, Prince Otto was appointed second lieutenant and on March 1, 1864, he was introduced to the cadet corps for military training . On May 26, 1864 he was appointed first lieutenant . After the death of his father King Max II on March 10, 1864, his older brother Ludwig ascended the throne as King Ludwig II. In the period from June 18 to July 15, 1864, the brothers received both the Austrian and the Russian imperial couple. Only about a year later, however, the first signs of a mental disorder were noticed in Otto.
In 1865 he accompanied his mother to Schwerin and Berlin as well as to Hamburg and Kiel. In September 1866 he traveled to Northern Italy to accompany his brother on his journey through Franconia in November.
When he reached the age of majority on April 27, 1866, he was promoted to captain and entered active military service with the infantry body regiment . In this function Otto took an active part in the German War in 1866 and in the war against France in 1870/71 , in the latter as owner of the 5th Chevauleger Regiment . However, the sight of mutilated soldiers hit him hard, and depression plagued him. Ludwig II was worried about Otto's mental state and saw that his brother was unsuitable for taking over government - in the event of his abdication, which he flirted with several times.
During the imperial proclamation in Versailles in 1871, Otto and his uncle Luitpold represented his brother Ludwig II; he wrote to him about his impressions:
"[...] Oh Ludwig, I can't describe to you how infinitely sore and painful it was during that ceremony [...] Everything so cold, so proud, so shiny, so ostentatious and boastful and heartless and empty."
In general Otto and Ludwig II had a deep brotherly affection, which was evident in frequent joint ventures (visit to the Wartburg in 1867). In 1868 Otto was accepted into the knightly order of St. George , the house order of the Wittelsbach family. In 1869, on the initiative of Cardinal Karl August von Reisach, the investiture in the Knightly Order of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem took place .
Shortly after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, Otto's mental state began to deteriorate rapidly. Since 1871 he has increasingly avoided meeting strangers. He was placed under medical supervision and reports were made to Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck about his condition . Since January 1872 Otto was officially considered insane, from 1873 he was kept in isolation in the southern pavilion of Nymphenburg Palace . The attending physician was Bernhard von Gudden , who at the time was an expert in the field of mental illnesses and who confirmed Otto's illness in a further report from 1873.
At the Corpus Christi Mass in the Frauenkirche in Munich in 1875 , a sensational incident occurred when Otto - who had not attended the service - stormed into the church in hunting clothes and asked the celebrating Archbishop Gregor von Scherr on his knees for forgiveness of his sins. The high mass was interrupted and the prince was led away by two clerks without resistance. Otto was then taken to Schleissheim Palace , where he was placed under even closer surveillance. His last public appearance was the participation in the royal parade on August 22nd, 1875 on the Munich Marsfeld at the side of his brother. From June 1, 1876, he stayed for a few weeks in Ludwigsthal Castle in the Bavarian Forest by order of his doctors .
When Otto's condition worsened again massively in the spring of 1880, he was finally taken to Fürstenried Castle near Munich, which had been specially converted for him, in 1883 , where he would spend the rest of his life. By order of King Ludwig II, who repeatedly visited his brother at night, no violence was allowed to him. Otto was also visited by his cousin Therese von Bayern , who had a love affair with him and never married.
King of Bavaria
When King Ludwig II was incapacitated by his ministers on June 10, 1886, his uncle Luitpold took over rule in the Kingdom of Bavaria and carried out state affairs in place of Ludwig as Prince Regent; his official title in this function was "Vereser of the Kingdom of Bavaria". Only three days later, Ludwig II died under unexplained circumstances, with which Prince Otto succeeded him as King of Bavaria on June 13, 1886, in accordance with the Wittelsbach succession. Since Otto was unable to rule due to his state of health (it was officially called: “The King is melancholy”), Prince Regent Luitpold exercised the reign for him too. He did not understand the proclamation of his accession to the throne, which King Otto was read out the day after he officially took office in Fürstenried Castle. He thought his uncle Luitpold was the rightful king. Shortly afterwards, the Bavarian troops were sworn in on King Otto I and coins were minted with his likeness.
After Luitpold's death on December 12, 1912, he was succeeded by his son Ludwig in the office of Prince Regent of Bavaria. An amendment to the Bavarian constitution in November 1913 made it possible in principle to end the reign in the event of a long illness of a king and to allow the next Wittelsbacher to ascend the Bavarian throne. On November 5th, Prince Regent Ludwig declared his reign ended in a declaration signed by the Bavarian ministers and was named Ludwig III. proclaimed King of Bavaria. At the same time he stipulated that the titles and dignities of King Otto should not be affected. The country thus had two kings for a few years.
On October 11, 1916, King Otto I died unexpectedly due to a bowel obstruction . The king was laid out in public, only then could the population see their king for the first time, and national mourning was decreed for three months. On October 14, 1916 Otto was laid to rest in the crypt of the Church of St. Michael in Munich near the sarcophagus of his brother Ludwig II. His heart was buried separately and is located in the Chapel of Grace in Altötting .
Clinical picture
Both Ludwig II and his brother Otto I claimed that both were mentally ill or melancholy. The Psychiatry at the time in which these theses were set up, was still in its infancy and was based on statements made by third parties, of which the first psychiatrist started vague diseases. Today it is assumed that Otto suffered from a paranoid-hallucinatory , schizophrenic psychosis . According to the psychologist and Otto's biographer Alfons Schweiggert , the therapy attempts, which were still awkward at the time, included, among other things, moral sermons, ice-cold showers, and morphine. The doctors also considered magnetism therapy.
Historical perception of the time of Otto I.
The "Prinzregentenzeit", as the reign of Prince Luitpold is often called, is due to the political passivity of Luitpold as the era of the gradual subordination of Bavarian interests to those of the Reich. In connection with the unfortunate end of the previous rule of King Ludwig II, this break in the Bavarian monarchy had an even stronger effect. According to historians, the constitutional amendment of 1913 finally brought about the decisive break in the continuity of royal rule, especially since this amendment had been approved by the state parliament as representative of the people and thus indirectly meant a step away from a constitutional to a parliamentary monarchy . The combination of these two developments is now considered to be the main cause of the unspectacular and unopposed end of the Bavarian Kingdom in the course of the November Revolution of 1918. In the course of his twenty-five-year reign, Prince Regent Luitpold knew how to overcome the initial discomfort of his subjects through modesty, efficiency and folklore. These years of the Prince Regent were finally - especially in retrospect - transfigured into a golden age in Bavaria, even if people continued to mourn the “fairy tale king” Ludwig II, which is still happening today in a folkloristic and nostalgic way.
reception
Prince Otto von Bayern was portrayed in a supporting role by Klaus Kinski in the 1954 film Ludwig II - Shine and the End of a King . With this role, Kinski first caused a sensation in German and international cinema. She contributed a lot to his later role model as a "lunatic on duty".
ancestors
literature
- Cajetan von Aretin: The inheritance of King Otto of Bavaria. Court politics and Wittelsbach property rights 1916 to 1922 (= series of publications on Bavarian regional history. Vol. 149). Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-10745-1 (also: Munich, Univ., Diss., 2006).
- Gundula Gahlen: The Bavarian officer corps 1815-1866. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77045-5 , p. 635.
- Heinz Häfner : A king is eliminated. Ludwig II of Bavaria. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56888-6 , p. 330 ff.
- Arndt Richter: The mental illness of the Bavarian kings Ludwig II and Otto. An interdisciplinary study using genealogy, genetics and statistics. Degener & Co., Neustadt an der Aisch, 1997, ISBN 3-7686-5111-8 .
- Jean-Louis Schlim: In the Shadow of Power - King Otto I of Bavaria , Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-944334-80-6 .
- Alfons Schweiggert : Shadow King. Otto, the brother of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a picture of life. Ehrenwirth, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-431-03192-7 .
- Alfons Schweiggert: Bavaria's most unhappy king. Otto I., the brother of Ludwig II. Sankt Michaelsbund , Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-943135-66-4 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Otto in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Dieter Albrecht : The change of regent in 1912, the end of the reign in 1913 . In: Alois Schmid (Ed.): Handbook of Bavarian History . founded by Max Spindler. 2nd completely revised edition. tape 4 . The new Bavaria. From 1800 to the present. First part of the volume. State and politics. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50451-5 , p. 412 ( limited preview in Google Book search). .
- ^ Walter Flemmer: Stations of a fairy tale king. Places and landscapes of King Ludwig II. In: Georg Jenal with the collaboration of Stephanie Haarländer (Ed.): Present in Past. Contributions to the culture and history of the modern and modern times. Festival ceremony for Friedrich Prinz on his 65th birthday. Munich 1993, p. 419.
- ↑ At Heinz Häfner: A king is eliminated , Munich 2008, it says from p. 38 f .: In the park of the royal villa a court official discovered “that Ludwig tied his brother Otto's hands and feet, with a gag in his mouth and one Sackcloth on the floor around his neck and tugged violently at the cloth. [...] The officer had to use force to free Otto. Father Max II was shocked and angry about Ludwig's behavior. He dictated a severe punishment. For his part, Ludwig was so bitter about it that he took a violent dislike for Berchtesgaden and did not return there for a long time. "
- ↑ https://www.hdbg.eu/koenigreich/web/index.php/themen/index/herrscher_id/7/id/35 The royal family in the time of Ludwig II.
- ↑ Dr. Theodor Toeche-Mittler: The imperial proclamation in Versailles on January 18, 1871 with a list of the festival participants. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1896
- ↑ H. Schnaebeli: photographs of the imperial proclamation in Versailles. Berlin 1871.
- ↑ Sigrid-Maria Großering: Elisabeth: Empress from the House of Wittelsbach
- ↑ Hans Jürgen Brandt: Jerusalem has friends. Munich and the Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. EOS 2010, p. 58 f.
- ^ Psychiatry patient Otto I. - Steel baths, electric shocks and morphine as therapy . sueddeutsche.de , May 15, 2016, accessed on January 11, 2018.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Ludwig II. |
.svg){kind=small} King of Bavaria 1886–1913 |
Ludwig III. |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Otto |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Otto I .; Otto Wilhelm Luitpold Adalbert Waldemar von Wittelsbach |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | King of Bavaria |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 27, 1848 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Munich |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 11, 1916 |
| Place of death | Fürstenried Castle |