Ludwig I (King of Bavaria)

The son of King Maximilian I and Augustus Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt. He received the first name in honor of his correspondence godfather Louis XVI , King of France, the full baptismal name of Ludwig Carl Augustus . He attended universities in Landshut and Göttingen ; early discovered an ardent love of literature, music and art. Unlike his father, he was hostile to Napoleon I , but nevertheless in 1806-1809 he commanded the Bavarian division in the wars against Prussia and Austria .

At the end of the war with France, Ludwig lived mainly in Würzburg and Aschaffenburg , often making trips to Italy. At this time, he surrounded himself with a circle of writers and artists, trying to protect them. In particular, he became close to Cornelius , Overbeck , Thorvaldsen , and later to Kaulbach . In his private life, he was thrifty, but spent enormous amounts of money on collections of works of art, on supporting theaters, etc. His political views at that time were distinguished by some liberalism ; the constitution of 1818 was based on a memorandum compiled by him.

After his accession to the throne in 1825, the position of the press became better, police persecution ceased. He moved the university from Landshut to Munich , reorganized the Academy of Fine Arts. Most of all he sought to convert Munich to the "second Athens." He surrounded himself with artists and began to build various buildings, either in Greek or in Italian. Especially famous is the Valhalla built by him with busts of all the famous people of Germany, with the exception, however, of Luther and the Reformation . At the same time, Ludwig acted as a poet and writer, but his works, although dispersed in several editions, differed only in a pretentious, pretending to be archaic language and left no trace in German literature.

March 28 ( April 9 ), 1826 was awarded the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called ^[5] .

The Chamber of Deputies did not look particularly sympathetically at the king’s enterprises, which demanded huge expenditures, and therefore Ludwig's moderate-liberal direction quickly gave way to a sharply reactionary one. This was facilitated by the influence of the Catholic clergy. The press was subordinate to the severe censorship charter of 1831 ; Democrats were subjected to police harassment, arrest and expulsion. Cornelius, naturalist Ocken , philologist Falmerayer were forced to leave Bavaria. The Protestant religion, despite the equal confession of the constitution, was shy; for example, Protestant soldiers were ordered to kneel before the holy gifts, and pastors who protested against this were put in jail; A systematic struggle was waged against the Chamber of Deputies until, with the help of police measures in the elections, the opposition was eliminated. In the field of politics, Ludwig's romantic passions expressed sympathy for the Greek rebellion; he agreed to the election of his son, Otto , as the Greek king, which was very expensive for the Bavarian treasury, forced to support the king of a devastated country.

In 1810, he married Theresa of Saxe-Guildburghausen . Wedding festivities marked the beginning of the Oktoberfest .

In this marriage, 9 children were born:

• Maximilian (1811-1864), King of Bavaria
• Matilda (1813-1862), in 1833 married Ludwig III of Hesse
• Otton (1815-1867), King of Greece
• Charlotte (1816-1817)
• Luitpold (1821-1912), regent of Bavaria with the sons of Maximilian II.
• Aldegunda (1823-1914), in 1842 she married Francis V d'Este
• Hildegard (1825-1864), in 1844 married Albrecht, Duke of Teshen
• Alexandra (1826-1875)
• Adalbert (1828-1875)

The onset of old age did not interfere with Ludwig's love affairs. In 1846, he fell under the strong influence of the Irish adventurer Eliza Gilbert, posing as the “Spanish dancer Lola Montes, ” who was said to be able to “defeat Loyola, ” that is, to overthrow the clerical ministry of Abel, and then the moderate ministry of Maurer. The so-called Lola ministry was organized, but the political reaction did not become weaker from this, although it lost its clerical connotation. Universal hatred of Ludwig was expressed in Heinrich Heine's “Laudatory Songs to King Ludwig” (in the Zeitgedichte), which sharply ridiculed and patronized Ludwig, and his poetry, and the influence of his lovers, and his pietism , mixed with frivolity.

The revolutionary movement of 1848 led Ludwig on March 20, 1848 to abandon the crown in favor of his son, Maximilian II ; Lola was forced to leave Europe and left for the USA . Since then, the former king has lived as a private man, devoting himself to the patronage of the arts. In 1854, the famous Russian poet Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky met him and dedicated the complementary poem “Munich” to the ex-king.

Ludwig I died in Nice , having outlived his son, when his grandson Ludwig II reigned. His equestrian statue was erected in Munich in 1862, during his lifetime.

• "Gedichte" (Munich, 1839-47);
• "Wahlhallagenossen" (1842) - biographies of figures whose busts are collected in Valhall.

• B. V — s. ,. Louis I, King of Bavaria // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1896. - T. XVIII. - S. 237—238.
• Sepp, “Ludwig Augustus” (1869);
• Heigel, "Neue historische Vorträge" (Munich, 1883);
• Heigel, Quellen und Abhandlungen zur neueren Gesch. Bayerns "(Munich, 1884-90);
• Heigel, Histor. Vorträge u. Studien "(1887);
• Heigel, "L. I, König von Bayern ”(Lp., 1888, 2nd ed.);
• Trost, "König L. I von Bayern in seinen Briefen an seinen Sohn, den König Otto von Griechenland" (1891).

• Ludwig I (King of Bavaria) at the German National Library .