BAVARIA
The Bavarians emerged
in a region north of the Alps, originally inhabited by the Celts, which had
been part of the Roman provinces of Rhaetia and Noricum. The Bavarians spoke
Old High German but, unlike other Germanic groups, did not migrate from elsewhere.
Rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by Roman
withdrawal early in the 6th century AD. These peoples may have included Marcomanni,
Thuringians, Goths, Rugians, Heruli, and some remaining Romans. The name "Bavarian"
("Baiuvari") means "Men of Baia" which may indicate Bohemia,
the homeland of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources circa 520.
Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early
8th century. Bavaria was, for the most part, unaffected by the Protestant Reformation,
and even today, most of it is strongly Roman Catholic.
From about 550 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the duchy
of Bavaria, ending with Tassilo III who was deposed by Charlemagne.
Three early dukes are named in Frankish sources: Garibald I
may have been appointed to the office by the Merovingian kings and married the
Lombard princess Walderada when the church forbade her to King Chlothar I in
555. Their daughter, Theodelinde, became Queen of the Lombards in northern Italy
and Garibald was forced to flee to her when he fell out with his Frankish overlords.
Garibald's successor, Tassilo I, tried unsuccessfully to hold the eastern frontier
against the expansion of Slavs and Avars around 600. Tassilo's son Garibald
II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616. After
Garibald II little is known of the Bavarians until Duke Theodo I, whose reign
may have begun as early as 680. From 696 onwards he invited churchmen from the
west to organize churches and strengthen Christianity in his duchy (it is unclear
what Bavarian religious life consisted of before this time). His son, Theudebert,
led a decisive Bavarian campaign to intervene in a succession dispute in the
Lombard Kingdom in 714, and married his sister Guntrud to the Lombard King Liutprand.
At Theodo's death the duchy was divided among his sons, but reunited under his
grandson Hucbert.
At Hucbert's death (735) the duchy passed to a distant relative
named Odilo, from neighboring Alemannia (modern Southwest Germany and northern
Switzerland). Odilo issued a law code for Bavaria, completed the process of
church organization in partnership with St. Boniface (739), and tried to intervene
in Frankish succession disputes by fighting for the claims of the Carolingian
Grifo. He was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his
death in 748. Tassilo III (b. 741 - d. after 794) succeeded
his father at the age of eight after an unsuccessful attempt by Grifo to rule
Bavaria. He initially ruled under Frankish oversight but began to function independently
from 763 onwards. He was particularly noted for founding new monasteries and
for expanding eastwards, fighting Slavs in the eastern Alps and along the Danube
and colonizing these lands. After 781, however, his cousin Charlemagne began
to pressure Tassilo to submit and finally deposed him in 788. The deposition
was not entirely legitimate; Dissenters attempted a coup against Charlemagne
at Tassilo's old capital of Regensburg in 792, led by his own son Pippin the
Hunchback, and the king had to drag Tassilo out of imprisonment to formally
renounce his rights and titles at the Assembly of Frankfurt in 794. This is
the last appearance of Tassilo in the sources and he probably died a monk. As
all of his family were also forced into monasteries, this was the end of the
Agilolfing dynasty.
For the next 400 years numerous families held the duchy, rarely
for more than three generations. With the revolt of duke Henry the Quarrelsome
in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and south east. The last,
and one of the most important, of these dukes was Henry the Lion of the house
of Welf, founder of Munich. When Henry the Lion was deposed as duke of Saxony
and Bavaria by his cousin, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1180, Bavaria
was awarded as fief to the Wittelsbach family, which ruled from 1180 to 1918.
Also the Electoral Palatinate was acquired by the Wittelsbach in 1214.
The first of several divisions of the duchy of Bavaria occurred
in 1255. With the extinction of the Hohenstaufen in 1268 also Swabian territories
were acquired by the Wittelsbach dukes. Emperor Louis the Bavarian acquired
Brandenburg, Tyrol, Holland and Hainaut for his House but released the Upper
Palatinate for the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach in 1329. In 1506 with
the Landshut War of Succession the other parts of Bavaria were reunited and
Munich became the sole capital. In 1623 the Bavarian
duke replaced his relative, the Count Palatine of the Rhine in the early days
of the Thirty Years' War and acquired the powerful prince-electoral dignity
in the Holy Roman Empire, determining its Emperor thence forward, as well as
special legal status under the empire's laws. Also the Upper Palatinate was
reunited with Bavaria. The ambitions of the Bavarian prince elecors led to several
wars with Austria during the early 18th century. From 1777 onwards Bavaria and
the Electoral Palatinate were governed in personal union again.
When Napoleon abolished the Empire, Bavaria became a kingdom
in 1806, and its area reduplicated. Tyrol and Salzburg were temporarily reunited
with Bavaria but finally ceded to Austria. In return the Rhenish Palatinate
and Franconia were annexed to Bavaria in 1815. Between 1799 and 1817 the leading
minister count Montgelas followed a strict policy of modernisation and laid
the foundations of administrative structures that survived even the monarchy
and are (in their core) valid until today. In 1818 a modern constitution (by
the standards of the time) was passed, that established a bicameral Parliament
with a House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") and a House of
Commons ("Kammer der Abgeordneten"). The constitution was valid until
the collapse of the monarchy at the end of the First World War.
After the rise of Prussia to prominence Bavaria managed to
preserve its independence by playing off the rivalries of Prussia and Austria,
but defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War led to its incorporation into the
German Empire in 1871. In the early 20th century Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,
Henrik Ibsen, and other notable artists were drawn to Bavaria, notably to the
Schwabing district of Munich, later devastated by World War II.
Key Identification Notes: The word Bayern, The Bavarian arms are an almost
sure identifier, especially when shown alone or in the upper left part of the
arms. A few other states show them in other quarters of the arms.
Thalers
Half Gulden
20 Kreuzer
10 Kreuzer
3 Kreuzer
2 Kreuzer (Half Batzen)
1 Kreuzer
