Maximilian von Montgelas - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Maximilian Josef Garnerin, Count von Montgelas (September 12, 1759 Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

– June 14, 1838 Munich) was a Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

n statesman, from a noble family in Savoy

Savoy

Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....

. His father John Sigmund Garnerin, Baron Montgelas, entered the military service of Maximilian III, Elector of Bavaria

Maximilian III, Elector of Bavaria

Maximilian III Joseph was Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire and Duke of Bavaria from 1745 to 1777.-Biography:...

, and married the Countess Ursula von Trauner. Maximilian Josef, their eldest son, was born in the Bavarian capital Munich

Munich

on the September 10, 1759.

Early life

He was educated successively at Nancy, Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

and Ingolstadt

Ingolstadt

Ingolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As at 31 March 2011, Ingolstadt had 125.407 residents...

. Being a Savoy

Savoy

Savoy is a region of France. It comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps situated between Lake Geneva in the north and Monaco and the Mediterranean coast in the south....

ard on his father's side, he naturally felt the French influence, which was then strong in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, with peculiar force. To the end of his life he spoke and wrote French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

more correctly and with more ease than German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. Nevertheless the Munich-born Montgelas always wanted to be addressed as a Bavarian by nationality.

In 1779 he entered the public service in the department of the censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

of books. The Elector

Prince-elector

The Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire were the members of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Roman king or, from the middle of the 16th century onwards, directly the Holy Roman Emperor.The heir-apparent to a prince-elector was known as an...

Charles Theodore

Karl Theodor

Karl Theodor may refer to:* Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria , Prince-Elector of Palatine and of Bavaria* Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg , Freiherr of Dalberg and Archbishop-Elector of Mainz...

, who had at first favored him, became offended on discovering that he was associated with the Illuminati

Illuminati

The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...

, a secret society in Bavaria that held to the most anti-clerical propositions of the Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

. Montgelas therefore went to Zweibrücken

Zweibrücken

Zweibrücken is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Schwarzbach river.- Name :Zweibrücken appears in Latin texts as Geminus Pons and Bipontum, in French texts as Deux-Ponts. The name derives from Middle High German Zweinbrücken...

, where he was helped by his brother Illuminati to find employment at the Court of the Duke, the head of a branch of the Wittelsbach

Wittelsbach

The Wittelsbach family is a European royal family and a German dynasty from Bavaria.Members of the family served as Dukes, Electors and Kings of Bavaria , Counts Palatine of the Rhine , Margraves of Brandenburg , Counts of Holland, Hainaut and Zeeland , Elector-Archbishops of Cologne , Dukes of...

family. From this refuge also he was driven by orthodox enemies of the Illuminati.

The brother of the Duke of Zweibrücken, Maximilian Joseph took him into his service as Private Secretary. When his employer succeeded to the Duchy, Montgelas was named Minister, and in that capacity he attended the Second Congress of Rastatt

Second Congress of Rastatt

The Second Congress of Rastatt, which was opened in December 1797, was intended to rearrange the map of Germany by providing compensation for those princes whose lands on the left bank of the Rhine had been seized by France....

in 1798, where the reconstruction of Germany

Germany

, which was the consequence of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, was in full swing.

Minister in Bavaria

In 1799, the Duke of Zweibrücken succeeded to the Electorate of Bavaria, and he kept Montgelas as his most trusted adviser. Montgelas was the inspirer and director of the policy by which the Electorate of Bavaria was turned into a kingdom

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...

in 1806, and was very much increased in size by the annexation of church lands, free towns and small lordships. As this end was achieved by undeviating servility to Napoleon, and the most cynical disregard of the rights of Bavaria's German neighbors, Montgelas became the type of an unpatriotic politician in the eyes of all Germans who revolted against the supremacy of France. From his own conduct and his written defence of his policy it is clear that such sentiments as theirs appeared to be merely childish to Montgelas.

He was a thorough politician of the 18th century type, who saw and attempted to see nothing except that Bavaria had always been threatened by the house of Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

, had been supported by Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

for purely selfish reasons, and could look for useful support against these two only from France, who had selfish reasons of her own for wishing to counterbalance the power both of Austria

Austrian Empire

The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...

and Prussia

Prussia

in Germany. As late as 1813, when Napoleon's power was visibly breaking down, and Montgelas knew the internal weakness of his empire well from visits to Paris, he still continued to maintain that France was necessary to Bavaria.

The decision of the king to turn against Napoleon in 1814 was taken under the influence of his son

Ludwig I of Bavaria

Ludwig I was a German king of Bavaria from 1825 until the 1848 revolutions in the German states.-Crown prince:...

and of Marshal Wrede rather than of Montgelas, though the minister would not have been influenced by any feeling of sentimentality to adhere to an ally who had ceased to be useful. In internal affairs, Montgelas carried out a policy of secularization and of administrative centralization by determined means, which showed that he had never wholly renounced his opinions of the time of the Enlightenment movement.

In the field in interior politics he can be regarded as the most successful German politician of the early 19th century with a long list of astonishing achievements. Already in 1796, when the Duke of Zweibrücken (after the French advance towards Zweibrücken) was a landless prince exiled in Ansbach

Ansbach

Ansbach, originally Onolzbach, is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is the capital of the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Ansbach is situated southwest of Nuremberg and north of Munich, on the Fränkische Rezat, a tributary of the Main river. As of 2004, its population was 40,723.Ansbach...

, Montgelas had developed a masterplan for the future modernisation of Bavaria. This lengthy paper, the "Ansbacher mémoire" was rediscovered in the 1960s and published in 1970 by the Bavarian historian Eberhard Weis, who also is Montgelas' biographer. After 1799 when Maximilian Joseph succeeded to the electorate of Bavaria, Montgelas as his primary adviser and leading statesman very much followed his concept throughout the following years in a very uncompromising manner:

Montgelas enforced the taxation of the nobility and the clergy. Taxation went along with a complete economic description and measurement of Bavaria leading to an outstanding cadastral system. Montgelas passed the first modern constitution for Bavaria in 1808, which included the abolition of any relics of serfdom that had survived until then. Montgelas was responsible for the abolition of the torture in 1812 by introducing a new penal code based on contemporary humanitarian standards. He introduced compulsory school education, compulsory military service, compulsory vaccination. He reorganised the Bavarian administration by a centralised cabinet of modern ministries instead of a multitude of chambers. Montgelas was also responsible for the abolition of all tolls within the kingdom of Bavaria thus enabling free trade within the country. And he designed and passed a regulation for civil servants, the "Dienstpragmatik", which became a model for civil service in Germany as whole. According to its rules, admission to any service within the public administration was no longer dependent on whether one was Catholic or of noble family, but solely on the quality of one's education. Thus Montgelas broke the preponderance of the nobility in the higher and decisive ranks of public administration. Civil servants were granted a sufficient salary and their widows a pension. Thus Montgelas refounded the civil service on new ethics and created a social group of servants loyal only to the crown and kingdom of Bavaria.

In order to reduce the political and cultural influence of the Catholic Church in Bavaria in favor of the secular state, Montgelas extended civil rights, including citizenship, to Protestants. The Jewish communities were awarded a secure legal status, although there remained a discriminating special registration.http://www.gda.bayern.de/jewmat.htm

Along these lines, Montgelas secularized—that is seized for the use and benefit of the State—many Catholic land-holdings, most especially the Bavarian monasteries. Montgelas was attempting to sever the Mortmain
Mortmain
Mortmain is a legal term that means ownership of real estate by a corporation or legal institution that can be transferred or sold in perpetuity; the term is usually used in the context of its prohibition...

that had driven the state to the treasury to the brink of financial ruin under Karl Theodor. According to principles of the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic reorganization of Europe, the expropriation of Church property and the suppression of Church institutions were essential steps to the modernization of the State. Since the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages, the monasteries had owned large stretches of land and governed the farmers working that land. Montgelas, again in keeping with principles of the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic reorganization of Europe that favored the establishment of absolute secular authority over against religion, eliminating such exercises of authority by and resources from church institutions was necessary. Monastic life as such was viewed by Montgelas, in keeping with the most religiously hostile forms of Enlightenment thinking, as useless, at best, and as a breeding ground of "superstition."

In Montgelas's eyes, any form of parliamentary representation was as dangerous to the modern state as was the Church. Even the powerless and highly plutocratic Parliament introduced by the constitution of 1808 practically never came into being. Montgelas himself declared, that the repeated wars prevented any convocation of the Parliament. In fact he preferred his status as a benevolent dictator and successfully evaded any control by any form of Parliament. Only after Montgelas' dismissal in 1817, the second Bavarian constitution of 1818 introduced a real bicameral Parliament (to the standards of the era).

His enemies persuaded the king to dismiss him in 1817, and he spent the remainder of his life as a member of the Bavarian House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") till his death in 1838. He had married the Countess von Arco in 1803, and had eight children; in 1809 he was made a count

Count

A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...

. As a typical generous nobleman of the 18th century he allowed his very attractive wife to have her lovers and even invited some of them to his palace.

In 2005 the Free State of Bavaria and the city of Munich erected a monument at Munich

Munich

's Promenadenplatz in his honor :de:Bild:MaximilianGrafvonMontgelas.jpg.

Biography

Eberhard Weis: Montgelas - Zwischen Revolution und Reform 1759–1799, München, Beck Verlag, 2nd edition, 1988, ISBN 3-406-32974-8

Eberhard Weis: Montgelas - Der Architekt des modernen bayerischen Staates 1799–1838, München, Beck Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-406-03567-1

Early life

Minister in Bavaria

Biography

See also