page_title: Electoral Palace, Koblenz
section_title: French occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Electoral Palace, Koblenz / History / French occupation
caption_attribution_description: View of the Pfaffendorfer railway bridge in Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany), in the late 19th century. The former palace of the Kürfürst of Trier is in the background. Note: At the Library of Congress this bridge is wrongly identified as a bridge in "Frankfort", probably meaning Frankfurt/Main.
context_page_description: The Electoral Palace in Koblenz, Germany, was the residence of the last Archbishop and Elector of Trier, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, who commissioned the building in the late 18th century. In the mid-19th century, the Prussian Crown Prince had his official residence there during his years as military governor of the Rhine Province and the Province of Westphalia. It now houses various offices of the federal government.
  The Electoral Palace is one of the most important examples of the early French neoclassical great house in Southwestern Germany, and with Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, the Prince Bishop's Palace in Münster and Ludwigsburg Palace, one of the last palaces built in Germany before the French Revolution. Since 2002 it has been part of the Rhine Gorge UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is also a protected cultural property under the Hague Convention.
context_section_description: During the War of the First Coalition, the advance of the French revolutionary army finally made it necessary for Clemens Wenceslaus to flee on 7 October 1794. Two weeks later, the French under General François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers captured Koblenz. The Electorate of Trier ceased to exist and at the end of 1801 was largely annexed by France. It was therefore impossible to complete the interior of the Electoral Palace. Before leaving, Clemens Wenceslaus had what could be moved loaded on ships and taken to Augsburg, where the pieces became part of the furnishings of the electoral residence there. Some were auctioned off after his death; large parts of the furnishings of the reception rooms from the palace at Koblenz remain in Schloss Johannisburg in Aschaffenburg, in Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, in the Munich Residenz, in the Landshut Residence, and in the New Residence in Bamberg.
  After Clemens Wenceslaus' departure, the palace was used temporarily as a military hospital (a Russian military hospital after Napoleon withdrew from Moscow and the Russians liberated Koblenz from the French) and, beginning in 1815 after it passed into the possession of Prussia, as a barracks.
caption: Rhine frontage of the palace photographed in the 1890s (in the foreground, Pfaffendorf railway bridge)
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