page_title: Kingdom of Bavaria
section_title: Regency and institutional reform
hierarchical_section_title: Kingdom of Bavaria / History / Regency and institutional reform
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Deutschland, Bayern, München, Justizpalast, Statue Prinregent Luitpold
context_page_description: The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1805 as Maximilian I Joseph. The crown would go on being held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom came to an end in 1918. Most of Bavaria's present-day borders were established after 1814 with the Treaty of Paris, in which Bavaria ceded Tyrol and Vorarlberg to the Austrian Empire while receiving Aschaffenburg and Würzburg. With the unification of Germany into the German Empire in 1871, the kingdom became a federated state of the new empire and was second in size, power, and wealth only to the leading state, the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1918, Bavaria became a republic, and the kingdom was thus succeeded by the current Free State of Bavaria.
context_section_description: The crown passed to Ludwig's brother Otto. However, Otto had a long history of mental illness and had been placed under medical supervision three years earlier. The duties of head of state actually rested in the hands of Prince Luitpold, who continued to serve as regent for Otto.
  During the regency of Prince-Regent Luitpold, from 1886 to 1912, relations between Bavaria and Prussia remained cold, with Bavarians remembering the anti-Catholic agenda of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, as well as Prussia's strategic dominance over the empire. Bavaria protested Prussian dominance over Germany and snubbed the Prussian-born German Emperor, Wilhelm II, in 1900, by forbidding the flying of any other flag other than the Bavarian flag on public buildings for the Emperor's birthday, but this was swiftly modified afterwards, allowing the German imperial flag to be hung beside the Bavarian flag.
  The Catholic, conservative Patriotic Party founded in 1868 became the leading party in the Bavarian Landtag (Parliament). In 1887, its name was changed to Bavarian Centre. In 1893, the Social Democrats were elected to the parliament. From 1903, the University Education was also possible for female students. In 1906 a liberalization of the suffrage was carried out. With the Centre politician Georg von Hertling the Prince-Regent appointed to the head of government for the first time a representative of the Landtag's majority.
  Luitpold's years as regent were marked by tremendous artistic and cultural activity in Bavaria where they are known as the Prinzregentenjahre ("The Prince Regent Years"). In 1912, Luitpold died, and his son, Prince-Regent Ludwig, took over as regent.  By then, it had long been apparent that Otto would never be able to reign, and sentiment grew for Ludwig to become king in his own right.  On 6 November, a year after the Landtag passed a law allowing him to do so, Ludwig ended the regency, deposed Otto and declared himself King of Bavaria as Ludwig III.
  The Prinzregentenzeit ("prince's regent's time"), as the regency of Luitpold is often called, was due to the political passiveness of Luitpold an era of the gradual transfer of Bavarian interests behind those of the German empire. In connection with the unhappy end of the preceding rule of King Ludwig II this break in the Bavarian monarchy looked even stronger. Finally, the constitutional amendment of 1913 brought the determining break in the continuity of the king's rule in the opinion of historians, particularly as this change had been granted by the Landtag as a House of Representatives and meant therefore indirectly the first step from constitutional to the parliamentary monarchy. Today the connection of these two developments is regarded as a main cause for the unspectacular end of the Bavarian kingdom without opposition in the course of the November revolution of 1918. However the course of his 26-year regency Luitpold knew to overcome, by modesty, ability and popularity, the initial uneasiness of his subjects. These prince regent's years were transfigured, finally—above all in the retrospect – to a golden age of Bavaria, even if one mourned the "fairy tale king" Ludwig II furthermore what happens in a folkloric-nostalgic manner till this day.
caption: Statue of Prince Regent Luitpold at the Justizpalast
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