page_title: Maximilian von Montgelas
section_title: Minister in Bavaria
hierarchical_section_title: Maximilian von Montgelas / Minister in Bavaria
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Ernestine von Montgelas, geb. Arco
context_page_description: Maximilian Karl Joseph Franz de Paula Hieronymus de Garnerin de la Thuile, Count von Montgelas was a Bavarian statesman, a member of a noble family from the Duchy of Savoy. His father John Sigmund Garnerin, Baron Montgelas, entered the military service of Maximilian III, Elector of Bavaria, and married the Countess Ursula von Trauner. Maximilian Josef, their eldest son, was born in the Bavarian capital Munich on September 10, 1759.
context_section_description: In 1799, the Duke of Zweibrücken succeeded to the throne of the Electorate of Bavaria, and he kept Montgelas as his most trusted adviser. Montgelas was the inspirer and director of the policy by which in 1806 the Electorate was turned into a kingdom and was also greatly increased in size by the annexation of church lands, free towns, and small lordships, such as Wallerstein. As this end was achieved by undeviating servility to Napoleon, and by the most cynical disregard of the rights of Bavaria's German-speaking 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 Montgelas to be merely childish.
  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, had been supported by Prussia for purely selfish reasons, and could look for useful support against these two only from France, which had selfish reasons of her own for wishing to counterbalance the power both of Austria and 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 and of Marshal Wrede rather than of Montgelas, although 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 achievements. Already in 1796, when the Duke of Zweibrücken (after the French advance towards Zweibrücken) was a landless prince exiled in 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 M
caption: Portrait of Countess Ernestine von Arco
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