Reshaping an Earthly Paradise: Land Enclosure and Bavarian State

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Reshaping an Earthly Paradise: Land Enclosure and Bavarian Reshaping an Earthly Paradise: Land Enclosure and Bavarian

State Centralization (1779-1835) State Centralization (1779-1835)

Gregory DeVoe Tomlinson

Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College

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RESHAPING AN EARTHLY PARADISE: LAND ENCLOSURE AND

BAVARIAN STATE CENTRALIZATION (1779-1835)

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

Louisiana State University and

Agricultural and Mechanical College

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The Department of History

Gregory DeVoe Tomlinson

B.A., San José State University, 2009

M.A., San José State University, 2012

August 2020

Acknowledgments

The Central European History Society (CEHS) funded a visit to the Bayerisches

Haupstaatsarchiv and Staatsarchiv München in the summer of 2016. Further support came from

the LSU history department and the generous contributions of members of the LSU Osher

Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) for a subsequent visit in the summer of 2018. The staffs of

the Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv and Staatsarchiv München are extremely dedicated,

professional, and were more than helpful with their assistance. I would especially like to thank

Dr. Susanne Millet at the Hauptstaatsarchiv München for her explanation of archival policies and

assistance with Kurrentschrift handwriting.

There are many people that provided advice and extensive commentary during this

project. I would like to thank Professor Suzanne Marchand for her guidance, mentoring,

patience, and support. Thank you for giving me so many opportunities to expand my intellectual

horizons and for giving me the confidence to complete this, and other projects. Professor

Brendan Karch offered helpful comments as well as relatable counsel regarding the dissertation

process. Robert Billinger, Rafe Blaufarb, James Brophy, Wolf Gruner, Rosamond Hooper-

Hammersley, and David Meola provided detailed feedback and encouragement at the

Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (CRE) and German Studies Association (GSA)

conferences. Professors Rita Krueger and Howard Louthan gave me the great opportunity to

present early thesis ideas at the Center for Austrian Studies (CAS) workshop in Minneapolis in

2017.

Countless people provided support during the writing of this dissertation. Professor

Katherine Aaslestad was a great person to discuss thesis ideas from the beginning of this project

iii

to the most critical research trip I took to Munich in the summer of 2018. Professors Libra Hilde

and Mary Pickering at San José State University (SJSU) in San José, California offered helpful

suggestions for navigating the Ph.D process. I would also like to thank Ken and Ashlee Kruse,

Matt Bell, Robert Harney, Roland and Mary Dommert, Evelyn Hayes, Janice Irving-Wise, and

fellow LSU Germanists Scott Berg, Erik Wagner, and Jason Wolfe.

Writing this dissertation would not be possible without the love and support of my

family. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents Chris and Irene Tomlinson, and my brother

Andrew Tomlinson. This project could not be completed without you.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………..ii.

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………....v

INTRODUCTION. THE INTERCONNECTED NATURE OF BAVARIAN STATE

BUILDING AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF LAND OWNERSHIP CLASSIFICATION

(1799-1835) ………………………………………………………………………………………1

CHAPTER 1. REDRAWING THE MAP: THE ROLE OF LAND IN THE GROWTH OF

ELECTORAL BAVARIA………………………………………………………………………34

CHAPTER 2. A STRUGGLE FOR PROPERTY: STATE-GUIDED ALLODIFICATION (1799-

1809) ……………………………………………………………………………………………76

CHAPTER 3. BAVARIA AND THE CONGRESS SYSTEM: POSTWAR ALLODIFICATION

EFFORTS (1809-1817).……………………………………………………………………….127

CHAPTER 4. LAND AND POWER: THE LANDTAG AND LAND REDEMPTION (1818-

1825) ……………………………………………………………………………………….....169

EPILOGUE. THE ROAD TO LIBERAL LAND POLICIES (1825-1848) ……………….....206

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………..216

VITA…………………………………………………………………………………………..226

Abstract

The Electoral state of Bavaria was reformed through a comprehensive project of land-

based allodification (the creation of a distinction between privileged titles and property

designations) through the process of “redemption” beginning in 1799. This process was

previously impeded by the strength of landholding estates that included notables and the Catholic

Church. In addition, Electoral Bavarian leaders lacked centralized control. Civil servants, known

as cameralists, mediated political and economic interactions between these estates. The economy

was based on subsistence and the productive capacity of Gutsherrschaft, a manorial system

based on regional jurisdiction and rent collection by notables who largely did not own property

that could be bought or sold.

A shift in this system took place first in terms of cameral education, and second in its

application by controversial reformers such as Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, later ennobled

as the Graf Montgelas, or simply, Montgelas. Cameral reformers in Bavarian, and German

universities, proposed that the role of such civil servants be expanded to included arbitrating land

sale as part of a centralized state. Additional educational reforms included the Enlightenment

idea of physiocracy that cameral scholars interpreted as a school of thought that included land

enclosure for productive crop yields. Montgelas was an early proponent of this school of thought

but was exiled due to his membership in the Enlightenment inspired secret society, the

Illuminati.

Montgelas found support in exile in the Duchy of Zweibrücken from its ruler, Maximilian

IV Joseph. Also referred to as Max Joseph, this ruler allowed Montgelas to develop his ideas

including the Ansbach Memorandum which called for a larger, centralized cameral authority in

the model proposed by reformers in cameral institutions. Similar reforms in Bavaria were seldom

pursued and when attempted failed.

Max Joseph, a member of the minor Wittelsbach line, became Elector of Bavaria when

Elector Karl Theodor died in 1799. The new Elector brought Montgelas with him to serve as his

First Minister of state. Montgelas reformed the centralized bureaucracy and aligned Bavaria with

France, leveraging the success of the Revolutionaries’ armies to quash internal and external

threats to Max Joseph’s rule. This brought territorial expansion, recognition of Bavaria as a

Kingdom, and the implementation of a unitary legal code in the form of the 1808 constitution.

Legal supremacy allowed Montgelas to begin the process of allodification. Claiming the land for

state use was beyond the power of the state ministries and Montgelas could not pursue this

project by fiat. Instead the process, known as “redemption,” was voluntarily done by notables

seeking cash payment for their land. The collapse of the Napoleonic system nearly destroyed

Montgelas’ reform programs as debt, famine, and disorder ensued though Montgelas’ efforts

were vital to the state and the allodification, through compromise and modification, remained.

Montgelas was removed from power in 1817 and a new constitution in 1818 was

implemented and included the creation of a legislative body, the Landtag, to advise the King.

The limits of the Bavarian state, financially and beholden to an acceptable constitution in the

eyes of much stronger postwar reactionary powers, impeded its ability to address pension

payouts and other forms of support to landholders. Redemption efforts stalled but the process of

land reform was given much-needed structure and transparency. The system survived until the

1830 when stronger German economic forces in the form of the Prussian led Zollverein

(Customs Union) effectively placed Bavaria under the dominance of Berlin.

Introduction. The Interconnected Nature of Bavarian State Building and the

Transformation of Land Ownership Classification (1779-1835)

In 1808 the Bavarian noblewoman Ana Maria Meierl levied a grievance against the

General Commissariat of the Isar Landkreis in the newly formed Kingdom of Bavaria.

Bavarian

Finance Ministry officials based in the capital Munich read Meierl’s complaint on the topic of

the “breakup of neighboring fief properties” that her family possessed.

Meierl ended her

complaint by both asking for assistance from Munich’s Finance Ministry administrators and

underscoring how the loss of fiefdoms affected so many of her fellow notables.

Meierl’s petition

to the regional government was answered. She retained the fief as private property. A Finance

Ministry scribe recorded that the land would be respected, “…to each regarding the partition of

the vacant fief property, taken over (for/by) her as owned item.”

This complaint sheds light on

several important economic, political, legal, and social developments in the Kingdom of Bavaria

in the early nineteenth century.

The Meierl case represents not only one example of the division and sale of former fief

property in the Kingdom of Bavaria it is also demonstrative of the dynamic shift in European

conceptions of land ownership and usage in the early nineteenth century. The very notion of

what constituted land ownership and land usage changed in Europe beginning in the eighteenth

century. Common land ownership, semi-feudal tenant farming, and their organization under the

watchful eyes of noble jurisdiction were fixtures of eighteenth century European subsistence-

Petition of Ana Meierl to the General Commissariat of the Isar Kreisamt, August 10, 1808, in

BHStA, MF 17316. German: “Die beste des Anna Maria Meierl zu jedem die zertremmerung des

Lehen lehren Guts betretend übernahme ihr als einen dahin gehörigen Gegenstand.”

Ibid.

Ibid. German: “…zu jedem die Zertremmerung des Lehen lehren Guts betreffend übernahme

ihr als einen gehörigen Gegenstand.”

based agricultural production and social order. Land was not physical property but the shared

basis of the hierarchical yet symbiotic stability of the European way of life. Reformers changed

the legal definitions that governed this system, however, during the late eighteenth century for

the purposes of social revolution and the belief that increased agricultural production would

bring greater tariff and toll revenues for the state. In each case, productive agriculture required

the breakup of the old feudal order. In turn, such a transformative alteration to the land system

was a critical tool for state building.

Stimulating profitable and productive agriculture required the elimination, or restriction,

of the entrenched legal definitions that governed the privilege of landholding. Physiocrats,

economists who in part advocated for the amelioration of agricultural land through the

introduction of new soils and land enclosure, greatly influenced eighteenth century reformers.

Intrepid, reform-minded civil servants were confronted, however, with established definitions of

land and property. Land law was of paramount importance for European rulers and legal terms

like Dominium directum and Dominium utile were commonplace. Dominium directum concerned

the eminent domain of the estate including the ability to rent land.

Dominium utile was the

tenant farmers’ right to farm and pay rent on land.

Ancien regime France, for example, had a

system of property that was defined more by its ties to power and authority rather than as a

descriptor for possession of commercial goods or land.

Manorial estates were frequently

referred to as seigneuries, a feudal organization of land tenure. Land tenure, in the French case,

meant that rents were collected on plots. Outright land ownership as a form of property was thus

John Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and Legislators in the French

Revolution (University Park: Penn State Press, 2020), 55.

Ibid.

Rafe Blaufarb, “The Great Demarcation – The Decree of August 4, 1789,” Modern European

History Colloquium Lecture at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, April 23, 2018.

rare. A rigid separation between owning land and the ability to exploit or sell land (alienation)

was codified into French law from Roman and medieval legal precedents.

The rarest of land

classification was the Dominium plenum, also referred to as an allodial.

Allodial land was by

definition something that could be owned, divided, and sold in its entirety. It was the critical

designation for land that reformers of the eighteenth century believed was vital to increasing crop

yields and profits.

The French Revolution served as the catalyst for physiocratic-inspired reform of land

systems in France and beyond, including Bavaria. Allodified land as Dominium plenum was the

key to higher crop yields. The French revolutionaries abolished the archaic property definitions

of the ancien regime on the night of 4 August 1789.

Allodial property replaced the old land

system. French reforms inspired many beyond the Republic’s borders and the armies of France

brought the land system, as well as other legal reforms, with them. The new land system was

appealing for various reasons. The new land system was studied by civil servants across

Continental Europe who were in the process of studying physiocratic literature from the mid-

eighteenth century. Bavarian civil servants were no exception. Proponents of allodified land

promised higher crop yields. This meant more profit for farmers and merchants. It would also fill

state coffers by increasing tariff and toll revenue. For emergent states like Electoral Bavaria this

project could assist the ruler in his effort to secure state sovereign power. Reformers Franz Karl

von Hompesch-Bollheim and his protégé Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin (the later Graf von

Montgelas) sought to introduce such a project. Significant obstacles barred the implementation

Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge University

Press, 1999), 27.

Ibid.

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 5.

of such a land system. An ill-defined process of land and economic management known as

cameralism served as the sinews of the Elector’s decentralized control. Cameralism was common

in the German states. The system relied on intermediaries (known as cameralists or cameral civil

servants). Any reform of land would mean the augmentation of cameral institutions to a role of

greater importance as institutions of centralized state authority. Hompesch and Montgelas

believed that realizing such a plan began with a vast alteration to the legal and economic

classification of Bavarian land. Academic reform, internal conflict of the estates of Bavarian

society, and the exigencies of the Napoleonic Wars both complicated and assisted Montgelas’

reforms. The Bavarian state was committed to large-scale land allodification by the time Anna

Maria Meierl levied her complaint against the breakup of her fief.

The Meierl case is thus an excellent place to begin an examination of the prime

importance of land ownership and use in the early-nineteenth century Kingdom of Bavaria.

Meierl’s concerns were not only common but were quotidian for Bavarian bureaucrats from the

moment of the Kingdom’s inception through the next three decades. Meierl’s consternation

about the loss of a fiefdom as property therefore requires important background information

regarding the nature of Bavarian land law. In addition, the term “property” itself is loaded: what

constituted property in the early nineteenth century is not consistent with its present-day

definition. Property consisted of “movables” and “immovables,” as it does today. The former

referring to a tangible good ranging from crops to lumber. Immovable property refers to land,

forests, or any defined piece of geographic space that could not be physically relocated. Land

itself, was rarely categorized as an immovable property, however. Land was property that was

subject to a blend of older legal traditions ranging from loosely interpreted Roman precedent,

Rhenish traditions, and the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire.

Land could be rented out to

peasants, divided in common fields, and, in rare cases, owned exclusively in all legal terms, by

an individual. In Bavaria, land classification was no different. This would all change beginning

in 1808.

Bavaria’s key land reformer, the First Minister Graf Montgelas, allodified Bavarian land

through his efforts to implement the first Bavarian constitution in 1808. The constitution

eliminated lingering feudal privileges, including special tax rates and pensions, for Bavarian

landed lords. Land was thus deemed an immovable property but the Bavarian state, acting as a

property broker, still needed to buy the land where feudal estates once existed. This process,

known as “redemption,” would occupy much of the attention of the Bavarian state during the

allodification process. Montgelas’ goal was to allodify and redeem all land before supporting its

mass transformation into highly productive enclosed plots. Montgelas’ plans faced significant

pushback from internal opposition from Güter feudal estate lords, the need for consistent crop

production to feed the Bavarian population, and the exorbitant demands of erstwhile ally

Napoleon Bonaparte who required significant resources for his military campaigns. The

allodification process supported the centralization of the Bavarian state under its King Max

Joseph and, despite the various challenges posed by internal and external factors, was largely

successful in surviving the Napoleonic era.

Historiography

The historiography of Bavarian, and by extension, German law, forms the first integral

point of introduction to this dissertation topic. The legal status of property in Bavaria, according

Franz Wieacker, A History of Private Law in Europe with Particular Reference to Germany,

trans. Tony Weir (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 13.

to German legal Historian Franz Wieacker, was the product of a synthesis of French (Rhenish),

German (Holy Roman Empire), and Roman legal traditions strengthened by a search for

agricultural and jurisdictional solidity in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War.

Wieacker’s work,

A History of Private Law in Europe with Particular Reference to Germany, forms an essential

basis for understanding the legal traditions so rooted in Bavarian society. Bavarian reformers

contended with a wide array of laws and local customs during their land allodification project.

Providing a standardized model of land administration and state sovereignty was thus a

challenging task.

Explaining power relations in Bavaria is therefore also important. An analysis of the

interaction of the Bavarian estates also helps readers understand the prevailing Gutsherrschaft

and other land systems of the era. Historian and sociologist Werner Sombart, 1903 book The

German National Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im

neunzehnten Jahrhundert) contended that this system (Gutsherrschaft) was popular due to its

stable crop production and the connection of power and property through inherited titles.

Sombart explained that crop yields and the relationship between land and the power structures of

the era were important institutions for economic and social stability and also a powerful bloc to

be overcome by reformers. Further entries enhance Sombart’s analysis of subsistence-based

agriculture and the power balance between estates in German polities. Subsequent studies in the

field enhance our knowledge regarding expected crop yields and the day to day operation of

subsistence-based German agriculture. Wilhelm Abel’s 1967 History of German Agricultural

Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the 19

Century (Geschichte der deutschen

Wieacker, A History of Private Law in Europe with Particular Reference to Germany, 13.

Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1978), 5.

Landwirtschaft vom frühen mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrhundert) elucidated the instability of

agricultural crises in Germany and why such a stable, yet inflexible system, was necessary.

Abel underscored the persistence of famine and crop failure in German agricultural history.

Another facet of Abel’s research is the truncated nature of his research which emphasized the

physiocratic break in the continuity of German agricultural history. Abel contended that one of

the boldest aspects about agricultural reforms of this era, including those undertaken in Bavaria,

was the disruption of the entrenched and tested systems of semi-feudal agriculture and estate

lordship.

Peasants also stood by the system as a mark of consistency and mutual assistance. Thus,

the conservative nature of Bavarian agriculture was in part the maintenance of a tested system

and opposition to its disruption or destruction. Mutual aid was an important aspect of the

subsistence economy and altering this system would affect many. Private land ownership on a

large scale meant competition and a massive alteration of tested, traditional forms of agriculture.

Lords had responsibilities to care for the common weal. German historian Renate Blickle

identified the critical expectations of stability due to an economy of need over want during this

era in her 1987 American Historical Association paper, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of

a Fundamental Change in Early Modern Bavaria."

Blickle concluded that land was a shared

responsibility of lord and peasant prior to its designation as private property. The shared roles of

agricultural production and checks on the exploitation of labor were important points of trust in

Bavarian society among the estates’ social hierarchy. Any reformer who sought to change the

Wilhelm Abel, History of German Agricultural Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the

Century (Stuttgart: Eugen Ulmer, 1967), 288.

Ibid.

Renate Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early

Modern Bavaria." Central European History 25, no. 4 (1992): 377-85.

existing agricultural system would face considerable opposition not only from above but from

below. Changing a way of life also posed legal challenges.

In the specific case of Bavaria, one must examine the legal codes used by the state to

assess the value of existing property in this society of need. Legal guidelines delineated property

classifications and the financial and privileged benefits of estate ownership. The precedent for

property distinctions was Elector Maximilian III of Bavaria’s Maximilian Bavarian Civil Code of

1756. Another key text to consider is that of the Celle based agronomist Albrecht von Thär, who,

like Elector Maximilian III, provided a historical basis for the existing agricultural order. Thär’s

work, the Grundsätze der rationellen Landwirthschaft (1809–1812) (Principles of Rational

Agriculture) examined the history of German agriculture and related laws while also calling for a

break from restrictive manorial controls on agriculture and subsistence farming.

Thär’s

historical analysis and land-related theories were popular with Bavaria’s future reformer

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin (the Graf Montgelas) and thus merit our attention as historians.

Agricultural reformers like Thär and Montgelas were fixated on ideas of land as a potent source

for the amelioration of all mankind that were encapsulated in physiocracy.

The Enlightenment school of physiocracy gained wide purchase in the German states and

was widely applied for the purpose of land renewal and profitable trade. The transformation of

land as a productive good drove Montgelas’ application of the theoretical concept of

physiocracy, best detailed in principle and varied forms of interpretation by historian Liana Vardi

in her monograph The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment.

Vardi’s work is a key

Theodor Freiherr von der Goltz, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft (Stuttgart: Scientia

Aalen, 1963), 7.

Liana Vardi, The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2014), 115.

entry for anyone who wishes to understand the broad applications of aesthetic, scientific, and

agricultural necessity for land reform that was so important to physiocrats. Physiocrats believed

that land use was critical for improving society. Many European statesmen interpreted these

physiocratic ideas as endorsements of farming enclosure. Vardi’s descriptions of physiocrats

reveals them to be enterprising and knowledgeable but hesitant to compromise. One can deduce

that these bold theories were popular with state reformers for their ability to generate greater

state revenues. These theories, however, were much like other Enlightenment ideas in that they

had a limited penetration beyond a narrow literate stratum of society.

Any reformer would have to contend with the reality of considerable popular opposition

to change and the challenges posed by the application of theories. In the Bavarian case, Eberhard

Weis’s sweeping biography, Montgelas, detailed the key reformer’s narrow interpretation of

physiocratic though among his other major ideas for reforming Bavaria reformer.

Weis

characterized Montgelas as intelligent, intrepid, and, at times, intransigent. Yet Montgelas is

well-defended by Weis as a champion of much-needed state reform in the pattern of Enlightened

absolutism. Montgelas was not quite the radical that many of his contemporaries believed him to

be. As First Minister Montgelas brought coherence and direction to land policies and cemented

the authority of Bavaria’s rulers during a challenging time of war when a clear, cautious path

was impossible to pursue. The funds and personnel at Montgelas’ disposal were less than what

many possessed in larger states such as Austria and Prussia. Weis noted that Montgelas was also

not the only German statesman to seek agricultural and state reform to be met with many

challenges along the way.

Eberhard Weis, Montgelas, 1759 – 1838, Eine Biographie (München: C.H. Beck), 2008, 8.

Montgelas was thus not alone in seeking the dramatic transformation and sale of land as

private property in late eighteenth century Germany. For other attempts at applied physiocratic

reform one must turn to David Warren Sabean’s influential 1990 study, Property, Production,

and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, which detailed the complexity of village life in

Bavaria’s neighboring state of the Duchy of Württemberg. Sabean’s work is a masterful and

detailed examination of village life and the nature of property inheritance and laws, both codified

and understood on a verbal, common level.

Village traditions were cemented in law and oral

agreement. They were a marker of consistency in village life and were a key component of

interpersonal relations as well. Land was the basis of crop production but was also a family

affair. The introduction of physiocratic reforms, as Württemberg’s civil servants also attempted

in the late eighteenth century, posed a serious challenge to traditions and family life. This created

problems for Württemberg’s reformers as well. Traditions in larger states like Prussia were

equally difficult to disrupt.

William W. Hagen’s Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500-

1840 considered land reform attempts in the Kingdom of Prussia in a sweeping chronicle of

Prussian agriculture and village life.

Even the mighty King of Prussia had to make

compromises with estate notables called Junkers. Hagen recorded the preeminence of rank,

privilege, and staunch conservative resistance to private land sale. Incentives for military rank

and land allotments were given to the Prussian Junker notables in exchange for maintaining law

and order and providing their sons as military officers. The scope of Hagen’s study also

David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 5.

Paul Warde, The Agricultural History Review 51, no. 2 (2003): 242-43.

demonstrates how persistent patterns of Prussian agriculture and power relations were difficult to

alter. A common trend throughout the German states, including Bavaria, was stalled, complex

efforts to compromise with notables and to alter existing agricultural systems.

Ferdinand Kramer’s essays “Bayern” (Bavaria) and “Bavaria: Reform and

Staatsintegration” highlight the trusted systems of Bavarian society in the form of the Stände, or

the estates of Bavarian society. Kramer’s work provides a reader with a detailed overview of the

semi-feudal constraints of the estate-based, privileged nature of land ownership, jurisdiction, and

tax making policy in eighteenth century Bavaria known as Ständeschaft.

Bavarian estates were

powerful and well-supported by notables and peasants. Reformers faced a momentous task when

they tried to alter the system, consolidate power in the hands of the Elector, and then obtain

European respect for Bavarian sovereignty. Reform projects would necessitate a fundamental

shift in the role of German, and by extension Bavarian, civil bureaucracy to implement any

changes.

The world of civil servants who interpreted property and law transactions, as well as the

great reforms begun by Montgelas, was dominated by the economic and social policing theories

of cameralism. German sociologist Max Weber’s pioneering research on cameralism in the early

twentieth century is instrumental for analyzing the power relations of civil servants in the

modern age.

Weber’s rational legal model of the development of civil bureaucracy

demonstrates that such a pivotal, powerful role of bureaucracy did not exist in eighteenth and

Ferdinand Kramer, "Bayern." Historische Zeitschrift. Beihefte 37 (2003): 5-24. And Ferdinand

Kramer, “Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration,” German History 20 (June 2002): 370.

Max Weber, Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, Ed. and Trans. by Tony Waters and

Dagmar Waters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 50.

early nineteenth century Bavaria. Cameralism, in its place, maintained the connections, at times

tenuous, between powerful interests. The existing systems in German localities were a rebuke to

strong bureaucratic control and the power of centralized states. Shifts in cameral thought began

in educational institutions where concerns for land and its varied usage abounded. David

Lindenfeld’s The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century is an

expansive, coherent guide to shifts in cameral theory in German universities by the late

eighteenth century that emphasized the critical role of physiocracy and the need for state

centralization to buttress the authority of German rulers.

Cameral academies produced the first

of many reformers in Bavaria that would eventually include Montgelas. Lindenfeld’s scholarship

thus allows historians to view the limits of cameral reform under bureaucrats like Montgelas and

to understand how difficult implementing reform really was. Montgelas came to view property as

integral to the financial success of the Bavarian state and the role of the cameral civil servants as

paramount.

Such a definite shift in responsibilities thus constituted a controversial shift towards the

centralized primacy of the state and its ruler from what historian Andre Wakefield would later

describe in his book The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice

as a disconnected, inconsistent process of mediation and negotiation on the part of the

cameralists.

Cameralism was designed to operate as an intermediary system between the estates

in Bavaria. The faculties of cameralism maintained a way of life and estate relations and were

therefore not a place for reformers. Bavaria’s cameral officials, like other smaller German states,

David Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 35.

Andre Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 2-3.

occupied a limited role in a small state surrounded by larger powers with better equipped

officials.

Thus, analyses of diplomatic statecraft and the transformative role of estate mediation

performed by such officials are crucial for any examination of state building in the late

eighteenth century. Montgelas’ preeminent biographer Eberhard Weis described the cameral

official as intelligent, secretive, and paranoid in the author’s complex examination of the

official’s life, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie.

Montgelas believed that a centralized

state bureaucracy needed to take a commanding role in driving land reform. Montgelas’ plan

called for the expansion of the size of the Bavarian civil service and the scope of its

responsibilities. Montgelas articulated these thoughts in the Ansbach Memorandum of 1796.

The path to state supremacy amidst the turmoil of estate power and foreign meddling was thus

complex and tumultuous. Historian Karl Otmar von Aretin’s Bayern’s Weg zum souveränen

Staat, Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie, 1714-1818 (Bavaria’s Path to Sovereign

Statehood, Territorial Estates and Constitutional Monarchy, 1714-1818 ) chronicled the

impediments that Montgelas, and other reformers faced, when they forged a unified state from

the Bavarian Electorate’s porous borders and disjointed collection of estates.

The predatory

larger states of the Habsburg Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia coveted Bavarian lands.

Compromises were frequent and sweeping reform was abandoned for incremental gains. Seeing

Montgelas, or other reformers, as failures, however, is misleading. Similar forces challenged the

Eberhard Weis, Montgelas 1759 – 1838, Eine Biographie, 8.

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach Memorandum."

Proposal for a Program of State Reforms (September 30, 1796),” German History in Documents

and Images (GHDI), https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3524 (accessed

February 1, 2020).

Karl Otmar von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat, Landstände und konsitutionelle

Monarchie 1714-1718 (München: C.H. Beck, 1976), 38.

smaller state of the Archbishopric of Mainz in the Rhineland. Tim Blanning’s Reform and

Revolution in Mainz, 1743-1803 traced the origins and conduct of similar reactions to reform

from traditionally bound domestic interests similar to the obstacles that plagued Bavarian

reformers.

Mainz’s emulation of the French Revolution met with a bloody riposte at the hands

of the Prussians but Bavarian Elector Max Joseph and his First Minister Montgelas made the

daring, and costly decision to side with the French to leverage the surging tide of the

revolutionary wave to fund and legitimize land reform.

Understanding foreign influence on Bavarian state building, especially from France, is

thus of paramount importance. Montgelas and Max Joseph tied Bavarian fortunes to the rising

tide of Napoleonic victories, hoping to overcome the impediment of a small state budget and

larger rival military powers with French assistance. The result was a complex and costly fifteen-

year period of constitutional legal changes to Bavaria and disastrous participation in France’s

war, less as a partner state and more as a vassal. Historians such as Eberhard Weis, whose

Bayern und Frankreich is a brief overview of the two state’s close relations during the years of

French Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts, highlight the complexity of navigating interstate

relations for smaller powers like Bavaria.

Bavaria was besieged by foreign powers’ and their

predatory designs on land. An alliance with France offered the opportunity to secure Bavarian

sovereignty in central Europe by allying with the rising tide of the French Revolution and its

application of Enlightenment ideas. Weis’ scholarship is helpful for contextualizing Montgelas

and Max Joseph’s embrace of the Enlightenment and the nature of a centralized bureaucratic

Tim Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz, 1743-1803 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1974), 134-135.

Eberhard Weis, Bayern und Frankreich in der Zeit des Konsulats und des Ersten Empire

(1799-1815) (München: Stiftung historisches Kolleg, 1984), 40.

state with the exigencies of border security and even aggrandizement.

Montgelas was also

obsessed with developments in land law and legal distinctions in Revolutionary France. French

revolutionaries destroyed the connection between privilege and property, a topic explored in

Rafe Blaufarb’s The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property.

Blaufarb articulated the distinction of land designations, the creation of private

property in France, and the sweeping influence such a program had in Enlightenment era Europe.

The legal revolution of this “great demarcation” popularized ideas of mass allodification and the

destruction of the notable challenge to the state. The reforms and the success of the French

Revolutionaries’ armies drove Montgelas and Max Joseph towards an alliance with Paris.

When Bavaria’s leaders made this alliance, they planned to use French influence to drive

a similar program of allodification. The French presence made the Bavarian state stronger, in the

inchoate years of its status as a Kingdom from 1806-1808, and Napoleon’s victories greatly

assisted the drive to claim noble lands from cash poor elites. Such a program was strictly

voluntary and was known as “redemption.” Redemption is discussed by German historian

Friedrich Lenger in the Economy and Society” subsection of Jonathan Sperber’s Germany, 1800-

1870.”

Lenger identified that the problem with the redemption process was that reformers like

Montgelas did not have strong enough bureaucracies to convince elite landholders to sell more

estate land for cash payouts. Civil servants could not be everywhere, and landed notables were

not willing to give up their titles and land without a fight. Compromise was not a defeat for

Montgelas but a stark reality of the complex nature of land transformation. The idea of

Ibid.

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property, 18.

Friedrich Lenger, “Economy and Society,” in Jonathan Sperber, Oxford Short History of

Germany, 1800-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 97.

allodification was possible in theory but reclaiming and transforming land required significant

pressure and the maintenance of law and order. Support for notables was crucial to stabilizing the

internal cohesion of Bavaria and bringing coherence to Montgelas’ land program as well.

Bavarian civil servants lacked the trust of the local populace when they carried out

Montgelas’ reforms. Such was the case throughout Germany as well. Inconsistent behavior and

broad interpretation of reforms produced conflict. The boundaries of state control appear to be a

common theme of the era as Hans Rosenberg observed in the much larger Kingdom of Prussia in

Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy, the Prussian Experience 1600-1815.

Rosenberg’s

analysis demonstrates that civil servants were inconsistently trained, not always ethical or lawful,

and lacked sufficient support for their appointed tasks. The limits of the Bavarian state’s power

were no different. A theoretical understanding of such obstacles can be found in historian W.R.

Lee’s rejection of Reinhart Koselleck’s modernization theory. Koselleck advanced that German

states in the key Sattelzeit era (1750-1850) underwent massive economic, political, and

infrastructural developments that brought the standardization of governmental trends and the

domineering, ever-present control of armies of civil servants.

Lee, and Richard Evans, in an

essay entitled “The German Family,” demonstrated that the impact of “flattening” the same

trends of modernization that Koselleck so passionately advanced, were frequently overstated by

specialists keen to advance a progress arc for the duration of the Sattelzeit era.

Montgelas’ great

theories were tested by events that destroyed these flattening trends. Inconsistencies and the

Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy, The Prussian Experience, 1660-

1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 69.

Reinhart Koselleck, “On the Need for Theory in History,” in Werner Conze (ed.), Theory of

History and Practice of History Teaching (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), 5.

“The German Family,” in Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and

Twentieth-Century Germany ed. Richard Evans and W.R. Lee (London: Routledge, 2016), 85.

chaotic nature of the early-nineteenth century wars, famines, and periods of mass civil unrest

destroyed even the best laid plans of state building.

The collapse of Montgelas’ system, and that of the Napoleonic supported system,

demolished notions of rapid economic and social progress in land reform by 1815. Bavaria’s

outsized exploitation of Napoleonic success is featured in the comprehensive Napoleon’s Wars,

An International History, 1803-1815 by Charles Esdaile.

In part, Esdaile explained how

Napoleon demanded draught animals and food from Bavaria as well as a 30,000-soldier levy for

his campaign against Russia, making the cost of these wars questionable for the small south

German state.

Napoleonic success was crucial to Bavarian survival. The suppression of local

notables and the imposition of Bavarian law rested on the support of the French military

presence. If Montgelas was the prime Bavarian reformer, it was Napoleon perhaps more than

Max Joseph, who was his principal supporter and benefactor. The collapse of the Grande Armée

in 1812 forced Max Joseph, at the behest of his son, the Crown Prince Ludwig, to terminate the

alliance with Napoleon to salvage Bavarian sovereignty in 1813.

The fallout from French

defeat weighed heavily on Bavaria’s leaders. Land was overused and famine set in. Thomas

Schuler’s, “Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern best explored the collapse of the

Franco-Bavarian alliance. Schuler examined the actions of the Crown Prince (and future King)

Ludwig to the Russia campaign and his animosity toward the French. These events informed his

role as a key figure of Bavaria’s postwar diplomatic mission to the Congress of Vienna in

Charles Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 (New York: Viking

Press, 2008), 235.

Thomas Schuler, “Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern (München: C.H. Beck,

2015), 17.

Ibid.

1815.

Ludwig’s immediate role is given more depth in the comprehensive biography of his life

by German historian Heinz Gollwitzer in his Ludwig I of Bavaria. Gollwitzer presented a man

who contrasted sharply with his father. Max Joseph was austere and well-read. Ludwig was a

dandy known for his ostentatious tastes and for being a dilettante. Ludwig fancied himself a king

with limitless power but was ultimately forced to compromise with notables, sharing power to

salvage the Kingdom his father created.

Ludwig played a crucial role in the dismissal of Montgelas in 1817 and the drafting of a

second constitution in 1818. The constitution allowed private landholders to be approved by the

King for service in a legislative body known as the Landtag. Ludwig’s role in the Bavarian state

became greater by 1818 as his father’s health failed. The drafting of the second Bavarian

constitution provided a much-needed systemic overhaul to the operation of state ministries. The

Landtag was also crucial in guiding state reforms by reviewing and commenting on the King’s

proposed legislation. Bavaria’s new stratified legal and political system was itself riven with

rivalries but also constrained by the King’s ability to dismiss sessions of the Landtag. The

complex innerworkings of the Landtag and its politics are deftly explained by Dirk Götschmann

in Bayerischer parlamentarismus im Vormärz. Die Ständeversammlung des Königreichs Bayern

1819–1848 (Bavarian Parliamentarianism in the Vormärz Era, The Meeting of the Estates in the

Kingdom of Bavaria 1819-1848). Here Götschmann guides readers through the process by which

key advisors, handpicked by King Ludwig, deliberated over his proposed reforms.

The number

of state ministries increased and the growth of the Landtag as a legislative body posed new

Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig I. von Bayern, Königtum im Vormärz, eine politische Biographie

(München: Süddeutscher, 1987), 71.

Dirk Götschmann, Bayerischer parlamentarismus im Vormärz. Die Ständeversammlung des

Königreichs Bayern 1819–1848 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2002), 5.

challenges for the King. In time, Landtag members complained of their limited role in the

machinery of state. In its early years, however, Landtag members buttressed the state Montgelas

created and improved it. The members of the Landtag also proved to be staunch defenders of the

King and the need for compromise within the Kingdom.

The historiography of Bavaria that covers the ten years after King Max Joseph’s death

(1825-1835) presents a rich history of economic expansion and the persistent need to negotiate

trade and diplomatic entanglements within central Europe and beyond. As King, Ludwig was

more concerned with expanding his role as a sovereign rather than serving as a constitutional

monarch. Agricultural land was in a constant state of degradation in large part due to new

protectionist tariffs levied by rival grain markets in much larger states. The Landtag scrutinized

rent, tax, and pension payments from estates while rendering assistance when and where it could

for estate holders. These events in Bavaria are given greater context within the world of Vormärz

German states by Theodore Hamerow’s study Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics

and Politics in Germany, 1815-1871.

Hamerow’s analysis in part traces the development of the

Bavarian state to the mid-nineteenth century but focuses a great deal on the 1830s when King

Ludwig proposed a trade bloc with the bordering states of Baden and Württemberg. This South

German Customs Union, Hamerow explained, was intended to benefit Bavaria but was eclipsed

by the stronger Prussian-dominated Zollverein (Customs Union) to the north. W.O. Henderson’s

book, The Zollverein, featured a strong argument that the greater regional dominance of the

expanding Prussian Zollverein bloc crippled the Bavarian system and subordinated the smaller

south German state to a broader integration into Berlin’s orbit. as explains so well.

Bavaria’s

Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics and Politics in

Germany, 1815-1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 4-5.

W.O. Henderson, The Zollverein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), 63.

leaders thus faced consistent opposition and competition from abroad throughout the 1820s and

1830s. This was like the Kingdom’s ordeal during the Napoleonic Wars. Compromise in the

Zollverein negotiations, like the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, were therefore, a consistent

trend that complicated Bavarian efforts at land and state reform through the 1830s.

Argument and Sources

The Kingdom of Bavaria had a diverse array of legal land classification that reformers

sought to change in 1808. Land in Bavaria was property, but property was usually associated

with title, privilege, and jurisdictional rule. Land was not, however, immovable property which

could be bought, sold, or transferred from one owner to another.

In the Kingdom of Bavaria

land was mostly part of a semi-feudal arrangement. This Gutsherrschaft system of feudal rents

was how most Bavarians saw land. Several plots, and a divided common land, were rented on

each manorial estate (Güter) and used, by law, for the mutual benefit of lord and peasant. The

Maxmilian Code, the guiding legal charter and property guide in the Electorate of Bavaria in

1756 stated, “while the law has different meanings, here it signifies a vessel, that is a sovereign

command which in matters relating to the common best (interest) is stipulated for the subject.”

In rare cases, the Grundherrschaft system, more common in the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia

to the north, entailed protection in exchange for loyalty.

The rarest land property classification

Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe, 5.

“Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis. Oder Neu Verbessert- und Ergänzt- Chur-

Bayerisches Land-Recht,” niedersächische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen

[Accessed 8 May 2020]. “Das Recht hat zwar unterschiedliche Bedeutungen, hier aber bedeutet

es ein Gefäss, das ist, ein oberherrschaftliches Gebot, welches in sachen das Gemeine Beste

betreffend dem Unterthan (sic) vorgeschrieben ist.”

Hermann Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des

18. Jahrhunderts (München: C.H. Beck, 1977), 320-321.

was the Allodial-Gut, an Allod or a defined, enclosed piece of land legally defined as a piece of

property that could be bought and sold. In 1808, the Allodial-Gut would become incredibly

important. That year the Kingdom of Bavaria would implement a new constitution that

eliminated feudal privileges including jurisdictional claims. The Bavarian state thus turned all

land into allodial property. This shift in the property definitions of land in Bavaria was crucial to

state centralization and was a key reflection of broader alterations in the Kingdom’s economy

and social order. The archival sources used in this dissertation, including land allodification and

redemption negotiations, price indices, and pension support for landed notables reveals the

complexity of land reform when confronted with real problems when applied in practice rather

than existing as mere theory. Anna Meierl’s complaint is a great way to examine the intricate

effects of the allodification process in the Kingdom of Bavaria.

Late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Bavarian civil servants, beginning with

Montgelas, allodified all the territory’s land as part of a program to boost agricultural production.

A succession of Bavarian state bureaucrats sought to centralize power under the Elector, later

King of Bavaria, to control the ownership of land. Bavarian authority over agricultural land also

necessitated the expansion of a centralized state bureaucracy to manage these resources. The

nature of the Bavarian civil service, and that of the Elector’s rule, however, did not allow for

total ownership and authority over land. Instead, the Bavarian civil service, much like the

administration of other smaller German states, was driven by the mercantile and legal philosophy

of cameralism. Cameralism was a broadly defined German system of commercial and social

management to mediate the interaction between different estates (or orders) of Bavarian society

including the Catholic Church, noble elites, and Bavaria’s sovereign. Thus, cameral officials

were not civil servants with broad powers who answered only to the ruler.

The idea of mass

land allodification was the product of reforms first in cameral institutions and the examples

presented by other European forays into claiming land, compensating nobles, and selling plots to

amenable, physiocratic minded owners. This effort was part of a crucial, successful effort to

centralize Bavarian power, economic activity, and social cohesion under the rule of the King.

Allodification was but the key to the elevation of the Bavarian King, his civil servants, and the

political and economic independence of the new Kingdom.

The introduction of new ideas and shifting scholarship prompted cameral officials and

German leaders to assess what the scope of a cameral official’s responsibilities should be.

Physiocracy was but one important Enlightenment school of thought that spread to Bavaria by

the mid-eighteenth century. Physiocrats, the philosophes who promoted physiocracy, were

prominent in both France and Great Britain in the mid-eighteenth century. These thinkers were

motivated by the idea that the productive use of land was key to the revitalization of state

economies.

By the 1760s, professors at Bavarian cameral institutions, namely the University of

Göttingen, began to include physiocratic ideas in their curricula.

Professors like Johann

Stephen Pütter, called for the role of the cameralists to be fundamentally altered.

Pütter

proposed that cameralists take a more forceful role in state administration of economic activity

and the legal interpretation of land ownership. This new direction in cameral science was

therefore controversial. Land reform entailed allodification. Allodification inferred that the

Bavarian leader would possess greater authority over his subjects’ land and titles. This shift

Andre Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice,

2-3.

Liana Vardi, The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment, 115.

Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century, 35.

Ibid.

potentially deprived landed elites of their sources of income in the form of rent collection and

pensions based on the possession of a manorial estate.

New content in cameral instruction was appealing to students who believed the

cameralists needed to be the central agent for the introduction of physiocratic reform in Bavaria.

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin (the later ennobled Graf Montgelas) was a promising cameral

official in Bavaria who supported Pütter’s cameral approach.

Worth noting is that many of

Montgelas’ peers agreed with Pütter. Montgelas agreed with Pütter that the state, as a

representative body of the Elector, should rule over Bavarian estates.

The young cameral

official also railed against the Catholic Church as a moribund, dysfunctional institution that had

too much influence over the Elector. Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church in Bavaria took issue

with Montgelas, and using his staunch anti-clericalist beliefs and membership in the Illuminati

against him, pressured the Elector Karl Theodor to dismiss and exile the young civil servant.

Karl Theodor himself failed at a land reform project, further crystallizing Montgelas’ belief in

the necessity for a more powerful civil bureaucracy.

Elector Karl Theodor proposed a series of land-related exchanges and taxation shifts in

the 1770s with little success, demonstrating that major impediments stood in the way of

reformers from both within the Bavarian state and from beyond its borders. The Elector Karl

Theodor proposed exchanging land to protect Bavarian territorial integrity in the 1780s to no

avail.

Bavarian notables blocked his bid at reform and foreign powers (Austria and Prussia)

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin also appears in this dissertation under the guise of his later

ennobled title “Graf Montgelas” or simply “Montgelas.”

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach Memorandum."

Proposal for a Program of State Reforms (September 30, 1796).”

Karl Otmar von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat, Landstände und konstitutionelle

Monarchie, 1714-1818, 64.

wished for more Bavarian land. Karl Theodor’s reign (1778-1799) taught reformers like

Montgelas two crucial lessons: any land policy would meet with significant resistance from the

powerful interests of Bavarian estates and that governing, not just reform, would always be

influenced by the more powerful states looming on the Electorate’s border.

Montgelas found support for physiocratic influenced reform of cameral land policy in the

court of the Duke Maximilian Joseph (Max Joseph) of Zweibrücken. Max Joseph was, like

Montgelas, a student of the Enlightenment. A member of the minor line of the Wittelsbach

dynasty, the ruling family of Electoral Bavaria, Max Joseph coveted the throne and sought to

become an Enlightened ruler.

Max Joseph made Montgelas an advisor and supported the

reforms he suggested for the small ducal territory. Montgelas’ first major reform program was

the Ansbach Memorandum of 1796.

The Ansbach Memorandum contained Montgelas’ major

ideas for the reform of Electoral Bavaria. Montgelas declared that the responsibilities and role of

cameral ministers were archaic and needed to be changed. The solution was the training of a new

type of civil servant with broader legal responsibilities and a key, cameral focus on Ökonomie,

land-related management.

Reforming the Bavarian state, Montgelas would learn, was more

difficult than simply addressing the shortcomings of its cameral civil servants.

It was the latter threat that surrounded Max Joseph’s accession to power in 1799 and that

complicated Montgelas’ dramatic implementation of the reforms entailed in the Ansbach

Memorandum. Max Joseph became Elector upon the death of Karl Theodor in 1799. The

Manfred Treml et. Al, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat (München:

Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildungsarbeit, 2006), 21.

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach Memorandum."

Proposal for a Program of State Reforms (September 30, 1796).”

David Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century,

58.

Elector, with Montgelas as his key advisor at his side, looked to legitimize the central role of the

state above the powers of the estates. Max Joseph, like Montgelas, looked to Revolutionary

France as a positive example for state reform, including the revolutionaries’ approach to land

classification. The French Revolutionaries allodified land by abolishing feudal titles and

privileges, and with them, the connection between property title and the land itself.

Such a

distinction was critical for Max Joseph and Montgelas. If the two could emulate such a process

within the Electoral state of Bavaria they could accomplish two key goals of state building. The

first was breaking the power of the notable held estates. The second was transforming land into

property owned by those landholders who shared a physiocratic approach of productive land use.

This transformation was more easily proposed than implemented. The project also hinged on the

Elector and his advisor leveraging the fortunes of war by making a key alliance with France to

both protect Bavarian sovereignty and to crush the established Bavarian estates.

Thus, Montgelas’ proposed reforms of a centralized state led land allodification program

hinged upon an alliance with France. This brought early benefits due to Napoleonic success and

disaster as the French Empire disintegrated. Max Joseph gravitated towards the revolutionaries in

1801 when French forces defeated an Austrian army on Bavarian soil.

The two powers signed a

peace treaty at Lunéville shortly thereafter. Large segments of land were redistributed to many

German states because of French victories in 1803. Bavaria was given more land from several

archbishoprics as part of the Final Recess of the Holy Roman Empire

(Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) that year.

The reduction in power of the Catholic Church in

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property, 18.

Waterloo 1815. Coppen, Bernard. “The Treaty of Lunéville 1801.” www.waterloo1815.com.

– http://www.1789-1815.com/tr_luneville_txt.htm [accessed December 21, 2019].

Günter Krings, "Das Alte Reich am Ende — der Reichsdeputationshauptschluss

these lands paved the way for the secularization of Church land in Bavaria. Montgelas achieved

two major goals of his program by eliminating the political power of the estate of the Church and

by allodifying its land, separating the manorial jurisdiction from the Church’s authority to that of

the Bavarian state. Subsequent French victories over Austria brought greater security to

Bavaria’s borders and Napoleonic recognition of Bavaria’s status as a Kingdom rather than an

Electorate in 1806.

The Establishment of the Kingdom of Bavaria was a high point for Bavaria’s leaders as

the power of the monarchy finally superseded the authority of the competing estates. The

limitations of bureaucracies of this era were also on display. Montgelas worked quickly,

establishing a centralized bureaucracy containing finance, interior, and justice ministries. Max

Joseph approved the first Bavarian constitution in 1808 abolishing all feudal privileges, titles,

and special tax rates.

This allowed Montgelas to pursue his long sought-after goal: the

allodification of all manorial land. The process of allodification was followed in Bavaria by

“redemption.”

Redemption of land, plots voluntarily sold to the state for resale, revealed a key

shortcoming of the more powerful state ministries, though. Cameral civil servants could not be

everywhere and could not personally enforce every law. Systemic control by an ever-present

bureaucracy was a century away at least.

Redemption was thus done on a voluntary basis.

Estate lords were cash poor due to war in Europe. Montgelas believed that this desperation

would make the lords sellers. Instead, they demanded the legal fulfillment of past due pensions.

1803." JuristenZeitung 58, no. 4 (2003): 173-79.

"Constitutional Texts: Bavaria 1808 and 1818 Constitutions" lawin.org. 01, 2013.

https://lawin.org/constitutional-texts-bavaria-1808-and-1818-constitutions/ [accessed 05 2020]

Lenger in Sperber. Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870, 97.

Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, Ed. and Trans. by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters,

50.

In addition, the health and vitality of their lands was critical to the Bavarian food supply and

trade. Elsewhere protestations to the new system were stronger. Land ownership traditions of

Tyroleans were challenged by the Bavarian state.

A revolt followed in 1809, and French

assistance was needed to suppress it. Montgelas’ program of allodification was failing to pay

dividends but not exclusively his fault. Bureaucracies of the time were limited in their scope of

power. Bavaria was also a smaller state making the power of its centralized authority difficult for

its comparatively smaller and poorer bureaucracy. The alliance with France, so integral to the

foundation of the Kingdom of Bavaria and the land reform project, would unfortunately bring

famine, debt, and disorder beginning in 1812.

The allodification and redemption project stalled and collapsed amidst the implosion of

the Napoleonic system and alliance from 1812-1815. Napoleon demanded more from Bavaria

every year as the French viewed Bavaria more as a tributary vassal state than an equal partner.

Napoleonic trade controls in the form of the Continental System, the internal blockade intended

to cut Britain off from trade, had dire consequences for Bavaria.

Crops, draught animals, and

conscription of Bavarian subjects for military service left farmland in disrepair and agricultural

yields plummeted. The failure of Napoleon’s Russian campaign destroyed Bavarian sustenance

and ability to maintain its sovereignty independent of the coalition. The greatly weakened

Bavarian state was now challenged by its more powerful regional enemies, Austria and Prussia.

Facing this pressure, Max Joseph left the Napoleonic alliance at the behest of his son, the Crown

Prince Ludwig, in 1813 and defected to the side of the Sixth Coalition, the allied powers

Eberhard Weis, Montgelas, Eine Biographie, 1759 – 1838, 80.

“Rejoinder to His Britannic Majesty's order in council of the 11th November 1807.”

The Waterloo Association. http://www.napoleon-

series.org/research/government/france/decrees/c_decrees16.html. [accessed December 23, 2019]

determined to defeat Napoleon.

The cost of the war was immense and state debt and famine

conditions ravaged Bavaria. Though allied to the victorious coalition, the most prominent of the

major powers’ leaders, Austrian Prince Klemens von Metternich, viewed Max Joseph as

untrustworthy. Bavaria was also perceived as a state that benefitted from its close alliance with

Napoleon until his demise. The survival of state sovereignty was in jeopardy when Europe’s

powers met in Vienna in 1815.

Montgelas’ system, however damaged by conflict, survived the postwar era due to

skillful negotiations with Austria and Metternich’s support of constitutions in the German states.

The Bavarian state was stripped of territory at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and Austria took

land on its periphery the following year in the Treaty of Munich.

Bavaria was stricken by

famine, mounting state debt, and the deterioration of land quality. Famine in 1816-1817

produced dire consequences for many Bavarians. State debt incurred from the conflict damaged

the centralized state bureaucracy but did not destroy it. Some, like the Crown Prince Ludwig,

blamed Montgelas for Bavaria’s misfortune. Ludwig led a successful effort to remove Montgelas

from power in 1817. It was now time to find a structured solution to the damage incurred during

the conflict.

The Crown Prince Ludwig represented his ailing father King Max Joseph during the

drafting of a second constitution in 1818 intended to provide greater transparency and

bureaucratic cooperation within the Bavarian state. Ludwig blamed Montgelas for Bavaria’s

Adam Zamoyski,

Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (New

York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 107.

“Treaty of Munich.” April 14, 1816. Treaty of Munich.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=um1eAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fal

se. [accessed December 12, 2019].

catastrophic participation in the Napoleonic Wars. The former First Minister’s efforts, however,

established a centralized state with Max Joseph as its ruler. Montgelas’ land system, and the state

ministries that controlled it, needed to be reformed not eliminated. Graf Georg Friedrich von

Zentner, a trusted legal theorist and civil servant under Montgelas provided a solution to the

perceived flaws of the state ministries and their land system. Zentner drafted the second Bavarian

constitution in 1818. This constitution created a bicameral legislature, the Landtag, that included

some notables close to the King, as well as some non-nobles interested in land, into the

government. The Landtag’s upper chamber gave many notables more representation than before

and the lower chamber included some non-noble property holders. In sum, the system

represented something of a capitulation to mediatized nobles (those who had been relieved of

their privileges). The Landtag was to be a representative advisory panel for the King and not a

substitute to his rule. A strong “monarchical principle” gave the King the right to propose

legislative ideas and for the Landtag to review it.

The Landtag was immediately inundated with

complaints (Beschwerde) about deteriorating land conditions and assistance paying noble

pensions and salaries. These complaints were inescapable as the years passed and a series of

agricultural crises impacted Bavaria into the 1820s. The death of Max Joseph in 1825 brought

Ludwig to the throne and forced him to further compromise with notables to preserve Bavaria’s

economic integrity.

Ludwig attempted to stabilize the Bavarian state during 1825-1835 by offering

concessions with landholding notables and attempting to create a trade bloc to protect the

Kingdom’s export economy. Ludwig was forced to compromise with landed nobles. Ludwig

helped notables, in a limited sense, keep their agricultural lands, now owned as property and

Hans-Michael Körner, Geschichte des Königsreichs Bayern (München: C.H. Beck, 2006), 55.

rented by tenants, stable. In the late 1820s Ludwig also attempted to create the South German

Customs Union for the purpose of protecting regional trade.

Ludwig also believed that such a

trade bloc would privilege the Bavarian economy while opening its merchants and landholders to

new markets. The plan backfired. Prussian leaders created a much stronger Zollverein (Customs

Union). Ludwig joined the Zollverein in 1830 surrendering to the stronger market forces and

political power of the Kingdom of Prussia. Bavarian leaders, once again, were stymied by the

larger forces on the periphery of their lands and by the domestic need for stability and

agricultural production.

This dissertation, therefore, advances that the element of compromise complicated but

did not deter Bavarian efforts at state-guided allodification during the late eighteenth century and

early nineteenth century. Montgelas’ reforms must be viewed within the context of their era.

Challenges from notables and peasants alike complicated the process of reform due to the serious

disruption to consistent, well-tested forms of agricultural production and mutual aid in a

subsistence-based economy. Reformers of this era lacked authority to enforce sweeping changes

to the character of everyday life. Civil servants, though given broad mandate by new state

bureaucracies, were ill-equipped to change the nature of agricultural usage or to destroy the

much needed, stabilizing influence of rural lords. The reforms of Graf Montgelas in this era did

not fail they instead provided the crucial foundation for the reformation of the Bavarian economy

and the secure power of the Wittelsbach Dynasty. They were imperfect in an era of chaotic

interstate relations, savage war, and unbearable famine. The ultimate success of land

W.O. Henderson, The Zollverein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), 63.

allodification was in the state’s retention of the program through these crises. Reforms followed

upon reforms and Bavarian land production, state power, and the quality of life were improved in

the long term.

Thesis Structure

Chapter one of this thesis explores the estate-based structure of Bavarian agriculture and

social organization. Titled and untitled nobility owned land and peasants paid rents for their

plots. The estates were also a significant political bloc in Bavaria, as was the Catholic Church.

This chapter also includes a description of the vital cameral reforms of the eighteenth century.

New curricula borrowed physiocratic elements for a new reinterpretation of private property law

and influenced future reformers such as Montgelas.

The topic of chapter two contextualizes the formation of the Kingdom of Bavaria amidst

the climate of the French Revolutionary Wars and the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. Max Joseph,

as Elector, and his First Minister, Montgelas, were drawn to France as it was a purported beacon

of Enlightenment virtue. French armies arrived on Bavarian soil and handily defeated Austrian

forces. Max Joseph benefitted from the redistribution of German principalities defeated by

Napoleon in 1803. The Kingdom of Bavaria was formed through the consent and support of

Napoleon Bonaparte. Montgelas’ massive expansion of bureaucratic led land reform of

allodification was given the martial backing of French forces. Foreign intervention was crucial to

solidifying the power of the new Kingdom of Bavaria. The 1808 constitution was a founding

compact of the enlightened absolutist model of the new Bavarian state. Max Joseph used the

constitution to crush the power of the competing estates leaving himself as sole ruler. King Max

Joseph’s successes and failures were buoyed by Napoleonic support through 1809.

Chapter three concerns the connection between the collapse of the Napoleonic alliance

and Montgelas’ property system. The inextricable link between the redemption process of land

and the strength of the state centralization of bureaucracy was compromised by Napoleonic

policies. The imposition of the 1810 Napoleonic Continental System, an internal blockade of

European powers occupied or allied with France brought debt and famine. Napoleonic demands

on Bavaria’s leaders for resources crippled the small German state and led to its near ruin when

the French Army was defeated in 1812. The Crown Prince Ludwig I convinced his father King

Max Joseph to defect to the side of the Austrian and Prussian-dominated Sixth Coalition by

1813. In addition, the collapse of the Napoleonic order brought debt, destroyed agriculture, and

the threat of conservative reaction from the Habsburg dominated Congress of Vienna system to

Bavaria. Montgelas’ efforts as First Minister ended in 1817 when he was dismissed by the

Crown Prince Ludwig. Montgelas’ reforms were critical for the future success of Bavaria’s

economy and the power of the King.

The creation of a compromise driven parliament (the Landtag), an advisory assembly of

titled and untitled nobles and educated professionals, led by the monarchical principle of rule

forms the basis of chapter four. Attempts at land redemption were relegated to a diminished role

while support for mediatized, cash poor notables increased. Graf Friedrich Georg von Zentner’s

1818 constitution produced a more structured state bureaucracy while strengthening the existing

state dominated land law reforms of the Montgelas’ era. A sense of order and systemic

application was present in this system. Those notables who sought assistance for their destroyed

lands and pensions to pay debts disagreed.

Finally, an epilogue discusses the swirling market forces that brought Bavaria into a

Prussian-dominated trade bloc of the Zollverein over the last attempt at a state driven,

agriculturally driven economy. Bavaria was once again besieged by stronger economic forces

and the further reduction of its political autonomy.

Chapter 1. Redrawing the Map: The Role of Land in the Growth of Electoral

Bavaria

Late-eighteenth century Electoral Bavarian civil servants faced significant challenges in

their effort to transform agricultural land from its connection to semi-feudal jurisdiction to

private ownership as property. Several impediments stood in the way of such a large-scale

overhaul of land ownership. Landholding requirements were a deeply entrenched part of

Bavarian life. Bavarian land was largely organized into Gutsherrschaft estates (Güter), a semi-

feudal agricultural and social model, as well as the Grundherrschaft tenant farming system. The

Catholic Church also had extensive lands managed using the Gutsherrschaft system. This model

brought stability and reinforced the role of law and order in rural areas in the wake of Thirty

Years’ War (1618-1648).

Electoral Bavaria was a patchwork of these estate lands, as well as

the political and social pull of the Catholic Church and mendicant orders (like the Jesuits and

Norbertines), and the limited authority of the Elector. The Elector was a leader that bound these

institutions together less through real power than from his title and historic importance. The

sinews of state control were managed by cameral civil servants, or cameralists. Cameralists were

officials who were schooled in the German economic management school of cameralism. A

cameralist’s career hinged on currying favor with the Elector and negotiating the web of

powerful interests that both advised and constrained his rule. Such a system provided functional

relations between the estates but left Bavaria weak in a turbulent sea of alliances, expensive

wars, and shifting borders.

Hermann Kellenbenz. Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des

18. Jahrhunderts, 320-321.

Physiocratic influence from beyond Bavaria’s borders influenced shifting notions of

cameral responsibilities. The role of the state in Bavaria, as well as in continental Europe, was

increasing. Ideas concerning land usage, including physiocratic inspired notions of maximizing

lucrative crop yields, were of interest to enlightened bureaucrats. The presence of these concepts

in Bavaria became controversial. Aspiring reformers adopted these new ideas and promoted the

notion of an expanded state that would drive agricultural development. In turn such agricultural

development would fund the primacy of a more robust centralized leadership.

This chapter examines the stagnant, if stable, organization of agricultural land in the

Electorate of Bavaria from 1648 through the conclusion of the late-eighteenth century. The

period in question is of critical importance for Bavarian and European history. Ambitious civil

servants advanced Enlightenment-inspired reforms that would fundamentally change the nature

of land ownership and use. The new system would mean mass, state-sanctioned private land

ownership and the elimination of feudal privileges associated with estates. This meant altering

Electoral Bavarian legal traditions. The confusing array of legal codes were a product of

institutions of the Holy Roman Empire and the various influences of Roman, French, and

German law. Feudal property arrangements, including the collection of rent, were normative.

Land as privately held property was uncommon. Several attempts at land reform, including an

overhaul of the tax system failed due to the intervention and obstinacy of the landed nobility.

Finally, in the 1750s, a new legal guide to land ownership, rents, and inheritance, the Codex

Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis. Oder Neu Verbessert- und Ergänzt- Chur-Bayrisches Land-

Recht – or “Maximilian Code” was introduced to provide clarity to land ownership distinctions.

“Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis. Oder neu Verbessert- und Ergänzt- Chur-

Bayerisches Land-Recht,” [accessed May 8, 2020].

A handful of German civil servants first proposed a mass rewriting of the laws that governed

land ownership and privilege by the mid-eighteenth century. One enterprising civil servant,

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, the future Graf Montgelas, generated controversy by proposing

to expand the size and role of a unitary civil bureaucratic state led by an unchallenged sovereign.

Such a program was intended to manage Bavaria’s economic interests, with a special focus on

agricultural benefit, for the advantage of a more robust state.

Electoral Bavaria and Central Europe in the Wake of the Thirty Years’ War

Electoral Bavaria, the predecessor of the Kingdom of Bavaria, maintained a system of

shared jurisdictional responsibilities between ruler (the Elector), notables, the Catholic Church in

Bavaria, and subjects during 1648-1799. Bavaria, in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-

1648), was a patchwork of estates, bishoprics, and free cities. The Electoral Bavarian state owed

its sovereignty to the Peace of Westphalia. Lessened, yet unbroken, Imperial authority gave

Bavarian leaders more latitude. According to Robert A. Kann, “After 1648 every major move of

the emperor had to be based exclusively on the strength resulting from the rule in the hereditary

lands and those of the eastern crowns.”

The elite assembly of the Holy Roman Empire, the

Imperial diet, met for the last time as a complete and functional assembly of estates with decision

making power in 1653-1654.

The product of this diet was the “electoral capitulation”

(Wahlkapitulation) of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in 1654.

Leopold effectively

divvied up electoral states while severely curtailing the land rights and responsibilities of the

major contingents of the Electoral Bavarian state: Old Bavarian (Altbayern) and Palatinate

Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918 (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1980), 55.

Ibid.

(Oberpfalz) lords.

Subsequent Imperial decisions by Leopold reinforced the subservient role of

electoral states like Bavaria. In addition, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I did not consult the

electoral states or the landed gentry when making military decisions.

Kann, however,

concluded that the subsequent sessions of Leopold I “gave little additional leverage to Habsburg

power in imperial domestic matters.”

The electoral states lost their representative voice in the

Imperial diet (which reconvened in 1663) but gained increased autonomy over their own polities.

Leaders of electoral states, like Bavaria, turned to new forms of agricultural production and rural

jurisdiction to bolster their power and to turn a profit.

Many Bavarian landed elites adopted the German Gutsherrschaft manorial system by the

mid-seventeenth century to provide stable agricultural production and social control.

The

Gutsherrschaft model, along with the Grundherrschaft model, was the basis of Bavarian

agricultural production, landholding rights, and law and order for over a century and a half.

German-speaking central European land was devastated by the Thirty Years’ War. Bavarian land

was no exception. The priority of Bavarian rulers was agricultural stability. Recovery efforts

were slow. Gutsherrschaft manorial estates (Güter) were the centerpiece of agricultural

organization.

The Güter Domainen (domains of the estate) frequently, but not always, included

Karl Otmar von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle

Monarchie, 13. German: “Der Reichschluss von 1654 und die Wahlkapitulation Kaiser Leopolds

I. von 1658 stellen insofern eine Zäsur in der Geschichte der deutschen Landstände dar, als ihnen

damit die Bestreitung der Mittel zur Pflicht gemacht wurde…weiter durch das in der

Wahlkapitulation erlassene Verbot galt auch für mehrere Stände eines Landesherrn, in unserem

Fall der bayerischen und oberpfälzischen Stände.”

Ibid., 13-14 – German: “Der Reichsschluss von 1670, der die Landstände zwingen sollte, alle

Mittel zur Landesverteidigung zu genehmigen, wurde von Leopold I. allerdings nicht bestätigt.”

Ibid.

Rudolf Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, trans. Jonathan B. Knudsen (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988), 17.

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 17.

a Vorwerk (manorial office).

Agricultural organization, along this model, was decentralized

during the seventeenth century. Electoral Bavarian Güter Domainen were among the many

Gutsherrschaft estates to undergo an agricultural and labor reorganization called Bauernlegen

during the seventeenth century.

This process entailed the appropriation of peasant land

followed by land rights transferred back to peasants based on rents.

Peasants would also repay

manorial lords with a portion of their crop yields. Gutsherrschaft practices in northeastern

German states entailed serfdom but Bavarian subjects escaped such an ordeal. Bavarian peasants

benefitted from the close cooperation of the Catholic Church and the Electoral state’s process of

confessionalization that, in part, protected Güter laborers from abuses.

According to historian

Renate Blickle, Güter law included the adherence to a 1616 labor code that restricted services

and work for lords for “subsistence” related matters rather than for luxury.

Bavarians

experienced stability during the latter half of the seventeenth century with farming as the basis

for sustenance and social order.

The strengthening of the Gutsherrschaft system transformed both the organization of land

and the legal responsibilities of landholders and estate lords. Güter lands were rented to peasants

in exchange for as much as one third of all crop yields, livestock, fish, or wildlife.

Land was

divided into furlongs (Felder) and then three separate large fields (Zelgen).

The periphery of

Ibid.

Lujo Brentano, Gesammelte Aufsätze. Bd. 1. Erbrechtspolitik: alte und neue Feudalität, Bd. 1

(Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1899), 233.

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 17.

Marc R. Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque. Religious Identity in Southwest

Germany, 1550-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 219.

Renate Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early

Modern Bavaria,” 380.

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 16.

Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, 5.

land was for the cultivation of flax and hemp.

Arable land, unfortunately, was overused to the

point of soil depletion. Slash and burn farming techniques were common and parts of fields were

left fallow.

Innovation or adaption was infrequent and life on the Güter estate could be

Hobbesian. Peasants were born and died on estates. Labor obligations to lords supplemented

crop payments. A “fitting subsistence” of “domestic necessity” – Hausnotdurft – unified the

subjects and lords in a mutual respect for legal and moral boundaries.

A series of legal and

religious principles also reinforced this hierarchical yet symbiotic relationship between noble and

peasant.

There were few developments in land-related legal theory in German-speaking central

Europe that concerned Bavarian lords. Instead, there was, in general, a shared concern for the

potential abuse of regional jurisdiction by estate holders and its impact on the common weal.

German legal thought, at its most theoretical, included the jurist Samuel Pufendorf’s combination

of the established traditions of Roman legal codes with the socially compassionate influence of

Christian natural laws.

Pufendorf delineated the “entia physica (the features of external nature)

and entia moralia (the components of the social world of ethical freedom).”

In practical terms,

Pufendorf’s ideas, and those of other thinkers, were not considered by either Bavarian lords or

peasants. Meierrecht guided Bavarian law. Meierrecht, an unwritten but mutually understood

agreement between tenant and lord, provided a notion of relative fairness.

Verbal agreements

Ibid., 6.

Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory, The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-

1815 (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 143.

Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early Modern

Bavaria," 378.

Wieacker, A History of Private Law in Europe with Particular Reference to Germany, 245.

Ibid.

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 89.

between tenants and lords governed everything from inheritance laws and debts to where

cottages could be built. The basis of these legal principles kept the relationship between Güter

lord and subject less than amicable, but it was a consistent and understandable arrangement.

Güter law was, however, not necessarily profitable.

Concerns about abusive profiteering and the exploitation of peasants by elite estate

holders are present in the communal social contracts of German-speaking villages. These

concerns did not result in any change in the enforcement of Meierrecht. Changes came only to

address specific times of poverty or famine. The lingering devastation wrought by the Thirty

Years’ War handicapped the development of agricultural land, and the amelioration of

peasant/noble relations, for long after its conclusion. There were few draught animals, limited

arable tracts of land, and many people were killed before the conclusion of hostilities. Labor

from subjects was limited to the number of workers available and the skills they possessed.

Peasant farmers were busy with cultivating crops, the main form of rental payment and export

profits for estates, and with the putting-out system of producing proto-industrial goods through

the semi-profession of contracting known as Vorlegen.

Rudolf Vierhaus recorded in Germany

in the Age of Absolutism, “At the end of the seventeenth century noble estates in Bavaria are

thought to have had less than one half – indeed sometimes only one third or one quarter – of their

prewar value.”

In sum, Gutsherrschaft was not necessarily an ideal system for agricultural

productivity, efficient labor use, or profitability from the standpoint of successive generations.

Stability, through consistent crop yields and the maintenance of social order, however, was the

paramount component of mid-seventeenth century rural life, and trumped demands for

Ibid. 23.

Ibid.

productivity, efficiency, or the amelioration of everyday peasant life. Private landownership,

limited to parts of common lands, and the much rarer allodial-Güter (land owned outright by

individuals) was equally rigid in its construction and maintenance by the Güter lords.

The strict, private property semi-ownership within the Gutsherrschaft regime was the

Hoffuss system. This system provided a rigidity to private land ownership. Hoffuss land was

derived from the Hufe (literally hooves and in low Latin, Hoba) and existed in Bavaria since the

eighth century CE.

The origins of the system are murky. The term mansus also appear in

conjunction with the Hoffuss-system as a form of small household connected land ownership.

Hufe land was understood by Bavarian peasants as the responsibility of families.

Common land

on the Gutsherrschaft estate was also open to shared pasturing and division.

This also stymied

the development of productive rural agriculture. Koppelwirtschaft (crop rotation) was the

predominant form of cultivation that produced enough foodstuffs for personal consumption and

payment to the estate lord.

Hoffuss, much like the jurisdictional function of the Gutsherrschaft

estate was ideal for the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bavarian farmer because it was

stable. Historian W.R. Lee also noted that common pasturing and division of land had a

peacekeeping element in everyday life, augmenting the role of the Catholic Church as a system

that produced a semblance of equality and fairness in living conditions.

Robert Latouche, The Birth of the Western Economy: Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages

(Abingdon: Routledge Press, 2005), 77.

Ibid.

Georg Landau, Die Territorum in Bezug auf ihre Bildung und ihre Entwicklung (Whitefish:

Kessinger Publishing, 2010), 4.

“The German Family,” Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and

Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Richard Evans and W.R. Lee (London: Routledge, 2016), 85.

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 19.

Ibid., 85.

Consistent, subsistence-based crop yields, however, were not suitable for the potentially

productive nature of Bavarian agriculture. The natural order of things, as they were, did not

always sit well with Bavaria’s electors. In the first half of the eighteenth century crop prices

soared in the city markets of the German states.

100

The Electoral Bavarian state profited from this

uptick at the expense of its estate holders and small land holders through the imposition of steep

land taxes and, indirectly, the extraction of cash crops from small farmers.

101

Bavarian taxes,

increased by the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century. A full thirty percent of

all Bavarian state tax revenues were deducted from estate land and common landholders.

102

Bavarian Electors also counted on beer, wine, and meat taxes to produce significant revenues

ever since the implementation of market and tavern taxes in the sixteenth century. By the

eighteenth century, as much as fifteen percent of all tax (Steueren), toll (Zölle), and extra charges

(Aufschläge) revenues came from the consumption of Bavarian beverages and meats, amounting

to the impressive sum of roughly 500,000 to 600,000 gulden collected from the various estates,

cities, and towns of the Electorate.

103

These revenues, though impressive, were consistently

collected in peace time but did not provide room for growth if the need for increased state

spending arose. It was a predictable pattern of production and consumption typical of the

100

Wilhelm Abel, Agrarpolitik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1951), 284. “…und

1690/1740 stiegen die Getreidepreise…”

101

Andreas Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H.

Beck, 1983), 296. “…die Landsteuer im Simplum, dem einfachen Satz, circa 27000 Gulden im

Jahr ein 1728 betrug die angetrube Steuersumme, die fuer den Etatsausgleich notwendig war,

724000 Gulden, das waren 2.5 Simpla Landsteuer und 1.5 Simpla Landsteuer.”

102

Ibid., German: “das bedeutet, dass um diese Zeit bereits 30% des gesamten Finanzbedarfs des

Kurfurstentums Bayern unmittelbar vom gemeinem Mann als Steuer bestritten wurden.”

103

Ibid., 296. “Für Bier kamen so im Durchschnitt an die 400000 Gulden, für Wein 40000

Gulden an Aufschlägen herein. Mit dem Fleischaufschlag auf geschlatetes Vieh von etwa 50000

Gulden betrugen also die Aufschläge ingesamt 500,000 bis 600,000 Gulden, das waren etwa

15% des gesamten Staatsbedarfs. Steueren, Zölle und Aufschläge zusammen ergaben also je

nach der Höhe der Bewilligung noch einmal eine Millionen Gulden an Einnahmen.”

centuries old Hoffuss model. The Bavarian state, though flush with the profits of such

consumption, faced the difficult challenge posed by the wars and political crises on Bavarian

borders during the eighteenth century. Reform of this system would require a reconsideration of

its value by administrators.

Early Cameralism and the Limits of the Bavarian State, 1700-1745

Cameralism became the next iteration in Bavarian land management, agricultural reform,

and the foundation of mercantilist law by the eighteenth century. The end of the seventeenth

century in Bavaria was stable politically but not necessarily profitable. Farming was

unsustainable and attempts to produce export cash crops failed. The eighteenth century witnessed

the advent of new social and political ideas concerning state management and economic

production. One of these ideas was that of cameralism: the scientific policed order of economic

and social activity. Electoral Bavaria’s cameralists thus had responsibilities that were vaguely

defined. This was not uncommon in the eighteenth century. Like much of Germany, Bavaria’s

use of the Gutsherrschaft system decentralized power in the hands of Güter lords who were

given special privileges, a pension, and jurisdictional authority over their estate land. The

German sociologist Werner Sombart commented on this arrangement, “in earlier times wealth

followed upon possession of power.”

104

Privilege, in the Bavarian context, meant social status

and a degree of local legal power. The application of laws, taxes, and tariffs were inconsistent,

and many subjects sought a rational order to them.

Cameralists rose in prominence in the late-seventeenth century and early eighteenth

century to address these calls for a semblance of legal and commercial order.

105

Cameralists were

104

Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe, 5.

105

Andre Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and

Practice, 2-3.

the forerunners of the latter Kingdom of Bavaria’s Finance Ministry in the nineteenth century

and were equally unpopular as less state reformers and writers and more stereotyped as hated tax

collectors.

106

Collecting funds was no easy task. Even with the advent of cameralism, Bavaria’s

disparate estates, bishoprics, cities, and townships were difficult to reach. Johann Justi, arguably

one of the foremost theorists of cameralism, wrote, “money is the blood of the state, just as the

government its heart. Taxation brings blood to the heart and in a healthy system the government

would pump it back into the veins.”

107

Justi, however, served the warlord King Frederick II

whose vast armies scoured his small Kingdom of Prussia for what meager resources were drafted

into the King’s service. Bavaria, by contrast, lacked the resources of a centralized state

government or an army to police its subjects. If Bavarian cameralists were to develop a robust

economy, they would need an Elector committed expanding their limited powers.

Cameralism in a broader German context brought the means of economic and social

control to monarchs and princes but failed to cement the unchallenged rule of the leaders of

small states (Kleinstaaten). American sociologist Albion Small defined cameralism in 1909 as an

administrative technology,” and continued, “it was not an inquiry into the abstract principles of

wealth, in the Smithian way.”

108

Similarly, historian Marc Raeff commented on the main goal of

the more formally defined Polizeiwissenschaft as, “a major purpose of these police ordinances

was to instill and encourage active, rational, and production-oriented attitudes in society.”

109

Cameralism was also influenced by the economic theories of mercantilism.

110

A small army of

106

Ibid.

107

James Sheehan, German History 1770-1866 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 33.

108

Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice, 3.

109

Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State, Social and Institutional Change through Law in

the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 92.

110

Ibid.

cameral bureaucrats were required to enforce state economic restrictions and social and political

controls. Cameralism suited the Bavarian electoral state because of its paradoxically less visible

yet ever-present nature.

111

The state Finance Ministry of several small German states was called

the Fiskus (treasury) which controlled trade and collected tariffs and the proceeds of even a

fraction of illegal transactions.

112

Historian Mack Walker describes German cameralism, in

general, thus “state administration of detail was weak, the cameralist combination of central

administration in the state itself with differentiation among places and social estates…”

113

Specialized bureaucracy did not have either the training or the numerical presence to affect the

daily lives of Bavarians. Wealth collection thus followed upon conserving the status quo of the

Gutsherrschaft system of estate rent and crop payments and the reciprocal pension assistance

from Munich. Walker concluded that cameralism sought harmony not reform and was designed

to collect tariffs, tolls, while preserving the established social order of the old regime.

114

The

cameralist bureaucracies of small German states thus existed to work within the system of

absolutist structures of law and order, agricultural production, and the ability for electors and

princes to perform various functions, namely raise armies.

Elector Charles VII of Bavaria and his heir, Maximilian III, worked within this narrow

bureaucratic structure to adapt to rising debt concerns or the exigencies of sudden warfare. The

relationship between the rural Stände (estates of the Church and landed nobles) and the Elector

was still defined by the semi-feudal Gutsherrschaft system in the mid-eighteenth century. This

111

Mack Walker, German Home Towns, Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1817

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 145.

112

Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State, Social and Institutional Change through Law in the

Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800, 93.

113

Walker, German Home Towns, Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1817, 145-146.

114

Ibid., 147.

system, a stable and secure economic model of agrarian production and social order, failed to

produce enough resources for the Bavarian state. Charles VII, the Bavarian elector and Habsburg

Emperor, was tested by the Bavarian Landesverordnung, the estate hierarchy between ruler and

landed elites. Bavaria’s vulnerable, ill-defined borders of estates and titles throughout Germany

and the Low Countries, were breached by foreign forces and the Electoral State became a

battleground. The authority and production of crops of the rural estates were broken by invasion

and conflict.

Charles VII lacked the resources to fight Bavaria’s wars and sought new means to rein in

spending and the burden imposed on estate holders.

115

News of military movements and rural

destruction filled the yearly surveys and broadsheets in the Electoral State and free cities alike.

The Jahresübersicht (yearly overview) of Augsburg in 1743 referenced the dangers of foreign

forces operating on Bavaria’s borders. The author of the Jahreübersicht stated, “…22 batt. along

with grenadier company and 6

cavalry regiment and such all the rest marching near Bavaria.”

116

Conflict exacerbated debt concerns. Charles VII clashed with Bavarian elites over state debt.

State debt in the 1740s reached 7.8 florin.

117

The death of Charles VII in 1745 triggered another

round of lively debate surrounding state debt. Maximilian III, the heir of Charles VII took power,

and struggled to assert control over the disparate territories of the Electoral State. Charles VII,

and his father, pledged support for France in exchange for French acknowledgment of

115

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

23. German: “In der Zeit zwischen 1728 und 1742 bemuehte sich der Kurfürst dann, durch eine

sparsame Hofhaltung zur Besserung der Finanzen beizutragen.”

116

“Augsburger Abendzeitung. Augspurgische Ordinari-Zeitung, derer neuesten historischen,

politischen und gelehrten Nachrichten (Augsburger Abendzeitung), Nro. 25.”

117

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

24.

Wittelsbach claims to the Bavarian crown.

118

The authority of Bavaria’s electors thus remained

limited. Wars and debts plagued Bavaria in the mid-eighteenth century and the state lacked the

resources to combat external and internal enemies. New means to categorize and marshal the

resources of Bavaria, however, presented the opportunity to create more unified and functional

system of managing the Electoral State. Such reforms would require a properly motivated

Elector and the political capital to sponsor and enact changes in cameral institutions.

Habsburg Attempts at Reform and Bavaria’s Uncertain Future

The wars of the eighteenth century exposed the feeble authority of the Bavarian state, its

inadequate military, and the wasteful spending of an ample yet overburdened treasury and

taxation system. Electoral Bavaria was occupied by the Habsburg Empire in 1704-1715 during

the War of the Spanish Succession.

119

Bavarians suffered from privations and violence

reminiscent of the Thirty Years’ War. Vienna coveted Bavarian lands as early as 1680, its

leaders being particularly fixated on the fertile Innviertel and Salzburg that bordered German-

speaking Habsburg land.

120

Habsburg occupation intensified in the 1740s when Bavaria allied

with France before losing the Battle of Pfaffenhofen in 1745. Maximilian III, the Holy Roman

Emperor, became prince-elector of Bavaria, and ruled the electoral state in 1745-1777.

121

Maximilian’s positive programs in Bavaria featured the artistic contributions to Munich

including the establishment of the Royal Porcelain Manufactory.

122

Maximilian’s military

expenditures, however, had an adverse effect on the Electorate. According to historian Andreas

118

Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918, 93.

119

Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire vol. 2., 1648-1806 (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2012), 399.

120

Ibid., 399.

121

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

25.

122

Ibid.

Kraus the cost of each Bavarian military unit added to the state payroll represented a consistent

drain on Munich’s finances. Maximilian raised an army so expensive that it cost 1.5 million

gulden to simply maintain its strength each year.

123

Kraus concluded that Maximilian’s profligate

spending on the arts and military glory presided over the terminal decline of the already

overburdened land taxation scheme.

124

Maximilian’s spending, however, was tied to a more

important and lasting legacy of increased cameral activity in the role of quantifying financial

assets and the best means by which to expand the profits and political reach of the Hofkammer.

Information Revolution: Bavaria and the Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt, 1745-1768

Electoral Bavaria’s cameral institutions, like its borders, were in flux during the reign of

Maximilian III. Economic management, specifically crop production and the collection of rents,

was not a uniform process. The Habsburg Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia embraced cameral

bureaucracy through the training of civil servants including much maligned tax collectors. Both

empires were led by energetic enlightened despots committed to reform and training those who

would carry out new laws. So complete was the reach of Prussia’s cameral officials under

Frederick II that Berlin enforced a 1749 decision to ban “the sale of all ‘scandalous and offensive

books’ published outside Prussia.”

125

Electoral Bavaria, by contrast, did not have a cohesive civil

service to implement and enforce legal decisions. The lack of consistent publications of vital

information regime broadsheets (Intelligenzblatt and Regierungsblatt) in the eighteenth century

infers certain limitations hampered the accurate reporting of events or resources in the Electoral

123

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 296-297.

124

Ibid, 296, German: “Ferdinand Maria hat so, wie eine Stimme des 18. Jahrhunderts beteuert,

sein Land in blühendem Zustand hinterlassen Max Emanuel began der Niedergang.”

125

Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (New York: Random House, 2016), 345.

state.

126

Charles VII and Maximilian III remained dependent on the estate lords to carry out their

decisions.

127

The finances of Maximilian III were in poor condition towards the end of his reign

due to Electoral Bavarian participation in the War of the Austrian Succession.

128

The idea of

increasing taxes on estates was not discussed. Instead, tradition and the notion of limited peasant

autonomy persisted in a time when the programs of Frederick II, Maria Theresa, and Joseph II

attempted to place the state in a more powerful, wealthier, and centralized status. The means to

address such reforms did not exist in Electoral Bavaria. Bavaria’s state administration lacked the

personnel or the census information to pursue concrete reform.

Electoral administrators responded to the disordered nature of Bavarian finances, taxes,

and decentralized rule by creating a broadsheet with economic data and current affairs in a

simple, digestible broadsheet format. Finally, the current affairs, local ordinances, and economic

assets included in Bavarian territory were presented in one singular publication. This played a

transformative role in providing the data necessary for Electors to understand the economic

products of Bavarian agriculture and trade. Informational guides in broadsheets existed for a very

limited literate cross-section of the Bavarian populace beginning in the 1720s. Such sources,

however, had a limited impact outside of informing local lords who were literate, cameral

126

Many eighteenth-century resources are incomplete. Many records begin in 1803 with other

years being absent either through the lack of scanned material and information in existing

Regierungsblätter.

127

Lee, “The German Family,” 85.

128

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

23-24. German: “Der bald nach dem Regierungsantritt Max III. Ausbrechende Konflikt zwischen

der Landschaftsverordnung und dem Kurfürsten war aber nicht nur in den katastrophalen

finanziellen Lage nach dem Oesterreichischen Erbfolgekrieg, sondern auch in der Absicht des

neuen Kurfürsten angelegt, die Situation zur Entmachtung der Stände ausunutzen.”

officials, or merchants.

129

New schools for noble education, however, changed this to a minor

degree.

A differing educational approach enhanced the assimilation and impact of new

agricultural and commercial information. The introduction of state-published economic data

came at a time when aristocrats began sending their children to Ritterakademien, schools

designed to teach Latin and to provide a basic education.

130

Other schools, called the Gymnasia

Illustria, offered an alternative to the more numerous schools with Latin education and

instruction focused on more practical skills including French language instruction for the

purposes of diplomacy and political theory.

131

In Bavaria, and southern Germany in general,

Jesuit education combined religious instruction with a humanistic approach to language learning

and other disciplines. This educational shift coincided with the broader European reading

revolution of the eighteenth century. Electors, civil servants, and merchants were not only

capable of reading about affairs of state and trade, they possessed an eagerness to quantify and

analyze such data. New toll regulations in 1762 reflected a need to collect and compile all toll

rates, policing information, and crop prices. This demand yielded the idea of the Churbaierisches

Intelligenzblatt (the Electoral Bavarian Intelligence Sheet), a project first discussed in the court

chamber (Hofkammer) in 1762.

132

Unfortunately, the court found such a task beyond the

capabilities of the existing cameral institutions. By 1765, Bavarian officials tasked highly

educated scholars with the Academy of Sciences to collect and publish the appropriate toll and

129

“Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt.” Bavarikon, bayerisches historisches Lexikon.

[accessed December 20, 2020].

130

Vierhaus, Germany in the Age of Absolutism, 73.

131

Ibid.

132

“Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt,” Bavarikon, bayerisches historisches Lexikon.

pricing information of all Electoral Bavaria.

133

The Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt was first

produced in April 1765. Finally, the data needed to inform land policy and taxation was available

to Bavaria’s leaders.

The Intelligenzblatt served as a source for communicating ordinances, crop prices, and

news information from throughout Europe. An official compendium of cereal and meat prices in

market cities, for instance, informed a more active and engaged Hofkammer.

134

Church

ordinances were also included in the Intelligenzblatt. The Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt

project became the responsibility of the Munich-based cameral official Franz Seraph von

Kohlbrenner. Kohlbrenner was the chancellor of the electoral court (Hofkammerkanzlisten) as

well as the secretary of toll policy (Mauthdirektionssekretär [sic].”

135

Kohlbrenner’s vision of

the Intelligenzblatt also went beyond the notion of its use as a state tool of communicating

Electoral ordinances and crop prices. By 1767-1768, the Intelligenzblatt became a platform for

moralizing articles, the promotion of general education, and an agent of expanding state

authority in Bavaria. Such sources were common in German states at the time. Bavaria’s version,

the Intelligenzblatt, became a monthly publication, and, in time, a biweekly broadsheet, during

Kohlbrenner’s tenure.

136

However limited the role of Bavarian civil servants in 1760s, the

Intelligenzblatt was a powerful tool for economic knowledge and at least the concept of a

comprehensive, well-informed state administration.

A typical Intelligenzblatt issue featured seven articles, beginning with a public

declaration from the Elector himself. “The 25 January 1768 edition of the Intelligenzblatt begins

133

Ibid.

134

Ibid.

135

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 344.

136

“Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt,” Bavarikon, bayerisches historisches Lexikon.

with a salute to, “...the glorious rule of our Highness Elector Maximilian III of the highest order,

generalities, and commands and prohibitions.”

137

Bulletins and regional information follows

including commands for taxation and social order, sanctioned by the Elector himself, followed.

This represented a key extension of the Elector’s power in the hands of mayors, patricians, and

guild leaders in the disparate towns and villages of the Electorate. The Intelligenzblatt from 5

March 1768 provides an instructive example. This issue leads with a public declaration from

Michael Bauer, the mayor of Rothgerber zu Landsberg.

138

Bauer, “[the] subject of Rothgerber zu

Landsberg offered the inland public piece: each center for four florin.”

139

The desire to

understand and guide the direction of rural policies was central to the ambitions of cameral

officials of the Royal Academy of Science is present in the regional announcements. Cameral

officials in Bavaria, like the Holy Roman Empire, as historian Andre Wakefield observes, were,

“certainly not neutral or universal. It was an extractive logic, attuned to the particularity of local

places and populations. It was also a creative logic, producing knowledge even as it yielded

revenue.”

140

The creation of regional jurisdiction offices and a concern for economic products

was thus common for cameral regimes. Article five of the Intelligenzblatt records the

construction of a town hall for the purpose of benefitting manufactories and merchants.

141

Stimulating trade in Bavaria and accounting for profits were chief goals of Bavarian cameral

137

Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt Nro. 4.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10345046_00045.html

[accessed November 1, 2019].

German: “glorreich regierenden Churfurstl. Durchlaucht in Bayern Maximilian III

hochstandesherliche, Verordnungen, Generalia, Geboth (sic), Verboth (sic).”

138

Ibid.

139

Ibid., Article 2 German: “Michael Bauer bürgl. Rothgerber zu Landsberg biethet dem

inlandischen publikum theil…jeden Center 4 fl”

140

Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice, 25.

141

“

Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt Nro. 4.”

officials during the 1760s, reflecting a desire to overhaul taxation and state control over lucrative

industries.

Electoral Bavaria’s trade status, including debts, was also available to those sufficiently

privileged to read and understand the complex nexus of merchants, banks, and exchange rates in

Europe. The existing legal framework for categorizing and enforcing property law was the Codex

Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis into the 1760s. The Codex stated, “Of legal erudition and

justice, of rights and duties writ large. Each [item] of legal scholarship or juris prudence consists

of not only of thorough knowledge of its laws, but also the correct application of the same

occurring cases.”

142

The compact, created by Elector Maximilian III, made very general

distinctions for property rights, inheritances, and authority.

143

It reflected both the rudimentary

laws of Bavaria and the limits of the knowledge possessed by the Elector and his court of what

economic assets existed in the Electorate. Maximilian III was, however, not to be deterred.

Elector Maximilian III planned to control the leasing of tobacco importation in 1768, and again,

in a broader 1770 toll reform program.

144

This testifies to the ambitious role that Bavaria’s

Electors and cameral officials began to play in the attempt to quantify and exploit the mercantile

assets of the Electoral State.

145

The cameralists of Bavaria, like their other overly-analytical

142

“Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis. Oder neu Verbessert- und Ergänzt- Chur-

Bayerisches Land-Recht.” niedersächische Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.

https://gdz.sub.unigoettingen.de/id/PPN620322853?tify={%22pages%22:[10],%22panX%22:0.4

44,%22panY%22:1.004,%22view%22:%22info%22,%22zoom%22:0.776}. [accessed May 8,

2020]. German: Von der Rechts-Gelehrsamkeit und Gerechtigkeit, dann denen Rechten und

Pflichten überhaupt. Je-Rechts-Gelehrsamkeit oder Jurisprudenz bestehet nicht nur in

gründlicher Kenntnis deren Rechten, sondern auch in richtiger Anwendung derselben auf die

vorkommende Fälle.

143

Ibid.

144

“

Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt Nro. 4.”

145

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

37.

brethren in other German states, were members of a, “ravenous fiscal-juridical chamber that

devoured everything in its path.”

146

In theory, no singular point of datum related to trade escaped

the grasp of the authors of the Intelligenblatt. For example, page 97 of the report detailed,

“London. Rational debts from the previous year finalized at 129 million: 724 thousand, 936

Pound Sterling…”

147

Financial data compiled in the Intelligenzblatt goes beyond a simple

accounting of state debt with a single creditor. A list of trading hubs and price comparisons

follows the report of state finances. Prices for wares appear in the Intelligenzblatt are converted

to florin (fl.), kreutzer (kr.), and the Austrian Landmünze (M.)

148

The inclusion of the

Landmünze, a regional southern-German currency introduced in 1754, demonstrates the close

ties of the Electoral Bavarian state to the Habsburg imperial court and to the greater regional

trading circles. This categorization of trade and commercial activity exhibited the growing status

of the Bavarian economy and the information available to the Elector.

Further data revealed the now global reach of Bavarian trade and the Elector’s desire to

understand and exploit markets. The lengthy list of exchange rates for goods ranging from coffee

from the Levant and Souriname [sic] or pepper, either English or Danish, were part of a new web

of information that cameral officials provided to the active market climate of the Electoral

Bavarian state.

149

The Hofkammer recorded market activity in and beyond the boundaries of

Altbayern for the benefit of state profit. Current events, especially those affecting the acquisition

of luxury goods, were recorded in detail, often by aggregating international financial and

political news. The articles towards the end of the Intelligenzblatt commented on a diverse range

146

Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice, 25.

147

“Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt 5 März 1768.”

148

Ibid.

149

Ibid.

of topics from ethnography to politics. Consumer trends are the most consistent trend. One

speculative paragraph is a summary that reads, “One can read, in one of the English papers, a

Russian calculation which England may conclude from the trade with Corsica; it reads that the

free Corsicans invite us to trade with them.”

150

The Intelligenzblatt authors dutifully reported,

“Corsica brings wine, oil, wax, and other products forth. English wares are, woolen wears,

manufactured wares of metal, porcelain, and clothing.”

151

The article emphasizes the value of

British trade: “England needs wares of the sum of 4 million florin or 400,000 sterling.”

152

Market

prices informed Bavarian trade, a source of indirect state income through tolls. A desire to

categorize global information including trade and current events represented Bavaria’s

engagement with broader European trends including the creation of centralized, royal

bureaucracies (however marginal Bavaria’s administrative prowess was), the desire to increase

revenue from merchant activity, and the acquisition of rare and valuable wares for the Residenz,

the palace of the Elector. Reform, if possible, could utilize the powerful, yet limited, tools of

state management for the purpose of enriching and enlarging the power of Bavaria. Bavaria,

however, required an Elector committed to exploiting this data collection and to augmenting the

role of the sovereign in everyday life.

150

Ibid, 167. German: “In einem der englischen Blätter liest man die Berechnung Russens, den

England aus der Handlung mit Corsica ziehen könnte; es heist die freien Corsen laden uns ein

mit ihren zu handeln.”

151

Ibid. German: “Corsica bringet Wein, Öl, Wachs, und andere Artikel hervor, Englands

Waaren sind, Wollenwaren Fabrictwaren von Metall…Porcelan, Galanterieswaren.”

152

Ibid. German: “…Waar England brauchet so wäre es schon eine Summa von 4 Millionen fl.

oder tt (400,000 Sterl.)”

The Abortive Reforms of Karl Theodor, 1777-1784

A shift in Bavarian rule came in 1777, with the accession of Karl Theodor, a reform-

minded, ambitious leader who wished to centralize power in his person. Karl Theodor ruled from

Munich and was willing to trade various territories to foreign powers to solidify both his own

rule and the territorial integrity of Bavaria from foreign invasion. Elector Maximilian III died

without an heir in December 1777. Karl Theodor, the elector’s successor, was born in the

Palatinate and belonged to the Wittelsbach-Sulzbach line.

153

The new elector was responsible for

the first cohesive, yet failed attempt to collect revenue from Güter estates by placing tight

controls on the transfer of land.

154

Perhaps the most trenchant example of Karl Theodor’s

ambitions was his decision to move his court in Mannheim to Munich.

155

Karl Theodor felt no

compunction against parting with his former home to secure power in Bavaria. The Elector also

traded the familiar confines of his territory in the Austrian Netherlands to the Habsburg Empire

in exchange for the Wittelsbach throne.

156

Karl Theodor’s accession also involved a complex

plan of land exchange from Bavaria’s disparate estates to secure the elector’s stake to power.

These moves nearly sparked the worst European war in fifteen years to Bavaria and

central Europe. Prussia’s enlightened despot Frederick II wished to stave off Austrian influence

in Bavaria and further incursion into the German Kleinstaaten. Austrian troops arrived in Bavaria

in mid-January 1778, angering Frederick II who demanded the territorial concession of Ansbach

153

Jorg Englebrecht, “Karl Theodor von der Pfalz. Kurfurst von der Pfalz und Bayern,” Portal

Rhenische Geschichte, http://www.rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de/Persoenlichkeiten/karl-theodor-

von-der-pfalz/DE-2086/lido/57c9327525e325.41903160 (Accessed April 24, 2020)

154

Ibid.

155

Ibid.

156

Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 (Harvard:

Belknap Press, 2006), 216.

and Bayreuth, which Prussia had laid claim to for many years.

157

A larger war was averted when

the Treaty of Teschen on 13 May 1779 granted Prussia its demands and solidified the Austrian

presence as a close, influential ally of Bavaria. Karl Theodor staved off a larger conflict by being

willing to part with Bavarian territories and a semblance of regional autonomy. His very

presence on the throne was viewed by some as that of an interloper rather than a worthy

successor to Maximilian III, and Karl Theodor, in many ways, struggled to win the hearts and

minds of his new subjects.

158

Karl Theodor’s willingness to trade land, and other Bavarian assets, was part of a larger

plan to operate beyond the confines of his ostensible authority to restructure the land tax and

organization of estate pensions. These reforms were carried out by a reluctant state bureaucracy.

The Güter elites protested vociferously and frequently. The Steuerstreik of 1778 witnessed an

unprecedented rejection of the prince-elector’s rule eventually leading to the suspension of land

taxes.

159

Karl Theodor was shocked that the estates broke with imperial laws governing land

taxation without the consent of Munich.

160

Bavarian land institutions were, at least in theory,

practical, functional, and the basis for a cameral bureaucracy that collected and categorized rents

and social order without interfering greatly in the everyday lives of Bavarians. Upsetting such a

system would thus spark a certain degree of controversy. Karl Theodor launched an ambitious

157

Ibid., 216-217.

158

Jorg Englebrecht, “Karl Theodor von der Pfalz. Kurfurst von der Pfalz und Bayern.” German:

“Seine bayerischen Untertanen haben das sehr wohl vermerkt und sind ihm mehrheitlich mit gro-

ßer Abneigung begegnet.”

159

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 359. German: “…In den

Steuerstreik, setzten die Zahlung der Steuer für 1778 so lange aus, bis ihnen versichert wurde,

dass Bayern ungeteilt dem Hause Wittelsbach verbleiben würde.”

160

Ibid. German: “Karl Theodor rächte sich, indem ern ach dem Frieden von Teschen den

Ständen das Steuerbewillingungsrecht entzog, ein Bruch des Reichsrechts der sich freilich nicht

lange aufrechterhalten liess.”

plan to trade Bavarian land, at will, for guarantees that his rule would be respected and protected

from internal and external threats. The plan, however, was organically Karl Theodor’s. Karl

Otmar von Aretin, in his comprehensive, Bayerns weg zum Soueveränen Staat: Landstände und

konstitutionelle Monarchie 1714-1818 outlines how such an exchange of land (die Tauschpläne)

was not a product of foreign pressure itself but an abortive ploy to solidify the power of and

reputation of Karl Theodor himself.

161

The “exchange project” itself was the product of Karl

Theodor’s desire to work beyond the constraints of Bavaria’s Güter elites and the established

social order of the Electorate.

The controversial exchange plan was announced in 1782 and brought security to

Bavaria’s borders at the price of internal turmoil. Karl Theodor took the unprecedented step of

raising the case of his own legitimacy not with the Ritter (knights), Praläten (prelates), or the

general nobility of Bavaria but with the sovereigns Joseph II and the Catherine the Great.

162

Karl

Theodor communicated his desire to acquire the Austrian Netherlands, the territory of his birth,

with Graf Romanzoff, the Romanov ambassador, before consulting the emissaries of Frederick II

in Berlin.

163

Karl Theodor expressed his willingness to part with, among other regions, including

the valuable Innviertel, and with it, Salzach, near the profitable city of Salzburg, to Habsburg

authority.

164

Bavarians were notably absent from these discussions. Nevertheless, the prince-

elector raised his plan to Bavarian bureaucrats and the elites of the Stände in the Reforminteresse

of 1783.

165

Karl Theodor added the profitable agricultural lands of the Duchies of Jülich and

161

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

64.

162

Ibid., 94.

163

Ibid.

164

Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 166.

165

Hermann Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhunderts, 323.

Berg in his exchange plan thereafter to appease the demands of Habsburg foreign minister the

Prince of Kaunitz.

166

In theory, this decision to cede these pieces of Bavarian territory was

mutually beneficial to the Stände and prince-elector. Bavarian autonomy would remain intact

and the support of Güter lords could be retained despite the expense of sacrificing fertile

farmland and the valuable commodity of salt and iron ores. Karl Theodor, instead, believed that

the promotion of intrastate trade would more than compensate for such losses.

167

The plan, in

theory, clashed with Bavaria’s elites who cared little for their prince-elector or such land

exchanges. The Tauschpläne was agreed upon by Frederick II and Joseph II in 1784 despite its

widespread controversy amongst the Stände in Bavaria.

Karl Theodor’s plan to exchange land for sovereignty provoked a strong rebuke among

the Bavarian elites (Adelstände) in electoral Bavaria and the Kammer who used new means of

census data to evaluate the worth of land-based on its prospective utility. The Tauschpläne was

completed in December 1784, netting the Bavarian state one million florin for an enlarged

Austrian Netherlands and territories in the porous border area of Alsace.

168

The concerns of royal

families and the boundaries of ancestral lands formed the basis for treaties and compensation.

The quality of this land and its financial ramifications were the basis for criticism from a rising,

ambitious segment of educated and revolutionary future reformers. Tauschpläne land transfers

were in large part the result of a clash between tradition and a small cameral bureaucracy

concerned with economic gain.

166

Ibid., 88.

167

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

112-113.

168

Ibid., 112-113.

Chief among Karl Theodor’s powerful critics came from his most senior cameral official,

Baron Franz Karl Joseph Anton von Hompesch and his dedicated subordinate Maximilian Joseph

von Garnerin. Hompesch acted as the Electorate’s treasurer since 1741, and, since 1778, the

senior cameral official of Karl Theodor’s court.

169

Baron Hompesch was responsible for,

“financial, economic and the affairs of the treasury in the electoral-Bavarian, Neuburg, Sulzbach,

Jülich and Bergisch lands.”

170

Sulzbach, Jülich, and Berg were new acquisitions of the 1784

plan which Hompesch presided over at the will of the Prince Elector. Hompesch was given a

manor and land in Berg am Laim in 1778 after the accession of Karl Theodor and would do

much to advance the cause of an interventionist, centralized Electoral State. Hompesch was a

dedicated cameralist who committed the Bavarian state to a course that emphasized exploiting

internal tariffs and intrastate trade over the predominance of the land tax system.

171

The Bavarian

Finance Ministry, a modest cameral institution, collected tolls for the use of limited canals and

roads, as well as profits gained from the trade of valuable salt deposits.

172

The pivot of

Hompesch’s bureaucracy also offered welfare assistance (Wohlfahrts) to promote the

transportation of salt and other valuable goods within Bavaria.

173

Hompesch served Karl

Theodor loyally but mentored one of the prince-elector’s most vocal critics: Maximilian Joseph

Garnerin. Garnerin, a junior cameralist, represented a new challenge to Karl Theodor and his

169

Bayern entsteht. Montgelas und sein Ansbacher Mémoire von 1796, Nr. 32 hrsg. von Michael

Henker, Margot Hamm und Evamaria Brockhoff (Augsburg: Veröffentlichungen zur

Bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur, 1996), 127.

170

Ibid.

171

Eckart Schremmer, Die Wirtschaft Bayerns Vom hohen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der

Industrialsierung, Bergbau, Gewerbe, Handel (München: C.H. Beck, 1970), 678-679.

172

Ibid, 673.

173

Ibid.

exchange of land with foreign powers. The basis of Garnerin’s opposition, then marginal, would

have greater import in subsequent years due to a shift in cameral instruction.

Reforming the Cameral Sciences: The Education of Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin

The rise of Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, and the growing prominence of Bavarian

cameralists, owed much to their own cameral education as well as the influence of the

Enlightenment. These forces created an expanded, more interventionist state bureaucracy.

Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin was born in Savoy to a noble family in 1759. Garnerin was

heavily influenced by French culture through his early education and his French language skills

likely surpassed his abilities in German.

174

The early education of Garnerin featured the study of

existing cameral theories of state administration or Polizeiwissenschaft. Swirling Enlightenment

ideas developed by philosophes on the periphery of the Savoyard Kingdom also played a

formative role in Garnerin’s development both as a civil servant and as a person. Garnerin’s

cameral education was drawn primarily from the cameral faculties taught at a series of academies

within German-speaking central Europe. The main academies included Lautern, Stuttgart,

Giessen, Mainz, and Ingolstadt – the last being located within the Electoral State.

175

The kind of

education Garnerin received was rooted in the shift in cameral sciences featured in the research

and instruction of Johann Stephen Pütter, and a later successor, Johann Beckmann, at the

University of Göttingen.

Pütter and Beckmann broadened the economic approach of cameral education and

advanced a more informed, powerful role for the cameral civil servant. Pütter broadened the

174

Ibid.

175

David Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century,

35.

narrow focus of the cameral faculties by combining notions of Politik (newly defined political

science) with a general education in mathematics, history, and law among other subjects.

176

Pütter’s work also provided a hybridized form of Roman and German laws that primarily

protected the state in its limited and non-invasive capacity from the Church and estates alike.

177

Pütter’s contemporary at Göttingen, Johann Beckmann, education was drawn from an initial

focus on Ökonomie and mathematics followed by later studies of Polizei and finance. This

steered his research toward the reorganization of the educational system at the academies.

Beckmann’s 1769 work Principles of German Agriculture, a philosophical rather than practical

agricultural guide detailed the inclusion of Ökonomie in Kammeralwissenschaften.

178

This

cameral science included the assessment, leasing, and sale of property. Polizei concerned the

science of the ruler’s will over estates. These scholars shaped Garnerin’s views of what a

cameral bureaucracy was and what its powers should be. Garnernin’s formal education was

completed by 1779 when he was appointed to the office of censorship by Karl Theodor himself.

The position was somewhat ironic given that Garnerin was also drawn to the secretive

Enlightenment society of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt and soon became a covert member.

179

Garnerin’s membership in the Illuminati influenced his decision to pursue bolder Enlightenment

theories of agricultural reform and anti-clericalism.

Ingolstadt also offered Montgelas access to a nexus of public Enlightenment inspired

debate surrounding the role of cameral science and its officials. Ingolstadt was home to the

prestigious Bavarian University of Ingolstadt where Franz Xaver Moshammer, professor in the

176

Ibid., 40.

177

Ibid., 40-41.

178

Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century, 29.

179

Ibid.

“faculty of state administration” (Staatswirthschaft (sic)) taught. Moshammer was discreet in

what he chose to publish or argue in favor of in his lectures.

180

The Ingolstadt faculty, including

Moshammer, however, were influenced by the well-known cameral scholar Friedrich Casimir

Medicus, the director of the cameral academy in Lautern, and spread his ideas freely.

181

Medicus’ new ideas centered around a well-informed Polizei, the principal agents of cameralism,

using statistical data compiled from censes to take a more active role in state centralization and

the development of economic production.

182

Professor Medicus’ ideas, on the surface, called for

a very modest proposal – the use of numerical data on population, land, and economic products

to guide state decisions. The accumulation of data, however, required the expansion of the

cameral institutions of Bavaria. Karl Theodor trusted Medicus as a scholar of his native

Palatinate and tasked him with the reorganize the faculties of the Kameralwissenschaften from

Ingolstadt. The new curricula of the cameralists led to a clash between cameral reformers and the

more entrenched interests in Bavaria.

Ingolstadt was also the nucleus of Jesuit activity in Bavaria including schooling and

moral instruction that led to friction between cameralists and the Jesuit order. Although the order

had been dissolved in Bavaria in 1773, many of its former members remained a persistent

influence in Electoral society.

183

These former Jesuits voiced their opposition to the proposed

expansion of state authority. The Jesuits were formerly one of the many Prälatenorden –

landholding clergy - in Bavaria that included, among other orders, the Norbertines and

180

Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice, 125.

181

Ibid., 126.

182

Ibid., 126.

183

Ferdinand Kramer, “Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration.” German History 20 (June

2002).

Augustinians.

184

The Catholic Church, and the various confraternities of mendicant orders,

played a critical role in ensuring social discipline and religious leadership. This fit into the

harmonious relationship between cameral institutions, the Church, the Bavarian estates, and the

Elector. The religious orders saw a redesigned cameral faculty, and its implications of an

expanded state bureaucracy, as an existential threat that would supplant the role of the Church as

a powerful social, religious, and political force.

185

The ex-Jesuit father Ignaz Frank protested and

managed to have Medicus’ Ingolstadt curriculum reduced to thought provoking, well-staffed

faculties that ultimately had little bearing on reforming the cameral institutions of the state.

186

This caused a rupture in cameral reform and the diffusion of their faculties in Bavaria.

The main faculties were moved to Heidelberg and the Catholic Church, exerting its role

in the “disordered police state” (as historian Andre Wakefield described cameralism), quelled

any broad reform projects. By 1786 the would-be reformers were defeated by a more

conservative approach of slow, largely ineffectual token reforms. Karl Theodor, much maligned

by Bavarians (and Bavarian historians), however, simply worked within the existing framework

of his Electoral state that was divided between powerful, competing institutions. Garnerin’s

experience in Ingolstadt, though he was a marginal figure as a cameralist, made an indelible

impression. The role of the Catholic Church and Jesuit order in blocking the reform of cameral

faculties in universities and training a new generation of civil servant left him with a lifelong

184

Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, “The Age of Enlightenment: Graf Montgelas.”

https://www.en.uni-muenchen.de/about_lmu/introducing-

lmu/history/contexts/05_enlightenment/index.html, 15 November 2019.

185

Wakefield, The Disordered Police State: German Cameralism as Science and Practice, 127.

186

Ibid.

antipathy for the political role exercised by organized religion.

187

Garnerin’s education and

professional life were forever changed in 1786 by both personal and broader European events.

1786-1789: Maximilian Joseph Garnerin and His Service to Maximilian IV Joseph

1786-1789 proved to be signal years in the career of Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin and

the eventual trajectory of enlightened state reform in Bavaria. Garnerin’s disappointment with

the failure of cameral reforms was punctuated by his removal from the Hofkammer in 1786.

Garnerin sent anticlerical letters to the Zweibrückner Zeitungs criticizing the Jesuit influence in

Bavaria.

188

Karl Theodor, and the other contingents of Bavaria’s elite estate, who reacted in

horror to the French Revolution, terminated Garnerin’s appointment. The swirling Enlightenment

and anti-clerical sentiments of the Revolution produced animated, and disdainful, debate in

European courts. Garnerin’s membership in the anti-clerical Enlightenment society, the

Illuminati, was suddenly called into question during his time in Sensheim. Montgelas blamed

Jesuits for his removal. The Jesuits in Bavaria, however, were superseded by Karl Theodor, the

Elector, and the Catholic Church in Electoral Bavaria in noble law.

189

Regardless of whomever

was responsible for his dismissal, the incident fostered a lifelong distrust of the Jesuit order, and

all Catholic clergy, in Garnerin.

190

Garnerin was purportedly broken by these events. His own

religious views turned to a collection of views somewhere between a degree of Voltairean

atheism and deism.

191

Garnerin’s prospects in Bavaria faded and he left the Electorate. Adrift,

Garnerin arrived in the Duchy of Zweibrücken and became the personal secretary to the Count,

187

Eberhard Weis, Montgelas, 1759 – 1838, Eine Biographie, 8.

188

Ibid., 8.

189

William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University

Press Inc., 2002), 54.

190

Weis, Montgelas, 1759 – 1838, Eine Biographie, 8.

191

Ibid., 115.

Max IV Joseph.

192

Although Garnerin’s desire to reform the Bavarian cameral institutions failed

he began to work for Maximilian IV Joseph, a count in Zweibrücken, thus beginning a thirty-six-

year partnership of reform and state building in Bavaria.

In Zweibrücken Maximilian Garnerin became the private secretary and eventual advisor

to Count Maximilian IV Joseph.

193

Max Joseph was born in Mannheim in 1752 and belonged to

the House of Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld.

194

Following the onset of the French Revolution,

Max Joseph fled to Ansbach in ducal Zweibrücken because of his previous service in the Royal

Alsace Regiment of the French Army in Strassburg.

195

Max Joseph became a member of the

branch line (Nebenlinie) of the Wittelsbach Dynasty, the ruling family of the Electorate of

Bavaria, by becoming a Landesherren, or a landed lord.

196

Max Joseph was not a typical estate

lord. Those close to the count described him as “easy going” (leichtliebige) and an avid reader of

Enlightenment texts including the Baron de Montesquieu and the French naturalist Georges

Louis Leclerc, the Comte du Buffon.

197

Both Max Joseph and Garnerin watched the French

Revolution unfold more with fascination than the revulsion typical of many European elites.

A French Connection: The French Revolution and Land Reform

French property reforms created private property and abolished seigneurial dues owed to lords

rather than the state. The National Assembly abolished tenurial holding, the privately held power

of nobles for policing and land rents on 4 August 1789.

198

In France no outright ownership of

192

Manfred Treml et. al. Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 21.

193

Weis, Montgelas, 1759 – 1838, Eine Biographie, 115.

194

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 21.

195

Ibid.

196

Ibid.

197

Ibid.

198

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property, 5.

land existed. The Kingdom of France possessed land and held it while private property existed in

the role of purchased title and authority, often referred to as “venal office.” What French

revolutionaries did was separate the ability to own land as property from owning titles by

resurrecting the sixteenth century concept created by the jurist Charles Loyseau called an allod –

or “free-hold” property.

199

In pre-revolutionary France those who possessed land did not own it,

their property of noble titles permitted them to grant rights to peasants (which they rarely did),

and to continually restructure seigneurial dues, or rents on land plots.

200

Free hold property was

rare in the Electorate of Bavaria and was known as allodial-Gut in the Codex Maximilianeus

Bavaricus, Civilis.

201

Peasants could refuse to pay rent but were subject to arrears payments.

202

The creation of free hold property under the allodial system created the Seigneurie Privée, in

essence, land as privately held equity.

203

Rents were paid to the revolutionary government in

Paris, not to seigneurial lords. The 4 August 1789 declaration provided, as historian Rafe

Blaufarb contended, a “great demarcation” between property and public power but did not lead

to the rise of distinctly middle class “liberal power.”

204

Such a revolution in property holding

organization harkened back to French legal traditions of absolutism but was also inspired by

prevailing Enlightenment trends in Europe that focused on land reform and more productive use.

Germans took an interest in French reforms, and military activities, as the revolution’s turbulent

course spilled across the east bank of the Rhine River and beyond.

199

Ibid., 18.

200

D.M.G. Sutherland, France 1789-1815, Revolution and Counterrevolution (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1986), 70-71.

201

“Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis”

202

Sutherland, France 1789-1815, Revolution and Counterrevolution, 71.

203

Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property, 25.

204

Ibid., 10.

The French Revolution’s property reforms and alleged economic liberalization inspired

many in German polities in the Rhineland. In Mainz, a rule of enlightened absolutism had been

underway since the mid-1740s. Friedrich Karl, Mainz’s Archbishop and Elector in 1774-1802,

looked on the French Revolution with a sense of horror.

205

A series of revolts in border villages

and towns spread throughout 1789 ranging from a near riot over forest rights in Boppard, in the

Electorate of Trier to the harassment of an official who heard discussions of events in Paris.

206

Reports of a revolt in Aschaffenburg in 1790 proved to be false including an outlandish

description of the Electoral chateau being burnt to the ground.

207

Lookouts were instructed to

identify and stop French infiltrators and propagandists. France declared war on the German

forces on 20 April 1792 and advanced towards Mainz. The French Army defeated a German

force at Valmy on 20 September 1792, causing a disorganized retreat. French forces entered

Mainz on 21 October 1792. The French representatives worked with Clubists, Jacobin inspired

collaborators to push revolutionary reforms such as the abolition of guilds – a measure that met

with a strong rebuke from the Handelsstand, Mainz’s merchants. Mainz was divided between

revolutionaries and a mainly clergy-led opposition by 1793 but by 1795 was recaptured by

counterrevolutionaries who reinstated Friedrich Karl to power. The example of Mainz was

violent and divisive but more instructive examples of French and Enlightenment inspired reform

swept Germany.

The Margraviate of Baden provided a more stable and productive example for Bavarian

reformers through its program of physiocratic land management. In 1771, the Margrave Karl

Friedrich reunited the territories of Baden-Durlach and Baden-Baden. Karl Friedrich tasked his

205

Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-1803, 267.

206

Ibid., 245.

207

Ibid., 246.

Kammerrat (finance councilor) Johann August Schlettwein with the experiment of physiocratic

trials beginning in 1770.

208

Physiocracy was a diverse and complex product of the Enlightenment

that advanced, broadly, that land reform could be used as an agent of social and economic

improvement.

209

Physiocrats believed in the merits of land use through artistic, craft-based, and

scientific lenses. Francois Quesnay, perhaps the leading exemplar of the physiocratic school,

advocated for using agriculturally productive land as the means for transforming the wealth and

character of states.

210

Quesnay’s 1758 Tableau Economique (Economic Table), a pioneering

survey of economic data, provided physiocrats with the solution to agricultural reform and

growing state wealth through the renewable, “annual reproduction of a marketable surplus.”

211

Baden attempted to increase crop yields in the villages of Dietlingen, Balingen, and Teningen per

physiocratic principles.

212

The project, deemed a failure at its conclusion in 1802, did not change

peasant farming techniques.

213

Historian Richard Bowler finds that the failure to lift excise,

trade, and consumption duties thwarted any positive conclusions from the trial study.

214

Those

who engaged in scientific experimentation in the German states remained committed to the

examination of tinkering with crop yields through modifying farm management and encouraging

larger surplus yields.

208

Richard Bowler, “Demonstrating the Natural Order: The Physiocratic Trials in Baden, 1770-

1802.” Central European History 52. [June 2019]: 211-232.

209

Rafe Blaufarb, “The Great Demarcation – The Decree of August 4, 1789,” Modern European

History Colloquium Lecture at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, April 23, 2018.

210

Vardi, The Physiocrats and the World of the Enlightenment, 115.

211

Ibid., 3.

212

Bowler, “Demonstrating the Natural Order: The Physiocratic Trials in Baden, 1770-

1802,” 212.

213

Ibid., 212-213.

214

Ibid., 230.

Finally, in Germany, including Bavaria, a fascination with agricultural science, in part

inspired by the Enlightenment, and the success of the English enclosure movement, led to a rush

to study and experiment with new techniques to maximize crop production. The guide for many

a German cameral official was English agronomist Arthur Young through the translations of

Albrecht Thär. Arthur Young’s findings from farming in England and his travels and

observations in France led to the publication of The Annals of Agriculture from 1784-1806.

215

This publication consisted of 46 volumes of substantial research about crop production.

216

Young, writing in 1771 in The Farmer’s Tour through the East of England, concluded that

“enclosures, the use of marl (a kind of soil consisting principally of clay mixed with carbonate of

lime, forming a loose unconsolidated mass, valuable as fertilizer), new rotations, turnips, clover

and rye grass, long leases, and ‘by the county being divided chiefly into farms,” were the keys to

increased production.

217

Albrecht Thär, a Saxon born in Celle in 1752, translated Young’s work

into German and established agricultural curricula based on the Englishman’s research.

218

Celle

became a buzzing hub of activity for cameral officials seeking to learn about physiocracy and

Young’s research. The impact of Young’s research was also felt in Bavaria. In the 1780s the

Bavarian Elector Karl Theodor initiated cultivation of crops in swampland in Donaumoos

between Neuberg and Ingolstadt.

219

Permanent cultivation proved impossible but the investment

in the project with a joint stock company to seize estate land using feudal laws represented an

215

Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815,

188.

216

Ibid.

217

Ibid., 147.

218

Von der Goltz, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 7.

219

Kramer, “Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration,”

370.

attempt by the Elector Karl Theodor to augment the agricultural output of the Bavarian state.

220

Beyond Bavaria, Maximilian IV Joseph of Zweibrücken sent cameral officials to Celle to study

Thär’s translations.

221

This interest in developing land, however, took a secondary role to the

immediate dangers of the escalating war in Europe.

The Path to Reform: Balancing Bavaria’s Future between Larger Powers

War placed Bavaria in a powerless, weakened role between Republican France and

Habsburg Austria. Garnerin, in exile in Zweibrücken, gravitated towards the revolutionaries due

to his Illuminati connections and anticlerical views. An ebullient Garnerin wrote to a friend

regarding the French Revolution, “I applaud the downfall of the clergy.”

222

In Bavaria, Karl

Theodor brought the Electorate to the side of the Habsburg Empire, issuing the 11 September

1789 “Prohibition of the Sale of all Printed Works of the French unrest.”

223

Austria wished to

contain France at the expense of Bavarian territory.

224

By 1795 the unrest in France produced

great consternation in Munich.

225

French forces would invariably head east through the most

western lands of Electoral Bavaria’s Palatinate lands, altering Garnerin’s view of the conflict and

the opportunities it presented.

The French advance made a lasting impression on Max Joseph and Garnerin as leaders of

a small state amidst a larger European conflict. Duke Max Joseph sent emissaries to Berlin

seeking an alliance with Prussia to protect his sovereignty to no avail.

226

On 7 September 1795,

220

Ibid.

221

Von der Goltz, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 13.

222

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 19.

223

Schuler,“Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 17.

224

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 44.

225

Ibid., 17-18.

226

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 19.

with French influence looming, Max Joseph avoided Vienna and sought an alliance with France

only to be rebuked.

227

Zweibrücken sided with France through the Convention of Pfaffenhofen

leaving Electoral Bavaria isolated and within the orbit of Austria.

228

The following year, 1796,

went poorly for Austria and Bavaria. The French Army of Italy, led by general Napoleon

Bonaparte, humiliated the slow moving and ineffectual Habsburg Army in northern Italy,

extracting an indemnity of 45 million francs and looting upwards of 12 million francs worth of

valuables.

229

Bonaparte carved out territory to form the future Cisalpine Republic. On 10

September of 1796, Garnerin played a central role in mediating Franco-Bavarian peace talks and

thus solidified his role as Max Joseph’s principal advisor.

230

In September 1796, Garnerin used

this new position from which to plot the path for future Bavarian land reforms.

The Ansbach Memorandum and Bavarian Land Reform and State Centralization

On 30 September 1796 Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, the closest advisor to Count

Maximilian IV Joseph of Zweibrücken issued the Ansbach Memorandum, a sweeping proposal

for the dramatic expansion of centralized state authority and the modernization of the Bavarian

economy. Garnerin used the advantageous position afforded by the French victory, his own

promotion to a more senior advisory position, and the waning fortunes of Bavaria and Austria, to

announce an ambitious plan for state reform. Garnerin began, “One of the greatest flaws of the

Bavarian administration lies in the defective organization of the central ministry. A precise

division of the departments, so useful for maintaining the order without which business cannot

227

Ibid.

228

Ibid.

229

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 51-52.

230

Ibid.

be carried out in a regular fashion, is absolutely unknown there.”

231

A decentralized bureaucracy,

lacking authority and sufficient personnel is outlined as the central issue, something Garnerin

later recalled in his memoirs.

232

Garnerin continued, “This arrangement, which was fine for the

Middle Ages, when the simplicity of handling things facilitated and lessened the work of

government officials, is no longer suitable today, as matters have become much more

complicated.”

233

The expanded bureaucracy, alien to the ideas outlined in earlier cameral texts

and practices, required a larger staff and presumed the enhanced role of the state over other

Bavarian institutions such as the Church or the elite estates.

Garnerin’s reformist ideas were sweeping in scope and would entail the reordering on the

Bavarian cameral profession in the image of the scope and size of French republican

bureaucracy. Garnerin outlined the creation of a Foreign Ministry as well as those ministries

attending to finance and justice.

234

An army of bureaucrats, like those of larger states, would

require new training and to be obedient to First Minister and Elector alike. In Prussia, for

example, such a system was based on “personnel management on a flexible combination of

calculated external pressures and inducements and internal incentives.”

235

Garnerin was most

emphatic about reforms when he addresses the question of land. In the second of his four guiding

principles for reform Garnerin advances, “The abolition of the financial prerogatives of the

privileged estates in the various provinces, the creation of a carefully drawn-up land registry that

231

Graf Montgelas, Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach

Memorandum." Proposal for a Program of State Reforms (September 30, 1796).”

232

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 269, “One of the biggest shortcomings was

insufficient central authority.”

233

Graf Montgelas, Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach

Memorandum."

234

Ibid.

235

Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy, The Prussian Experience, 1660-

1815, 88.

establishes a fairer proportion in direct tax levies, the abolition of several levies that impose too

great a burden on subjects, and the cessation of the disastrous system of Bavarian customs duties

clearly demand the attention of the legislator in the various branches of this vast

administration.”

236

Montgelas’ key focus, however, was land.

Land formed the basis for state reform. The abolition of feudal privilege, of the Güter

estates, and the power of the clergy were the central reform programs of Garnerin. Crucial to

Garnerin’s plans featured this program of state centralization, the development of land for

productive means, and the imposition of uniform tolls.

237

In addition, Garnerin proposed for

universal state control over forests, mines, and “care for” (Betreuung) of commerce, industry,

and manufactures.”

238

Negotiations with seigneurial estates was also a responsibility of the

Finance Ministry.

239

In Germany, seigneurial rents soared, peasants revolted, and in Munich,

Nuremberg, and Ulm sporadic rioting shook Karl Theodor and his court.

240

Max Joseph, if not

Garnerin’s role in Bavarian state building through land reform reached a critical phase by the end

of 1796. As the Treaty of Campo-Formio finalized the cessation of hostilities in northern Italy in

1797, Max Joseph and Max Joseph von Garnerin were poised to assert their new role as

intermediaries to enact state reform in Bavaria.

236

Graf Montgelas, Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Maximilian von Montgelas, "Ansbach

Memorandum."

237

Ibid.

238

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie 348.

239

Ibid.

240

David Blackbourn, History of Germany, 1780-1918, The Long Nineteenth Century (Malden:

Blackwell Publishing Company, 2003), 40.

Conclusion: Bavarian Land in the Age of Revolution

Both the reform and maintenance of the Gutsherrschaft system were contingent upon

internal educational and information reform as well as foreign pressure on Bavaria’s borders.

The system of land management created in the wake of the Thirty Years’ War, the

Gutsherrschaft, created stability and order. It was slated for replacement with a state

administered agricultural program based on surplus crop production and a uniform tax and toll

regimen. Bavarian means of commercial and administrative management maintained feudal

landownership and the role of the Catholic Church to preserve order and sustainable crop yields.

Attempts at reform failed due to half measures, a dizzying array of legal traditions, and the

intentional shortcomings of cameral institutions as the connective tissue of archaic, feudal

institutions of Bavarian life. The Enlightenment, the reform of cameral institutions, and the

upheaval caused by the French Revolutionary Wars placed Bavaria at the crossroads of mass

state guided land reform. Though untried, Bavaria’s leaders elevated the mechanisms for such

massive reforms to a more powerful role.

Chapter 2. A Struggle for Property: State-Guided Allodification (1799-1809)

Maximilian IV Joseph of Zweibrücken became Maximilian I (or Max Joseph) Elector of

Bavaria in February of 1799. Max Joseph would give Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, the later

ennobled Graf Montgelas, unparalleled authority to carry out unprecedented, state-guided land

reorganization and the restructuring of the civil service. These reforms centered on allodification

of land by removing the privileges and titles connected to estates. In its place, the existing

nuances of Bavarian land law as dictated by the Codex Maximilianeus Bavaricus, Civilis would

be replace by Montgelas’ fiat. Montgelas envisioned the dramatic transformation of Bavarian

agriculture in private hands. Land enclosure, higher crop yields, and bountiful tax and toll

collection would follow. The centralized bureaucracy would guide these reforms and in turn

would be strengthened by their products. Yet such a program required a climate of conflict and

chance to make successful. The authority of the Bavarian state was also not as powerful as it

seemed to its leaders. War and a costly alliance would be the price for the allodification process.

The demands of this conflict would destroy Bavaria’s agriculture, leave the state indebted, and

the populace in poverty but would provide a functional basis for the rule of a centralized state.

Therefore, this chapter explores the execution and consequences of Max Joseph and

Montgelas’ sweeping property-based reforms from 1799-1809. Max Joseph, Elector, then King

of Bavaria, sought to transform Gutsherrschaft estates, Church lands, and the domains of former

free imperial cities into privately held, enclosed land. This process was also known as

allodification and preceded Montgelas’ plan to apportion land into privately owned tracts.

Montgelas served as the architect and catalyst for this Bavarian property reform. Montgelas first

presided over an ambitious expansion of centralized bureaucratic control over estate lords, the

Catholic Church in Bavaria, and urban patricians. Güter land was to be transformed in

accordance with Enlightenment era theories that emphasized productive and profitable

agriculture. Bavaria’s reforms, however, could not be undertaken while the polity was a

marginal, impoverished state. Bavaria would need powerful outside assistance to keep nobles

and foreign rivals alike at bay. Montgelas and Max Joseph’s mutual affinity for France, the

French Revolution, and Enlightenment ideals led to Bavaria’s closer relations with Paris between

1799-1805. The diminished status of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Empire allowed

Bavaria to secularize Church lands in 1803, to eliminate the political role of prelates, and to

claim territories overrun by French forces for its own. Max Joseph and Montgelas used the

Austrian defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz, and the subsequent Treaty of Pressburg, to declare the

foundation of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1806. French influence indirectly facilitated the

drafting of a republican inspired constitution in 1808. Max Joseph made Montgelas and civil

bureaucrats, as well as a select group of reform minded nobles, the nucleus of Bavarian power.

Estates titles were taken by the Bavarian state but the sale of land as private property was limited

by insufficient state authority. The drafting of the 1808 constitution represented Montgelas’

attempt to cement the primacy of Max Joseph and the state, using land reclamation as an

economic and political tool for the transformation of the Kingdom of Bavaria into a sovereign

polity.

Karl Theodor’s Last Stand: The Collapse of Electoral Bavaria (1795-1797)

Bavarian Elector Karl Theodor was forced to mobilize the Electorate’s resources to

prepare for war at the expense of land reform, poor relief, and the support of Bavarian notables

during the War of the First Coalition (1792-1797). Electoral Bavaria was officially neutral during

the War of the First Coalition, a conflict in which the royals of Europe’s ancien regime

attempted to crush the French Revolution before reinstalling the deposed Bourbon Dynasty. Karl

Theodor faced considerable pressure from both major warring factions, Austria and France.

241

The Elector was thus presented with the single greatest challenge to Bavarian territorial integrity

since the War of Bavarian Succession nearly twenty years prior. The Austrian Army encroached

upon Bavarian territory when it moved across the Inn River to counter French forces in the

Rhineland.

242

French forces, now east of the Rhine River, created an atmosphere of anxiety in

Munich. In 1795 French forces invaded Bavaria. Karl Theodor ordered Sir Benjamin Thompson,

the Count Rumford, to plan and then implement a strategy to strengthen Munich’s defenses.

243

Rumford persuaded Karl Theodor to destroy existing city walls and to build isolated strongpoints

to defend certain parts of the city instead while land outside of Munich was zoned for the

construction of new structures.

244

Such a plan provoked a strong rebuke from nobles because

they believed the removal of city walls would leave the city weaker against a siege as well as the

Elector claiming and using land for his own purposes. A French attack posed the risk of causing

major disruptions to commercial activity within Munich and outlying areas.

Rumford’s idea to destroy sections of Munich’s city walls was complicated by the influx

of indigent Bavarians. The limitations of the Bavarian state were soon laid bare. Plans to feed

Munich’s population, including the rising number of newly arrived refugees, were destroyed by

French armies living off the land and seizing Bavarian food stuffs and draught animals. The

hasty construction of segmented lines of defense also provoked anger from a broad cross section

241

Richard Bauer, Geschichte Münchens (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2003), 91.

242

Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 50.

243

Bauer, Geschichte Münchens, 90.

244

Ibid. German, “Als sich 1796 die durch das neutral Bayern gegen die Österreicher ziehende

französische Rheinarmee München näherte und der Kurfürst das Weite suchte, übernahm Graf

Rumford die Verhandlungen mit den kriegführenden Mächten.” And, “Eine Entscheidung Karl

Theodors vom Juni 1796, dass München fortan keine Festung mehr sien könne, hatte diesen

längst überfaelligen Bruch mit der fortifikatischen Vergangenheit der Stadt möglich gemacht.”

of Munich’s population, specifically due to the removal of the bastion near Karlstor and the

destruction of available farm land.

245

In sum, any transformation of Munich’s existing defensive

works faced the prospect of intense and spirited disagreement between Karl Theodor and

Bavarian elites over how best to use land. The dispute regarding the defensive walls is also an

instructive example for the examination of the barriers, physical and metaphorical, to programs

of land reform in late-eighteenth century Bavaria.

Karl Theodor, acting on Rumford’s instructions, sacrificed Bavarian land to an invading

force that did not respect the Electoral state’s neutrality, in turn eroding what remained of his

reputation with the Bavarian Adelige Stände – the elite nobility of the Güter estates and Church.

This continued a pattern of inaction on Karl Theodor’s part that stemmed from earlier losses of

territory including Mannheim which fell without resistance in 1795.

246

Karl Theodor was thus

seen as an unreliable defender or even advocate for Munich’s defense let alone the welfare of all

Bavarians. The Elector had also been attacked in the past by nobles for his Tauschpläne of 1792-

1794 that proposed exchanging the valuable land in the Innviertel near Salzburg to Austria in

exchange for a title in the Austrian Netherlands.

247

Karl Theodor further weakened his status

among Bavarian nobles by overlooking the value of land for tax and credit collection, a system

widely controlled by the very nobles it taxed.

248

The resources of surrounding land, much like

245

Bauer, Geschichte Münchens, 91. German: “Es muss nicht erwähnt warden, das salle diese

Massnahmen – selbst angeordnete Begradigung der so komplizert ueber die Festungswaelle und

Torbastionen gefürhten Zufahrten zur Stadt - nur das Murren der Bevölkerung und den Protest

der Gemeindevertretung zur Folge hatten.”

246

Andreas Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns Von den Anfängen bis Gegenwart, 361.

247

Karl Otmar von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souvernen Staat: Landstnde u. konstitutionelle

Monarchie 1714-1818, 117. German: German: “Karl Theodor wüsste von den österreichischen

Tauschplänen der Jahre 1792 bis 1794, ohne das der um eine Einwilligung angegangen worden

wäre.”

248

Ibid.

those nearly surrendered to Austrian demands, were jeopardized when Rumford executed his

defensive plan.

The sudden, wide-ranging designs for Munich’s “defortification” and urban expansion

also comprised an early assertion of broad royal authority over the social transformation of

Munich, and to a greater extent, Bavaria. The land was also vital to a much larger program

Rumford was designing (and published in 1796) to feed Munich’s poor through the

establishment of new workhouses where homeless persons would be used as a conscripted labor

force.

249

Rumford’s essays on poor relief and urban pacification, written explicitly for Karl

Theodor’s use, included a detailed list of instructions to police and exploit Munich’s have

nots.

250

Rumford, writing in an aloof, if not patronizing tone, informed Karl Theodor, “As

nothing is so certain fatal to morals, and particularly to the morals of the lower class of mankind,

as habitual idleness, every possible measure was adopted, that could be devised, to introduce a

spirit of industry among the troops.”

251

This essay, entitled Of the Prevalence of Mendicity in

Bavaria at the Time When the Measures for Putting an End to it Were Adopted, floated the idea

of paying poor Munich residents poverty wages to motivate their service as laborers.

252

Bavarian

farmers on Güter estates remained committed to subsistence agriculture for over a century and a

half after the Thirty Years’ War, believing that the production of any foodstuffs would

intrinsically be profitable.

253

Subsistence agriculture, however, was a well-established pattern of

249

Graf Benjamin Rumford, An Account of an Establishment for the Poor at Munich,

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1025/pg1025-images.html.

250

Ibid.

251

Graf Benjamin Rumford, An Account of an Establishment for the Poor at Munich.

252

Ibid.

253

Wilhelm Abel, Agrarpolitik, 22. German: “Die Bevolkerung wuchs, und mit der Vermehrung

der Verbraucher Stiegen die Preise der Agrarprodukte, die nach dem Dreissigjahrigen Krieg sehr

gefallen waren.”

crop production that was propagated by peasant farmers and estate elites who knew no other

form of land management.

Rumford’s new land management plan met with predictable, if not sensible, objection.

The plan disturbed the foundation of the Gutsherrschaft model and the power and privilege of

the landed elites. Rumford’s attempt was met with praise from Montgelas who decried the

obstinacy of the landed elites. Montgelas, writing from the Duchy of Zweibrücken, seethed at

what he believed was a missed opportunity to produce profitable, surplus bumper crops from

arable land. The exiled Bavarian wrote, “Bavaria is the most fertile province in Germany and the

one with the least spirit. It is an earthly paradise that is inhabited by fools."

254

The behavior of

Karl Theodor did little to counter Montgelas’ appraisal. Karl Theodor was detached, indifferent,

and more interested in art, literature, and attempts at placating elites. The Elector was not

interested in fully committing to reform. Firm leadership was also needed due to Bavaria’s

precarious border security. Austrian and French armies converged on the Electorate. The

Electorate’s land was soon both the battleground and the potential prize for invaders from both

east and west.

Karl Theodor, uninterested in a defensive campaign against invaders, signed a

humiliating treaty with Austria in January 1796. The treaty formally placed Bavaria under

Austrian protection but revealed the extractive and predatory nature of the much larger Empire

upon the Electorate’s land. The elector’s endorsement of a controversial plan for urban renewal

during invasion was juxtaposed with this latest capitulation. Critics assailed Karl Theodor as

indifferent to Austrian domination. Bavaria was forced to fight France by Austria. Now a

254

Eberhard Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 591.

combatant power in the War of the First Coalition, Bavaria was invaded by French forces. The

“positional lethargy” of Karl Theodor was made apparent as the French Army dealt a series of

defeats to the Austrians and overran Bavarian farmland in the Rhineland.

255

French forces under

general Jean-Baptiste Jourdan penetrated a defensive position on the Main River and advanced

unchecked into the Upper-Palatinate.

256

Another French force under Jean-Victor Marie Moreau

exploited these gains by crossing the Upper Rhine in southern Bavaria shortly thereafter. Karl

Theodor sent emissaries to negotiate a ceasefire with both generals Jourdan and Moreau before a

treaty was signed on 7 September 1796.

257

Bavaria’s negotiations with the French commanders

were brief and one sided. Moreau’s armies circulated revolutionary pamphlets and encouraged

the open activities of previously secretive Jacobin organizations.

258

Austria continued fighting

France’s Army of Italy and left Karl Theodor to pay a 16-million-franc indemnity to Paris

following a separate treaty.

259

The collapse of Bavaria exacerbated shortages of arable land,

cereals, and draft animals by 1797. Bavaria capitulated first to Austrian demands then French.

Confidence in Karl Theodor plummeted. The future of Bavaria’s integrity was in question as

quality of land products was destroyed.

Bavaria’s relative isolation during the last year of the War of the First Coalition had a

deleterious impact on grain markets and supply for the electorate’s population. Broadsheets from

255

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat, 117. German: “Er übersieht damit die –

natürlich im Rahmen ihrer Möglichkeiten beliebenden – Aktivitaäten und insbesondere die für

die Kreditwürdigkeit des Landes so wichtige Steuerwaltung, die er in völliger Verkennung der

wahren Verhältnisse als ‘nicht anderes als priviligierte eigenützige Steuerverwaltung

bezeichnet.”

256

Ibid.

257

Ibid.

258

Eberhard Weis, Bayern und Frankreich in der Zeit des Konsulats und des Ersten Empire

(1799-

1815) (München: Stiftung historisches Kolleg, 1984), 114.

259

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 362.

1797 turned to reporting criminal activities and food prices rather than the ongoing war. The

Münchener Intelligenzblatt from Saturday 26 August 1797 featured a lengthy criminal report on

the theft of mares during the night of 13-14 August 1797, a much valued commodity.

260

The

report is followed by tables detailing the price of corn, maize, oats, and barley commodities from

both Bavarian and foreign sources.

261

No price information is available for neighboring Salzburg

while Ulm, a Free Imperial City occupied by Bavaria to the west, had the most expensive prices

at 18 florin 30 kreutzer per bushel (Scheffel), possibly due to the French presence in the

region.

262

Market activity was negatively impacted by the conflict. The conclusion of hostilities

brought much-needed relief to Bavarians by the fall. Austrian forces collapsed in Italy leading to

the signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio on 17 October 1797. Austria received more territory

in the vicinity of Bavaria near the Inn River.

263

The Habsburg Empire regrouped but Electoral

Bavaria found its treasury and army depleted.

264

This campaign itself ended the following month

and was followed by territorial negotiations in the Congress of Rastatt from November 1797-

1799.

Bavaria as Spoils of War: The Congress at Rastatt (1797-1799)

The treaty negotiations of Rastatt were of vital importance for Bavaria due to the loss of

several vital Electoral territories. This complicated the position of Bavaria’s Elector. The

Congress of Rastatt negotiations concerned land exchanges as part of the settlement of French

victory in the Rhineland and northern Italian provinces previously under Austrian control.

260

“Münchener Intelligenzblatt Nro. 35.”

261

Ibid.

262

Ibid.

263

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 50.

264

Kraus, 362.

Bavaria was not mentioned directly as a major participant. Delegates from the German states and

republican France met in Rastatt between November 1797 and April 1799.

265

The German states

were dominated by Austria and Prussia who angled for territorial aggrandizement rather than

demonstrating a unified front against the upstart French Republic.

266

Historian James Sheehan

underscored how the Congress at Rastatt was a clash of cultures; decadent and indulgent

Habsburg envoys such as Franz George Karl Count Metternich-Winneburg zu Beilstein, the

father of Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and a pragmatic and austere French delegation

concerned with territorial expansion and the spread of revolutionary values. Europe’s ancien

regime suddenly found itself at the mercy of the revolutionaries. Bavaria, however, was treated

less as a power and more of land to be divided between major states.

Austria’s new ministers were forced to accept the terms of Rastatt impacting the future of

the Habsburg Empire and, by extension, neighboring Bavaria. The director of the foreign affairs

of Austria, Baron Thugut, the hastily appointed successor to the recently deceased Prince

Kaunitz, was forced to make peace with France to end hostilities and help the Habsburg Empire

save face.

267

Thugut found the peace terms unacceptable but, Austria, as a participant, came

away from the Congress at Rastatt with added territory.

268

If Austria, Prussia, and France came

away from Rastatt either as winners or losers, Bavaria participated as merely a spectator. Bavaria

surrendered territory to the north on the periphery of the Austrian Netherlands and eastern

Bavaria, including Mannheim to France, as well as ceding land near the Archbishopric of

Salzburg to Austria in a separate treaty.

269

The Austro-French agreement concerning Bavarian

265

James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866, 241.

266

Ibid., 240.

267

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 81.

268

Ibid., 61.

269

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 362.

territory was kept secret.

270

Austria agreed to respect French territorial claims to the eastern bank

of the Rhine River in an effort to protect the integrity of the Holy Roman Empire without

Prussian influence.

271

The traditions of the Holy Roman Empire, which purportedly protected

Bavaria were effectively removed through the negotiations at Rastatt.

The institutions of the Holy Roman Empire were the strongest traditions that dictated

economic and social behavior in Bavaria. Bavaria’s relationship with Austria remained

subordinate. The Reichshofrat (the imperial court council) in Vienna, as well as the Aulic

Council, mediated disputes and acted as a central arbiter and interpreter of the combination of

unique legal trends from German, Imperial, and Roman laws present in the Empire.

272

In theory

these institutions formed a well-used, routine forum for disputes between lord and peasant. In

practice, however, the courts and councils made Bavaria more beholden to Austria for the

purposes of legal legitimacy and functional interstate cooperation.

273

Historian Karl Otmar von

Aretin described these important structures of cameral bureaucracy as a “German form of

revolution.”

274

However relevant these systems of law and Polizeiwissenschaft were to Germans,

their existence and authority were intrinsically tied to Vienna. Bavaria, and other Reichstädte,

also paid additional taxes to maintain the court and council from 1797 onward. Prussian military

and political influence were also felt in Ansbach during the 1790s. Finally, the terms of the

Congress of Rastatt were dictated to the Reich by Paris. In sum, the ability for a small German

state, even a larger, wealthier state like Bavaria, to act independently within the Reich system, let

270

John Gagliardo, Reich and Nation: The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763-1806

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 188.

271

Ibid., 189.

272

Lenger in Sperber, Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870, 26.

273

Ibid.26.

274

Ibid., 27.

alone on the European stage, was an unrealistic expectation. Karl Theodor, unable to act

independently within the constellation of the Bavarian estates and the Church, was certainly ill-

equipped to navigate the diplomatic challenges posed by Rastatt.

Rastatt afforded Montgelas the opportunity to openly criticize Karl Theodor’s policies.

Montgelas, who represented the Duchy of Zweibrücken at Rastatt, laid out extensive programs

for the integration of German states, as independent entities, into a larger, cooperative alliance.

These plans, like Karl Theodor’s, however, were equally ignored. In Bavarian terms, reform of

any kind required approval from the Church and the Güter lords, elites fundamentally opposed to

increasing the power of the elector. Karl Theodor, mocked for his ostensible inaction, was thus

constrained by the intransigence of the noble Stände and the moribund system of decentralized

Bavarian estates. This was, however, irrelevant to Bavarians of the era. Montgelas’ plan and

confidence demonstrated a more coherent, powerful approach to statecraft. Montgelas too would

have to contend with the great challenges that obstructed Karl Theodor’s attempts at reform.

The source of Karl Theodor’s power, the support of the Güter lords, Church (the

Pralätenorden), and the cameral officials of the Electoral court, failed to assist in Bavaria’s

defense. These estates also failed to muster the resources or provide consent for the completion

of any program of social policing or tax reform. Funding for a competent military was thus

insufficient. Nevertheless, Karl Theodor’s court provided propagandized reports of contributions

of materiel from the Güter estates for defense.

275

Güter domains provided the basis for Karl

275

“Münchener Wochen- oder Anzeigsblat Nro. 51.” Digipress Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek (BSB). https://digipress.digitale-

sammlungen.de/view/bsb10505705_01659_u001/1?cq=M%C3%BCnchener%20Wochen%20od

er%20Anzeigsblatt%2026%20December%201798 [accessed December 17, 2019]. German:

Theodor’s revenue stream through taxes and provided the material support for the Electoral

court.

276

This essential Bavarian land was under constant threat by foreign powers and

appropriated at will via invasion and treaty negotiations. The lords of the Domainenbesitz, the

privileged estate of Bavaria, continued to contribute resources to Munich while protecting their

legal and societal standing. This concept was referred to as Bauernschutz.

277

Electoral records of

Güter resources contributed to defense, however, highlight the diminishing assets available to

their estates, the very backbone of the Bavarian treasury. Bavarian notables, as a privilege of

their estate status, also enjoyed a separate tax administration.

Contributions to the Electoral treasury were contingent upon what notables agreed to pay

and depended heavily on the value of their assets.

278

Electoral court secretary Josef Diezenberger

publicized a September to December auction of a vast collection of items from the estate of

countess Bechischen .

279

The 26 December 1798 Münchener Wochen und Anzeigsblatt featured

an estate liquidation of the countess’ assets to be auctioned off to other “subservient elites” via

the court market.

280

Such an announcement is consistent with the operation of the Electoral

“Endesgesetzer ist von dem Kurfuerstl. Kämmerer, dann freiresigierten Forst und Wildmeister in

Greifenfeld, Titl. Grafen von Arco…”

276

Abel, Agrarpolitik, 20.

277

Ibid.

278

Ibid.

279

“Münchener Wochen- oder Anzeigsblat Nro. 51.” German: “German: da man von Seite des

kurfürstlichen, Hof Rate in der Titel Grafin Bechischen Verlassenschafts Sache auf

untertanigstes Eliten einiger Interresanten, und zufolge zu erst jungst 10 December erfolgten

gnadigsten Revisions Resolution beschlossen hat, die zu dieser Verlassenschafts Kassa

gedringen Guter, nämlich die Hofmärkte...” English: … matter of the most subservient elites of

some interested parties, and following the most gracious revision resolution, just recently passed

on Dec 10, has decided, to (sell) to the highest bidder the goods belonging to the inheritance

assets, namely the court markets Königsmiesen, and debts, and then the Schwaig Warmberg as

well as several other subjects of the same class by public auction after the auctioning of Raas

which was already held in Berlau on Sept. 14.

280

Ibid.

treasury in 1798. Bavaria’s Hofmärkte (the court treasury) practiced escheatment: the transfer of

non-land property (including jurisdictional and even royal titles) to the state when there was a

lack of an heir.

281

The legal presence of Bavarian notables was codified through the Estate

Commission, which, although not having met since 1699, consisted of sixteen members, eight of

whom were estate holders.

282

In the case of the aforementioned estate (Verlassenschaft – the

assets) were transferred at a special court decided rate for countess Bechischen’ estate.

283

The

treasury also set the value and price by consulting key notables interested in the Verlassenschaft.

The report emphasizes the value of the estate through the assertion that, “…the most compliant

elite of some interested parties, and according to the most recent gracious revision resolution

passed on December 10th, decreed that the estate, which is worthy of the treasury, namely the

court markets…”

284

The estate in question was also evaluated based on its movable, trade goods

related, assets. The first sentence of the announcement makes reference to rice tenders on the

Meuse-Rhine border region as the result of a transaction concluded on 14 September 1798.

285

Such was another legacy of the swirling forces of Karl Theodor’s reign and the destructive

nature of the War of the First Coalition: bankruptcy and inflation.

286

281

Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 399. This practice is also used in a non-real

estate property to refer to non-real estate property.

282

Ferdinand Kramer, “Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration,” 50.

283

Ibid.

284

“Münchener Wochen- oder Anzeigsblat 19 December 1798.” German: “Sache auf

untertanigstes Eliten einiger Interresanten, und zufolge zu erst jungst 10 December erfolgten

gnadigsten Revisions Resolution beschlossen hat, die zu dieser Verlassenschafts Kassa gedrigen

Guter, nämlich die Hofmärkte känigsmiesen, und solle, und dann den und die Schwaig Warnberg

wie auch mehrere einschichtige Untertanen durch nochmal wiederholt öffentliche verstetgerung

an den Reisbietenden nach Raas der schon untern 14 September abgehaltenen Versteigerung zu

Berlau.”

285

Ibid.

286

Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 453-454. Whaley emphasizes that inflation

increased post-1789.

These issues were mostly a burden carried by landed elites and Bavarian peasants. Estate

lords, regardless of legal, tax, and pension privileges increasingly faced crop failure, shortages of

liquidity, and likely the loss of their labor force due to a 5.9% population decrease during the

1790s.

287

Bavaria’s Güter lords adapted their agricultural approach by shifting their focus to the

cultivation of potatoes.

288

The specific case of the Bechischen estate’s sale to rice farming buyers

in the Meuse-Rhine area appears to be a pragmatic solution to a failing agricultural estate:

transferring a rice cultivation area during a large scale shift to growing potatoes. The swirling

crises caused by conflict, debt, and flagging estate worth were insurmountable obstacles for even

the most capable and energetic leader and his limited yet educated ministers. Karl Theodor,

regardless of skill or interest in these issues was poorly equipped to protect and expand the

Bavarian state at a most critical point in the dramatic transformation of central Europe.

Life After Death: Karl Theodor’s Legacy, 1798-1799

By 1798-1799, the Elector Karl Theodor’s legacy was that of a leader who failed to

preserve Bavarian territorial cohesion from invasion by foreign powers. Karl Theodor, despite

the limitations imposed by the elite Stände, was remembered perhaps mostly for his effete and

non-committal approach to reform that frustrated his cameral officials and opponents alike.

Franz Karl von Hompesch, the First Minister, who, with Count Rumford, made critical state

decisions, was tasked with finding new ways to secure the integrity of the Bavarian state.

Territorial cohesion was of paramount importance but the Staatsgedanke – the idea of a unified

Bavarian state remained a controversial. This idea, so crucial to any functioning model of

independent sovereignty, was widely rejected by competing interests such as Güter lords and the

287

Ibid., 454.

288

Ibid.

Catholic Church.

289

The task of the Bavarian state, Hompesch, Rumford, and the small cameral

staff, was preserving the very legitimacy of the Wittelsbach crown.

290

Karl Theodor trusted

subordinates to maintain Bavaria’s borders but lacked the power to support them.

Preserving Bavarian territorial integrity may have been beyond the powers of even the

most talented statesmen of the era. Georg Friedrich von Zentner (1752-1835), a future minister

of greater importance in the scope of Bavarian history, advised Karl Theodor on legal matters

pertaining to his Electoral issue and how best to utilize diplomatic channels with larger European

powers.

291

Zentner, like Karl Theodor, was born in the Palatinate.

292

Zentner possessed a talented

legal mind and was educated in Ingolstadt, the heart of new approaches to state management

techniques in Bavaria. In addition, Zentner was well-traveled, having spent time in Berlin and

Vienna before studying recent developments in German legal theory at the Georg August

University in Göttingen.

293

Therefore, Zentner made an ideal choice for Bavaria’s diplomatic

missions. Despite Zentner’s apparent skill, little could be done to protect Bavaria from invasion

and dissolution.

Instead, Karl Theodor died on 17 February 1799 leaving Bavaria adrift. The deceased

Elector’s capital, left to the ambitious, yet incompetent hands of Count Rumford. Electoral

Bavaria was in crisis. Munich’s population swelled to 40,000 by the end of the eighteenth

century of which 2,000 were beggars.

294

Rumford’s plan to feed and house Munich’s poor with

289

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

118.

290

Ibid.

291

Franz Dobmann, Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Zentner als bayerischer Staatsmann in den

Jahren 1799–1821 (Augsburg: Münchener historisches Studien: Kallmünz, 1996), 133.

292

Ibid.

293

Dobmann, Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Zentner, 133.

294

Schuler,“Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 11.

the construction of great halls and ample portions of Rumfordsuppe, a barley and pea soup, were

well-meaning but lacked sufficient planning and resources for proper execution. Rumford’s land

reforms and defortification of Munich destroyed arable land and supplies of bread, barley, while

other ingredients for Rumford’s soup dwindled.

295

Rumford’s impractical and detached approach

to bureaucracy, urban planning, and poor relief are perhaps best encapsulated from his essays on

handling Munich’s homeless problem. Rumford wrote in his 1796 essay, “An account of the

Taking up of Beggars in Munich,” an uninspiring, and possibly contrived scenario in which he

enforced Munich’s new poor relief laws;

We were hardly got into the street when we were accosted by a beggar, who asked us for

alms. I went up to him, and laying my hand gently upon his shoulder, told him, that from

thenceforwards begging would not be permitted in Munich;—that if he really stood in

need of assistance, (which would immediately be enquired into,) the necessary assistance

should certainly be given him, but that begging was forbidden, and if he was detected in

it again he would be severely punished.

296

Rumford’s authority as military leader and

First Minister in 1799 was stretched thin and, without an Elector present, it was certain to

be relieved of his authority upon the accession of a new leader.

Rumford’s limited authority still operated within a relatively unchanged nexus of political,

economic, and religious powers present when Karl Theodor acceded to the throne in 1779.

The authority of the Elector was limited by the regional jurisdiction of Güter lords who

opposed any attempts to secure the Wittelsbach role of Fideikommiss, an entrusted property

holder (as an expression of authority rather than possession of land).

297

The Catholic Church

formed one of the most powerful blocs of estate holders throughout Karl Theodor’s rule as well.

295

Ibid. 11-12.

296

Graf Rumford, Benjamin. “An account of an Establishment for the Poor at Munich.” Project

Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1025/pg1025-

images.html. [accessed 20 December 2019].

297

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

116. German: “Den Bemühungen Karl Theodors, einen Wittelsbachischen Fideikommiss zu

errichten, setzte die Landschaft den Begriff der kurfürstlichen Nebenländer entgegen, wie die

nichtbayerischen Besitzungen von ihr genannt wurden.”

Church lands accounted for 56% of all landholdings by 1799.

298

Bavarians universally observed

and heeded the spiritual commands of the Church through numerous devotions, observances,

masses, pilgrimages, processions and festivals each year.

299

Karl Theodor, by design of the

Electoral throne, was the manager of the vital institutions of the Bavarian state from the Church

to the Guter estates. The Elector’s real power resided in the expectation that he would coordinate

the cooperation of each estate of the Electoral state rather than push for sweeping, unilateral

reform. Karl Theodor’s legacy was that of a failed leader who halfheartedly committed to reform

and the pursuit of centralized authority while fully indulging in art, theater, and urban

beautification at the expense of practical or popular uses of the private treasury. Karl Theodor

and Graf Rumford’s destruction of city walls yielded much consternation from the public as did

the construction of an expensive baroque palace.

The Accession of Max Joseph and Montgelas (1799)

Max Joseph, Duke of Zweibrücken succeeded Karl Theodor as Elector on 16 February

1799 beginning a path towards centralized authority in the hands of the Elector (then King) of

Bavaria, a plan first outlined as early as 1796.

300

The count of Zweibrücken arrived in Munich

amidst a great deal of tumult in Bavaria and beyond. Karl Theodor had died without an heir and

Max Joseph, a member of the minor line of the Wittelsbach Dynasty (Pfalz-Birkenfeld) was

selected as the heir of the electoral issue.

301

Max Joseph differed greatly in temperament, artistic

taste, and ambition from his predecessor. The new elector was described as easygoing and

298

Schuler,“Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 13.

299

Ibid.

300

Max Joseph was referred to as Max IV Joseph as count and Max I Joseph as king of Bavaria

(1806-1825). For clarity he will be referred to as Max Joseph here.

301

Manfred Treml et. al. Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat,

23.

convivial in his encounters with a broad cross-section of Bavarian society.

302

Max Joseph

navigated the social atmosphere of courtly interests with ease but his decision making process,

much like that of his predecessor Karl Theodor, could be “fickle and indecisive.”

303

Max Joseph

was aided in matters of state by his ambitious and radical advisor Maximilian von Garnerin, the

future Graf Montgelas.

304

Montgelas and Max Joseph worked well together in the Duchy of

Zweibrücken where the latter had become duke upon the death of his brother in 1795. Both Max

Joseph and Montgelas read Enlightenment texts regarding ideal forms of shared powers of

government, physiocratic reform of land, endorsed the instrumental role played by well-educated

bureaucrats, and critical to the future course of Bavarian policies, were both Francophiles who

looked to the revolutionaries in Paris for inspiration in spite of the French occupation of the new

Elector’s native Mannheim.

305

When Max Joseph became elector in February 1799 Europe was again in conflict, this

time engaged in the War of the Second Coalition (1799-1802). Max Joseph would continually

use the climate of conflict to leverage Bavarian reforms throughout his rule, enhancing and

expanding his authority throughout the Electorate of Bavaria. Where previous Bavarian electors

were wary of making public statements about military alliances due to the looming threat of the

Electorate’s neighbors (namely Austria) Max Joseph was not subtle about where his personal

sympathies would lie in the new war – on the side of France.

306

Max Joseph wrote the French

Directory in 1799, “I ask you to inform the director that he has no loyal friend but me. The joy I

302

Ibid.

303

Ibid.

304

Maximilian Karl Joseph Franz de Paula Hieronymus de Garnerin de la Thuille Graf von

Montgelas, Maximilian Garnerin will be referred to as Maximilian von Montgelas or Count

Montgelas for the purposes of clarity.

305

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 23.

306

Ibid.

felt every time I heard about the success of the Republic's weapons has shown me that I'm

French.”

307

Max Joseph, ever conscious of the exclusion of Bavaria from the Congress of Rastatt

settlement, and wary of Austrian designs, however, remained in the Second Coalition against the

Directory.

308

Max Joseph, who perhaps exercised prudent caution over indecision when, despite

his sympathies for the revolutionaries, kept Bavaria closer to its powerful neighbor Austria. Such

a decision was critical to the stability of Max Joseph’s new rule and allowed for him to maintain

at least tacit support among Bavarian notables. This was of vital importance as he pursued a

greater role as a supreme authority in the Electorate over merely one instrument in a

constellation of estates and interests.

Max Joseph solidified his role in the Electorate’s power structure by giving his full

support to the sweeping reforms proposed by his principal advisor Maximilian von Montgelas.

Montgelas had advocated for the rapid expansion of Bavarian civil bureaucracy in size, quality

of civil servants, and powers in his 30 September 1796 Ansbach Memorandum or “Proposal for a

Program of State Reforms.”

309

The memorandum, addressed to Max Joseph, begins with the

direct and declarative statement, “One of the greatest flaws of the Bavarian administration lies in

the defective organization of the central ministry. A precise division of the departments, so

useful for maintaining the order without which business cannot be carried out in a regular

fashion, is absolutely unknown there.”

310

Montgelas wrote from experience as a former civil

307

Ibid. German: “Ich bitte Sie, dem Direktoren mitzuteilen, dass es keinen treuren Freund

besitzt als mich. Die Freude, die ich jedesmal empfunden habe, wenn ich von Erfolgen der

Waffen der Republik hörte, hat mir bewiesen, dass ich Franzose bin.”

308

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, 367. German: “Aus Furcht, Österreich könnte sich auf Kosten

Bayerns mit Frankreich verständigen, wagte Max IV. Joseph auch dann den Austritt aus der

Koalition nicht, als nach der Rueckherr Napoleons aus Ägypten auf allen Fronten wieder der

französiche Vormarsch einsetze.”

309

Ansbach Memorandum

310

Ibid.

servant in the service of Karl Theodor. The Bavarian bureaucracy’s inadequacies, and the limited

authority of the elector, played a large role in the ineffectiveness of Karl Theodor’s reforms,

however non-committal they were. Any changes would require a strong executive and a

dedicated team to execute his orders. Montgelas continued;

Most of the ministers sit on the council merely as a matter of form. The chancellor is,

strictly speaking, the only one who works. Everything is referred to him. He alone

prepares and deals with all the questions on which the Sovereign has reserved the right of

decision. This arrangement, which was fine for the Middle Ages, when the simplicity of

handling things facilitated and lessened the work of government officials, is no longer

suitable today, as matters have become much more complicated.

311

Montgelas identified the problem of limited, unskilled bureaucracy also emphasized the need for

a larger, better trained bureaucracy than that which existed in Bavaria. Montgelas, however

failed to mention the powerful forces beyond the crown. This was likely a deliberate choice

influenced by his dismissal and the constraints imposed by prevailing German legal theories

about the role of cameral officials.

312

Max Joseph agreed with Montgelas’ ideas and made him

First Minister.

When Max Joseph dismissed Count Rumford in 1799, he was also conscious, like

Montgelas, that one man could neither fulfill all bureaucratic tasks nor could he persuade or

manage the other personalities and leaders of institutions that dominated Bavarian society.

Bavaria’s nobles were a powerful influence on the Elector. The Nobles also obstructed the

efforts of Karl Theodor to exchange territory or to make serious alterations to Munich’s

defenses. This was consistent with their defiance of Karl Theodor. The expansion of a civil

311

Ibid.

312

See chapter one discussion of the evolution of cameral philosophy and its impact on Bavarian

civil service.

bureaucracy, and the investment of such a body with any measure of authority would be

controversial. Bavaria, like Austria and Prussia, had a history of cameralists being the First

Ministers of Electors. Unlike these larger powers, however, Bavaria had no traditions of elite

service to the crown or respect for the centralized authority of a dedicated civil service.

313

Bavarian cameralists, unlike their Prussian counterparts in Berlin, did not have an arrangement

with their nobles for loyal military and civil service in exchange for titles bestowed by a king.

314

Any state reform in Bavaria would require first the expansion of cameral roles was needed

The role of cameral officials in larger states had more support than Bavaria where

competing interests such as nobles and the Church blocked the expansion of centralized state

power. Cameral officials were tasked with the broad, vague role of Polizei. As historian David

Lindenfeld observed this was defined by Immanuel Kant as, “public security, comfort, and

respectability...”

315

The authority of cameral officials was also dictated by interpretations of

“different rights of sovereignty (Hoheitsrechte) in German state law as developed by [Johann

Stephan] Pütter and others.”

316

Cameral officials, by 1799, still navigated broadly defined roles

as agents of state administration and conflict resolution between the numerous powerful estates

in Bavarian society. While historian Hans Rosenberg, wrote in his study, Bureaucracy,

Aristocracy, and Autocracy, the Prussian Experience, 1660-1815, “Thus, the nobility of descent

had lost ground, in terms of influence and numbers, in the exercise of the powers of leadership,”

such could not be said of Bavaria. Neither Bavarian electors, nor cameralists, were, to paraphrase

313

Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy, The Prussian Experience, 1660-

1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 69.

314

Ibid.

315

Lindenfeld, The Practical Imagination: German Science of State in the 19th Century the

Practical Imagination, 58.

316

Ibid.

the absolutist King Louis XIV, the state in and of itself. Any reform of a civil service would

require the subordination of estate notables, the Catholic Church and mendicant orders, and the

authority of urban patricians. Such a task could only be accomplished by the long-term project of

establishing an enlightened absolutist state. Montgelas made his case for the drastic expansion of

Bavarian cameral responsibilities to Max Joseph in 1799.

Montgelas’ theories of an expanded civil service were given practical expression in the

1799 “Directive on Reforming the Training of State Officials.” Montgelas’ memorandum, issued

on 25 June 1799, was a documented attempt to expand the civil bureaucracy for the purpose of

asserting a more direct and powerful electoral authority from Max Joseph himself. Montgelas

embarked on a long-term path to eliminate feudal privileges in 1799.

317

The directive marked a

strong departure in the training of civil servants from previous cameral universities. Montgelas

established benchmarks for a general course of study for university students who sought electoral

posts. The curricula for a prospective cameral official, in Montgelas’ opinion required one to;

“…first strive to obtain practical experience at a rural court in the following areas: the course of

judicial civil and criminal justice, the composition of legal documents and interrogations,

inventories and inspections…”

318

Such training required a prospective civil servant to play an

active role in also keeping abreast of the shifting demands of German agriculture and the legal

approach to land use.

317

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 24.

318

Graf Montgelas, Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin. “Bavarian Elector Max IV Joseph,

Directive on Reforming the Training of State Officials (June 25, 1799).” German History in

Documents and Images. Available at - https://ghdi.ghi-

dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3525. [accessed December 16, 2019].

Montgelas anticipated the inclusive nature of civil bureaucracy despite the lack of

centralized control exercised by Munich. The 1799 directive also required legal training to

include, but not be limited to, “guardianship and deposit affairs, matters relating to the church

and charitable foundations, the tax system, the oversight of military billeting, as well as other

matters associated with the state police, national culture, and the polity.”

319

This directive was,

however, purely theoretical. Any expansion of the civil bureaucracy into a functioning, all-

encompassing, professional staff required a further revolution in the establishment of the elector

as a sovereign beholden that was not beholden to any of the estates. Many elements within

Bavarian society, especially the Catholic Church and mendicant orders (Jesuits and Norbertines),

viewed such a French inspired, Enlightened bureaucracy as a danger to Bavaria.

320

Other

Bavarians looked to Prussia as both an ideal model of enlightened absolutism as well as a potent

ally to stave off Austrian influence.

321

Montgelas and Max Joseph, French educated and

sympathetic to the revolutionaries, looked to Paris for inspiration instead. Montgelas and Max

Joseph thus faced the crises of debt, declining agricultural production, foreign influence, and the

challenge of the elites within Bavaria.

Max Joseph was energetic and eager upon assuming the throne in 1799. Yet the new

Elector was immediately frustrated by the issue of tremendous state debt and the financial

insolvency of Bavaria’s Adelige Stände – the estate nobility who were key junior partners in his

rule over the Electorate.

322

Montgelas, paranoid and suspicious of the religious orders and estate

319

Ibid.

320

Kramer,“Bayern,” 360.

321

Ibid.

322

Benno Hubensteiner, Bayerisches Geschichte, Staat und Volk, Kunst und Kultur (München:

Süddeutscher, 1977), 343-344.

lords, was confrontational and insisted on controlling all aspects of reform.

323

This was also

necessary due to the powerful influence of these blocs. The 1799 directive offers precisely what

Montgelas’ looked for in his subordinates: professionalism and loyalty. Montgelas’ concluded

the directive with the statement, “Although this administrative training is obligatory, partly for

the sake of educating, partly for the sake of examining the aspiring counselors of justice, without

regard to rank, it is not a guarantee of an actual right to employment; rather, when vacancies

occur they will be filled by the trainees who prove to be the best qualified. Montgelas wished to

create a professional, permanent bureaucracy to replace existing notions of Polizei. The training

of bureaucrats echoed the revolutionary, and controversial program to expand cameral training to

a specialized civil bureaucracy in the service of an unchallenged sovereign. The idea of a more

powerful sovereign in the model of an enlightened absolutist, however, was something that

domestic pressures and foreign influence complicated if not made nearly impossible. Renewed

conflict soon brought new problems and dilemmas to the Electorate in 1799.

Bavaria in the War of the Second Coalition (1800)

Max Joseph’s participation in the War of the Second Coalition (1798-1802) was a

hindrance to Montgelas’ efforts to concentrate power in the hands of the King. Bavarian war

efforts also stalled Montgelas’ efforts to implement an Enlightenment-inspired state

administration. Montgelas’ ambitious plans were stymied in 1799 when the French Army

mounted an ambitious offensive in the direction of southwest Germany, exploiting their victories

won in the Rhineland and the subsequent territorial gains agreed upon by the Austrians and

Reichstädte at the Congress of Rastatt. Bavaria was limited to the status of a present power at the

323

Ibid., 359.

100

negotiations but not one with much of a voice. Electoral representatives, led by Georg Friedrich

von Zentner, watched as Mannheim, and much of the Rhineland Palatinate regions of Bavaria,

became the spoils of war for both victors and vanquished. When war resumed, Bavaria found

itself in a familiar place, sidled between the aggressive postures of Austria and Prussia.

324

Some

of Bavaria’s most fertile and valuable land was in the west where vineyards and large-scale

cereal agriculture produced significant profits for Güter estates.

325

Austria moved against France

to protect their northern Italian territories, bringing the war closer to the south of Bavaria. The

course of the war forced Bavarians to reassess how to protect agricultural lands.

The demands of the War of the Second Coalition forced the First Minister to reprioritize

the defense of the Electorate over his plans to overhaul economic, social, political, and religious

aspects of everyday life.

326

France delivered a crushing blow to the Russian Army in Switzerland

in 1799 and by 1800 was poised to strike deep into the heart of the Electorate of Bavaria.

Napoleon Bonaparte, now First Consul of the Directorate, fought and won a major victory at

Marengo over the Austrians, weakening the strength of the Habsburg defenses in the Rhineland.

Montgelas, and Max Joseph, faced a critical and difficult quandary. Both men were students of

the Enlightenment and championed the success of the French Revolution. French forces did,

however, lay waste to much of Bavarian territory during the War of the First Coalition. The

destructive foraging of the French Army deeply affected Bavarians. Bavaria thus contributed a

token effort to the War of the Second Coalition, adding its meager forces to the Austrian

324

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. State, Society, and Liberty: Studies in Political Theory and

Constitutional Law (New York: Berg Publishers, 1991), 13.

325

Max Spindler et. Al. Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte IV/I: Das Neue Bayern von 1800

bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H. Beck, 2003), 734.

326

Von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle Monarchie,

234.

101

command fighting the French west of Munich. French forces, under general Moreau, defeated

Austrian and Bavarian forces at the Battle of Hohenlinden on 3 December 1800. Austria, having

lost the Battle of Marengo to Napoleon Bonaparte in June 1800 as well, disengaged from the

conflict and thereafter, like Bavaria, sought peace terms from France.

Making Peace and Preserving Bavaria: Lunéville and Bavarian Economic Growth

Max Joseph and Montgelas used the defeat at Hohenlinden to sign a peace treaty with

France, giving Electoral Bavaria an advantageous position for territorial expansion at the

Reichsdeputationschluss (RDH), the Final Recess of the Holy Roman Empire. The Austro-

Bavarian defeat at Hohenlinden produced a rift between Vienna and Munich. France’s victory

caused the Austrian army to retreat eastward to defend Vienna from the French, abandoning

Munich to general Moreau and French forces. Francis II, the Holy Roman Emperor, signed a

new peace treaty with France at Lunéville in 1801 negotiating an end to hostilities while

finalizing territorial agreements first advanced at Rastatt from 1797-1799.

327

Lunéville cemented

the presence of France on the east bank of the Rhine River as well as territory claimed by

Electoral Bavaria. Article six of the Lunéville Treaty made specific reference to both Habsburg

and Bavarian territories in Batavia (the Austrian Netherlands and the adjacent Electoral

territories) as well as land in the Helvetic Republic, northern Italy, and territory in the Inn River

327

Waterloo 1815. Coppen, Bernard. “The Treaty of Lunéville 1801.” www.waterloo1815.com.

– http://www.1789-1815.com/tr_luneville_txt.htm [accessed December 21, 2019]. French: Art.

6. S. M. l’Empereur et Roi, tant en son nom qu’en celui de l’Empire germanique, consent à ce

que la République française possède désormais, en toute souveraineté et propriété, les pays et

domaines situés à la rives gauche du Rhin, et qui faisaient partie de l’Empire germanique ; de

manière qu’en conformité de ce qui avait été expressément consenti au congrès de Rastadt par la

députation de l’Empire, et approuvé par l’Empereur, le thalweg du Rhin soit désormais limite

entre la République française et l’Empire germanique ; savoir : depuis l’endroit où le Rhin quitte

le territoire helvétique, jusqu’à celui où il entre dans le territoire batave.”

102

basin southeast of Munich.

328

Any hopes of further integrating disparate Bavarian estates in the

Palatinate and northwestern Europe were dashed when the French also demanded the “Thalweg

of the Rhine” – a line connecting the lowest points of the River thus being ideal for navigating

the various segments of the valuable trade and communication route. Montgelas’ modernization

of Bavarian agriculture also depended on securing and promoting the useful transportation of

goods, a concept known as Wohlfahrts (welfare transportation).

329

Access to land was necessary

for the development of Bavaria’s economy.

Max Joseph and Montgelas needed to protect Bavaria’s fertile land and river access to

develop the funds necessary for state driven reforms. Bavaria, even prior to the reign of Max

Joseph, possessed valuable salt reserves and held a monopoly on transportation of the

commodity in southwestern Germany.

330

Tolls on river-based movement of salt for trade were an

integral part of the growth of the Bavarian economy by the early-nineteenth century.

Transportation beyond waterways was also taxed by Munich at .0075 florin per kilometer

Fuhrlohn (cartage) but was slow and inefficient.

331

The frequency of conflict on Electoral land,

as well as the division and exploitation of the various “spotted carpet” (Fleckerlteppich) estates

and territories, made transportation of goods and the collection of taxable commerce difficult.

332

Protecting this land, however, could not be done without fending off the influence of the

Habsburg Empire.

328

Ibid.

329

Eckart Schremmer, Die Wirtschaft Bayerns Vom hohen Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der

Industrialsierung, Bergbau, Gewerbe, Handel, 673.

330

Ibid.

331

Ibid., 677.

332

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Koenigreich und Freistaat, 33.

103

The Habsburg Emperor Francis II, ostensibly a protector of the smaller German states,

angled to solidify his territorial claims first raised at Campo-Formio and Rastatt, further

complicating Bavarian attempts to maintain its security and the profitability of economic

activity. In a secret exchange of the Treaty of Lunéville, ratified on 9 February 1801, France

recognized Austria’s claim to Berchtesgaden and even more territory in the vicinity of the

Archbishopric of Salzburg.

333

The Habsburg acquisition of Berchtesgaden was disconcerting for

Bavarians. Berchtesgaden was a provostry, an important cloister town between the Habsburg

Empire and Electoral Bavaria became part of the Archbishopric of Salzburg in 1802. The

provostry also had a profitable salt mine that fed into Bavaria’s vital commodity trading of the

mineral and the transportation tolls Munich collected. In sum, Bavaria’s territories were scattered

more so than prior to the treaties at Campo-Formio and Rastatt. Bavaria faced serious losses of

high yield lands, lucrative salt mines, and the trade arteries that sustained Munich’s authority and

the maintenance of Güter estates. Bavarian territory, however, was soon to expand as a result of

French success in the Rhineland.

By 1802-1803, Bavaria was a much smaller polity but, led by the regime of elector Max

Joseph and his First Minister Maximilian von Montgelas, began to use the expanded power of

the civil service to drive structured economic growth. Britain and France made peace in the 1802

Treaty of Amiens, thus concluding the hostilities of the War of the Second Coalition. Electoral

Bavaria now possessed the Duchy of Berg, Wurzburg, Bamberg, and Munich. Max Joseph

possessed an outwardly optimistic view of Bavaria’s status as a minor power in 1803 yet

333

Lunéville Treaty: French – “Article séparé et secret. Ainsi qu’il est convenu par l’article 5 du

traité patent, le grand-duc de Toscane obtiendra en Allemagne une indemnité pleine, entière et

équivalente de ses États d’Italie, à laquelle sont préférablement employés l’Archevêché de

Salzbourg et la Prévôté de Berchtesgaden.”

104

reevaluated the need for profitable industries. The thoughts of Max Joseph, and his ministers,

conveyed in the 1803 Churbaierisches Intelligenzblatt, expressed a shared desire to spur trade in

cities and towns. The Intelligenzblatt posed the frank question, “When will a manufactory be

recreated in the former fortress city of Ingolstadt?”

334

The report answered the question by laying

out a plan to mobilize Ingolstadt’s residents for the purpose of the various benefits of economic

development. Such taxable trades formed the new basis for revenue for the state coffers.

335

Munich’s civil servants recognized the various hardships posed by the years of war but offered a

bold new direction for recovery.

Land reorganization was part of a broader plan to shift the Bavarian economy from one

of subsistence to profitable, productive agriculture. One of the biggest challenges to this

transformation was the attitudes of ordinary Bavarians towards land use. The 1803

Churbaeirisches Intelligenzblatt reported; “It is difficult to lead people accustomed to a certain

way of life on a different path; - misery alone … only, the police must remove …. such that the

people who wish to stand upright again don’t despair…”

336

Here, the Bavarian court and

ministers repurpose the idea of the Hausnotdurft – a principle of mutually beneficial public

works and a “domestic necessity” - common in Gutsherrschaft system to spur economic

334

“Churbaierische Intelligenzblatt 1 Januar 1803.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

(BSB). https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/Vta2/bsb10710120/bsb:11595274?page=5. [accessed

December 23, 2019]. German: “Wann die ehemalige Festung Ingolstadt in eine Manufaktur-

Stadt umgeschaffen werden?”

335

Wilhelm Abel. Agrarpolitik, 20.

336

“Churbaierische Intelligenzblatt 1 Januar 1803.” German: “Schwer ist's, a “…. eine

bestimmte Lebensart… aus den Augen verlieren”?Lebensart schon gewöhnte Menschen einen

andern Weg zu führen; – allein die Not ist der größte Lehrmeister; – nur muß die Polizey [sic]

des Staates die größten Hindernisse aus dem Wege räumen, damit die Menschen, die sich wieder

auf richten wollen, nicht versagen, und die Möglichkeit ihres besseren Fortkommens niemals ans

den Augen verlieren.”

105

activity.

337

The state, acting as a more involved sponsor of Fabriken and Manufaktoren

(protoindustrial craft industries), enhanced structured state guided economic growth.

Such productive industries were part of the so called “bureaucratic rationality” of the

Montgelas’ state ministries. This produced the fulfillment in part of the Ansbach Memorandum

and the directive on the training of new Polizei.

338

A fragment of this report that remains for

public use also communicated the benefit for Handelsmänner (merchants) who worked with

Munich. The report’s authors explain that one beverage merchant in possession of a building

would see an increase in profits if the space was expanded with help from the state; “because

half of the remaining homes are destroyed, they only have a net yearly yield of 600 florin.; he

had not required service of the of the last troublesome buildings possessed, so there was a net

influx of 1,200 florin.”

339

Profitability of industries and land development helped the state,

landholders, and merchants. It also represented partly what economist Karl Polyani described as

a “great transformation” of economies towards “possessive market society” in a broader

European sense.

340

Bavarian territory shrank from successive wars but the state bureaucratic

impulse to engage with economic assistance and profitability of land use increased in scope and

intensity. The shared idea of necessity of the very spartan Gutsherrschaft system, the Idee der

Nahrung (the idea of subsistence) later defined by German economist Werner Sombart, were

337

Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early

Modern Bavaria," 378.

338

Lenger in Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870, 33.

339

“Churbaierische Intelligenzblatt 1 Januar 1803.” “…weil die Hälfte todt [sic] im Gebäude

ist; die des giebt ihm also nur einen jährlichen reinen Ertrag von 6oofl.; – hätte er das lästige

Gebände anzurichten nicht nothwendig gehabt, so würden ihm 12oo fl. rein einfließen.”

340

Renate Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early

Modern Bavaria,” 384.

106

well on their way to obsolescence. Further expansion of Bavarian territory and authority seemed

to be the last barriers to a meteoric rise in profitability and prominence for the Electorate.

An Independent Electoral Bavaria: The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803 and the

Secularization of Church Land

Max Joseph’s interest in state sponsored economic growth and land development was

assisted by territorial gains and a near complete legal departure from the institutions of the Holy

Roman Empire in 1803. The availability of land for private sale also increased dramatically as a

result of major territorial appropriation and annexation in 1803.

The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (RDH), the Final Recess of the Holy Roman Empire

of 1803, was the reorganization of the various duchies, free imperial cities, and archbishoprics of

the Rhineland territories, all but in name shattering the final vestiges of imperial authority in the

Reichstädte.

341

The RDH was the project of Napoleon Bonaparte for the purposes of

compensating Habsburg Austria and the German states for the loss of the Rhineland but was

carried out by the Emperor Francis II.

342

Francis II mediatized, or eliminated the privileges of

small state elites and archbishoprics before offering unincorporated duchies, free imperial cities,

and church affiliated lands to larger powers, even including Bavaria and Baden.

343

The Final

Recess of the Holy Roman Empire was finalized on 27 April 1803. In all, the RDH transformed

341

Alexander Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe (New York: Palgrave

MacMillan, 2003), 90.

342

Michael Rapport, Nineteenth Century Europe (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 35.

343

Günter Krings, "Das Alte Reich am Ende — Der Reichsdeputationshauptschluss

1803." JuristenZeitung 58, no. 4 (2003): 173-79. www.jstor.org/stable/20826691. [accessed May

12, 2020]. German: “Das Ziel war die endgültige Beseitigung der Österreichischen Vorherrschaft

im Reich. Als dieser Plan der Reichsdeputation vorgelegt wurde und Preussen, Bayern,

Württemberg und Hessen-Kassel fuer dessen sofortige und bedingungslose Annahme eintraten,

erzwang erst der Widerspruch des Kaisers, dass sich die Deputation uber haupt in der Sache mit

den Entschädigungsrelegungen befasste.”

107

Germany through the elimination of over 60 ecclesiastical territories.

344

The RDH was

instrumental in helping to expand the territorial holdings of smaller German states.

In Electoral Bavaria, Max Joseph and Montgelas accomplished two major long-term

objectives from the RDH: territorial expansion and independence from the legal and diplomatic

institutions of the Holy Roman Empire. Bavaria gained valuable territory such as the Duchy of

Berg in the Palatinate.

345

The Duchy’s capital of Dusseldorf was situated in an ideal location on

the Rhine River. Territorial expansion came at an ideal time for Bavarians. British grain prices

fell during the early-nineteenth century and German cereal prices, including Bavarian crops,

soared.

346

Land redistribution was also a product of the RDH in Bavaria. Land was sold by

princes, ecclesiastical bodies, and guilds while rents were shorter and more expensive (generally

in three-year terms).

347

The Gutsherrschaft system survived these land exchanges while urban

speculators sold available land to peasants, driving up private debt.

348

Land from the RDH was

valuable for agricultural productivity but also opened more markets to Bavarian merchants and

bankers.

Land was frequently sold off, with other assets, in state run auctions. The lasting effects

of war and the collapse of Imperial institutions produced a cash and credit crisis leading to

foreclosures.

349

Bavaria was a minor power when compared to Austria or Prussia in Germany.

The Electorate was, however, a much stronger polity than the sundry segments of land that it

344

Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe, 90.

345

Ibid., 71.

346

Wilhelm Abel, History of German Agricultural Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the

Century, 221.

347

Tim Blanning. The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the

Rhineland 1792-1802 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 138.

348

Ibid.

349

Ibid.

108

received in the RDH. Bavaria was one of ten Imperial Kreise before 1803, comprising one of the

smaller economies and a patchwork of territories.

350

The addition of new territories in the

Palatinate brought a more cohesive Bavaria to bear, including a corridor of land connecting the

Duchy of Berg, Altbayern, and Franconia to the northwest of Munich.

351

Bavarian, at times

peasants but mostly wealthy urban patricians, benefitted from the availability of more land to

rent but at much higher prices. Not all Bavarians possessed enough liquidity to participate in

such a market. Land availability, especially in valuable former ecclesiastical areas, benefitted

rural buyers or urban speculators who wished to acquire and sell parcels of land. Over eighty

percent of all Germans lived in rural areas at the beginning of the century.

352

Therefore, there

were certainly enough interested parties willing and able to acquire newly available land even

while the negotiations for the RDH were still being finalized.

There were also those willing to part with land, and immovable assets such as draught

animals, to acquire much-needed cash by the beginning of 1803. A Churbaierisches

Intelligenzblatt announcement for a cereal auction was posted on the authority of Karl Edler von

Burger, high court representative, rural judge, and steward on 14 January 1803.

353

Burger’s

notification was for grain in the town of Mering near Augsburg.

354

Mering had been a town in

Electoral Bavaria long before the territorial expansion of the RDH. The auction of assets from

Mering residents, however, were not subject for sale by a centralized bureaucratic authority

before 1803. Max Joseph, having left the Holy Roman Empire through the RDH now shed the

350

Brendan Simms, The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779-1850 (New York: St. Martin’s

Press, 1998), 8.

351

Ibid., 108-109.

352

Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe, 90.

353

“Churbaierische Intelligenzblatt 1 Januar 1803.”

354

Ibid. German: “Getreid, Zehen Versteigerung. Von churfürstlichen Kastenamts wegen wird

man in Verfolg höchster Entschließung.”

109

religious and legal traditions of the Empire on the advice of Montgelas.

355

Cereal prices,

including barley, wheat, corn, and maize usually came at the end of each Intelligenzblatt due to

their importance for a broad cross section of Bavarians ranging from the richest elites and

merchants to poorer farmers selling their crops. Cereals for sale included 10 bushels

(Schäffel)…1 quarter of a bushel of rye, and 31 bushels of barley.

356

Such wares were available

for purchase by the state at a time of major social transformations in Bavaria as well. Montgelas

attempted to establish a “monocratic” state where the liquidation and auction of these items

would be available for sale to a rapidly expanding, wealthier landholding segment of society.

357

Available land, even if it made requisitioning and auctioning off such foodstuffs, was a net

benefit for Montgelas’ attempt to make the state the sole power in Bavaria under the leadership

of Max Joseph. If the RDH helped Montgelas add more land to Elector Bavaria then the

acquisition of Church land under the policy of secularization in 1803 fulfilled a second, if not

more transformative moment in shifting Bavaria towards a more productive and profitable

agricultural power.

Secularization in 1803, the forced state takeover of Church lands and abolition of

ecclesiastical political power and jurisdiction, formed a key objective of Montgelas’ civil service.

The secularization of archbishoprics and their land was a long-term goal of Montgelas, and, in

part, many of his predecessors in the eighteenth century. The process of secularization was

initially led by French Revolutionaries at home and spread as Enlightenment inspired groups

aligned with Jacobinism emulated France.

358

Montgelas’ primary interest in these institutions,

355

Whaley, Germany in the Holy Roman Empire, 58.

356

“Churbaierische Intelligenzblatt 1 Januar 1803.”

357

Simms, The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779-1850, 86.

358

Lenger in Sperber, Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870. 33.

110

however, was the land and movable assets (i.e. trade goods and rents) they possessed. Bavarian

ecclesiastical land was worth an estimated 11 million gulden.

359

Such land was extremely

valuable because of its arable soil and valuable goods it produced ranging from abundant cereal

harvests to much desired beer and wines in former archbishoprics like that of Freising, just

outside of Munich. Funds for the state were also desperately needed. Bavarian state debt rose to

38 million gulden in 1803.

360

Montgelas, having subverted the authority of the Church, not only

seized much of their assets, mostly land, but did so by breaking with broader German and

Imperial legal traditions.

German legal traditions, observed in Bavaria, were the synthesis of Canonical, Roman,

and German schools of thought. Montgelas, like the Prussian and Austrian legal reformers of the

early-nineteenth century, advanced his own program for legal reform beginning with civil

service directive of 1799 and the first attempt at a draft resolution to establish a Bavarian

Landtag to make laws in 1800.

361

Montgelas combined the foreign and inner ministries and well

as the Finance Ministry and made himself, with the assent of Max Joseph, the First Minister of

all three.

362

Therefore, Montgelas was in a legal sanctioned position to supersede established

legal conventions and the recognized traditions of estate cooperation via cameral intermediaries.

Put simply, Montgelas, acting on behalf of Max Joseph, was the Bavarian state.

Montgelas’ seizure of Church land and sale to private holders constituted a key moment

in the transformation of Bavaria’s economy as well as the pivotal role of the state, not estate

359

Dietmar Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern (München: Süddeutscher Verlag,

1988), 162-163.

360

Ibid., 165.

361

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 23-24.

362

Ibid.

111

holders and renters, in arbitrating and brokering land transfer. Having taken Church assets,

Montgelas moved to implement physiocratic inspired reforms for land development emphasizing

productive agriculture.

363

The results of this transfer were significant. Historian Tim Blanning

asserted that as much as 50% of all land was acquired by urban speculators and members of

Bavaria’s middling order.

364

In addition land transfer from Churches produced much

consternation among Bavaria’s notables and poorest ranks alike. The sale of Church land was

part and parcel of a, “huge wave of secularization [that] enabled the Bavarian state to strengthen

the vital class of prosperous independent peasant proprietors [but was] less successful, however,

in persuading the nobility to follow suit.”

365

Church land was also integral to massive poor relief

schemes independent of projects, like Rumford’s military workhouses, to feed the poor with

cheap bread, beer, and other foods.

366

Bavarian Burghers were less successful, if interested, in

fulfilling a similar duty to the poor.

367

This would have dire consequences for many of Bavaria’s

neediest when the Napoleonic Wars began later in 1803. Specific property transactions were a

daily occurrence.

Instructive examples of land transfer to ordinary Bavarian property buyers and titled

nobility can be found in both regional announcements made by the state as well broadsheets. One

notice published by the general commissioner regarding land jurisdiction and the availability of

ecclesiastical land for sale was posted in the Churfurstl. Oberpfälzisches Wochenblat on 1 April

363

Theodor Freiherr von der Goltz, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 19.

364

Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland

1792-1802, 138.

365

Simms, The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779-1850, 88.

366

Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland

1792-1802, 213.

367

Ibid.

112

1803.

368

The report details the removal of Church authority over land, something quite common

in the wake of secularization as over 73 distinct Church territories of the Pralätenorden were

now under Munich’s control.

369

This specific land seizure stated, “…his prince-electorial

Highness has deigned to appoint by highest decree of March 15

the unassigned parish Anzing

in Bavaria to the spiritual council kanonifuss, Anton Buber, highly praised by the prince-

electorial Office of the General Commissioner.”

370

Buber was praise as a representative

appointed by a general commissioner in Freising to assume control over Church land in Anzing,

an Upper Bavarian town. The presence of a state representative in the Freising in April 1803,

however, is revealing. Montgelas’ regime acted quickly, bringing Freising, a valuable and

historic center of Church activity in Bavaria, under Electoral control. Furthermore, state

authority meant that an expensive standing army occupied new land and enforced the will of the

Elector with unprecedented authority. The presence of Munich’s civil servants was inconsistent,

but an attempt was made to assert direct influence over people living in Freising and Anzing to

the north.

The role of the Bavarian state was a necessary vehicle for social and economic

transformation regardless of whether, in the context of modernization theory, it was successful in

this task.

371

Munich’s enforcement of sweeping land reform was not the passive role played by

368

“Churfürstl. Oberpfälzisches Wochenblatt Nro. 13.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

(BSB). https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10346102_00107_u001/1 [accessed

December 21, 2019].

369

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 29.

370

“Churfürstl. Oberpfälzisches Wochenblatt Nro. 13.”

German: “desgleichen haben seine churfurstliche durchlaucht vermog höchster Entschliessung

vom 15ten März die erledigte Pfarren zu Anzing in Baiern den vom Churfurstl

Generalkommissariat zu Freising angerühmt geistlichen Rath kanonifuss, Anton Buber zu

verleihen geruhet.”

371

“The German Family.” Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and

Twentieth-

113

eighteenth century cameralists. Instead, both civil servants, and a military unit, the Fugger Light

Cavalry Regiment, made Bavarian control in Freising, and its former archbishopric, a visible

reality.

372

The activities of religious life, however, were not subject to any French inspired

control or domination. Upper Bavaria also remained mostly Catholic and its spiritual

contributions for its parishioners remained largely unchanged.

373

Protestant denominations were

also protected under Bavarian rule with the Tolerance Edict of 1803.

374

Montgelas’ ministries

now played an active role in transforming the physical dimensions of Bavarian ecclesiastical and

former feudal land, asserting authority through direct means of policing and legal authority, and

the dissemination of Enlightened ideas of religious toleration. Threats of resumed European

hostilities, however, threatened to bring war again to Electoral Bavaria, jeopardizing once again,

any attempt at reform.

Bavarian Plans for Land Amelioration and the War of the Third Coalition (1805-1806)

Montgelas’ efforts to expand integrate new Bavarian territories and seize former feudal

and ecclesiastical land faced a significant test with the need to compensate landholders for lost

tracts and to persuade common farmers to adopt new, experimental cultivation techniques.

Bavarian ownership of Church lands and new tracts acquired during the Final Recess of the Holy

Roman Empire in 1803 was central to funding Montgelas’ ambitious plans. Montgelas remained

committed to a project of state centralization and the promotion of domestic and foreign trade of

Century, Germany ed. Richard Evans and W.R. Lee. (London: Routledge, 2016), 86.

372

“Churfürstl. Oberpfälzisches Wochenblatt Nro. 13.”

German: “Se. Kurfurstliche Durchlaucht haben dem Kommandanten des Reg. Fugger Chebaurs

Leger Fugger die Stadtkommandants Freising verliehen…”

373

Claus Arnold. "Internal Church Reform in Catholic Germany." In The Churches: The

Dynamics of Religious Reform in Northern Europe, 1780-1920, edited by Van Einjatten Joris

and Paula Yates, 159-84. Leuven (Belgium): Leuven University Press, 2010. (161)

374

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 37.

114

grain, salt, wine, and other movable goods. Montgelas was impeded by the Gemenglage

(mixture) of laws, traditions, and regional customs that made the integration and homogenization

of Bavarian identity and governance difficult.

375

In sum, in 1803 alone, Bavaria gained 288

square miles of land, 843,000 new subjects, and the cities and towns of Würzburg, Passau,

Freising, Eichstatt, and Bamberg.

376

Revenue generated from land in the form of rents and land

sales fueled much of Montgelas’ sweeping reforms. The process of transforming land after

allodification was called “redemption” where land was bought and sold for cash

compensation.

377

Fears of governmental based oppression also abounded but the First Minister’s

representatives discounted concerns of potential abuses by promising some titled landholders’

compensation or indemnities for the loss of land. A general report entitled, “The Indemnification

of the Serene Electoral House of the Bavarian Palatinate” was an examination of the financial

and political ramifications of efforts to assimilate new land, buyers, and to address compensation

claims for those affected.

378

The indemnification report chronicled the fears of those who lost

land or had it purchased at lower costs by the state.

379

The report, prepared for Max Joseph,

features a rebuff of critics of secularization: “With the progress and the exercise of such regents

[are] ordinances one must not fear from the secularization of the monasteries that an Egyptian

darkness will break over the next generations.”

380

Redemption, though a dynamic break from

375

Ibid., 33.

376

Ibid., 30.

377

Hermann Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhundert (München: C.H. Beck, 1977), 50.

378

“Die Indemnationslände des Durchlautigsten Churhauses Pfalzbayern.” Digipress Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek (BSB) [accessed 22 December 2019].

379

Ibid. This concerned mostly monasteries or cloisters.

380

“Die Indemnationslände des Durchlautigsten Churhauses Pfalzbayern,” 167. German: “Mit

der Fortschritten und der Ausuebung solcher Regenten: Verordnungen darf man von der

115

land rights of the past, was more generously compensated in Bavaria than it was in other German

states.

381

Rural buyers, however, did not develop land as quickly or productively as Montgelas

envisioned.

Montgelas read leading agronomic theories from thinkers such Albrecht Thär and his

translations of English agronomist Arthur Young. Max Joseph sent an official to Celle to speak

with Thär regarding agricultural organization in enclosures to enhance production.

382

Max

Joseph’s subjects, however, were not agronomists. The Bavarian peasant farmer, like other

Germans in the early-nineteenth century, was illiterate, superstitious, and stubborn.

383

Montgelas’ parochialism and expectation that farmers would embrace the rational, advanced

notions of efficient cash crop production met with the practical, if hardheaded peasant farming

approach. Still, Montgelas’ approach was bold and much-needed. Bavaria needed additional

funds and greater crop yields to survive the climate of European wars. Peasant farmers could ill-

afford the resources necessary for the proposed improvements on their land. Credit was in large

part unavailable to them as well.

384

Larger obstacles to agrarian reform, however, loomed in

1803 as Europe was once again at war and Bavaria, as it was in conflicts past, the battleground.

The War of the Third Coalition (1803-1806) provided Max Joseph and Montgelas with

the opportunity to further cement the role of the Wittelsbach Dynasty in Bavaria, the role of the

centralized state bureaucracy, and protection from foreign invaders wishing to appropriate the

Secularisation der Kloster gar nicht befürchten, dass eine egyptische Finsterniss ueber die

Nächsten Generationen hereinbrechen werde.”

381

Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des

18. Jahrhundert, 50.

382

Von der Goltz, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 13.

383

John G. Gagliardo, From Pariah to Patriot: The Changing Image of the German Peasant,

1770–1840. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969), 3.

384

Ibid., 3.

116

Electorate’s resources. France, under the leadership of first consul Napoleon Bonaparte, was

frustrated by the inability to retain control of Haiti and sold the Louisiana Territories to the

United States on 30 April 1803 for 68 million Francs.

385

Napoleon used the proceeds to prepare

for an invasion of Britain at his base in Boulogne. Britain declared war on France on 18 May

1803 over lingering tensions that failed to dissipate in the aftermath of the 1802 Treaty of

Amiens. The Third Coalition was formed between Austria and Russia with Britain also at war

with France, largely at sea. Austrian and Russian armies mobilized and planned an advance into

France, again through Bavaria. Austria, in the words of military historian Charles Esdaile, hoped

to contain France at the expense of Bavarian territory.

386

Max Joseph sought to protect Bavaria

from the fallout of a potential war fought in the Electorate. Napoleon crowned himself emperor

of France on 2 December 1804, further provoking the coalition arrayed against him and

increasing the chance of an armed struggle on Bavarian soil.

France, Austria, and Russia all moved towards battle in 1805 while Max Joseph sought to

avoid war. Max Joseph signed the defensive Treaty of Bogenhausen with France on 2 May 1805,

removing Bavaria from hostilities and refusing to ally the Electoral state with Austria.

387

This

decision was critical to preserving Bavarian autonomy and the future expansion of the state

under Max Joseph. Austria, as predicted invaded Bavaria in late 1805 as Napoleon moved his

forces from Boulogne to confront the Austrian Army first at Ulm, on Bavarian soil, and then in a

crushing victory, destroyed the combined Austrian and Russian forces at Austerlitz on 2

December 1805. Bavaria, as a defensive, neutral power (as well as being a buffer state between

385

George Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford

University Press, 2008), 101.

386

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 92.

387

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 13.

117

Imperial France and Austria, stood to benefit from a settlement ending hostilities between France

and Austria. The Treaty of Pressburg (Bratislava) in 1805 resulted in Austria’s loss of territory in

the Rhineland, northern Italy, and southeastern Bavaria.

388

Max Joseph proclaimed the Kingdom

of Bavaria in December 1805 after the Treaty of Pressburg. Max Joseph and Montgelas now

stood to gain from further territorial adjustments as France sought to reorder client states in the

German lands.

An Independent Power or a Napoleonic Client State? The Kingdom of Bavaria

Max Joseph and Montgelas used the Treaty of Pressburg and the formation of the French

led Confederation of the Rhine to cement the process of mediatization. This process was eased

by the French recognizing and assisting a new Kingdom of Bavaria. Montgelas used the period

between the Final Recess of the Holy Roman Empire and the 1806 Treaty of Pressburg to erode

legal and rental privileges of much of the elite Stände (estate) and to secularize Church lands.

389

This process had been underway in France since 1789 and was known as allodification – the

separation of land from privilege and title and its definition and privately held, immovable

property.

390

French occupation and influence east of the Rhine River lent support to the idea of

estate allodification in the German states. The last vestiges of the Holy Roman Empire were also

dissolved in 1806 with Napoleonic victories over Austria.

Max Joseph, having established the Kingdom of Bavaria in December 1805, formally

proclaimed himself of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria on 1 January 1806. Napoleon then

388

Ibid.

389

Kellebenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18.

Jahrhunderts, 49-50.

390

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern

Property, 25.

118

asked Max Joseph to marry off his daughter Augusta Amalie to Eugene Beauharnais, the stepson

of the French Emperor.

391

Thereafter, Napoleon recognized Bavaria as a Kingdom and also gave

Max Joseph the cities of Würzburg and Salzburg in part because, “southern Germany [w]as

central to the [French] Imperium.”

392

For its part, “interest, complicity, and intimidation, “ tied

Bavaria to France.

393

Max Joseph and Montgelas made careful decisions in regards to

Napoleonic France, hoping to leverage their favored status within the Imperium for their own

ends. Bavaria ceded the Duchy of Berg, a loosely connected territory received in the 1803 RDH,

to France.

394

Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine in July of 1806, six months

after he was victorious in the War of the Third Coalition. The Confederation of the Rhine

included sixteen German states in three classifications; model states, dependent states, and

smaller independent states that joined the Confederation later in 1806. The Kingdom of Bavaria

was, ostensibly, a key dependent state of the Confederation of the Rhine and was rewarded with

territories. Max Joseph was also required to furnish troops (30,000), draught animals, and food

for Napoleonic forces.

395

State debt, however, was reduced to 19 million gulden in 1806,

demonstrating, that at least initially, Bavaria’s close ties to France were mutually beneficial.

396

Furthermore, if Austria and its allies ever challenged France again Bavaria would be again find

itself at war, this time as a small combatant Kingdom and not merely a host for battles between

larger powers.

391

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 235.

392

Ibid., 232.

393

Lenger in Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870, 32.

394

Ibid., 235.

395

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 235.

396

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 165.

119

Montgelas attempted to use the strength of the Napoleonic alliance to advance and

accelerate the process of allodification and redemption. Bavarian agriculture, though transferred

to private holders, was not used productively. Broad trends for German farming included the

uneven adoption of the three-field system with a four-segment left fallow with clover and turnip

cultivation.

397

Montgelas’ Finance Ministry was responsible for brokering land sales and

encouraged the transfer of land at cash prices. Such a process could only be done voluntarily, and

the enclosure of land among the nobility was an uncommon occurrence.

398

The Bavarian

ministries also could only purchase land back upon the consent of Güter elites.

399

Montgelas

hoped this scheme would lead to record profits generated by Bavarian agriculture. State debt,

however, was out of control, rising to 80.6 million gulden in the span of only one year.

400

Montgelas needed funds to pay off this tremendous debt, spur economic growth, and provide the

Confederation of Rhine with Napoleon’s expected levies. Montgelas’ initial intent was to

encourage more domestic trade by reducing internal customs duties.

401

Land taxes (Grundsteuer)

were therefore increased to generate more revenue for allodified land.

402

Montgelas’ plans were

well-planned but the reservations of Güter lords impeded the fulfilment of any logical land-

related improvements. Land taxes were swiftly overhauled in all regions of the Kingdom of

Bavaria, the effects of which were most felt in newly acquired lands.

397

Gagliardo, From Pariah to Patriot: The Changing Image of the German Peasant, 1770–1840,

11.

398

Simms, The Struggle for Mastery in Germany, 1779-1850, 86.

399

Lenger in Sperber, Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870, 98.

400

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 165.

401

Lenger in Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870, 33.

402

Ute Planert, "From Collaboration to Resistance: Politics, Experience, and Memory of the

Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Southern Germany." Central European History 39, no. 4

(2006): 676-705, 684.

120

In May of 1806 Britain blockaded European ports controlled by France prompting

Napoleon Bonaparte to form the Continental System, an internal blockade designed to destroy

London’s economy, followed by a formal trade embargo in the Milan Decree of 1807. In

Bavarians rankled at the various trade restrictions. The British trade blockade in May 1806

destroyed the value of Bavarian grain. The sum of Bavaria’s 1806 crop worth was 445,203

gulden for wheat, corn, and cereal owner’s profits respectively.

403

This was a ten percent dip in

crop worth compared to the previous month.

404

This market was recorded by the Bavarian

government (Churfürstl. Polizei) on 3 May 1806, just over one week before the imposition of the

British naval blockade.

405

Munich, and regional governments like Würzburg, were ill-equipped,

however, to keep the grain market stable in the event of a severely depressed economic climate.

In June, grain prices dipped suddenly. The sum of crops on Würzburg’s cereal market held on 30

June 1806 plummeted to 352 gulden for wheat bushels, 115 gulden for corn, and 3 gulden for

grain owners.

406

The impositions of the campaigning season likely had an effect on depressed

grain prices as Napoleon’s forces practiced foraging as they passed through Bavaria (and other

territories). Napoleon defeated the Prussian Army at Jena-Auerstedt on 14 October 1806 thus

crushing the last German resistance to his military.

Napoleon passed through Bavaria on his way to this confrontation, requisitioning food

supplies from local sources. The sum total of grain values in Würzburg on 31 October 1806, over

two weeks after the battle, had still not recovered. 272 gulden worth of wheat remained as colder

403

“Würzburger Intelligenzblatt Nro. 127.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10388012_00185_u001/1

[accessed December 23, 2019].

404

Ibid.

405

Ibid.

406

“Würzburger Intelligenzblatt Nro. 127.”

121

fall temperatures set in. Montgelas was still integrating new lands into the Kingdom of Bavaria

while and mediatizing Güter estate land and Church plots. The plummeting grain market

frustrated Montgelas’ plans.

407

On 21 November 1806 a triumphant Napoleon issued the Berlin

Decree, forbidding the import of British goods. Bavarian cereal worth soared but the value of the

lowest prices of grain were not available for holders, perhaps implying that all grain reserves

were sold or requisitioned by 10 December 1806.

408

Bavarian markets, supported temporarily by

Napoleonic victory, were not providing profits for most cereal wholesalers. Bavaria’s elite estate,

the Adelige Stände, was also severely in debt and in search for credit and liquid assets.

409

Efforts

at integration produced dependency on the state and a coercive state of affairs (Sachezwang)

governed centralization efforts, debt relief, and bankruptcy (Bankrott).

410

In 1807, state debt worsened, and the economic demands imposed by Napoleon

increased. In December of 1807, Napoleon proclaimed the Milan Decree authorizing in article 3

of the treaty the seizure of any goods from vessels flying the English flag or that stopped in

English ports.

411

In theory, the denial of English goods from the continents represented an

appropriate protectionist measure, in practice it meant market restrictions for European states and

a system of extraction brought by French domination. As markets were restricted and land

development lagged, Montgelas sought to reaffirm the role of the centralized Munich ministries

407

Lenger in Sperber, Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870, 53.

408

“Würzburger Intelligenzblatt Nro. 127.”

409

Kellebenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18.

Jahrhunderts, 52.

410

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Koenigreich und Freistaat, 33.

411

“Rejoinder to His Britannic Majesty's order in council of the 11th November 1807.”

The Waterloo Association. http://www.napoleon-

series.org/research/government/france/decrees/c_decrees16.html. [accessed December 23, 2019].

122

in Bavaria. The state required legitimacy among its subjects and a fully articulated process of

lawmaking and limited representation.

The First Bavarian Constitution and Its Impact on Property (1808-1809)

Montgelas’ land reforms were well-planned and received great assistance from Napoleon

Bonaparte through the latter’s military victories. The First Minister wisely allied with Napoleon

but could not, like many other German statesmen, weather the storm of French embargoes and

levies. Ordinary Bavarians paid the price for French trade restrictions. Montgelas proved more

able than his predecessors in enacting land reform but could not overcome the power of estate

notables or the destructive nature of the Napoleonic Wars. Hostilities and the extractive

Napoleonic trade restrictions and military demands for campaigns further damaged the Bavarian

state. Bavaria was plunged into debt including 10 million additional gulden (Neueverschuldung)

in 1806 alone. Montgelas, who had spent the past ten years promoting the benefits of centralized

bureaucracy and the eradication of elite privileges, struggled to contain the economic decline and

failure to generate productive agriculture. The First Minister took advantage of the Final Recess

of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803 to erode Church privileges and weakened guild power in

urban centers.

412

Bavaria had become more monocratic under the leadership of Max Joseph and

Montgelas giving the state greater controls over agricultural production and the ability to assist

flagging landed estates. French policies, so crucial to winning Bavarian sovereignty, produced

new problems. Grain prices plummeted in 1806-1807 and a credit crunch hampered attempts for

many Bavarians to buy and develop land.

413

Bavarian woes were consistent with those faced by

412

Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics and Politics in

Germany, 1815-1871, 207.

413

Abel, History of German Agricultural Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the 19

Century, 223.

123

other states in the German confederation demonstrating that Montgelas, while not at fault for

Bavaria’s precipitous decline, was yet another victim of Napoleonic exploitation.

Montgelas also pursued the abolition of the Güter estates at what was at first an

opportune moment. French dominance destroyed all rivals to the Wittelsbach Dynasty and

placed Max Joseph and his family in high standing. Napoleon’s endless appetite for war,

however, destroyed these efforts. Max Joseph formally abolished Güter estates and set up a

council of state with four administrative divisions in 1806.

414

Montgelas envisioned a swift

process of divvying up estates. The property market for estate land sales was now open.

Purchasing power for most Bavarians was limited and estate holders were reluctant to give up

land. By comparison, in 1807, Bavaria’s defanged northern rival, Prussia, implemented a new

constitution that broadened property buying rights though it excluded many of the poorest of its

subjects. Montgelas, thus facing internal and external pressure, persuaded king Max Joseph to

support the drafting of a Bavarian constitution to codify and legitimize the primacy of the

Bavarian state. The key mechanism for future agricultural development was the abolition of

Güter estates and their connected privileges. Such a program was supported by the drafting of

the first Bavarian constitution in 1808. This document gave Max Joseph the ability to transform

Bavaria land for the betterment of the Kingdom, a crucial step for securing the economic vitality

of his state. Napoleon’s demands, however, complicated these reforms.

The product of this effort was the First Bavarian Constitution issued on 1 May 1808. The

Constitution was a document that declared the legitimacy of Max Joseph’s rule as an

unchallenged sovereign and his absolute support for the administrative powers of Bavaria’s

414

Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe, 91.

124

bureaucratic ministries under Montgelas’ direction. Max Joseph’s constitution asserted that, “We

are governed by the conviction that as long as the State remains a mere aggregate of separate

parts, it can neither achieve its full potential strength, for which it has the means, nor can the

individual members aim to impart upon themselves all the advantages of civil union.”

415

Therefore, this Gemeindeedikt (the Community Edict) made challenges from other institutions

in Bavaria theoretically obsolete. The document continues, “We have sought already through

many ordinances to eliminate the differences in the administrative systems in our Kingdom, as

far as it was possible beforehand, to establish a more uniform system for direct and indirect

obligations, and to make the most important public institutions of the collective more equivalent,

through establishments that at the same time ensure their distinctiveness.”

416

A large-scale

reorganization of Bavaria followed based on Montgelas’ recommendations. Montgelas altered

the Bavarian state by dividing it into fifteen administrative divisions (Kreise) in June 1808. This

was done to further integrate the Kingdom’s new territories.

417

In addition, Montgelas oversaw

the creation of a uniform tax system and pension circulation scheme (section 8, article 3).

418

These pensions were necessary for the survival of Bavaria’s mediatized nobility. Max Joseph

was now the sovereign of Bavaria with unprecedented power over the governance and salaries

paid out by the Bavarian state. For ordinary Bavarians from noble to common subject alike, this

was scant comfort.

For Private land borders, however, land boundaries and pension payments were vague

and ill-defined despite the expansion of Bavarian centralized authority. Land-related pensions, as

415

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416

Ibid.

417

Grab, Napoleon and the Transformation of Europe, 104.

418

Ibid.

125

well as titles and privileges, were brought to the attention of the Bavarian state for years

following the establishment of the First Bavarian Constitution. A report about former feudal land

and ownership title was brought before the Finance Ministry in December 1808.

419

This specific

case, brought before the administrative authority of the Isar-Kreis near Munich, considered an

ambiguous loophole (contra fiscum) in the feudal title of land compared to the new government

sanctioned, private enclosure title.

420

The Royal Finance Direction (Königliche bayerisches

Finanz Direktion) of the Isar administrative division received the case on 30 November 1808 and

a royal court resolution (Hofgerichts Resolution) preserved the fiefdom of Augustien

Blaumuller.

421

The central authority of Munich was now guaranteed by a legally binding

document but compromises were still possible. Munich’s authority was now declared by official

document, the 1808 constitution, but lingering financial and legal concerns regarding land title

would persist for years to come. By 1808, however, land, the productive resource Montgelas

intended to use to fund the independent status of Bavaria, was finally under state control. By

1809, war again arose, this time The War of the Fourth Coalition, and Bavaria itself as a minor

power, was threatened with the destruction of its allodification scheme and the centralized state

bureaucracy that created it.

419

Finance Ministry (Stadtrentamte München im Isarkreise) Discussion of the Feudal

Allodification of the Manorial Estate of August Blaumüller, 13 December 1808, in BHStA MF

17373.

420

Ibid. German: “Die Streitsache als Zug als über alle contra fiscum...feudalien.”

421

Finance Ministry (Stadtrentamte München im Isarkreise) Discussion of the Feudal

Allodification

of the Manorial Estate of August Blaumüller, 13 December 1808, in BHStA MF 17373.

126

Conclusion: Land and the Process of Bavarian Statehood, 1797-1809

Allodification was a necessary paradigm shift in notions of private land ownership that

laid the foundation for the modernization of an independent Bavarian state and the productive

use of agriculture to spur economic growth and the power of the new Kingdom. Bavaria’s path to

statehood was defined by the complex domestic challenge of feudal nobility and pressure from

foreign powers. The Elector could not act independently and received scant support from

notables. The legacy of Bavaria’s penultimate elector, Karl Theodor, was typical of the ancien

regime. Karl Theodor’s regime was also handicapped by the power of Bavarian estates such as

the Güter lords and the Catholic Church. In the elector’s defense, notions of a limited role of

cameral officials and the financial capability to transform the taxation and landowning system

was difficult process to execute without a major disruption to everyday Bavarian life. That task,

and challenges, were undertaken by the Enlightenment-inspired leadership of Max Joseph, first

as Elector then King, and his ambitious First Minister Montgelas. Montgelas and Max Joseph

used the dangerous climate of European war from 1799-1809 to promote Bavarian statehood as a

kingdom, independent of Austrian control. This process hinged upon the productive use of land.

Land was allodified through the separation of feudal title and the possession of land. This

affected landed nobility and the Church the most. The complicated, expensive process produced

mixed results and was not fully understood by Bavarian subjects. The territorial expansion and

spread of state authority from 1803-1809 also produced friction between subject and leadership.

Bavaria’s close ties with Napoleonic France, key to its recognition as a sovereign state in 1806,

threatened to bankrupt and destroy the southern German kingdom by 1809 when renewed

conflict threatened to destroy every reform attempted, or accomplished, by Max Joseph and

Montgelas.

127

Chapter 3: Bavaria and the Congress System: Postwar Allodification Efforts

(1809-1817)

Bavarian state guided allodification (the separation of land possession from title or

privilege) was severely disrupted by the costly demands of Napoleon Bonaparte during his

campaigns from 1809-1815. The Kingdom of Bavaria’s resources were so depleted that the wars

caused famine and debt crises for years following their conclusion. Bavaria became a dependent

state in the Confederation of the Rhine system (1806-1813). Montgelas capitalized on the

battlefield successes of Napoleon Bonaparte to build a centralized state bureaucracy against the

wishes of Bavarian notables and the defeated Habsburg Empire and Kingdom of Prussia.

Napoleon also recognized Bavaria as a Kingdom and gifted the new state additional lands at the

expense of its defeated neighbor, Austria. Montgelas made all Bavarian laws part of a unitary

system of rule under King Max Joseph. This new centralized law was implemented through a

general community edict (Gemeindeedikt) and was enforced by state bureaucrats. Montgelas’

opportunism was well-timed and well-planned. The unification of Bavaria under a single ruler

and his civil bureaucracy provided a vital foundation for the future economic health of the

Bavarian state. Napoleon’s seemingly unending wars and exploitation of client states, including

Bavaria, however, nearly destroyed all the important land-related reforms of the era.

Chapter three is therefore concerned with the consequences that the Kingdom of Bavaria

faced in large part due to the unceasing was of Napoleon Bonaparte. Montgelas pursued a long-

term goal of transforming Bavarian land into productive plots.

422

Land was to be “redeemed” on

a voluntary basis from its elite holders. This redemption program, unfortunately, stagnated and

422

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 13.

128

yielded few practical, immediate benefits for the state. Landed elites were cash poor and sought

greater assistance for their pensions and haggled endlessly over the price of their land.

423

The

simultaneous decision to commit vast state resources to land redemption while feeding

Napoleon’s armies put too much strain on the Bavarian state. The Bavarian state was strong and

well-supported so long as Napoleon’s armies were victorious. Trade embargoes and the steep

demands of Napoleon for men, draught animals, and food brought Montgelas’ regime to a

breaking point in 1813.

Montgelas’ efforts did modernize the state bureaucracy and introduced a systemic,

coherent, and uniform legal system to Bavaria. Critics viewed Montgelas’ tenure as First

Minister as “an interruption” in the stable, if perhaps unremarkable, management of Bavaria’s

finance and justice ministries.

424

In reality, it was the unstable nature of the Napoleonic Wars,

and Bonaparte himself, that destroyed the first coherent expression of unitary Bavarian rule and

effort to efficiently manage state finances. When Bavaria found itself on the losing side in 1813,

critics blamed Montgela for the disastrous alliance. The Kingdom of Bavaria was stripped of

territories in the Innviertel, Trentino, and the South Tyrol. State debt soared. Powerful restoration

powers led by Prince Klemens von Metternich also viewed Max Joseph with suspicion. Bavaria

was reduced in size at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Famine and civil unrest also followed.

The Crown Prince Ludwig, Marshal Karl Wrede, and the jurist Graf Georg Friedrich von Zentner

removed Montgelas from power in 1817 ending Bavaria’s first complicated experience with land

allodification.

423

Ibid., 97.

424

Jӧrg Rode. Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001), 21.

129

The 1808 Constitution: Legal Context

The reformers who drafted Bavaria’s constitution in 1808 eliminated the jurisdictional

privileges of the Güter estates and subordinated nobles to the authority of King Max Joseph. The

conference to draft the constitution was a secretive affair. The Secret Council (Geheimen Rat)

was dominated by Montgelas whose constitutional committee faced opposition from the twenty-

two-year-old Crown Prince Ludwig. Ludwig, who first appeared at the conference on 11 May

1808 as his father’s representative, perceived Montgelas as a threat to his father’s rule.

425

Ludwig

opposed the constitution due to its similarities to the Napoleonic model. The Crown Prince also

served under Napoleon and found the French to be elitist and wasteful of Bavarian resources.

Ludwig was therefore opposed to anything French-influenced, much to the chagrin of his father,

Max Joseph.

426

Whatever problems Ludwig had with the constitution, the 1808 document,

became law. Ludwig, however suspicious of Montgelas’ role in the Bavarian state, would benefit

from the uniquely powerful Bavarian constitution when it came time to solidify his own rule in

subsequent years.

The new constitution dramatically transformed the oversight for the ministries of Bavaria

through the inclusion of a framework for hierarchical allegiance to Max Joseph and his First

Minister Montgelas. King Max Joseph proclaimed the first constitution on 25 May 1808 making

the power of the Wittelsbach Dynasty and its civil bureaucracy the supreme authority in the

Kingdom of Bavaria. The constitution was a fusion of Napoleonic legal influence and the older

425

Weis, Montgelas 1759 - 1838. Sonderausgabe: Eine Biographie 1759 – 1838, 380.

426

Weigand, Katharina and Alois Schmid. Die Herrscher Bayerns 25 historische Portraits von

Tassilo III. bis Ludwig III (München: C.H. Beck), 2001.

130

traditions of Germany’s enlightened despots – the powers of the Austrian and Prussian

Machtstaaten. The Gemeindeedikt (community edict) established the uniformity of the

centralized rule of the Wittelsbach Dynasty as ordained by the 1808 constitution. Montgelas’

state ministries, however, would have to enforce said constitution. Montgelas, Johann Wilhelm

von Hompesch zu Bollheim (the son of Montgelas’ mentor Franz Karl von Hompesch), and

justice minister Heinrich Theodor Topor Graf von Morawitzky drafted the constitution. The

Bavarian constitution’s preamble established that,

By appropriate regulations and provisions, it aims at providing the just demands of the

state (based on its general raison d’état) toward its members, as well as those of the

individual members toward the state, with the guarantee of their fulfillment, the whole

with firm structure and cohesion, and each part of the state authority with the efficacy

commensurate with the requirements of the common good.

427

Montgelas, and the constitution’s other authors, established the monarch as the sole ruler of

Bavaria. All subjects looked to King Max Joseph, and his representatives, as the unitary

authority of the Bavarian state. The 1808 constitution was a revolutionary compact in the

Kingdom of Bavaria and provided similar powers and freedoms somewhat comparable to

contemporary reforms in other German states. Montgelas and Max Joseph swiftly broke the

power of feudal estates and the interests of the Church. This was a special achievement for

Montgelas and his fellow reformers. Many other states in German central Europe failed to

accomplish in such a sweeping capacity.

A similarly ambitious, yet far less successful program was underway in the Kingdom of

Prussia under the direction of Baron Karl vom und zum Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg

427

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131

by 1807-1808. Stein and Hardenberg’s “Edict Concerning the Facilitated Possession and Free

Use of Real Estate as well as the Personal Circumstances of the Rural Population” (Edikt den

erleichterten Besitz und den freien Gebrauch des Grund-Eigenthums, sowie die persönlichen

Verhältnisse der Landbewohner betreffend) of 1807-1808 (the October Edict) presented similar

reforms. It would later be enacted for the purposes of eliminating the last vestiges of feudal

servitude in Prussia. Stein and Hardenberg proposed opening feudal land buying privileges to a

broader cross section of prospective buyers, and promulgating the enhanced legal notion of

“Staatsbürger” – citizens of Prussia rather than subject status.

428

The Stein-Hardenberg Reforms

would take nearly a decade to be implement (in a far more conservative form). In part, they led

to the widening of land buying privileges throughout German central Europe.

429

In addition, they

were indicative of the broad influence of state centralization efforts that swept Germany in the

first decade of the nineteenth century and were most successful in Bavaria.

Bavaria was not the only state in the German Confederation to produce a new

constitution but its provisions for the execution of the King’s will was unique. Other regional

attempts that mirrored the advent of the 1808 constitution transpired in the French occupied

Kingdom of Westphalia and the Duchies of Baden and Württemberg. Karl Friedrich of the

Duchy of Baden instituted a legal code with a streamlined, hierarchical delineation of rights and

privileges intended to be, “both useful, and for political reasons advisable.”

430

Hans Gagern, a

political theorist, also proposed a legal system based on, “the similarity of political

428

Matthew Levinger, Enlightened Nationalism: The Transformation of Prussian Political

Culture, 1806-1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55-56.

429

Ibid., 56-57.

430

Mack Walker, German Home Towns, Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1817

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 201.

132

considerations.”

431

The main regulations of the 1808 constitution include the relationship

between the document and the Napoleonic system with the introductory proclamation, “The

Kingdom of Bavaria forms part of the Confederation of the Rhine.”

432

Max Joseph’s power came

from the introduction of the Konzessionsystem (concession system) – a systematic approach of

rule and law applied by civil servants and the imposition of uniform laws and community and

state levels.

433

The constitution represented the Oktroi (the implementation of law by will) of the

King of Bavaria that established him as Bavaria’s sole ruler. The architects of the Bavarian

system believed, however, that Bureaucratic reform, in the spirit of Enlightenment virtue, set

their constitution apart from contemporary legal compacts.

Property, including land, and the authority to determine the rights of its possessors, were

the sole responsibility of the state. Max Joseph and Montgelas’ reforms made Bavaria a kingdom

with the most liberal land buying requirements by 1808. A full 70% of the Bauernstände were

now afforded rights including uniform taxation.

434

Land reform, including the wholesale breakup

of Gutsherrschaft estates, formed a key part of this program. Land as property was protected

under the 1808 constitution but apparently not so if it was a manorial estate or a former Güter

Domainen. Montgelas continued to promote the seeming equity of the new property system. The

seventh article of the main regulations of the 1808 constitution ostensibly built on previous

efforts to protect property rights. Article seven stated, “The state grants all citizens safety of

431

Ibid, 201.

432

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433

Harwell Wells, Research Handbook on the History of Corporate and Company Law

(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018), 181. In reference to the Bavarian system:

Friedrich Lütge, Deutsche Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte: ein Überblick. Berlin: Springer

Verlag, 1966), 148.

434

Karl Otmar von Aretin, Bayerns Weg zum souveränen Staat: Landstände und konstitutionelle

Monarchie, 138.

133

person and of property...”

435

Montgelas, here, remained attached to his allodified system.

Property would not be interfered with. The noble estates, however, were no longer property and

were thus not respected.

1808: Montgelas and the Administrative Reorganization of Bavaria

The establishment of the First Bavarian Constitution also led to the restructuring of

Bavarian administrative divisions with regional capitals. In addition, the Bavarian state created

new ersatz organizations to replace charities to aid rural and urban poor. Reorganizing the rural

Güter estates meant that Montgelas and Max Joseph needed to create regional capitals and

provide new state services. These resources would replace the charity provided by religious

orders, operating under the concept of Notbedarf – the mutually beneficial, pre-eighteenth

century “economy of need,” existed before.

436

Montgelas, having centralized the Ministry of the

Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Finance under his authority as First Minister,

soon divided Bavaria into sixteen Kreise or administrative units (Regierungsbezirk). Regional

control through cameral institutions preceded this redrawing of the jurisdictional map. These

cameral institutions, however, were the sinews between ancien regime economic, religious, and

social controls to provide a functional harmony of estates.

The 1808 reorganization of the Bavarian Kreise gave Munich a semblance of centralized

control under the king and his royal ministries that replaced the power sharing arrangement of

the Electoral state’s varied estates. Bureaucratic centralization also entailed the elimination of

435

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436

Renate Blickle, "From Subsistence to Property: Traces of a Fundamental Change in Early

Modern Bavaria." Central European History 25, no. 4 (1992): 377-85. Accessed May 19, 2020.

www.jstor.org/stable/4546292.

134

estate privileges including special tax rates and personal pensions.

437

A general tax rate was

implemented through the geographic incorporation of new territories and the gradual erosion

then eradication of Güter estate boundaries.

438

The ideal tax system was uniform and systemic.

Tax rates were presented in the Intelligenzblätter of each of the sixteen Kreise. Land was

“redeemed” by the state in theory via the consent of estate holders.

439

Estate nobles possessed

land but did not own it. The land was connected to their titles. Titles were removed via the

process of “mediatization” and therefore estate land was simply property to be bought and sold.

Many elite landholders were cash poor due to persistent conflict and lagging rent collections.

440

The Bavarian estate, led by Montgelas, offered to buy land from elites through a process called

“redemption.” In practice, the new system of hierarchically imposed land redemption met with

some resistance. Yet some of the former estate nobility were suddenly amenable to cash payment

in exchange for estate land.

441

Montgelas exploited the climate of economic instability. As

historian Manfred Treml observed, a coercive state of affairs (Sachezwang) governed

centralization efforts, debt relief, and bankruptcy (Bankrott).

442

By 1808 land was requisitioned

by the Bavarian Finance Ministry and thereafter apportioned into enclosures with increasing

frequency. Montgelas’ designs went far beyond tax reform. The Bavarian civil bureaucracy

437

Wilhelm Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980.

(München: C.H. Beck), 1983, 142. German: “Diese war erst möglich, als 1807/1808 die

ständischen Steuerpriviligien beseitigt, die allgemein gleiche Steuerpflicht in modernen Sinn

eingeführt, die Laendständischen Korporationen in Altbayern, Pfalz-Neuburg, und in den

Erwerbungsgebieten aufgehoben und damit die Steuerverwaltung durch die

Behördenorganisationen der Landschaft abgeschafft worden waren.”

438

Ibid.

439

Lenger, Economy and Society, 97.

440

Hermann Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhundert, 52.

441

Ibid., 52.

442

Manfred Treml et. al, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 33.

135

played a significant role in land redistribution as Montgelas sought to buy loyalty of common

Bavarians and fracture the former Güter elites beyond the elimination of privilege and pension

collection.

The Finance Ministry under Montgelas grew and became more complex under the

foundation of the 1808 constitution and the legal supremacy of King Max Joseph. Cameral

institutions in the electorate served the interests of the Adelige Stände – the landed, titled and

untitled ranks of Bavarian society. Although the 1808 constitution was by no means republican

in spirit, the document did include provisions for the elimination of elite privileges. If members

of Bavarian society were “worlds apart” in social status, economic power, and political power

under Electoral rule, then certainly the founding years of the Kingdom of Bavaria led to a

levelling of social and economic status and a vast reduction of elite political standing.

443

1808

was the year of the bureaucrat. The Organizational Edict (Organischen Edikt) of 8 August 1808

granted authority to regional bureaucrats in the GeneralKreiskommissariate to enforce tax

revenue collection.

444

The Finance Ministry exercised direct authority over the regional

administrative Kreise and gave them legitimacy to publish the edict and have it respected at a

local level.

Montgelas’ guided expansion of the Bavarian state next addressed the complex legacies

of cameral institutions and privileged estates, a process which focused on stimulating rural

agricultural production. Results were less than satisfactory. The early implementation of

unchallenged rule met with conflict and confusion. Historian Eberhard Weis described the

443

Jerome Blum, The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe, 5.

444

Wilhelm Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980,

146.

136

friction created by this legal shift as the “abolition of old estate constitutions in Altbayern,

Neuburg, Tyrol and Voralberg with their dualism between prince and the countryside and their

cementing of estate privilege being taken…”

445

State integration on a village level was slow and

fraught with challenges from the traditional measure of rural autonomy enjoyed throughout all

the regions of Bavaria.

Changing land policies also entailed altering the Bavarian way of life. The Electoral

Bavarian programs of school reform, compulsory education, and conscription were implemented

to their most forceful and direct ends by 1808.

446

Some things remained static. The basis of the

Bavarian economy into the middle of the nineteenth century was agriculture.

447

Shifting

Bavarian farming towards a physiocratic inspired notion of production over subsistence would

require focusing on both the regional customary restrictions on crop development and

overcoming ignorance of new farming techniques. Problems with increasing Bavarian crop

yields were a persistent issue throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historian

Wilhelm Abel commented that Bavarians produced less than comfortable resources both for

market and personal consumption. Abel found, “Agricultural production was largely increased

though physiologically it was not significantly changeable by type and the needed quantity. Food

was not available to people in more than 3,000 calories a day in all types of food.”

448

Crop

445

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie 380.

446

Lee, “The German Family,” 86-87.

447

Ibid., 87.

448

Wilhelm Abel, Agrarpolitik, 42. German: “Die Landwirtschaft ist mit ihrer Erzeugung ganz

uberwiegend auf physiologische, nach Art und Menge nicht wesentlich veranderungsfahige

Bedurfnisse angewiesen. “Es ist dem Menschen nicht bekömmlich, mehr als 3000 Kalorien

alltaglich in der Nahrung zu sich zu nehmen.”

137

yields, in and among the most fertile regions of Bavaria, could not be transformed either easily or

quickly. Market prices, for the average Bavarian, did not fluctuate greatly in 1808.

The price of food changed little during the first year of the new regime’s constitution

perhaps owing more to the lack of substantial rural intervention by the government of Max

Joseph. Policies made beyond Bavaria’s borders were the first to impact the average Bavarian.

Napoleon’s Continental System barred the trade of grain, among other goods, to Britain. Fifteen

percent of all British grain imports were from smaller German states including Bavaria.

449

The

price of grain throughout the German states plummeted in part due to a lack of buyers who were

willing to pay what British merchants previously offered.

450

A short term crisis was averted

through extensive moneylending by Bavarian and other German creditors.

451

Bavarian

production of cereals thus was not dramatically affected by sudden trade restrictions. The price

of bread in remained consistent throughout the year of 1808. Montgelas reacted to the demands

of Napoleon on Bavaria and the intent to increase state wealth by instituting a new progressive

tax on land (the 1808 Grundsteuern) which increased profits by 9%.

452

This was profitable

because agriculture constituted 65% of Bavaria’s economic product.

453

State intervention was

still needed, however, to stabilize the operation and quality of farming products.

The temporary stability of grain prices in the German states brought a sense of optimism

for the new regime and stability to nearby German states in the early-nineteenth century. Just

449

Wilhelm Abel, History of German Agricultural Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the

Century (Stuttgart: Verlag Eugen Ulmer, 1967), 226.

450

Wilhelm Abel, History of German Agricultural Economy from the Early Middle Ages to the

Century, 223.

451

Ibid.

452

Dietmar Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern (München: Süddeutscher Verlag,

1988), 164.

453

Ibid.

138

beyond Bavaria’s borders in the key trading city of Regensburg, the price of a loaf of bread

(Paar Semmel) remained consistently six Kreuzer Landmünze, or .10 Gulden from January to

December 1808.

454

Bavaria also employed other means of state intervention to keep the grain

market consistent yet profitable. The Department of Spiritual Affairs (Departements des

geistlichen Angelegenheiten) administered the former church lands and oversaw poor relief for

Bavarian subjects.

455

Other services such as the, Organization of Medicine (Organisations des

Medizinalwesens) tended to medical relief with regional sanitation guidelines and the promise of

consistent treatment options including the provisioning of food.

456

The reorganization of Bavaria

at a regional administrative level also brought the creation and maintenance of tax and toll

collections as well as adequate leadership to oversee such an intricate operation.

Death and Taxes: Montgelas’ Overhaul of the Civil Service, 1808

Tax, toll, and pension collection was the basis of the twin responsibilities of law and

order as well as revenue generation for the Bavarian state. These funds, and fund collection, were

of paramount importance to Montgelas who increased the rate and number of taxes and tolls on a

regular basis. Montgelas, who effectively ran the various ministries of the state (even beyond his

own purview of the Finance Ministry), commanded an enlightened bureaucracy with the legal

mandate of a sovereign, Max Joseph. The First Minister behaved as an agent of not only French

inspired reform but of direct service to Paris. Montgelas’ extractive policies included an increase

in special taxes, the erosion of guild privileges and imposition of fees, and the dramatic reduction

454

“Regensburger Wochenblatt Nro. 1.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb11130523_00005_u001/10.

[accessed December 23, 2019].

455

Wilhelm Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980, 30.

456

Ibid.

139

of Güter pensions. All this to pay for Napoleonic backing.

457

In 1808, Montgelas introduced

various revenue collection schemes. The Mautordnung of 1807-1808 established a 15-30-florin

tax on the various craft industries in Bavaria as well as foreign trade.

458

This protectionist

measure produced increased income for the Bavarian state while simultaneously alienating

bordering countries.

The implementation of the new toll and tariff system was, however, not implemented in a

straightforward fashion. A report featured in the 17 March 1808 issue of the Bavarian National

Newspaper (Baierisches National Zeitung) demonstrates the confusion surrounding the creation

and enforcement of new tariffs. The newspaper commented;

“…Since this change made the control stipulated in the new customs and toll regulations

insufficient, and other measures had to be met in order to ascertain the security which the

royal toll levies previously found in these cash payments of the main customs rate at the

borders; however, since these measures intervene so deeply in the formal constitution of

the new customs and toll regulations that, due to the clarity and certainty required by law,

a complete revision of the new customs and toll regulations became necessary, so that the

Royal General Customs and Toll Direction received them in their modified form in order

to move them anew into print and to instruct all customs and toll agencies from April 1

on in the full and exact compliance with their contents.”

459

457

Weis, Montgelas, 382.

458

Rode, 32.

459

“Baierisches National Zeitung Nro. 65.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10505540_00259_u001/3?cq=Mautordnung

[accessed January 31, 2020].

German: “Da durch dieses abänderung die in der neuen zoll und Mautordnung festgesetze

kontrolle unzulänglich geworden, und andere Massregeln haben getroffen werden müssen, um

die sicherheit zu ersetzen welche die königliche Zollgefälle in jener baaren entrichtung des

Haupt Zoll dass es an den Grenzen zuvor fanden; dieses Massregeln aber so tief in die Formal-

Bestandteil der neuen Zolls und Mautordnung eingreifen, dass der einem Gesetz notwendigen

Deutlichkeit und Bestimmtheit wegen, eine ganzliche Umarbeitung der neuen Zoll u.

Mautordnung nothig (sic) wurden, so hat die königliche General Zoll und Maut Direction solche

in ihrer umgeänderten Gestalt empfangen, um sie vom neuen zum Druck beförden und die vom 1

April an zur strengen und genauen Befolgung ihres Inhalts den sammtliche Zoll und Maut

postierenungen anzuweisen.”

140

New tolls and tariffs came at a critical time for the Bavarian Kingdom. State debt surged to 86

million gulden and Montgelas increased taxes on internal and foreign trade while promising to

alleviate the burden of existing taxes on the most marginalized portions of Bavarian society.

460

Elements of the Bavarian Finance Ministry were also committed, ostensibly, to the amelioration

of the quality of life despite tax increases. The Ministry of Trade and Public Works (Ministerium

des Handels und der öffentlichen Arbeiten) was founded in the early years of the Kingdom’s

existence to monitor and manage Bavaria’s trade balance and the profitability of merchant

activity for the state.

461

Bavarian bureaucratic expansion and restructuring, however, were

desperately needed to support revenue collection and the imposition of local law and order. The

continued activities of the Bavarian state could not be carried out by Montgelas’ fiat. The 1808

constitution, however, laid the groundwork for the larger role played by Bavarian civil servants,

in accordance with the wishes of Montgelas and the assent of King Max Joseph.

Montgelas’ role as the First Minister allowed him to create a hierarchical structure for

tax and toll collections. The state reforms of 1808 established a Central Authority

(Zentralbehörden) to administer the new Bavarian government. The Secret State and Conference

Ministry (Geheimes Staats und Konferenzministeriums) was chaired by Montgelas.

462

The

subordinate foreign, finance, interior, and justice ministries were consolidated under the

authority of Montgelas himself.

463

Individual leaders included Graf Morawitzky (from the

Finance Ministry) and Graf Reigersberg (from the Justice Ministry).

464

The Ministry of War was

460

Jӧrg Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810, 29.

461

Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18.

Jahrhunderts, 49-50.

462

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 35.

463

Benno Hubensteiner, Bayerisches Geschichte, Staat und Volk, Kunst und Kultur, 343-344.

464

Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980, 172

141

commanded by Graf Johann Nepomuk von Triva, a logistical officer who served under Bavaria’s

preeminent general Karl von Wrede. Yet these individuals possessed little ability to operate

independently of Montgelas. The Central Authority (Mittelbehörden) was under the direction of

each of the four ministries (Generalkommandos) and included the vital departments of tax and

toll inspection (Zoll und Mautinspection) under the Finance Ministry’s authority.

465

Military

garrisons assisted with tax and toll collection as well as regional control.

466

This constituted a

major shift in revenue collection for the Bavarian state. Güter lords collected taxes and rents

from their estates and were permitted to protect the mechanism for how they were taxed – a

principle known as the Bauernschutze.

467

These responsibilities were now subordinated to the

Landgerichte – courts overseen by the Kreise administrative governments that answered to

Munich. The very structure of Montgelas’ new state ministries demonstrated the dramatic scale

of government expansion and stratification that began in 1808. Extensive, highly specific taxes

were also introduced. Tolls and tariffs required enforcement and collection. Bavarian civil

servants, as products of transformed cameral academies, became more powerful and

authoritative, as well as becoming careerist elites within the state administration.

Friction between civil servants and the former elite estate increased in the years

following 1808. Seething notables became envious of Bavarian civil servants and coveted the

unparalleled, privileged authority they exercised.

468

The transformation of the Bavarian civil

service, however, constituted a new version of German bureaucratic status. Bavaria employed

465

Hubensteiner, Bayerisches Geschichte, Staat und Volk, Kunst und Kultur 343-344.

466

“The German Family.” Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and

Twentieth-Century (Germany ed. Richard Evans and W.R. Lee. London: Routledge, 2016), 87.

467

Abel, Agrarpolitik, 20. German: “Der Adel werde ausser an der Verlust seiner finanzellen

Privilegien an den Verlust seines Monopols auf alle höheren Staatsstellungen und an die

Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz denken.”

468

Weis, Montgelas, 384.

142

cameral officials in the electoral era who were servants of the Hofkammer – the court chamber.

The expansion of the Bavarian civil service brought talented civil servants to every corner of the

Bavarian kingdom including the minutiae of rural life. The General Commissariat of the Toll and

Tax Directories, for example, were instructed, “primarily to report on the local peculiarities of

their districts, to forward the ministerial instructions and to monitor the implementation.”

469

Guild restrictions were also lifted, in much the same way that the elite estate was stripped of all

privileges. Montgelas’ bureaucratic foot soldiers oversaw the gradual erosion of the higher status

middling handicraft industry professionals including rule by patricians in cities like Augsburg.

470

Civil servants, for example, collected the rents from subjects in place of the manorial rents that

existed under the Gutsherrschaft system.

471

Yet Bavaria was not alone in professionalizing the

civil bureaucracy and the more involved role in the everyday lives of all subjects.

The enforcement of Bavarian law thus fell to a new generation of bureaucrat, or

Schreiber, that found himself more the arbiter of regional law than the loyal servant of the state.

Civil servants throughout the German states were not well-respected. Historian Ian McNeely’s

2003 study The Emancipation of Writing introduced the cameral official at the dawn of the

nineteenth century as a venal, untrustworthy pariah. Elisabetha Jäger, one subject of cameral rule

in southwest Germany decried the local magistrate and his subordinate officials as Spitzbuben

(rogues).

472

The reputation of civil servants changed little, but their power and breadth of

responsibilities increased dramatically. Interactions between subjects and civil servants increased

469

Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980, 37.

470

Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics and Politics in

Germany, 1815-1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 27.

471

Ibid., 47.

472

Ian F. McNeely, The Emancipation of Writing: German Civil Society in the Making, 1790s-

1820s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 101.

143

in frequency. The development of the Innenressorts (interior department) and the

Medizinalwesen (the medical service of the doctor’s department) by 1808 subjected Bavarians to

state scrutiny but also permitted ordinary Bavarians to voice grievances.

473

Some complaints

highlighted the impact of land quality and the availability of food. The establishment of, “local

medical districts and the appointment of local doctors (Gerichtsärzte) was designed on the one

hand to strengthen State control over medical practices.”

474

Civil servants in other Napoleonic

inspired German states followed suit. In the Duchy of Baden, the Vogt or Oberamtmann, an

advocate on behalf of the state, visited rural farmers every three years to evaluate conditions and

record any outstanding hardships.

475

Records became public record and highlighted the purported

omnipresent nature of governments throughout the Confederation of the Rhine.

Bavarian civil servants became a ubiquitous sight in the sixteen Kreise of the kingdom

through tax and toll collection, medical inspection, and the much-dreaded visitation for the

purposes of conscription. By 1809 taxes and tariffs were imposed to protect Bavarian agriculture

and handcrafts.

476

The common Bavarian civil servant collected proceeds for the state but also

oversaw the development of profitable agriculture and trades. This was an effort from above,

under the guise of guided state reform, to increase export profits. Several individuals contributed

to this effort. Joseph Ritter von Hazzi was one of the leading civil servants to take part in the

transformation of the Interior Ministry into a professional bureaucracy. Hazzi was born in 1768

into a family of peasant and middling origins.

477

Like Montgelas, Hazzi’s education included the

473

Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980, 30.

474

Lee, “The German Family,” 86.

475

David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, 75.

476

Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810, 33.

477

Heinz Haushofer, "Hazzi, Joseph Ritter von" in neue Deutsche Biographie 8 (1969), S. 158 f.

[Online-Version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd119357798.html#ndbcontent.

[accessed 20 December 2019].

144

traditional notion of specialized, decentralized cameral training in Ingolstadt with key influences

for land management provided by the Catholic Church.

478

Hazzi passed his civil service

examination in 1789 and became a specialist in land development.

479

This specialty would make

Hazzi, among other favorable candidates, useful to Max Joseph when he acceded to the throne.

Hazzi left Bavaria in the 1805 for service with the French military but his experience and

usefulness reveals much about the priorities of the Bavarian state. The increasing intervention in

rural life destroyed local traditions in place of a homogenized view of productive and efficient

use of resources for the Kingdom of Bavaria.

480

Officials in Munich adopted an extractive,

exploitative model that was shared with its patron state, Napoleonic France. The successors of

men like Hazzi were now seen as ever-present, educated agents of Munich. To others they were

occupiers in much of Bavaria, searching for every product or person of economic utility.

The amtliche Statistik: Montgelas’ Census and the Sale of Land

The desire to categorize and exploit Bavarian resources led to the creation of an improved

census in 1809. The legal foundation of Bavarian state centralization was coupled with the

creation of a large, professional, career civil bureaucracy subordinated to a favored servant of

king Max Joseph. Montgelas instructed his bureaucrats to document rural and urban life through

a quantitative lens. The result of this effort was the amtliche Statistik (Ministerial Statistic), also

known as the Montgelas Statistik. Montgelas employed every level of the civil service to gather

information pertaining to three key data points; Einwohner (subjects), Güter (estate land),

Landesbeschreibungen (territory). Bavaria even became the first German state to measure

478

Ibid.

479

Ibid.

480

Peter H Merkl, "The Small-Town or Village Community." In Small Town and Village in

Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life, 50.

145

mortality rates. Montgelas also classified the optimum wealth generated by craft industries. The

number and wealth of each Handwerker (craftsman), Fabriken (factory), Manufakturen (trading

entrepots), Kaufleute (merchants) and Kraemer (shopkeepers). The Montgelas Statistik was

important for structuring the Bavarian economy but not planning growth.

The amtliche Statistik did have omissions that reflected the limitations of state civil

servants. Certain categories proved elusive, perhaps due to the inability to properly quantify their

goods on a new market. Concern over how best to value the worth of land and mines, despite the

physiocratic inspired nature of land reform, persisted.

481

Getreide (corn) and Viehmärkt (the

market value of cattle) were considered because they were goods that could be traded.

482

Montgelas, having separated titled privilege from the possession of land had yet to establish the

monetary worth for land. As First Minister, Montgelas, like the physiocrats of the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, viewed the king as the co-proprietor of land as property.

483

The next great

question would be what value land as property would hold when sold at market.

Montgelas struggled to establish the value of land as an immovable good due to

disagreements concerning land valuation metrics. The conflicting notion of land worth was a

combative, and confusing, multi-decade debate to shift the value of land from that based in

pensions and rents collected under the Gutsherrschaft system to that of a cash-based market.

Difficulties also arose when Montgelas attempted to reconcile the region-specific taxes and tolls

of Swabia, Franconia, and Greater Bavaria with his plans for a uniform set of economic

481

Peter H Merkl, "The Small-town or Village Community." In Small Town and Village in

Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life, 50-100. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012.

[accessed February 2, 2020]. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qcsdn.7.

482

Ibid.

483

Rafe Blaufarb, “The Great Demarcation – The Decree of August 4, 1789.” Modern European

History Colloquium Lecture at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, April 23, 2018.

146

guidelines.

484

The sale of Güter estate land from each area of the Kingdom of Bavaria would

have to be done with both the consent of the estate holders. As in 1808, many of the elites faced

cash shortages stemming from a lack of rent collection and the loss of special privileges

(including special tax rates), in 1809.

485

The task of redeeming land and compensating the

mediatized, or nobles who now had no privileges or jurisdictional power, rested not with

Montgelas himself but with the Kreise Finanz Direktion – the financial administration of the

least seniority in the Bavarian Finance Ministry.

486

In practical terms the system relied on

negotiation with individual complainants.

One instructive example is an internal Finanz Direktion discussion of credit granted to a

former lord Michael Vegbauer.

487

The discussion pertains to the cash value granted to Vegbauer

for land on and near the former Vegbauer Güter estate near Kelheim in the administrative

division of Regen-Kreis, stating, “The Royal Finance direction of Regen-Kreis received files

about a bundled fief loan for Michael Vegbauer to be taxed by the Margrave of Kellheim. This is

for its appropriate use with the note that the pro preceterito has no relevant series of issues.”

488

Vegbauer’s case had no definite conclusion by Finance Ministry officials. The central question

surrounding this case, however, revolves around the fair pension compensation for former Güter

land. Estate lords collected pensions for their service as the jurisdictional leader under the

484

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 173.

485

Lenger in Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870, 97.

486

Finance Ministry (Finanzdirection des Regen-Kreis) Compensation for Michael Vegbauer’s

Fief, February 14, 1809, in BHStA MF 17290. German: German: Die K. Finanzdirections des

Regen-Kreises empfängt hin mit die acten uber einen beutelleheberen Ehre des Michael

Vegbauer zu Steuer Margrafts Kellheim zum geeigneten gebrauch mit dem bemerkten, des pro

preceterito kein relevien reihstand hefte.”

487

Ibid.

488

Ibid.

147

Gutsherrschaft system. If special privileges, like regional authority, and thus, pensions, were

terminated as a part of the new constitution, then how would estate holders be compensated for

their land? The answer to this question, despite the sophisticated, analytical pretense of the

Montgelas Statistik, was more grounded in negotiation and compromise depending on region and

state interest.

Cash payments for Güter lands were thus a common fixture for the regime that sought to

transform the agricultural landscape while pacifying rural resistance to Munich. The process of

land redemption by the Bavarian state was fraught with complexities. Theoretically, cash poor

nobles would duly accept payments from the state for a modest reduction in status. In practice,

however, this transaction revealed the limitations of Bavarian bureaucracy and the obstinacy of

former Güter estate lords unwilling to accept the loss of privilege and legal authority. The

Bavarian state mediatized the estate holders, imperial knights within the kingdom, and

individuals with titles. Bavarian nobles could express themselves publicly through an airing of

grievances through hardship reports, or Beschwerde, but were no longer represented as a Stände

or an estate of the kingdom’s social and political standing. Pensions tied to jurisdictional

privileges were also threatened by state land redemption. Land sales from the titled nobility of

Prussia to poorer farmers was illegal.

489

In Bavaria, however, the transfer of land with the state

as a broker was not only legal but encouraged.

490

Officials from the Finance Ministry extended

loans to nobles to facilitate this process.

491

Still, this process, as German historian Friedrich

Lenger, concluded, was difficult to execute.

492

The Finance Ministry was nevertheless intimately

489

Gregory W. Pedlow, The Survival of the Hessian Nobility, 1770-1870 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1988), 65.

490

Lenger in Sperber, Oxford Short History of Germany, 1800-1870, 97.

491

Ibid.

492

Ibid.

148

involved in monitoring the exchange of goods such as lands or their products and the

profitability of compensating landholders for them.

A 14 February 1809 extraction report from the finance direction of Vilsbiburg in the

Regen-Kreis reveals that inheritance laws were changed, and the value of land was not consistent

during this era. The initial extratus (extraction) report stated, “The government's financial

direction of the Regen-Kreis also received the files on a collection of land loans for the Michael

Vegbauer case. He testified to the Kelheim court [on the subject] of the appropriate use with the

noted pro-preceterito relevance. Finance Ministry, Su fidem extratus (extracted in good faith and

credit).”

493

Vegbauer’s Güter estate case is demonstrative of a typical complaint. Vegbauer’s

“stolen” property was land extracted by the Bavarian state as private property not connected to

the now mediatised fiefs. The regional Bavarian court at Kelheim heard Vegbauer’s complaint,

recorded it, but did not address his predicament.

494

The Bavarian state, as historian Dietmar

Stutzer advanced, demonstrated little flexibility in the realm of debt assistance or personal

suffering.

495

The Catholic Church, long a bastion of welfare support in Bavaria did not have the

authority or resources to assist rural poor due to the secularization of Church assets. Land plots,

beginning in the eighteenth century, could not be bequeathed to specific individuals through a

concept known as erbliche Lassiten.

496

The more subordinate institution of the financial direction

could offer little to help Vegbauer or others in similar circumstances.

493

Finance Ministry (Finanzdirection des Regen-Kreis) Compensation for Michael Vegbauer’s

Fief, February 14, 1809, in BHStA MF 17290.

494

Ibid.

495

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 178.

496

John G. Gagliardo, From Pariah to Patriot: The Changing Image of the German Peasant,

1770–1840) (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969), 17.

149

Further reports highlight the diligence of Bavarian civil servants to process, record, and

address grievances regarding property value while offering little action on relief or redemption of

land. 1809 proved to be a pivotal year in Bavaria’s agricultural history. Depressed markets from

the imposition of the Napoleonic Continental System and large-scale state intervention in land

exchanges did not lend an air of stability. Protectionary tariffs imposed by the Bavarian state

were also cancelled in compliance with Napoleonic policies towards the continental trading

bloc.

497

A new agreement imposed by Montgelas’ Finance Ministry subordinate Morawitzky

called the Bestimmung (settlement) eased taxation rates within Bavaria to spur growth.

498

Montgelas imposed new measures to protect Bavarian trade and remain within the guidelines

imposed by Paris. A two-year halt on internal tariffs was implemented while taxes on imports

increased. Bavaria, though a non-military contributor to the Spanish Peninsular War beginning in

1808, furnished essential goods such as foodstuffs and draft animals for French use. State debt

surged and direct control over Munich’s purse strings was desperately needed.

Mounting issues of debt and the inconsistent application restrictive land laws produced

confusion in Bavaria in 1809. Land values plummeted and complaints regarding enclosed lands

became more numerous while Montgelas attempted to stimulate the domestic cereal market.

Mounting state debt forced Montgelas to replace Morawitzky in 1809.

499

Cash and interest debts,

as well as land overuse, combined to produce new problems for Bavarians. A complaint lodged

by Benedikt Trosst on 17 November 1809 in the town of Straubing, in the Regen Kreise reflects

the desperation of the times.

500

Trosst possessed 1/16 of the jurisdictional land in Kelheim before

497

Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810, 33.

498

Ibid., 33.

499

Thomas Schuler,“Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 160.

500

Finance Ministry (Finanzdirection des Regen-Kreis) Compensation for Michael Vegbauer’s

Fief, February 14, 1809, in BHStA MF 17290.

150

the process of allodification.

501

Trosst had hoped to purchase ¾ of an old, disused area of the

Weltenburg Monastery near Kelheim. The price of 150 florin was offered, rejected, and Trosst

then insisted on being loaned an additional 50 florin a year to purchase and improve the

connected land. The taxes and price of land Trosst asked, or was required to pay for land, was

also subject to the state discretion for revenue collection. Tax authority (Steuerverwaltung) made

any such transaction, like Trosst’s, subject to the scrutiny more senior bureaucrats within the

Finance Ministry.

502

The Rentamt (Department of Pensions) and Kreiskasse (administrative

regional cash point) also investigated similar cases.

503

Therefore, ordinary Bavarians like Trosst

were required to navigate a dense web of bureaucracy imposed by a Bavarian state that had

replaced the indirect system of cameralism with the more specific, all-encompassing world of

Staatswissenschaft (state economy).

504

The dense network of Bavarian bureaucracy made land a

vital and valuable commodity to possess as property. New laws and tariffs, however, confused

and bewildered Bavarians. Buying land, paying off loans, or negotiating the sale of part of a fief

were far from concrete, institutional practices.

Opposition: Land and the Napoleonic Wars in Tyrol and Austria (1809)

Bavarian state centralization brought a more systematic use of bureaucratic control to

rural areas that produced friction, and at times, conflict. The centrality of Bavarian rule remained

501

Ibid.

502

Wilhelm Volkert, Handbuch der bayerischen mter, Gemeinden und Gerichte 1799-1980,

177.

503

Ibid.

504

Hans Frambach, "The Decline of Cameralism in Germany at the Turn of the Nineteenth

Century." In Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern

Europe, edited by Seppel Marten and Tribe Keith, 239-62. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester,

NY, USA: Boydell and Brewer, 2017. Accessed February 4, 2020.

www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt1t6p64s.16., 260.

151

that of controlling and developing agricultural land. Bavaria acquired new land in the Inn Kreise

in the vicinity of Salzburg and Alpine land in Tyrol as a reward for its close alliance with

Napoleon. The expansion of Bavarian bureaucracy brought an extension of Bavarian authority

over foreign land in the form of an occupying force. Bavarian rule met with disdain and then

opposition in the Tyrol in 1809. Andreas Hofer, a Tyrolean innkeeper, organized an armed

insurgency against Bavarian rule due to the, “destruction of provincial privilege and [because

Bavaria was] strongly anti-clerical…”

505

Tyroleans were also protective of their property rights

and inheritance traditions. Tyrol’s culture featured partible inheritance, where land was

bequeathed to children, with usually the largest quantity going to the oldest male heir.

506

Tyroleans divided land between the Muttergut (mother’s property) and the Vatergut (father’s

property).

507

The former provided sustenance for the mother in the event of the death of her

husband while the latter provided the bulk cash value property for valuable division of labor,

wealth generation, and inheritances after the passing of the Tyrolean pater familias.

508

This

system represented a regional status quo and made the competition for dowries important a

central aspect of Tyrolean family life.

Dowries and property inheritance were a central figure in social standing in Tyrolean

society and made marriage, as Bavarian’s commented, full of “cash talks” rather than that of an

amorous union.

509

Land property holdings were thus marked by massive disparities, as had the

Bavarian Hoffuss system of private land ownership in the eighteenth century. Bavarian

505

Charles Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 391-392.

506

Wolf, Eric R. "The Inheritance of Land among Bavarian and Tyrolese

Peasants." Anthropologica 12, no. 1 (1970): 99-114. Accessed June 24, 2020.

doi:10.2307/25604817, 99.

507

Ibid.

508

Ibid.

509

Ibid.

152

allodification and enclosure of land produced a glut of small scale privately held plots. Marriage,

in the eyes of many of Bavaria’s poorest landholders, was not as dominated by financial

ramifications as was the case with Tyrolean traditions. It stands to reason that a serious

disruption in martial traditions and social status could produce resistance to the power imposing

such sweeping changes to rural life.

Bavarian reforms in Tyrol brought the secularizing impulse of the Enlightenment, the

domineering nature of bureaucracy, and the destruction of land inheritance rites of local culture.

Bavaria occupied Tyrol with a token force of 3,000 militia.

510

Montgelas’ legal reforms, ported

to the pro-Habsburg Tyrol, rankled much of the populations. Churches were closed, land was

seized and sold off, and many men were conscripted into Bavarian military service.

511

Tyrloeans

rankled at the presence of Bavarians despite the establishment of Christian religious toleration in

the Religionsedikt of 24 March 1809.

512

The Religious Edict provided tax privileges and

increased autonomy for priests but did not relinquish state control over Church lands.

513

While

no sizeable armed protest broke out within Bavaria, Tyroleans responded with furor to the

secularization of Church lands and village life while competing with an extractive and invasive

bureaucracy of an occupying power. The nexus of Bavarian control in Tyrol was Innsbruck

where regional announcements were made. Bavarian civil servants set prices for comestibles in

Tyrol, announcing their authority as Polizei Direktion.

514

The Innsbrucker Zeitung, a publication

510

Esdaile, Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815, 392.

511

John A Mears, "The Thirty Years' War, the "General Crisis," and the Origins of a Standing

Professional Army in the Habsburg Monarchy." Central European History 21, no. 2 (1988): 122-

41. Accessed June 24, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4546115.

512

Hans-Michael Körner, Geschichte des Königreichs Bayern, 44.

513

Ibid.

514

“Innsbrucker Zeitung Nro. 28.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitale-

sammlungen.de/view/bsb10505498_00017_u001/4?cq=Innsbrucker%20Zeitung

153

which posted the set prices of crops available on the market, produced limited information on

cereal and meat costs in April 1809.

515

Bavarian land control and agricultural productivity,

subject to the Continental System, were more restrictive than Habsburg policies. The recorded

price of rye bread, per loaf, in Innsbruck, ranged from 26-30 kreutzer in April of 1809 and the

price fluctuated wildly thereafter.

516

Set prices for food formed yet another layer of unwanted

Bavarian domination of local customs including land management and market practices.

Prices are significant metrics to measure the mood of Innsbruck in the key month of

April 1809. Tyrol was subjected to a common practice of cameral transformation of land when

Bavarian bureaucrats “invaded” the countryside and foisted new cultivation and farm

management techniques on the local populace.

517

The farming techniques of the small Tyrolean

farm favored the development of cultivation typical of labor intensive, wage earning

sharecroppers.

518

This transformation upset Tyrolean practices and the Tyroleans who followed

them. According to historian Eric Wolf, the new cash-based, labor intensive farming of small

plots was unfavorable to the land and dowry market so crucial to the Tyrolean way of life.

519

land was not worth a multi-generational investment for sustenance, then it was worthless.

Bavarian practices, done as haphazardly and in such an improvised way (as they were also done

in Bavaria proper) did not bode well with Tyroleans. Tensions rose between Bavarians and

Tyroleans during a subsequent period of depressed local economic activity and a stagnant land

market.

[accessed February 5, 2020].

515

Ibid.

516

Ibid.

517

Walker, German Home Towns, Community, State, and General Estate, 1648-1817,186.

518

Ibid., 186-187.

519

Wolf, "The Inheritance of Land among Bavarian and Tyrolese Peasants,” 103.

154

In May of 1809 a significant insurrection began in Innsbruck and spread throughout

Tyrol due to economic pressures and anti-clerical attitudes expressed against Bavarian occupiers.

Aggrieved Tyroleans armed themselves and assembled local militias to harass and ambush

Bavarian soldiers. Hofer’s irregulars were also an indirect product of the expanding, data driven

Bavarian bureaucracy. Economic management of Polizei Direktion kept Tyroleans well-

informed of the actions of Bavaria’s key ally France as Napoleon committed to a destructive war

in Spain against Spanish regulars and a new irregular scourge, the guerrilla. Hofer and his

associates, deeply pious and anti-French (and thus anti-Bavarian), were spurred to rebellion.

Bavarian forces struggled to contain the Tyrolean insurrection. Insurgents defeated

Bavarian forces in multiple areas and seized control of Innsbruck itself. The revolt spread

throughout Tyrol and emboldened Napoleon’s various adversaries. Ironically, the anti-clerical,

anti-nationalist Tyroleans, of whom there were French, German, and Italian speakers in their

ranks, would inspire their own firmly partisan nationalist movements decades after, drawing

inspiration from the 1809 revolt.

520

French forces were required to assist Bavarian forces in

containing Hofer and his fighters. Napoleon’s troops subjected Tyroleans to the same ruthless,

indiscriminate violence that they had unleashed on resisting Spaniards and ultimately executed

Hofer. The revolt grounded as much in the clash of anti-clericalism and forced conscription was

also a struggle of two land ownership systems. The war in Tyrol, and the Bavarian failure to

manage or contain the transfer of land to state control and an imposed system of land enclosure.

Tyrolean resistance, and Bavarian weakness, prompted enemies of Napoleonic France to again

declare war.

520

John A Mears, "The Thirty Years' War, the "General Crisis," and the Origins of a Standing

Professional Army in the Habsburg Monarchy." Central European History 21, no. 2 (1988): 122-

41. Accessed June 24, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4546115.

155

The Habsburg Empire declared war on Napoleonic France and the Kingdom of Bavaria

in April of 1809, sparking the War of the Fifth Coalition and the reduction of Munich to one of

Napoleon’s vassal states. Austrian forces defeated an outmatched, smaller French contingent at

the Battle of Aspern-Essling on 21-22 May 1809. Bavarian forces, commanded by Marshal

Wrede, joined their French allies to repel an Austrian incursion into the newly restored Innkreis

at the Battle of Wörgl. The battle restored Bavarian authority in Tyrol and confidence in the

stability of Montgelas’ various ministries slowly returned. French support for the Bavarian effort

in Tyrol and the Innkreis, however, cemented the central role of Napoleon as not only the

benefactor of the Bavarian state but its ultimate protector. Napoleon sent a 40,000-man army

through Tyrol, requisitioned Bavarian resources at will through foraging, and only sent a brief

letter to King Max Joseph after the campaign was underway.

521

Bavarian forces also shelled the

rebellious Tyrolean town of Brixen as the revolt faded leading to criticism of Bavaria’s First

Minister, Montgelas.

522

Though French forces, joined by Bavarians, defeated the Austrian army

at the Battle of Wagram in October of 1809, the conclusion of hostilities was destructive for all

parties involved and crippled local trade, food supplies, and represented a serious crisis for

Munich’s leadership. Support for Montgelas within the Bavarian kingdom, even amongst

members of the Wittelsbach Dynasty itself (such as crown prince Ludwig), waned and the First

Minister met with the first serious challenge to his unchecked authority.

Serving France: Montgelas and the Disastrous Alliance with Napoleon, 1810-1813

Montgelas’ alliance with Napoleon Bonaparte became increasingly one-sided by 1810

as the Tyrolean uprising and the War of the Fifth Coalition revealed the indispensable necessity

521

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 438-439.

522

Ibid., 441.

156

of French backing to support Max Joseph’s regime. The entire land reform effort and demands of

state centralization hinged on Napoleonic support. Eventually the mutually beneficial alliance led

to the Kingdom of Bavaria being used by the French Emperor as a buffer state against his

enemies. The uneven alliance caused growing discontent first within the Bavarian royal family

itself and thereafter spread to the professional civil service. Montgelas, who used French support

to elevate the Bavarian state, found himself increasingly dependent on Napoleon for the security

of Bavaria and to fulfill his bureaucratic vision of the future. Montgelas maintained Bavaria’s

alliance with Napoleon after the Treaty of Schonbrunn on 14 October 1809. Napoleon gave areas

near Salzburg and the entirety of the Tyrol to Bavaria.

523

In 1810, Ludwig, the Crown Prince of

Bavaria and the son of King Max Joseph, voiced his concerns about the close alliance his father

and his First Minister had made with Napoleonic France.

524

Ludwig, though a loyal son and the

heir apparent to the Bavarian throne, had served in the Bavarian Army and had seen its glaring

limitations. Ludwig had commanded a division of the Bavarian Army that was subordinated to

French overall command at the Battle of Abensberg in 1809. Ludwig’s impression of the

Napoleonic alliance was that it handicapped the autonomy of Bavaria and was a disastrous

disruption to the established powers of Europe.

Ludwig was certainly justified in believing that the relationship between Napoleonic

France and Bavaria was costly. The Kingdom of Bavaria contribute 60.5 million gulden fighting

wars as part of the Napoleonic coalition.

525

Montgelas and Max Joseph remained within

Napoleon’s orbit if the war favored France. Graf Montgelas, ennobled in 1809 by Max Joseph,

traveled to Paris in December of 1810 to negotiate for the further territorial expansion and

523

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 458.

524

Katharina and Alois Schmid. Die Herrscher Bayerns 25 historische Portraits von Tassilo III.

bis Ludwig III, 305.

525

Weis, Montgelas, 1759-1838, Eine Biographie, 461.

157

protection of Bavaria. The visit was valuable for the objective of expanding Munich’s rule into

new lands. Bayreuth and the adjacent, long coveted city of Regensburg became Bavarian.

526

While the territorial acquisitions were profitable in theory, broader events outside of Montgelas’

control threatened to sabotage the integrity of the Bavarian state, the stability of agricultural

productivity, and the legitimacy of Wittelsbach rule.

The redistricting and development of Bavarian agricultural economy was complicated

by Napoleonic demands for goods to fight costly wars from 1810-1813. Montgelas and his

subordinate ministers had many reasons to be optimistic about the alliance with Napoleon

Bonaparte by 1810-1811. Bavaria’s ministers convinced king Max Joseph to reorganize the

administrative units under the expanded legal oversight of regional governments. The result was

the reduction of the sixteen Kreise to ten in 1810.

527

The new Kreise were organized around river

access, aiding trade, taxation, and communication within the Kingdom of Bavaria. The

respective administrative units were; Rezatkreis, Mainkreis, Regenkreis, Unterdonaukreis,

Salzachkreis, Isarkreis, Innkreis, Illerkreis, Oberdonaukreis.

528

Bavarian citizens were also

subject to more uniform legal practices and a court system called the Appellationsgericht by

1810.

529

The redistricting of Bavarian territories was a necessary step in collecting resources for

Napoleon’s wars but brought new legal challenges.

Bavarian control of resources was used to direct trade towards assisting Napoleonic

campaigns. Feuerbach’s Handelsgeseztzbuch auf der Grundlage des Code de Commerce (Trade

Law Book for the Foundation of the Commercial Code) was used to standardize mercantile law

526

Ibid., 458.

527

Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810, 29.

528

Ibid.

529

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 417.

158

in Bavaria in theory but was never implemented on a consistent and permanent basis.

530

Bavarians, however, likely understood that the invidious growth of Napoleonic support for

Bavarian rule more than merely influenced the economic policies of the Kingdom. Tens of

thousands of French soldiers were stationed in Bavaria where they were fed, quartered, and

requisitioned, if not stole, resources from locals. Weather conditions in Bavaria, and throughout

Germany, worsened in 1811. International volcanic activity spread dust and the dark clouds of

ash restricted sunlight.

531

Dreams of eventual land enclosure and abundant agricultural surpluses

were now in serious jeopardy. Nevertheless, Bavaria’s Finance Ministry officials remained

committed to the exploitation of farmland. French officials, for their own part, also had a vested

interest in German agricultural land, including Bavarian farms, and backed measures supporting

state centralization and the abolition of subsistence farming.

French reports on German lands reveal much about the Napoleonic regime’s desire to

encourage if not demand the project of mediatization and the enclosure of estate land via

allodification. The French representative, Claude Ambroise Regnier, ennobled as the Duke of

Massa in 1809, was a lawyer and a trusted associate of Napoleon Bonaparte.

532

Regnier, reported

on French efforts to accelerate the abolition of feudal type agricultural systems and recorded his

findings in, “Reports and Project for the Decree on the Abolition of Feudalism in the Department

of the Ems-Superior, the Banks of the Weser [River] and the Banks of the Elbe.”

533

Regnier’s

report also testifies to the Napoleonic French interest in developing and expropriating German

530

Ibid.

531

John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore: John

Hopkins University Press, 1977), xii.

532

National Assembly of France. “Jean Jacques Reboul.” http://www.assemblee-

nationale.fr/histoire/biographies/1789-1889/Tome_5/REBOUL_REILLE.pdf. [accessed 20

February 2020].

533

Ibid.

159

resources for the empire’s benefit. The French report from 1810 featured the explanation that,

“The Grand Duchy of Berg has ceased, for two years, being submitted to a feudal regime.”

534

The report, a concluding commentary on a study begun two years prior, concludes that feudal

privileges, rents, and pensions on each estate were also terminated.

535

French efforts to destroy

regional authority in German states was backed in large part by Bavarian acquiescence and

participation in the process.

Invasive land seizure policies, emulated in Bavaria, and reflected in the 1808

constitution, were now enforced as a concerted project by the French state. Napoleon occupied

territory in northern Germany and exerted increased pressures on the Continental System,

influencing the development of economic and associated legal reforms. French reforms were

frequently copied throughout the German states and the presence of Napoleonic armies and

many advisers and administrators contributed to the transformation of the agricultural economy

and ownership deeds. French influence spurred the creation of enclosure and the implementation

of a stronger bill of exchange for land.

536

Thus, the Duke of Massa’s report concerning

allodification in the merged northwestern states of Hanover and the free city of Bremen is

consistent with these developments. The duke of Massa reported that urban patricians rejected

the abolition of the patronizingly defined “feudal law of Lombards.”

537

Much to the Duke of

Massa’s consternation, Bremen was, “just at the moment of abolishing [the feudal system] the

regime had pronounced by the Westphalian law which the country submitted at the time of this

534

Chevalier Delamalle,“portions du Grand-duché de Berg,” Rapports et Projets de Décret Sur

l’abolition de la Féodalité dans les Départemens de l’Ems-Superieur, des Bouches-du-Weser et

des Bouches-de-l’Elbe.” Fondation Napoléon. Napoleonica.org. [accessed April 23, 2018].

535

Ibid.

536

Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18, 50.

537

Chevalier Delamalle, “Portions du Grand-duché de Berg,”

160

reunion.”

538

The French project of allodification, the removal of the designation of power as

property, was foisted upon northern German states as much as it was encouraged of client states

like Bavaria. Commitment to this project for unwilling German states, or willing parties like

Bavaria, however, exacerbated shortages of food and draft animals as French demands for

resources increased by the end of 1811 due to events in Russia.

Tsar Nicholas I withdrew from the Continental System’s embargo of trade with Britain

in 1810, in part motivating Napoleon’s desire to invade the Russia Empire, with Bavaria as a

loyal ally and logistical assistant in tow, in the summer of 1812. The invasion of Russia was as

much a disaster for the Kingdom of Bavaria as it was for Napoleon. Bavarian portrait artist

Albrecht Adam, who was also present for the carnage of the Battle of Wagram, reflected years

after that, “the campaign of 1809 was like a stroll in comparison to this [the Russian

campaign].”

539

Napoleon’s Grande Armée was augmented by vast levies of German troops and

supplies. Foodstuffs, horses and other draught animals, and wagons and carts of all types were

requisitioned for the campaign. Bavarian debt, in large part due to the Russian campaign,

ballooned to the tremendous sum of 118.1 million gulden.

540

State debt in Bavaria in 1810 alone

was 800,000 gulden lost from restrictions imposed by Napoleon’s Continental System.

541

addition, 30,000 Bavarian troops, led by marshal Wrede, would perish in Russia or during the

disastrous retreat across the Berezina River that winter.

542

Montgelas and Max Joseph were

forced to reassess the Bavarian alliance with France as the defeat turned into a rout. Conditions

538

Ibid.

539

Schuler, “Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 201.

540

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 165.

541

Schuler, “Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 202.

542

Ibid., 201.

161

in Bavaria worsened as state debt incurred from land redemption and furnishing the Grande

Armée soared and food shortages abounded.

Assessing the Damage: Famine and Debt after the Treaty of Ried (1812-1815)

Max Joseph and Montgelas made the difficult yet necessary decision to terminate

Bavaria’s alliance with France in 1812 before attempting to keep the agricultural market afloat

and rural farmers solvent. The project of allodification and land redemption stalled in the face of

Bavaria’s battlefield reverses, Napoleonic economic controls, and the prices incurred during the

process of land redemption. Bavarian notables, despite their lack of cash, retained much of their

original land. The process of allodification was successfully implemented to strip notables of

their titles, special privileges such as variable, personalized tax rates. Montgelas, however, failed

to redeem land for the transformation of land into suitable, productive farms.

543

Bavarians were

still largely dependent on subsistence agriculture. The burden of poor relief had previously rested

with the Catholic Church but with the process of secularization complete, the Bavarian state was

responsible for addressing the ensuing crisis.

544

Something had to be done to salvage struggling

farmers from notables to the much-idealized small-scale Bavarian peasant plot.

In 1812, the Tilgung’s Commission (Redemption Commission), organized by Montgelas

at the behest of Max Joseph, met to address the debt crisis. Montgelas’ basis for the commission

was laid out in the Ansbach Declaration of 1796.

545

A commission report from 11 October 1812

to Graf von Montgelas described secret meetings of the Tilgung’s specialists with Max Joseph at

543

Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics and Politics in

Germany, 1815-1871, 49.

544

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 177.

545

Francois Velde, Succession Laws of the Wittelsbach (Palatinate, Bavaria).

https://www.heraldica.org/topics/royalty/HGBayern.htm.

[accessed February 7, 2020].

162

Munich’s Nymphenburg palace on 10 September. Max Joseph responded, “Our government debt

repayment commission has to begin the yield of the loan and report back to us as soon as

possible,” signaling the beginning of debt and land relief efforts.

546

Montgelas’ solicited as

many assessments and regional reports to categorize the material worth of the Kingdom before a

new project of financial recovery could begin. These communications laid the groundwork for

financing what remained of Bavarian resources by 1812. So great was the depletion of Bavarian

resources that hunger gripped most of the regions of the kingdom by early 1813. Drastic

reevaluation of the needs and ability to assist the development of each Landkreise into stable,

profitable, and loyal regions of the state began.

The state debt commission of October 1812 could only make broad assumptions about

each region from Munich leading to a call for local reports on resources and collection of taxes.

The involvement of local administration played a crucial role in reassessment and reorganization

of Bavarian lands as regional authorities and interests gradually entered the circle of policy

formation and reporting. Montgelas’ Redemption Commission, required detailed reports of

privation and disrepair to aid land assistance and development. Act number 100, an example of a

land designation report commissioned by the Bavarian Finance Ministry, included a

correspondence record from 25 November 1812 establishing that:

Which of the most humble shows his royal majesty because of the beautiful building of

the royal ministry the rest of us grew to the Royal State Debt Redemption Commission -

Nymphenburg the 10th l.m (last months) surrounded, excellency of the K. Secret State

and Conference Ministry Mr. Graf von Montgelas and the above vidimirten copy to the

under Secret Commission this year after the highest S. Königl. Your Majesty soon

546

Staats-Schuldungen Tilgungs Commission, 11 October 1812, in BHSTaM 372. German:

“Unsere Staatschulden Tilgungskommission hat das hervor der Leihe hinzu einzuleiten und am

des darüber bald mögliche zu berichten.”

163

possible, and first you must raise yourself up by chance and try to get someone to

negotiate.

547

The report is a typical entry as it records the ubiquitous practice of debt assessment and

considerations for buttressing flagging agricultural efforts. Finance Ministry administrators also

set out to restructure Munich’s program of regulating trade networks to extract further profits to

pay off debt. A report on royal financial direction from Regensburg in the Hainsbach

Sallachkreise on 4 July 1813 demonstrates the Finance Ministry’s commitment to supporting and

taxing trades. Hainsbach-Sallach’s millers, for example, fell under Montgelas’ plan to commit

resources to supervising the taxation and certification of the trade between the 21

to the 26

the month.

548

The supervision and taxation of trades by the Bavarian state provided the

government with a source of revenue and the ability to sponsor development of local industries.

Debt reports were integral to compiling data about the conditions on the ground during the end of

1812, but little action could be taken to fully support, defend, or improve land conditions or trade

networks. Defending Bavarian security also required leaving its now one-sided, deleterious

alliance with France.

Max Joseph decided to end Bavaria’s alliance with France and join the side of the allied

coalition in the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812-1813) to save Bavarian sovereignty and chart a

new course of economic renewal. Historian Thomas Schuler presented king Max Joseph’s

547

Staats-Schuldungen Tilgungs Commission, 11 October 1812, in BHSTaM 372. German:

“Welches allerhöchsten an zeigt seine königliche Majestät p. wegen bei schön eines eigenen

Gebäudes die des königliche Ministerium uns übrigen wachsten an die K. Staats Schulden

Tilgungs Commission – Nymphenburg dem 10

ten

l.m. (letzte monate) umgeben, belieben

excellenz der K. Geheime Staats und Konferenz-Ministerium Herrn Graf von Montgelas und der

hier beliegenden vid mieten abschrift zu die unter Geheime Kommission dieses Jahr nach der

allerhöchsten S. Königl. Majestät bald möglich zu vollziehen, und erstl. dem mach sich sie heben

zufälligst zu müssen und jemand zu aushandlung zu bemühigen.”

548

Ibid.

164

options in 1813 in stark terms: a change of alliance to the allied side, a choice that would put

Bavaria at great risk if Napoleon was victorious, remaining allied with the French, or becoming a

neutral state.

549

The Kingdom of Bavaria expanded as a result of its close partnership with

Napoleonic France and Max Joseph was not eager to terminate the alliance. Max Joseph owed

his rule to Napoleon and was the father-in-law of Bonaparte’s favored stepson Eugéne

Beauharnais. Bavarian troops had fought under French command and had won the Kingdom its

territorial legitimacy as well as additional spoils of war ranging from Regensburg and Bayreuth

to Tyrol and Salzburg. Max Joseph understood defection would still be viewed with some level

of suspicion by the allies and, given an allied victory over Napoleon, would reduce the status, if

not the territorial boundaries, of Bavaria. Bavarian field marshal Karl von Wrede and crown

prince Ludwig convinced king Max Joseph to terminate the alliance with Napoleon and to join

the sixth coalition against France.

550

The result was the 8 October 1813 Treaty of Ried between

Bavaria and Austria. Bavaria found itself on the winning side when Napoleon was defeated at the

costly Battle of Leipzig from 16 to 19 October 1813. The allied victory sent Napoleon into

retreat and became a significant moment for German nationalist propagandists in the Kingdom of

Prussia who stoked anti-French sentiment and dubbed the event “the battle of nations.”

551

Bavaria, though wisely situated on the victorious side, did not consistently echo the anti-French

rhetoric of other occupied German states such as Austria and Prussia. The Kingdom of Bavaria

was subject to scrutiny, punishment, and reduction in power status after the Allied victory.

549

Schuler, “Wir sind auf einem Vulkan,” Napoleon und Bayern, 222.

550

Adam Zamoyski,

Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, 107.

551

Karen Hagemann, Revisiting Prussia's Wars against Napoleon: History, Culture, and

Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 168.

165

Years of Crisis: Famine and Territorial Reduction (1814-1817)

The years of 1813-1817 brought several crises to Bavaria including debt, famine, and

territorial loss. Bavarian debt from 1813-1815 stood at a vast 300 million gulden.

552

Montgelas’

proposed partnership with France had brought great victories, territorial aggrandizement, and the

defeat of Bavaria’s two greatest threats, Austria and Prussia. Bavaria, having defected to the

allied side in 1813 was viewed with suspicion as a collaborator puppet state of Imperial France.

Bavaria was thus relegated to a lesser status among European powers by the Congress of Vienna

system and forced to pay a 30 million-franc (23 million gulden) indemnity by the victorious

allies.

553

Shortages of cereals and meats increased within each area or Kreise of Bavaria. A

notice posted by Justice Minister Rödelmayer and his subordinate Bollmuth from 13 December

1813 highlights a shift in the management of Bavarian markets.

554

Rödelmayer’s report came

from Würzburg and was accordingly reprinted in the Würzburger Intelligenzblatt. The advisory

stated that an auction of 478 portions of veal would be made from the stores of Melchior Schüler

zu Neustadt at 10 AM on 5 January.

555

The auction is atypical of responsibilities that could be

carried out by the regional government at the general commissariat level. Meat was generally

sold at the market level and its price was regulated, at least in theory, by the responsibility of the

finance direction at the Gemeinde, or community level.

556

Greater action for food auctions and

management would be needed as shortages and climatic conditions worsened.

552

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 177.

553

Ibid, 166.

554

“Würzburger Intelligenzblatt Nro. 142.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitalesammlungen.de/view/bsb10388016_01121_u001/1?cq=Muenchen%20In

telligenzblatt [accessed January 28, 2020].

555

Ibid.

556

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 35.

166

A series of poor harvests from depleted farmland and the surrender of territory won

from Austria years prior crippled the Bavarian state. The winter of 1813-1814 was also

unexpectedly harsh. Montgelas, faced with furnishing a continuing military effort against

Napoleon, levied a new land tax that raised 23 million gulden from Bavaria’s approximately

three million subjects.

557

By 1814-1815, events like the auctions of meat stores and crops by

local authorities increased. Famine conditions abounded as the agriculture failed. In April of

1815 ash from the eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies blocked between 18-20%

of sunlight.

558

Land owned by small scale farmers was affected as were the land estates of the

mediatized elites. Elites, 9-10,000 of all Bavarians (.3 percent of the population), now possessed

half of the land they had prior to the dual processes of allodification and land redemption.

559

Even the former elites of Bavarian society were affected by the sudden destruction of food

supplies. The worst conditions came in 1816. Summer temperatures were between 2.3-4.6

degrees colder than expected and a complete harvest failure ravaged southern Germany.

560

Even

the productive enclosure-based agriculture of Great Britain, now an active trade partner with

Bavaria and other German states, was affected. British wheat yields were the lowest in 1816 out

of the time frame of 1815-1857.

561

Bavaria, struck by famine, was also deprived of vital

agricultural land as a condition of the post-Napoleonic settlement. Bavaria surrendered Salzburg

and land in the Palatinate to Austria in the Treaty of Munich in 1816.

562

Thereafter, Bavaria’s

557

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 418.

558

Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 (New York: Basic

Books, 2007), 169.

559

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 36.

560

Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, 170-171.

561

Ibid., 171.

562

Treml et al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 13.

167

debt crisis worsened, food scarcity, and growing number of beggars provoked concerns that the

current state was unequal to the task of government.

Bavaria’s debt crisis, famine conditions, and territorial losses became so severe in 1817

that senior Bavarian officials, including the crown prince Ludwig and Field Marshal Karl von

Wrede blamed Montgelas for the catastrophe and removed him from his post as First Minister.

Maximilian von Garnerin, the Graf Montgelas, had possessed a nearly unchallenged dominance

over Bavarian state bureaucracy from 1799-1817. Montgelas allodified Bavarian land and

redeemed half of all estate territory by 1815. His program of state centralization was also highly

successful and used the rising tide of Napoleonic influence to win Bavaria unquestioned

sovereignty and European standing. But Bavaria’s commitment to the Napoleonic alliance was

costly and Montgelas’ authority, however, consistently drew criticism from within the highest

reaches of the Bavarian state and royalty.

563

However successful Montgelas’ reforms had been

they depended on the fortunes of the Napoleonic system. Montgelas’ career thus ended with

Napoleon’s defeat and the collapse of the Bavarian military. Ludwig and Wrede believed the

Kingdom of Bavaria needed a new civil service and political establishment to salvage what

remained of Montgelas’ reforms.

Conclusion

The success and failure of the Montgelas era reforms in the Kingdom of Bavaria hinged

upon Napoleon Bonaparte’s demands, victories, and ultimately defeat. Montgelas used an

uneven and exploitative alliance with Napoleonic France as the impetus to drive the

allodification and redemption of land through 1817. The First Minister was also partly

responsible for the drafting of a constitution in 1808 that provided unitary rule under the aegis of

563

Ibid.

168

King Max Joseph. Montgelas used this new legal compact to categorize and steer Bavarian

commerce, implement uniform tax, tariff, and toll rates, and to spur agricultural growth through

encouraging enclosure of plots. In addition, he presided over a Finance Ministry that attempted

to establish new values for land independent of previous pension payouts. This was partly done

to help feed the Bavarian machinery of state and to supply Napoleonic armies. Montgelas’

efforts were very rational in theory. In practice, the demands of Napoleon Bonaparte, created

massive state debt and aggravated rural poverty and famine conditions. The hierarchical system

of regional governments Montgelas designed was efficient at extracting resources but failed to

adequately support debt and famine relief. It is dubious, however, to say if any civil bureaucracy

of this era could. Montgelas’ policies also sparked protest in Tyrol and the Innkreis in the

vicinity of Salzburg. The system itself left Bavarian subjects with no support network in case of

debt, famine, and rising taxes. Bavaria became a vassal state of Imperial France when

Montgelas’ government committed to Napoleon Bonaparte’s wars from 1809-1812. The result

was the destruction of Bavaria’s economy, the sharp rise in sovereign debt, and the exacerbation

of poor farming conditions to the horrors of a vicious famine from 1814-1816. By 1817, the

failure of Montgelas’ system, in large part due to the alliance with France, convinced the First

Minister’s peers within the Bavarian state that it was Montgelas himself who was responsible for

the collapse of the allodification program and not the indirect fault of the extractive Napoleonic

system. Montgelas’ critics, in their rush to blame him for the near collapse of the Kingdom of

Bavaria, ironically blamed the First Minister for signing the same destructive alliance with

France that also elevated the German state to any degree of prominence.

169

Chapter 4: Land and Power: the Landtag and Land Redemption (1818-1825)

The Period 1818-1825 saw major adjustments in the Bavarian state, with added greater

accountability, representation, and codified land law to the foundational basis of enlightened

absolutist and cameral rule of Montgelas’ Finanzpolitik (financial politics). At the war’s end, the

Bavarian state was heavily indebted, and its bureaucracy was unequal to the task of confronting

the depressed markets, soaring state debt, and the spread of famine and disease. It was for these

reasons that Graf Montgelas was scapegoated for the failure of his own system and removed

from his position as First Minister in 1817. Yet, Montgelas was responsible for the centralization

of power of the Bavarian state under the King and unitary legal code. He was also the creator of

an improved organization of Bavaria’s agricultural land. The agricultural economy was still

crucial to the vitality of Bavarian power and the well-being of the Kingdom’s subjects, and land

redemption from the mediatized notables (those now subordinated to the state through the

removal of titles and privileges) was still a project very much of interest to Bavarian civil

servants and Max Joseph.

564

Not that this was uncontested: the process of land redemption itself

was met with the intransigence of Gutsherrschaft lords who refused to accept state payment for

land and a general confusion regarding land value and the development of what exactly was

productive agriculture.

565

Max Joseph, Graf Georg Friedrich von Zentner, Marshal Karl Philipp

von Wrede, and Crown Prince Ludwig all looked to notables in 1817 to salvage the very system

that removed so many titles from landed estates. Saving Montgelas’ system, one so heavily

564

Andreas Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 436

565

Friedrich Lenger in Jonathan Sperber, Germany 1800-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2004), 4.

170

contingent on compromise, required the great compromise of including notables in the very land

negotiation process itself.

This chapter examines the complex steps taken by a new generation of Bavarian

reformers to complete the Kingdom’s legally supported transition from Montgelas and Max

Joseph’s foundational program of land allodification, a unitary legal system subordinate to King

Max Joseph, and state centralization to that of a constitutional monarchy supported by a

parliament (Landtag). In many regards these reformers, led by the legal theorist Georg Friedrich

von Zentner, were successful. First, the monarch retained power and gained a more authoritative

role to advance legislative ideas. Second, the Bavarian constitution was respected by more

reactionary peers abroad. Third, the Bavarian state’s civil bureaucracy was further

professionalized and educated members of Bavarian society, including many landholders, earned

entrance into the Landtag where they debated legislation advanced by the King. Bavaria was not

a republic and was therefore far from democratic. These achievements, given the pressures of the

era are noteworthy.

The foundation for a broader representation of Bavarian society in political participation

was very narrow but found its first expression in 1818. Ordinary Bavarians, the landed elites and

small-scale landholders alike, faced consistent issues of debt, crop failures, and land erosion. The

agricultural economy was still crucial to the vitality of Bavarian power and the well-being of the

Kingdom’s subjects. Land redemption from the mediatized notables was still a project very much

of interest to Bavarian civil servants and Max Joseph but faced the same hurdles of grievances

regarding pensions from the same elites.

566

The process of land redemption itself, however, was

566

Andreas Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (München: C.H.

Beck Verlag, 1983), 436.

171

met with the intransigence of Gutsherrschaft lords who refused to accept state payment for land

and a general confusion regarding land value and the development of what exactly defined

productive agriculture.

567

Bavaria’s land management and enclosure movement would need an

added level of state oversight and scrutiny from the subjects, notable and prominent middling

members, to bring a rational order to this system.

Landtag legislators, civil servants, and the King himself produced the reforms so critical

to assisting the practical, everyday elements of agricultural production through financial support

and maintenance of land. This demonstrated that an expanded civil bureaucracy and more

representative, transparent legislative process did much to affect the lives of common Bavarians

in the promised meaningful, visible terms. The slow reforms of the Bavarian state, from the

perspective of vital high politics were successful and used Montgelas’ system as a vital basis for

the enhancement and systemic overhaul of land-related economic projects and networks of

agricultural, notable assistance.

Background of the Second Bavarian Constitution

Bavaria was beset by many crises in 1818. The Napoleonic Wars left millions of dead

throughout Europe. Agricultural land was also depleted from extractive Napoleonic demands and

France’s continual troop levies from the Confederation of the Rhine states. This meant fewer

farmers to till the land. In Bavaria, arable farmland was overused, and draft animals requisitioned

for French use. Bavaria’s economy was, in large part, based on agriculture and agricultural

products. This had significant repercussion because some 55% percent of the Bavarian was based

567

Friedrich Lenger, “Economy and Society,” in Jonathan Sperber, Oxford Short History of

Germany, 1800-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4.

172

on agriculture.

568

The implementation of the Second Bavarian Constitution in 1818 transformed

the relationship between the Kingdom of Bavaria’s official land policies and landholders by

making the machinery of the state, and thus its impact on land sale and development, the partial

responsibility of both Bavarian subjects and a dedicated, professional civil service that answered

to the King and a legislative body, the Landtag.

After 1817, Montgelas was replaced by a secretive council placed at the highest reaches

of the Kingdom’s Bavaria legal and court circles.

569

These were chiefly civil servants who were

kept on by the King and Crown Prince due to their critical role in forming and interpreting

constitutional law. Foremost among these personalities was Georg Friedrich von Zentner, a legal

theorist and civil servant, was the most prominent of these personalities to challenge Montgelas’

nearly unobstructed personal rule. Zentner was instrumental in the creation of the modern

Bavarian state and worked closely with Montgelas. Zentner’s career was also an ideal expression

of the nearly meritocratic ideal of Montgelas’ plan for civil service training. Zentner was born in

1752 in Mannheim and was the son of an innkeeper.

570

Jesuit education in Heidelberg played a

formative role in Zentner’s training before his specialized cameral and legal education in Metz

and Göttingen, respectively. Zentner’s education and subsequent rejection of Jesuit political and

social influence mirrored the career trajectory of Montgelas. At Göttingen, Zentner studied under

the cameral theorist Johann Stephen Pütter, the same thinker who had made such a great

impression on Montgelas as well. Pütter broadened the narrow focus of the cameral faculties by

combining notions of Politik (newly defined political science) with a general education in

568

Hermann Kellenbenz. Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhunderts, 67.

569

Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig I von Bayern. Konigtum im Vormärz. eine Politische Biographie,

71.

570

Ibid., 72.

173

mathematics, history, and specialized law among many other subjects.

571

Zentner’s education

and political role within the Bavarian state made him an ideal candidate for reforming

Montgelas’ system.

Zentner delivered lectures on history of the Holy Roman Empire and German law in

1779. Zentner’s educational pedigree helped secure both employment and notoriety. The future

Bavarian field marshal Karl Philipp Furst von Wrede attended a lecture in 1779 as was the Duke

of Württemberg, Charles II. Charles invited Zentner to advise his court in 1780 on legal

matters.

572

Montgelas recruited Zentner in 1799 and the legal scholar thus entered the Bavarian

civil service. and along with Montgelas, worked to form a universal property law beyond

privilege and social status. Zentner’s input was critical during the drafting of the first Bavarian

constitution especially in the realm of extending Napoleonic property laws, among other legal

traditions, into the Kingdom of Bavaria.

573

Zentner was also Bavaria’s leading legal theorist who

defended the Kingdom’s constitution, and sovereignty in the Congress of Vienna system.

Zentner’s loyal service aided his advancement within Montgelas’ regime into the post-

Napoleonic era.

The energetic role of Crown Prince Ludwig as a state council advisor brought new

urgency to efforts to restructure the Bavarian state. Ludwig served as his ailing father’s (Max

Joseph) representative in the Bavarian court and to government ministries. The Crown Prince,

having served in the Bavarian Army during the Napoleonic Wars, was skeptical of French ideas,

including the land and administrative reforms of Montgelas. The Bavarian state was foundering

571

Lindenfeld, David F, The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the

Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1997), 40.

572

Ibid.

573

Andreas Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 436.

174

in debt and the worsening of famine conditions loomed on the horizon when Mongtelas was

removed from power by what the First Minister almost surely believed was a camarilla of

reactionary interests. Ludwig was eager to scrutinize the purported weaknesses and mistakes of

Montgelas’ ideas and his personal rule that was shrouded in secrecy.

574

The Crown Prince was

interested in pragmatic solutions to Bavaria’s myriad woes, not philosophical views of scientific

and economic theory. Zentner, also a member of the 1817 group that ousted Montgelas, seemed

an ideal choice to represent Bavarian interests abroad with a new, seemingly anti-French face,

while drafting a revised constitution for the state. While Ludwig assessed the inadequacies of the

Bavarian constitution, Zentner added his doubts that the existing compact could protect the now

vulnerable authority of the state.

575

Bavaria’s reduced status in the Congress System, and its

alliance with Napoleonic France against Austria, made Ludwig, Zentner, and Munich’s

governing elite wary of threats to state sovereignty. Work within the new German Federal

system was now necessary to protect the integrity of Bavaria.

The political maneuvering of Bavarian statesmen in the system of German Federalism

was characterized by the protection of Wittelsbach rule, the retention of the Kingdom’s borders,

and a commitment to repairing and augmenting the economic value of agricultural land. Bavaria,

as a power in the new German Confederation, was subject to several challenges from abroad.

The German Confederation, and the Congress of Vienna System, were the key networks within

which Bavarian sovereignty was threatened most. Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, the chief

Austrian architect of the postwar conservative rebuke to the Napoleonic order, presided over the

Congress of Vienna System following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. Metternich’s

574

Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig I. von Bayern, Königtum im Vormärz, eine Politische Biographie

72.

575

Ibid., 219.

175

rejection of French, republican inspired state reforms was tempered by his tolerance for

constitutions drafted by German states. Article thirteen of the German Federal Act (Bundesakte

XIII) afforded states within the German Confederation the ability to draft and implement

constitutions.

576

Metternich, though he represented as an arch conservative of the post-

Napoleonic era, ostensibly favored the protection of a altständische Verfassung – a constitution

that preserved the privileges and landed titles of the elite estate of the German states.

577

The

Bavaria state dispensed with titles and privileges but its enlightened absolutist monarchy was

hardly radical in design.

Within Bavaria, however, key members of the Bavarian government and monarchy,

Zentner and Ludwig counted among them, demonstrated a clear bias for a reformed constitution

to protect the supreme authority of the Wittelsbach dynasty. Metternich’s article XIII could, at

least in theory, give support to the mediatized nobility in Bavaria, and in other German states.

Though reduced in status by the reforms of Montgelas, these 9-10,000 individuals (some .3

percent of the Bavarian population) possessed half of the land and material holdings they had

prior to the establishment of the Bavarian constitution of 1808.

578

The resurgence of the

Ständische Herrschaft system, a trapping of seigneurial, Electoral Bavarian land law, stood to

benefit from a favorable constitution approved by Metternich and more conservative

personalities in the German Confederation.

579

Metternich’s Article XIII articulated the

conservative order’s outsized influence on the development of state constitution’s, eliding

recognition of existing, Napoleonic era compacts.

576

James J. Sheehan, German History 1770-1866, 411.

577

Ibid., 411.

578

Manfred Treml et. Al. Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 41.

579

Rafe Blaufarb, interview by author, Tallahassee, FL, February 29, 2020.

176

The German states that did possess constitutions and greatly restructured state

bureaucracies balked equally at Metternich’s declaration. Wurttemberg’s kings, Frederick I and

the subsequent William I, honored the declaration of Article XIII with a resounding celebration

of the existing constitution but urgently reformed the legal code to protect against foreign

meddling.

580

Württemberg’s rulers were not alone in their scramble to secure pre-Congress

constitutions and legal traditions. In the Kingdom of Prussia, the Stein-Hardenberg reforms were

vigorously protected by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the theologian and

historian Joseph Görres.

581

The former Hanseatic Free City of Hamburg, now a member of the

German Confederation, was keenly defended by its patrician leaders who exalted the virtues of

unrestricted free trade and the demolition of city walls.

582

Perhaps the most provocative reactions

came from the Kingdom of Prussia in 1818 where a proposed leadership of a German Federal

Army (under the direction of Berlin) met with hostility throughout the German states.

583

The

sudden absence of the strong leadership of Montgelas in Bavaria, however maligned he now was,

threatened to weaken the position of the Kingdom during this period of uncertainty and

deliberation.

The Constitutional Process and the Uncertain State of Allodification in 1818

Montgelas’ system of allodification of estates posed its own series of distinct problems

for the Bavarian state as it revealed a deep dysfunction within the overstretched civil

580

Dilcher, Gerhard. "Vom Ständischen Herrschaftsvertrag zum Verfassungsgesetz," Der

Staat 27, no. 2 (1988): 161-93. Accessed March 30, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/43642088.

581

Ibid.

582

Katherine Aaslestad, “Liberty and its Meanings in the Hanseatic City-States, 1780-1830,”

Paper Presentation, 50

Annual Conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-

1850, Tallahassee, FL, February 28, 2020.

583

Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom, The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, 394.

177

bureaucracy. Bavaria’s early attempts at redemption of land for allodification were unevenly

applied by Montgelas’ Finance Ministry. The process of allodification was interpreted by

Finance Ministry officials on an individual, negotiated basis. Land became an immovable

property. Immovable properties and real ownership of immovable goods had an assigned price at

market. Land law by 1818 also included more traditional division of Realität (real property

owned as land) through inheritance portions.

584

Land was divided into smaller parcels of land

through enclosure The value of land was based on the supposed value of agricultural goods it

could produce.

585

A muddled process of privatization of land from estates caused great

confusion. Movable property was bought and sold on the same markets as immovable products.

Therefore, the movable and immovable goods were both traded for cash value.

586

Redemption

claims, and state assistance for notable losses through compensation related complaints played

more of a role of assigning value for all goods lost during the Napoleonic Wars and subsequent

years of hardship. The movable goods like crops were weighed against the value of immovable

goods like land.

587

Markets for goods with cash value meant the velocity of transactions

increased. Compensation claims, therefore, measured the loss of productivity as a metric of

disused land.

Confusion about the value of specific goods thus abounded and Bavarian Finance

Ministry officials struggled to make consistent decisions. Land compensation claims in the

Untermain-Kreis, for example, reflect this conflation of immovable and movable goods during

584

Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschicte 1800-1866 (München: C.H. Beck, 1983), 171.

585

Theodor Freiherr von der Goltz. Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 13.

586

Ibid., 19.

587

David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, 355.

A similar system was present in Baden as early as the eighteenth century. Baden used the term

Fahrnis to describe movable goods rather than immovables.

178

the state decision to establish cash values for land compensation claims. A report from 1817-

1818 records compensation for Franz Nickels’ crops and land as 20 florins.

588

Other goods

commanded a 40 florin, 47 kreutzer price.

589

The goods exchanged are placed in a general

category and the type or numbers of goods are not specified. Set prices for movable goods are

possible to explore as a type but more classification is unfortunately missing. The incomplete

picture of exchanges and pricing of goods also underscore the reality of a limited state presence

in managing land development beyond its purchase for enclosure. Untermain Kreis’ records give

a notion of a market that had structure but also include statements that demonstrate negotiation

was commonplace. The collection description begins with the order that labor and agricultural

products, as approved (and stamped) by regional authorities, were to be awarded the suggested

total of 57 florin, 27 kreutzer. Buying, selling, and compensating destroyed land, was a far more

complex and improvised process than extensive Finance Ministry records suggest.

Land assessed by the Bavarian state was, however, never subject to a coherent system of

assessment and compensation. Buying and selling land was presented as a straightforward

transaction by Montgelas. Fair transactions at market value was another question. In theory, the

assessment of the price of land was an action overseen by the expanded bureaucracy of the

Bavarian Finance Ministry. The reality was far different. The ubiquity of Finance Ministry cases

eventually brought before the Landtag attest to the lack of a systemic means of judicating land

transfer or sale. One critical point to explore is who was buying land. Few Bavarians had the

ability to purchase large quantities of land. The enclosure movement in Bavaria helped the state

generate revenue from previous seigneurial dues first, dividing and exploiting the former lands of

588

Finance Ministry Property (Realitäten) in Dettelbach im Untermainkreis, October 12, 1819, in

BHStA MF 21462.

589

Ibid.

179

mediatized nobility. Bavaria was mostly a land of small agricultural holdings that stayed within

families through the practice of partible inheritance – a process that divided land between family

members based on equal division of property. The open field system, as Theodore Hamerow

described it, disappeared and was replaced, at first, by early partition and sale among small

landholders.

590

Seigneurial dues were replaced by exchanges of cash for rental after the passage

of the first Bavarian constitution (1808) and continued through the passage of the second in

1818.

591

The existence of this rudimentary exchange of wages and rents for land as well as cash

for small plots persisted as the modus operandi for most Bavarians through the Napoleonic Wars

and beyond. The Bavarian state was more concerned with setting the value of larger former

estates and the sale of more substantial fields. Land quality and market value were chief concerns

of Bavaria’s reformers in 1818.

Drafting the Second Bavarian Constitution: Debate and Compromise

The careers and opinions of Bavaria’s most prominent civil servants were themselves

reflections of the complex loyalties of a state in transition from an Enlightened absolutist model

to that of a constitutional monarchy. The dismissal of Bavarian First Minister Graf Montgelas,

though seen as necessary by Ludwig, Wrede, and Zentner, weakened Munich’s central authority

during the interim period before the drafting of the second Bavarian constitution. Max Joseph,

however, acted quickly and appointed a new regime of Graf Alois von Rechberg as Foreign

Minister, Graf Friedrich Karl von Thürheim as Minister of the Interior, and Freiherr Maximilian

590

Theodore S. Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, Economics and Politics in

Germany, 1815-1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 39.

591

Ibid.

180

von Lerchenfeld (a close associate of Montgelas) as Finance Minister.

592

These candidates knew

Montgelas’ system well and were dedicated to the service of Max Joseph.

Therefore, the new regime, at least in 1818, reflected an initial desire on the part of Max

Joseph for state stability rather than a dramatic overhaul of the most senior leadership positions

in the Kingdom’s civil service. Rechberg, Zentner, and Lerchenfeld seemed an ideal trio to

govern Bavaria due to their earlier collaboration on the 1810 Bavarian Civil Code.

593

Graf Alois

von Rechberg was a career civil servant who hailed from Max Joseph’s native Zweibrücken and

served as Bavaria’s leading plenipotentiary to the Congress of Vienna.

594

Rechberg advanced a

Bavarian position that emphasized a conciliatory attitude to the new German Confederation.

595

The new finance minister, Freiherrn Lerchenfeld, however, typified the divided loyalties still

present over fifteen years since the beginning of Montgelas’ efforts to redeem and transform

Bavarian estate agriculture into productive, enclosed plots. Lerchenfeld’s family line belonged to

the rarefied elite stratum of the Bavaria Ständeschaft. Egglkofen, in Landkreis Mühldorf,

Oberbayern, was an estate tied to the jurisdictional privileges of the Lerchenfeld family.

596

Lerchenfeld served as a loyal subordinate to Montgelas and the latter possessed a castle on the

former Egglkofen manorial grounds as late as 1833.

597

Rechberg and Lerchenfeld, elites in their

own right, were a critical connective tissue between the estate Ständeschaft and the statist regime

592

Benno Hubensteiner, Bayerisches Geschichte, Staat und Volk, Kunst und Kultur, 360.

593

V. Müller, Karl Alexander. "Probleme Der neuesten Bayerischen Geschichte (1799-

1871)." Historische Zeitschrift 118, no. 2 (1917): 222-49. Accessed March 30, 2020.

www.jstor.org/stable/27603378, 231.

594

Wolfgang Burgdorf," von Rechberg, Alois Graf " in neue Deutsche Biographie 21 (2003), pp.

229-230 [online version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-

biographie.de/pnd118598783.html#ndbcontent

595

Ibid.

596

Karl Bosl, Handbuch der historischen Stätten-Deutschlands: Bayern Bd. VII (Stuttgart:

Alfred Kroener, 1989), 158.

597

Ibid.

181

of the Wittelsbach dynasty. Their bureaucratic experience, and elite ties, would prove crucial

during the process of forming the second Bavarian constitution.

Zentner, Rechberg, and Lerchenfeld, central, trusted figures of the Bavarian state were

thus entrusted with defending Bavarian interests against reactionary intervention from beyond

Bavaria’s borders. When Ludwig dismissed Montgelas in 1817 he did so at a critical point of

Bavarian negotiations within the Congress of Vienna system. Two years prior, Rechberg, then

serving as the Bavarian representative to the Congress of Vienna, was forced to manage

Bavarian loss rather than serve as the envoy of a major power. Metternich, the dominant

personality of the Congress of Vienna, presided over the Vienna Final Act following the

conclusion of the Congress sessions, therefore overseeing the return of Austrian territory to the

Habsburg throne. The Bavarian territories of Brixen in the Trentino and Tyrol were among the

Napoleonic spoils of war returned to Austrian possession per article 93 of the Vienna Final

Act.

598

Salzburg, a Bavarian possession, was ceded to the victorious Habsburg Empire.

599

The

price for this territorial loss seemed fair. The resumption of open access to Rhine and Danube

mercantile traffic, however, meant the end of the restrictive, protectionist Napoleonic

Continental System and new opportunities for Bavarian commerce.

600

Montgelas’ dismissal may

have taken place at a critical point for Bavaria, but the Kingdom’s territorial sovereignty

remained intact. Serious reform of the existing system, was, however needed.

598

“Vienna Final Act.” June 9, 1815. Vienna Final Act.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Final_Act_of_the_Congress_of_Vienna/General_Treaty [accessed

December 12, 2019].

599

“Treaty of Munich.” April 14, 1816. Treaty of Munich.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=um1eAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fal

se. [accessed December 12, 2019].

600

Vienna Final Act

182

Land and Political Representation: The Second Bavarian Constitution 1818

The writers of the 1818 constitution would have to address the failures of the 1808

constitution to protect subjects, including notables, from the unchallenged and inefficient

Bavarian state as the Kingdom was reduced in size and stature in the Congress system. The

enclosures of land not tied to privilege and title left many Bavarian notables cash poor. Although

done on a voluntary basis, the lack of liquid assets held by Bavarian notables, incentivized their

decision to relinquish land (the process of redemption) to Munich. Bavarian notables were faced

with the loss of power and influence as their legal and taxation privileges were destroyed without

recourse. This mediatization of Bavarian notables occurred during a climate of war and

economic privation. The ultimate authority of the Bavarian state made protest a futile effort.

Bavaria’s 1808 constitution made the King the “sole organ of the state”.

601

The 1818 constitution

was a document written in response to the purported failure of the Montgelas era state ministries

to protect and improve upon Bavarian agriculture and trade. Zenter, Lerchenfeld, and Rechberg

(among other officials) needed to address perceived shortcomings of the last legal compact of the

Montgelas years.

The special committee addressed the key points of taxation and land privileges by

eliminating many of the tax burdens of the Montgelas era despite their success in cementing state

authority. These topics produced friction between the supreme authority of the state under

Montgelas and the Bavarian notables who had been stripped of privileges and special taxation

and pension rights.

602

The elimination of special taxation rates was part of Montgelas’ plan to

601

Treml, Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat 41.

602

Jӧrg Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001), 29.

183

create a streamlined, extractive, and uniform system of taxation.

603

Historian Jörg Rode observed

that the long term consequences of this project were significant. Rode wrote, “In addition, the

reform of the unmanageable system of direct taxes was particularly significant.”

604

While this tax

reform was a significant step in the centralization of the Bavarian state and its accumulation of

revenue, the immediate products were less promising. The new tax system created a deeply

indebted state opposed by a cash poor notable population. These cash poor nobles were unable to

assist, even if willing, in the transformation of Gutsherrschaft land into a productive and

profitable agricultural enterprise. Zentner and the constitutional committee addressed the

taxation and hunger crises faced by Bavarians in the preamble to the second constitution.

Metternich’s influence on state constitutions is also present throughout the text of the second

Bavarian constitution. Zentner wrote;

The monumental and unprecedented world events that did not leave a single German

State untouched, and during which the people of Bavaria immediately demonstrated

themselves to be great both while suffering under the pressure and while surviving in

battle had hardly reached their goal in the Act of the Wiener Congress when We began to

seek to fulfill the requirements of Our State.

605

The constitutional committee was beset by the imposing interest groups of Bavarian notables, the

reactionary order of a German Confederation led by Metternich, and critics of state ministries.

Zentner and the constitutional committee thus sought compromise, not confrontation, with the

notable interests in Bavaria implemented on 26 May 1818 by a special committee led by Ludwig

I with the legal oversight of Graf Zentner.

603

“Baierisches National Zeitung Nro. 65.”

604

Rode, Der Handel im Kӧnigreich Bayern um 1810, 29.

605

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184

The constitutional committee, an informal circle including Ludwig I, Marshal Wrede,

Zentner, Rechberg, and Lerchenfeld, convened in early 1818 as the Staatsratkomission (State

Council Commission).

606

The implementation of the second Bavarian constitution in 1818

brought the promise of increased representation for landowners, notable and Mittelstände (non-

noble middling Bavarians who could buy property) alike. The Mittelstände property buying class

was small in 1818 but grew steadily during the next two decades. Merchants, lawyers and

professors, and enterprising farmers rose in monetary status and desired greater access to land. In

time these individuals, following a highly specific property-based pursuit of liberal politics,

demanded inclusion in the Landtag. Zentner, more than any other Bavarian statesman, was

responsible for the writing of the second constitution.

607

The legal theorist and general director of

the Ministry of the Interior was ideally situated to gauge both the unrest in the Kingdom of

Bavaria and the conflicting interests of each estate. Zentner was politically adept for someone

considered to be a loyal, apolitical civil servant, and he was given free rein to draft much of the

text of the constitution.

608

Staatsratkomission members took the important step of drafting a

constitution amenable to notable and, to a lesser degree, wealthy Mittelstände interests.

The state, represented chiefly by Ludwig and Zentner, was still the supreme Bavarian

authority under the King. Bavarian representation came, legally speaking, from a two-chamber

parliament (Landtag) comprised of notables in the Reichsräthe (Chamber of Imperial

Counsellors) and the Kammer der Abgeordneten (the Chamber of Deputies).

609

Together, the

sessions of the Landtag contained favored nobility connected to the Bavarian state, untitled

606

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 437-438.

607

Ibid.

608

Ibid.

609

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185

nobles, members of the manufactory (Fabrikante), a small contingent of prominent lawyers,

professors, and merchants (Kaufleute), and those private citizens who owned sufficient quantities

of land. Land qualifications for voting were common in Federal German constitutions and the

traditions of Rhenish law.

610

Crown Prince Ludwig I lent his support to both the establishment of

a two-chamber parliamentary assembly as well as the implementation of a uniform tax system.

611

All parties, however, were not equal. Membership in the Landtag emphasized social standing

and gross land ownership. The bicameral Landtag exposed the more conservative tacking of the

1818 constitutional reforms and the fundamental differences between the Bavarian Stände

(estates).

The two chambers of the Landtag contained an elite, propertied representation of

Bavarian men. A small proportion of the Bavarian populace possessed the ability to vote.

Reichsräthe members were from the most rarefied ranks of Bavarian society. Members came

from the top two voting classes of the five-class system.

612

Classes I and II had 475 and 86

members respectively.

613

Of these members 440 and 79 possessed the ability to vote in the lower

chamber. Class I members were noble landholders who collected rents as landlords. Such

esteemed members frequently held higher offices such as being a regional judge as well as

having membership and voting rights in both houses of the Bavarian Landtag. Sebastian Wenzel

Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, the first president of the upper and lower chambers of the Landtag

from 1819-1837, also held the office of minister of justice among other offices. Class III, with

3,416 members, was completely represented in the lower chamber as a voting bloc with 100% of

610

Jonathan Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 39.

611

Kraus, Bayerns Geschichte, 437

612

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 43.

613

Ibid.

186

its members being represented and present as Wahlmänner (electors).

614

Classes IVa, IVb, and V

especially, comprised the vast majority of Bavaria’s 3 million plus subjects. Voting rights in the

chambers of the Landtag, and participation as Wahlmänner, were extremely limited. Class V for

example constituted 6,689 Wahlmänner drawn from some 673,164 families and a total of

3,030,000 Bavarians. Membership requirements constrained the political voice of Bavaria’s

poorer landholders and non-noble Mittelstaende members. The responsibilities of both chambers

thus contrasted and presented potential points of friction for prospective deputies.

Members of both chambers of the Landtag were consumed with questions concerning

land politics with a specific focus on pensions and taxation rates. One of the most important

responsibilities of the Landtag was the control of granting and assessing landed property and

their connected tax and pensions rates. Article five of part 11 of the 1818 constitution stated, “In

order to compensate for great and determined services to the State, other State domains or

pensions may be awarded, but only with the approval of the Estates. They shall adopt the

property of being a fiefdom of the crown only inheritable in the male line.”

615

The arbitration of

property rights and pensions thus became a central responsibility of Landtag members. While

historian Andreas Kraus observes that the membership qualifications of each chamber did not

necessarily entail tensions in the Landtag over issues such as property rights and pensions, the

interests and social standing of deputies represented opposite sides of Bavarian estates.

616

Notables and the more middling members of the Landtag thus shared certain responsibilities.

614

Ibid.

615

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616

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 441.

187

Social standing provided potential areas of disagreement for Landtag members. The

notable, first class Schrenck dominated the Stände Versammlung as its president. His deputy, the

second president Johann Michael von Seuffert, a lawyer by trade, belonged to Class IV of the

voting bloc. Schrenck and Seuffert were both dedicated civil servants rewarded for their loyal

service to King Max Joseph. No conflict between Schrenck or Seuffert can be found in archival

material. Their positions in the Landtag and voting class membership, however, reveal a

fundamental inequality of suffrage criteria between Bavarian legislators. This gulf between

social rank and voting qualifications, would, in time, become a more visible point of conflict

between Landtag members. In 1818, however, land, and the social standing, pension, salary, and

participation in the Landtag, slowly became sources of consternation and friction among

deputies.

While no organized, republican inspired liberal political movement in the Landtag

membership existed in 1818, the very foundation of the assembly spurred lively discourse about

the scope of responsibilities possessed by the various members and committees of the Chamber

of Deputies and its educated, professional landholding representatives. Animated debate about

the broad range of economic and legal ramifications posed by of a two chamber, comparatively

representative assembly took place in 1818.

617

King Max Joseph, Zentner, and the State Council

Commission sought to create a sense of unity through the establishment of the second

constitution. This “constitutional patriotism” (Verfassungspatriotismus) became the basis for the

citizenship of subjects and the legitimacy of the Wittelsbach Dynasty.

618

Constitutional

patriotism and debate aside, the key focus of discussion gravitated towards land.

617

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 175.

618

Treml et. al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat, 33.

188

Gutsherrschaft land was the foundation of the Bavarian economy and was thus a key

topic of discussion for Landtag members. The Güter land of former Gutsherrschaft estates was

central to the integration of Bavarian subjects, noble and commoner alike, and subsequent

subordination to the will of the King and the decisions of the Landtag.

619

Landtag members

deliberated overt who owned Gutsherrschaft land and how it could best be maintained Landtag

Actenproducte – the main points of parliamentary procedure – often revolved around land value

and pensions associated with former estates. A Landtag report for a typical financial report reads,

“Security for the purchase of the foundation money, security for the future retention.”

620

Members of the Chamber of Imperial Counsellors and the Chamber of Deputies thus possessed a

vested interest in the formation of property law and its impact on wealth and pension

accumulation. Individuals in the Reichsräthe were consumed with preserving land and the

fortunes and privileges they retained. Reichsräthe members frequently criticized the inclusion of

common landowners in the Landtag, arguing that their presence and voting responsibilities

meant that “power and courage were lost in a sea of soup.”

621

Members of the Chamber of the

Deputies, who were eligible to stand for membership via election, were thus more motivated to

gain access to Güter land and the wealth of its potential agricultural products. The

responsibilities of the Chamber of Deputies would soon include vital discussions about the

property rights connected to land ownership, creating a potential conflict of interest between the

former Güter elites and commoners wishing to buy land.

619

Ibid., 1

620

Extradition of Pension Salary (Isarkreis München), in BHSTaM RA 81046. German:

“Sicherheit für die kauftige kauf bewahrung der Stiftungs gelden, Sicherheit für die kuenftige

Aufbewahrung.”

621

Treml et al., Geschichte des modernen Bayern: Königreich und Freistaat 40.

189

1819: The First Session of the Landtag and Land and Pension Debate

The Chamber of Imperial Counsellors, and the lower Chamber of Deputies served as a

passive audience for interpreting the laws proposed by King Max Joseph during the first

legislative session of the Bavarian Landtag beginning in February 1819. German historian Dirk

Götschmann comments in Bayerisches parliamentarismus in Vormärz, 1819-1848 that the

increased representation brought the promise of state modernization with it.

622

Members of the

Chamber of Deputies supported King Max Joseph’s legitimacy as the sole ruler of Bavaria. This

process, however, was defined by the contrast of the Chamber of Deputies’ legislative

responsibilities in theory and those it possessed. Deputies from both chambers played a more

reactive than proactive role in the legislative process.

The King of Bavaria, per the second constitution of 1818, presented legislature to the

Landtag. This idea was known as the monarchical principle in Bavarian Verfassungstheorie

(constitutional theory).

623

This concept, familiar to the Francophile King Max Joseph, was

borrowed from the French Charter of 1814 that proposed the same “so-called monarchical

principle.”

624

The constitution itself also implied that the “we” of the Bavarian state was that of

the State Council Commission and Max Joseph, not the legislators of the Landtag. “The current

file…” the preamble of the 1818 constitution begins, “is the work of our free and firm will.”

625

King Max Joseph, by Zentner’s design, was the driving force of the legislative process while the

bicameral legislature served as an advisory panel. Paragraph one of the second constitutional

622

Dirk Götschmann, Bayerischer parlamentarismus im Vormärz. Die Ständeversammlung des

Königreichs Bayern 1819–1848, 5.

623

Hans-Michael Körner, Geschichte des Königsreichs Bayern, 55.

624

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 438.

625

Ibid.

190

article also established, “The King is the head of the state.” The King had to convene a

legislative session every three years for the duration of no longer than two months and also had

the discretion to dissolve the entire assembly at will. Both chambers could also be dissolved at

the King’s discretion. Therefore, this process of supposed state modernization began with the

meeting of a largely undemocratic assembly of advisors who could be dismissed at the whim of

the sovereign. The putative legislators would have to find certain responsibilities from which to

carve out a more active role in the legislative process.

Questions regarding law enforcement and trade were important in 1819 due to increasing

hardships for ordinary Bavarians and a climate of reactionary policing and social surveillance in

central Europe. Members of the two chambers of the Landtag deliberated over taxes, hardship

reports from landowners, and various petitions brought before them. The legal initiative

(Gesetzes Initiative) of the monarchical principle meant that King Max Joseph was responsible

for presenting reforms before the Landtag. The two chambers of the Landtag approved new

taxes (Steuerbewilligung), cooperation over legal interpretation (Mitwirkung), lawmaking

(Gesetzesgebung), and petitions and hardship law (Petitions und Beschwerderecht).

626

Ongoing

disorder and damage to Bavarian property were chief among the concerns of the Landtag. The

task of the Bavarian Landtag, in part during 1819, was to support commercial activity in the

Kingdom by authorizing the enforcement of private property law. Property related concerns

filled the 1819 agenda of the Landtag. Many of these cases were part of a persistent decline in

commerce and the need for local authorities to have the support of Munich to enforce laws. One

of the first Landtag sessions, on 25 February 1819, considered the limits of local policing in

626

Ibid.

191

Straubing.

627

Members of Straubing’s local government sought the best means to enforce laws

without impeding trade. Finance ministry authorities secured foundation funds from trade and

local dues before reporting on local officials confidence in civil servants. A report reads, “the

foundation’s let out of a feeling of responsibility among the general population someone who is

responsible for grain, and to subjects among the division of landed property can be stored in the

community house of in a church.”

628

The limits of centralized authority, as this case from

Straubing illustrates, had yet to be appropriately addressed by the Bavarian state. Landtag

members were more adept, though, at extracting wealth from landholders than administering

land.

The Landtag was tasked with ensuring agricultural commerce while securing the

unabated flow of tax revenues into state coffers. A severe price shock hit Bavarian agriculture in

1819 and concomitant debt concerns spread throughout the Kingdom’s land estates.

629

Bavaria’s

taxation system did not help matters. The regimen was also far from a unique problem faced by

German states in the post-Napoleonic era. Bavaria, along with the Kingdom of Baden,

implemented massive taxation, allodification, and compensation efforts to transform the land of

elites in a continued effort to stimulate agricultural production.

630

The governments of Bavaria

and Baden attempted to extract as much cash from landholders as well to pay off state debts.

631

Bavarian income from dues charged to former estate holders constituted a full 15-22% of all

627

Extradition of Pension Salary (Isarkreis München), in BHSTaM RA 81046.

628

Ibid. German: “die Stiftungs lassen von den pflegen gefühl (from a feeling of responsibility),

unter die Gemeins zugleichen Getreid gern Guts Gemeinde bevollmächtigsten stehen, und nach

Unterthanen untern dem bei Realteilung selbst und dann Gemeinde Hause oder in der Kirche

aufbewahrt werden sollen.”

629

Hermann Kellenbenz. Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfaengen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhunderts (Muenchen: C.H. Beck, 1977), 40.

630

Lenger in Sperber, Germany, 1800-1870, 95.

631

Ibid., 97.

192

state revenue.

632

Income from land dues was of paramount importance. Landholders were the

largest group represented in the Landtag. One eighth of the Chamber of Deputies’ members were

Landeigentümer – those who owned land as property. The membership of the Chamber of

Imperial Counsellors was drawn from the elite estate of Bavarian society (Adeligestände) who

possessed Güter land as property and largely resisted the Kingdom’s land redemption efforts.

Ongoing hardships for Bavarian landowners (and non-landowners as well), were brought

before the first session of the Landtag. The Actenproducte of the Landtag included a discussion

of protecting private property and commercial interests in Passau dated to 29 April 1819.

633

Ensuring the protection of free commerce and private property was a priority throughout 1819.

The Landtag also paid close attention to protecting property in Straubing, Augsburg, and

Nuremburg due to reports of hardship submitted by regional governments from February to April

1819.

634

Private property in 1819 was also under assault due to a spontaneous, violent series of

riots known as the Hep-Hep Riots by August of that year. These anti-Semitic riots added to the

deleterious conditions of debt and famine that challenged the King and Landtag to find ways to

preserve private property rights and law and order in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Hardship reports

pertaining to agricultural estates increased during this year of instability and the treatment of

Güter estates as private property was again debated.

The process of Bavaria’s economic modernization hinged upon the division of land as

private property – a task which the Landtag played a crucial role. Authority in Bavaria still

rested in the leadership and title of the King. Max I Joseph presided over the Landtag and its

632

Ibid.

633

Extradition of Pension Salary (Isarkreis München), in BHSTaM RA 81046.

634

Ibid.

193

overall juridical and economic committees. Hardship reports and other petitions were heard by

the Chamber of Deputies, but the final negotiations were debated in the Chamber of Imperial

Counsellors. Finally, such cases were brought before the King. The specific work of

transforming land from estate to private property status meant establishing the land’s cash value.

This process was done by the “Rule of the Bicameral System” – a system of taxation,

cooperation between the two chambers of the Landtag, and a general legal commission. Land

concerns, in the form of hardships and petitions, also occupied the majority of the “animated

debate” by 1819.

635

The allodification of estates would thus entail the assessment of land by

examining the hardship reports and petitions filed by landholders. Most of the friction between

the two chambers focused on the borders of the enclosures and compensation claims including

the “legal initiative” of 1819. Land negotiations in the Landtag considered the value of estates

before allodification and enclosure and how pension and taxation would progress in an era of

private property plots. A reordering of land rents, pensions, and value was thus underway.

Deliberating Enclosures and Compensation: Drawing Boundaries for Land

The cases of aggrieved landholders that the Landtag heard were usually elites looking for

compensation for their disused land and much-needed pensions. Elite compensation claims were

part of the allodification process. Compensation was a slow process in part due to the detached,

dispassionate civil bureaucracy and the seemingly unresponsive nature of Landtag committees.

Mediatized nobles consistently complained about the new definition of land as legally defined as

private property. By 1819, many of the mediatized nobles, like those in Oberbayern had ruined

land, lagging rent collection, and a lack of liquid assets.

636

Many nobles reported such hardships

635

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 175.

636

Kraus, Bayerns Geschichte, 439.

194

to the Landtag. Nobles expressed confusion over the boundaries produced by land enclosure

while demanding pension payments that matched those tied to the former borders of their

estates.

637

Landtag members responded demonstrating that new system was more responsive.

The new constitutional laws, the representative power of the Landtag, and the monarchical

principle, though impressive in theory, however, provided little immediate assistance.

The struggle of the Beer family estate, contextualized within this turbulent era, further

elucidates the desperate and frustrated efforts estate holders, and common landowners alike, face

when confronting the impasse of Landtag sessions and the disengaged nature of the monarch.

Ludwig von Beer, the son of estate holder Wilhelm von Beer, inquired about his father’s life

annuity in correspondence to the Landtag.

638

Beer’s estate in Alsatian Electoral Bavaria was

subject to several enclosure attempts under first French then Bavarian states beginning in

1805.

639

The Beer family negotiated pension compensation plans that considered early

revolutionary policies in property reform in France from 1792 before Napoleonic reassessments

of property. Beer demanded a monthly pension of 323 Francs from the French state, as promised

by a 1792 regulation. The turbulent nature of the French political establishment during the years

of the revolution likely justified Beer’s decision to bring his grievances, next to the attention of

the Electoral Bavarian government. By 1805, Beer’s rising personal debt spurred him to make a

desperate plea to Munich for financial assistance. The absence of a functioning private property

637

Correspondence of Ludwig von Beer with the Liquidations Commission of the Bavarian

Finance Ministry, Nov 17, 1819, in BHStA MF 18718.

638

Ibid.

639

Correspondence of Ludwig von Beer with the Liquidations Commission of the Bavarian

Finance Ministry, Nov 17, 1819, in BHStA MF 18718. German: “An der Anlage uberreichen wir

euer königliche Majestät des in bezeichenden streitsucht gefällte erkenntnis prima, welches der

königlichten Sichtes Definitiv von der Klage entbiedet. Zugleich legen wir die säkulasiert Acten

aller Unterthänigst vor.”

195

regimen (not to mention the lack of contemporary understanding of how such a system might

operate) meant that Beer could not mortgage his estate to alleviate financial burdens. The

Bavarian Finane Ministry reported to Max Joseph, “In the attached documents that we are

handing to your royal highness the first decision result in the aforementioned conflict which

definitely frees the royal perspective from the lawsuit. We present the secularized documents

very humbly.”

640

In addition, Beer, like other Bavarian subjects, did not expect that he could

name a beneficiary for a pension or to whom his land or liquid assets could be bequeathed.

641

Thus, a French and German language letter sent by Beer to Elector Max Joseph in 1805

demanded scheduled payments to his life annuity that, in sum, exceeded 2,000 Francs.

642

Therefore, members of the Landtag were negotiating pensions and land value with subjects

whose long pre-constitutional history with allodification complicated their understanding of land

as legally private property in a confused state of inconsistent laws.

The example of the Beer money woes reflects a broader trend of restoration nobles

refusing to adapt to the new parameters of Bavarian property law. A gap in archival material

makes it difficult to assess what exactly became of the Beer family drama from 1805-1818. Their

estate was likely subject to the ruinous demands of French occupation including the seizure of

goods and the destructive nature of the Continental System’s “internal blockade” of continental

Europe. One thing, however, is certain: the Beer family continued its demand for state financial

assistance despite weathering the storm of successive wars, governments, and dramatic changes

to both French and Bavarian legal systems. Ludwig von Beer wrote King Max Joseph on the 16

640

Gagliardo, Enlightened Despotism, 17.

641

Ibid.

642

Correspondence of Ludwig von Beer with the Liquidations Commission of the Bavarian

Finance Ministry, Nov 17, 1819, in BHStA MF 18718.

196

December 1819, beseeching him for financial assistance owed to the Beer family in “Gulden und

Gnaden.”

643

The Beer’s fell back upon the old trappings of privilege and jurisdictional authority:

the touchstones of Old Regime Bavaria and Europe. Though addressed to the appropriate

Liquidations Commission of the Landtag (of the Petitions and Complaints Commission who

heard pension related cases) the letter appeals to a more antiquated pre-revolutionary mindset.

Beer’s letter recounts the shifting borders of the estate, the rise of French influence, Bavarian

control, and finally addresses loyal service to Max Joseph’s royal lineage of the House of

Zweibrücken.

644

The notion of unchallenged Wittelsbach authority and the legitimacy of the

1818 constitution had yet to be cemented in the minds of Bavarian notables.

Petitions and complaints, like those of the Beer family, were the right of all Bavarians as

written into the Second Constitution yet were also subject to the scrutiny of both chambers of the

Landtag. In addition, this new system also involved the oversight of the Interior Ministry

(Ministerium des Innern), Justice Ministry (Ministerium der Justiz), and the newly reorganized

regional governments of the eight Kreise of the Finance Ministry. The petition system was

guaranteed by title VII of the 1818 constitution.

645

Graf Georg Friedrich von Zentner declared

that petition law allowed for any of the “subject class” to bring a petition or grievance to the

attention of the Landtag.

646

In theory, such a petition was heard by the joint chamber as part of

the petition and hardships process (Petitions und Beschwerde). A petition could also be referred

643

Correspondence of Ludwig von Beer with the Liquidations Commission of the Bavarian

Finance

Ministry, Nov 17, 1819, in BHStA MF 18718.

644

Ibid. German: “Gulden und Gnaden.”

645

Dirk Götschmann, Bayerischer parlamentarismus im Vormärz. Die Ständeversammlung des

Königreichs Bayern 1819–1848, 60.

646

Ibid.

197

to King Max Joseph. In practice, many petitions, including hardships reports and pension cases,

were reviewed by the commission, assessed by the ministries of the government, but few were

resulted in sustained deliberation. Petition law was also subject to the “effective circles”

(Wirkungskreise) of the parliament.

647

Certain personalities frequently dominated the

proceedings of the Landtag and petitions commission. Count Alois von Rechberg, the more

autocratic leaning foreign minister and senior member of the Chamber of Imperial Counsellors,

was, in part responsible for examining such cases. Although a facet of new constitutional law,

the operation of the petitions commission was inconsistent. Assessment was arbitrary and, in the

case of the Beer family, compensation, was subject to the decisions of various ministries or the

personal whims and biases of Landtag members.

The division of larger landed plots, carved from the former Gutsherrschaft estates, like

the Beer family’s estate, occupied most of the attention of the Finance Ministry and the

proceedings of the petition and hardship commissions. Legislation and pension and land

compensation was often the responsibility of wealthy, career civil servants who had vested

interests in the process of assessing, selling, and taxing land. Finance Ministry officials, present

in the eight regional governmental subdivisions of the Bavarian kingdom (Kreise) also

established specialized offices to assess, enforce, and arbitrate cases regarding pensions, wages,

and the liquidity of the mediatized nobility’s former assets that were in large part connected to

land. Such divisions were called Rentamten and the wide availability of sources related to their

operation implies their frequent assessment of land in each Landkreise and their role in

arbitrating local land disputes and complaints about the inadequacy of state compensation for

647

Ibid.

198

former noble estates. Professional civil servants presided over these cases and heard the hardship

reports. The Finance Ministry grew following the dismissal of First Minister Montgelas.

Bavaria’s Chamber of Finance (Kammer der Finanzen) was added to the already swelling

number of bureaucrats assigned to overseeing the complex taxation system necessary for the

growth of the Bavarian state and the enrichment of the Kingdom. Finance Ministry officials also

exercised greater control over Bavarians’ everyday lives. The prices of movable goods and

immovable goods were now taxed and regulated by the Finance Ministry. Finance Ministry

officials, in the case of land sales, issued land certificates for a price. Such certificates were a

physical representation of the creation, sale, and purchase of land that the state made legal. These

certificates created a sense of legitimacy for land sales overseen by the state. Price controls on

land, seen frequently in town and city weekly broadsheets (Wochenblatt) also gave the

impression of state authority and a systemic approach to market regulation. The Intelligenzblatt

for Nördlingen, for example, recorded the gross value of land at 2,500 gulden on 1 January 1819

in a report that read, “the lovers of the cause have to appear in Kirchheim on the day noted, and

with proper documentation certify that they have the necessary knowledge for running a business

and that they are of immaculate reputation and can afford a security deposit of 2,500 florin in

goods or twice the value for present reasons.”

648

The survey, sale, and compensation of land

648

“Intelligenzblatt der Königlich Baierischen Stadt Nördligen Nro. 1.” Digipress Bayerische

Staatsbibliothek (BSB). https://digipress.digitale-

sammlungen.de/view/bsb10626654_00007_u001/1 [accessed November 1, 2019]. German: “Die

Sache liebhaber haben am bemerkten Tag in Kirchheim zu erscheinen, und sich durch gerichte

Zeugnisse anzuweissen dass sie die zu Fuhrung des Gewerbes nöthigen kenntnisse besitzen, von

untadelhaften Rufe senen, und eine Caution von 2,500 florin Waare oder den Doppeln Werth

dafür anliegenden Gründen leisten können.”

199

appeared to be a concise and ordered task of the state. State administration of land negotiations

fell to career civil servants of the Finance Ministry, however, not members of the Landtag.

Buying and selling land meant interacting with civil servants, an entirely new experience

for many Bavarians, who soon learned that the operations of the government on a local level

were far from consistent or fair. Finance Ministry scribes, and other civil servants, known more

colloquially as Schreiber, were the product of improved schooling and moral vetting. Many

German states implemented new selection criteria and training programs to produce efficient,

loyal, and morally upright bureaucrats.

649

Unlike the training of many cameral officials who

were highly educated in dedicated programs and a dossier was collected on their personal

background. Ian F. McNeely’s book The Emancipation of Writing clarifies that “a typical dossier

included the scribe’s age, birthplace, religion, father’s name and occupation, and mother’s name

with her father’s occupation, children’s names and occupations, university training (if any),

previous employment (if any), net worth, and the names of relatives of in state service.”

650

State

ministries tried to root out nepotism and cronyism as well. Civil servants, however, commonly

accepted bribes and could be convinced to look the other way while illicit activities occurred.

651

Land transactions, therefore, were subject to a fallible, inconsistent, and the overstated reach of

the state during a period of the kingdom’s centralization.

Compensation: Evaluating and Negotiating the Price of Estate Land

Conflict between mediatized nobles and the Bavarian state revolved around land

evaluation including pensions, land area, soil quality, and capital. These issues remained a focal

649

Ian F. McNeely, The Emancipation of Writing: German Civil Society in the Making, 1790s-

1820s, 137.

650

Ibid.

651

Ibid., 136.

200

point through 1825, reflecting a major trend in allodification related compensation cases. The

concept of allodification remained confusing to former Güter lords who placed claims to larger

estate boundaries irrespective of Finance Ministry maps of enclosures. Loans and pensions

related to estates were frequently subject to the review of the Kammer der Finanzen (K.d.F.).

The K.d.F was approached regarding financial assistance for struggling enclosures, to verify

enclosure payments at purchase, and to assist cash poor nobles in compensating the value of their

land. A consistent point of disagreement between the K.d.F and nobles were the rents collected

and pensions awarded based on the borders of each former Gutsherrschaft estate. One report

from 17 September 1820 offers a glimpse into the transactional nature of financial support for

enclosure holders.

652

The Rentamten München features numerous cases regarding pensions

connected to rent profits. Rents collected were part of surveys about estates from the early-

nineteenth century creation of enclosures. Pensions (Renten) were attached to the old obligations

connected to titles and service to the elector. The Sitzung Protokolle (laws created by the meeting

of the K.d.F and the Landtag) governed the collection of taxes derived from revenues from land

including enclosure, soil quality, and capital.

653

In the land assessed in case Ad. 16421, the value

of land, for example, was a hefty 3,720 gulden. Of this, twenty gulden worth was enclosed in the

case resolution to support the land holder based on a table of land valuation metrics gathered and

analyzed by the K.d.F. The relative worth, as assessed by the various entities of the Finance

Ministry, were essential to the growth of state centralization and paying off sovereign debt.

The early 1820s included a series of new crises for the Bavarian state, exposing the

bureaucracy’s inability to implement meaningful reforms to ameliorate conditions for struggling

652

Finance Ministry (Rentamt Isarkreis) Discussion of the Feudal Allodification of the Manorial

Estate of Freiherr Josef von Leyden, October 20, 1813, in BHStA MF 17374.

653

Ibid.

201

notables or the common weal. Europe’s grain market imploded again in 1820 and 1821.

654

Hardships reports increased in number. Bavarian crop prices dropped significantly, as did the

cash value of estate land. Most Bavarians lived modestly at best and desperately at worst.

Although the Bavarian population grew, famine and adverse climate conditions made life

difficult. Persistent problems included housing, nutrition, income, and infant mortality rates.

655

The average age of Bavarians at marriage was 25, which half of women never reached. 40-45%

of Bavarian women gave birth to six or more children by the end of the famine years

demonstrating that nutrition, though largely inadequate, was slowly helping to improve fertility

rates at the time of marriage. Therefore, most Bavarians were concerned more with survival and

finding work than buying land on the market. Most Bavarians were also cash poor, a problem

that both the mediatized nobility and the agrarian peasantry faced. Despite Bavaria’s inclusion in

the Bauernbefreiung (the emancipation of peasants), ¾ of all Bavarians, like their other German-

speaking counterparts, also still worked the fields for wages or rented segments of larger plots

for subsistence farming. Bavarian concerns regarding land value and sale, turned to basic

stability over market prices.

The metrics for land valuation were restructured in 1821 during the crop price crash and

informed bureaucrats but did little to affect their practical intervention in handling loans or

pension support. Munich established that the worth of one court in the former Electoral Bavaria

(Altbayern), Schwaben (Swabia), or Franken (Franconia) valued at 3,000 gulden were required

to give up 420 gulden to the state alone independent of any other tax considerations.

656

The

654

Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18.

Jahrhunderts, 70.

655

Ibid.

656

Stutzer, Geschichte des Bauernstandes in Bayern, 178.

202

K.d.F had to collect data on each estate and weigh what each former court owed. Legislators in

the Landtag were presented with the crisis in stark economic terms. The alleviation of debt

burdens for landholders was soon considered. The 30 January 1821 Landtag examination of

estate loans, chattel, and pensions presents a more organized overlay of how such data were

reevaluated. Landtag members deliberated over Lehen Umhandlungen (fief negotiations) from

30 January through 10 February 1821.

657

The “Directory of estate ownership” from 1821 in the

Unter-Donau Kreise was the focus of the Landtag’s attention.

658

Reports regarding affected

estate land flooded the ministry of the interior. This state organ collected and assessed the

finanzelle Gesichtspunkte – the financial points of view - of various sources of state income via

rents and loan payments.

659

Landtag members, informed by the product of state census collection

and the tabulation of rents, cereal movable good products, and other data, negotiated support for

ordinary Bavarians.

These detailed financial reports were the product of the work of Finance Ministry and

ministry of the interior bureaucrats. Landtag members viewed the number of individuals who

possessed portions of estate lands (Lehen-Körper), fiefs/estates (Lehen), salaries and estate worth

(Gehalt) and those who stood to inherit land, rents, and pensions (Erben) from 1821 onward.

660

The survey also considered the Besitzer (owner) of land.

661

This metric allowed the Landtag to

assess the impact of land values and production on a personal level as well. Market regulations

657

Petition of Ana Meierl to the General Commissariat of the Isar Kreisamt, August 10, 1808, in

BHStA, MF 17316.

658

Ibid.

659

Wilhelm Volkert, Handbuch die bayerischen Ämter, Gemeinden, und Gerichte 1800-1980,

31.

660

Petition of Ana Meierl to the General Commissariat of the Isar Kreisamt, August 10, 1808, in

BHStA, MF 17316.

661

Ibid.

203

increased during the early 1820s during a time when the lingering effects of the Continental

System still wreaked havoc on grain prices and trade.

662

By 1820 cereal prices were ¼ of what

they had been in 1817.

663

Aid was thus offered to Philipp Kitziger whose three sons stood to

inherit a plot that had a crop yield of 240 kreutzer on 2/3 of its cereal producing plots.

664

Such a

case was consistent with the ongoing lag in agricultural products and personal, as well as state

debts, during the 1820s. The actions of members of both chambers of the Landtag managed to

alleviate some debt concerns through 26 October 1825 when Max Joseph, King of Bavaria, and

the dramatic reforms of land allodification, died.

665

The Crown Prince Ludwig, known for his

vocal role in the constitutional process, acceded to the throne during a period of recovery and as

the last of the Montgelas era reforms diminished in scope and importance.

Conclusion: Reform and Revision, Protecting and Stabilizing the Bavarian State

The drafting of the second constitution of 1818 and the establishment of the bicameral

legislature brought a semblance of stability and systemic legislative oversight but little practical

assistance to address land quality, or landholder debt and pension concerns. Graf Zentner’s

constitution fundamentally altered the legal basis of Bavarian legitimacy at home and abroad.

The constitution was a product as much of an unstable domestic economy as it was the tense

atmosphere of civil unrest and the reactionary influence of larger powers bordering the Bavarian

state. Zentner’s constitution made Max Joseph, and future Bavarian Kings, legitimate rulers by

restoring the Adeligestände (the Bavarian elites) to a measure of respectability and utility for the

health of the state. Zentner formed a coalition of necessary personalities and interests in the

662

Stutzer, 170.

663

Ibid., 169

664

Petition of Ana Meierl to the General Commissariat of the Isar Kreisamt, August 10, 1808, in

BHStA, MF 17316. German: “2/3 Getreid und Gut – 240 kr. Gut.”

665

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 448.

204

Bavarian state to stabilize debt, tax revenue, and agricultural vitality. The Bavarian state in the

post-Montgelas era, was more expansive in its scope but more compromising. Critics of the

Bavarian state, however, perceived the reforms as failures. The Bavarian state was more active in

forming policy through the actions of the King and the legislative interpretations of the Landtag

but remained just as ineffectual as its predecessor in realizing coherent, systemic improvement of

Bavarian land. Zentner honed Montgelas’ reforms, in theory, harnessing the powers of state

authority for the shared, legally backed nature of a more transparent, republican inspired state.

Support for notables and landholders, in practice, did not transpire. For landholders, the Bavarian

state was still far from functional or responsive to everyday demands and hardships.

The Bavarian state and monarch themselves retained legitimacy, surviving the

reactionary revulsion to allodification and other land reforms that had marked the years of

revolution in the early-nineteenth century. Crown Prince Ludwig, who played a key role in the

dismissal of Montgelas in 1817, setting in motion the process of the reforms of 1818, became

King in 1825 at a point of stability and legislative and bureaucratic coherence. His rule, from the

vantage point of 1825, appeared to offer more of what Zentner provided, stability crop yields and

fair taxes. Thus, the modernization of Bavarian bureaucracy, twinned with the dual program of

agricultural development exposed the practical limitations of governmental and physiocratic

perceptions of modernization. The gradual evolution of the Bavarian state from 1818-1825

proved that a relatively seamless transition to legitimate professional bureaucratic service to a

constitutional monarchy was possible. The gulf between functional bureaucracy, economic

management, and social policing, beyond the theoretical, official capacity of the Bavarian state

was never truly present in the town or village setting. The litany of hardship reports, data

205

collected, and minutes of Landtag minutes do little to prove that the Bavarian state, on a

functional, everyday level, did much for ordinary Bavarians through 1825.

206

Epilogue. The Road to Liberal Land Policies (1825-1848)

King Ludwig’s efforts to stabilize productive agriculture and land value ultimately led to

his decision to join the Prussian led Zollverein (or customs union), a disastrous arrangement that

opened Bavarian landholders to new markets that in turn crushed them competitively. Ludwig’s

entry into the Zollverein constituted a new form of cooperation with the neighboring southern

German states of Baden and Württemberg in a failed regional South German Customs Union.

These negotiations revealed Ludwig’s desire to exploit Bavarian economic recovery for a

commanding role in a regional economic bloc, challenging the meteoric economic prominence of

Prussia and the looming presence of restoration-era Austria. The failure of the South German

Customs Union brought Bavaria into Berlin’s orbit and bought Munich access to unprecedent

European, and ultimately global market share. As had been the case with the Continental System,

Bavaria was again at the mercy of larger, more powerful political and economic forces beyond

its control. Grain prices plummeted, land quality diminished, and waning popular support led to

his abdication in 1848. The entry of the Kingdom of Bavaria into the Zollverein again devolved

control of the Bavarian economy and agricultural management to a foreign power – the second

time such an event had transpired in thirty years. New economic and political theories and forces

by the 1840s heralded the final demise of the Bavarian property regime that sought to transform

Güter estates into privately held plots. This supplanted a state driven by a strong monarchy and a

close circle of advisors for bold middle-class notions of power derived from the personal

accumulation of property.

This epilogue traces the lingering aftermath of Bavaria’s formative interdependent

bureaucratic and land allodification schemes seen in their last iteration as an attempt to preserve

Bavarian economic and political autonomy in the face of domination by foreign powers and the

207

challenges posed by domestic insecurity. Swirling economic forces beyond Bavaria’s borders

and new notions of property within the Bavarian state complicated attempts by King Ludwig I to

increase the Kingdom’s prominence in European political and trade circles. Land as privately

held property became more common and the agricultural sector, in the coming years, would

become more competitive. In sum, the Kingdom of Bavaria, like its predecessor the Electorate of

Bavaria, proved unequal to the task of managing and controlling the agricultural economy,

placating or taming landed notables, and securing the strong, independent status of the polity

amidst looming regional threats.

666

Ludwig I and The South German Customs Union: Bavaria and Broader Markets

The longstanding, multi-decade Bavarian quest for particularism within German-

speaking central Europe came to a critical juncture with Ludwig’s attempt to create a southern

German customs’ union with Munich as its capital. Bavaria was in a precarious political position

by 1825. Bavaria’s ministers at the time, including foreign minister Alois von Rechberg,

operated from a defensive position, advocating for the primacy of the Kingdom’s interests over

shared German objectives. Rechberg, pressured by Bavarian merchants, staunchly opposed

joining a customs union if the tariffs and crop prices did not disproportionately favor the

Kingdom’s private, moneyed interests while Maximilian von Lerchenfeld, acting as finance

minister, disagreed due to the potential markets Bavarians could reach.

667

By 1825, growing

trade networks in southern Germany also meant more markets for Bavarian farmers that stood to

help stabilize the agricultural market. Ludwig pursued a path of unity amongst the smaller

666

This is not to imply that Bavaria would inevitably succumb to Prussian led German

unification but merely serves to illustrate how much Bavaria’s rulers were incapable of subduing

consistent challenges from persistent domestic and foreign challenges to state sovereignty.

667

W.O. Henderson, The Zollverein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), 60.

208

southern German states, rather than Bavarian exceptionalism, appeared as a promising

alternative. The preliminary agreements for a South German Customs’ Union, the product of

cooperation between Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden, went into effect in 1825.

668

Ludwig was

skeptical of the plan at first. Bavaria raised tariffs on goods, including agricultural products that

same year.

669

Disagreements between the three independent German states ensued. Any regional

customs union, however, required compromise, investment in infrastructure, and the active,

consistent negotiation between each power’s representatives.

Ludwig’s defense of Bavarian particularism was challenged by the benefits offered from

joining a customs union that would help stabilize the Kingdom’s economy and assist struggling

landholders. Bavaria’s agricultural sector comprised 55% percent of the entire Bavarian

economy in the first half of the nineteenth century.

670

Facilitating the trade of agricultural

products and reducing tariffs on transportation and importation could, at least in theory, greatly

assist in stimulating growth in the Bavarian economy. A regional customs union stood to benefit

landholders as well. Lerchenfeld was wholly opposed to Bavaria’s integration into a system that

also benefitted agricultural producers in neighboring German states. Although Lerchenfeld’s

many opponents, such as Josef Ludwig Graf von Armansperg (then foreign minister), criticized

this position, they agreed that Bavarian products should hold a privileged position in any

hypothetical customs union.

671

Negotiations and parliamentary deliberations regarding the

customs union ensued in Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg from 1826-1828. Broadsheets of the

German states followed the discourse closely. The 24 December 1826 issue of the Nuremberg-

668

Henderson, The Zollverein, 61.

669

Ibid., 62.

670

Hermann Kellenbenz, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte Band I Von Anfängen bis zum Ende

des 18. Jahrhundert, 52.

671

Henderson, The Zollverein, 62.

209

based “Friedens und Kriegs Kurier” reported that in Stuttgart, King Wilhelm I of Württemberg

had tasked the Landtag, “To inquire with the government to take the appropriate action to bring

about a trade treaty or customs union with the Bavarian government.”

672

Bavaria’s King

responded similarly in 1825.

Ludwig’s position on the prospect of a trade union changed in the ensuing years when he

made Josef Ludwig Graf von Armansperg, a well-respected civil servant, his finance minister.

Ludwig made Armansperg finance minister in 1828. Heinz Gollwitzer, Ludwig’s preeminent

biographer, presents Armansperg as an uncompromising champion of Bavarian particularism and

the integrity of the Kingdom of Bavaria’s core lands of Altbayern, Schwaben, and Franken:

“Armansperg undoubtedly envisioned a supremacy in southern Germany that seemed more

important to him than a solution to the Baden-Palatinate territorial question.”

673

Armansperg,

with Ludwig’s support, however, sought cooperation with bordering states, including a trade pact

with Baden and Württemberg and mutual respect for each state’s constitutions in the German

federal system.

674

Armansperg’s efforts helped resurrect the stalled discussions about the

function of the proposed South German Customs Union between Bavaria, Baden, and

Württemberg. Wilhelm, raised concerns about the disadvantageous position faced by his subject

672

“Frieden und Kriegs Kurier Nro. 31.” Digipress Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb10502433_01329_u001/1?cq=Zollverein

[accessed April 23, 2020]. German: “Die Regierung zu ersuchen, die geeigneten Maasregeln zu

ergreigfen um einen Handels Vertag oder Zollverein mit der bayerischen Regierung

herbeizuführen.”

673

Gollwitzer, Ludwig I. von Bayern, Königtum im Vormärz, eine Politische Biographie, 267.

674

Ibid.

210

Württembergers in the proposed system.

675

These concerns were addressed and adequately

settled when the South German Customs Union went into effect on 18 January 1828.

676

Problems in the customs union, however, abounded within the system itself and beyond.

Infrastructure in Bavaria, for example, was lacking. Road traffic throughout Germany was

reported as, “expensive, arduous, and slow.”

677

Murray’s travel guide described travel in Bavaria

as “very bad” years after the initial customs union was first attempted.

678

Legally, uniform tariff

revenues on these poorly maintained trade arteries would be shared proportionally based on each

state’s population.

679

In practice, Bavaria collected 72% of all tariff revenues and the trade

network and customs zone was rated as far inferior in bill of exchange when compared to the

Prussian Zollverein to the north.

680

In short, the tariff collection were meager in comparison.

Understandably, the uneven tariff revenue collection scheme provoked disagreement. Forty-four

percent of the tariff revenues went towards administrative costs for the maintenance of the

customs union.

681

The annual tariff negotiations, held in Munich, were less than productive.

682

Looming Prussian trade dominance in the north of Germany began to apply an irresistible

amount of pressure on this ambitious scheme through Berlin’s stronger trade and diplomatic

presence, leading to the weakening of the South German Customs Union and the integration of

smaller German states, including Bavaria, into the Prussian-dominated system.

675

Henderson, The Zollverein, 62.

676

Ibid.

677

James Sheehan, German History 1770-1866, 465.

678

Ibid.

679

Henderson, The Zollverein, 63.

680

Ibid. Henderson records that the bill of exchange was 9.5 silver Groschens compared to 24

Prussian Talers in 1828 placing even Bavaria, the wealthiest of the South German Customs

Union powers at a severe economic disadvantage.

681

Henderson, The Zollverein, 63.

682

Ibid.

211

Bavaria in the Zollverein System (1834-1840)

Ludwig presided over the entry of the Kingdom of Bavaria into the Zollverein in 1834,

subordinating economic and, in time, political power to a nexus of Prussian dominance.

Bavaria’s entry into the Zollverein came at a critical moment in the Kingdom’s history. Ludwig

built confidence in his role by strengthening the Bavarian economy as the state weathered the

hunger crisis of 1825. Bavaria’s place within the German Confederation, however, had not

changed. Ludwig operated within an interdependent system that offered little room to

maneuver.

683

Prussia dominated the Zollverein and negotiated trade agreements unfavorable to

smaller states. Protectionist duties on corn were lifted in 1835 and prices plummeted in

Germany.

684

Prussian trade decisions no longer had merely an indirect impact on Bavaria’s

economic health. Instead, Bavaria was formally subordinated to a trade pact outside of the state’s

control. The price of corn in Regen-Kreis, an administrative unit of the Kingdom of Bavaria with

a capital in Regensburg, sank to a measly three kreutzer per bushel, a drop by 2 kreutzer.

685

Berlin’s control over the Zollverein protectionist measures were also inconsistent and subject to

exploitation from competing markets. Dutch traders made routine profits, for example, by duping

inattentive Prussian customs agents in various ways.

686

Merchants exploited a loophole in

customs duties and comparative market prices by dumping partially refined sugar into the

Zollverein trading zone at a lower price due to their claims that the good was unrefined.

687

Prussian dominance meant that Bavarian goods could be traded on a much wider scale but were

683

Kraus, Bayerns Geschichte, 461.

684

Henderson, The Zollverein, 129.

685

“Königliche Baierisches Intelligenzblatt für den Regenkreis Nro. 35.” Bayerisches

Staatsbibliothek available online at https://digipress.digitale-

sammlungen.de/view/bsb11166206_00707_u001/1?cq=1835. [accessed 30 April 2020].

686

Henderson, The Zollverein, 129

687

Ibid.

212

also subject to increased foreign competition and greater demands on the agricultural and trade

sectors to best stronger markets.

Global market competition constrained Bavarian growth to such an extent that it dwarfed

that of the regional trade imbalance and the exploitative Napoleonic Continental System of years

past. Sixty-seven percent of all Bavarian land in the 1830s was agricultural and nearly two-thirds

of the population was involved in cultivation.

688

Ludwig’s support for productive, if not stable

agriculture, was thus tested like it had never been before. Bavaria’s Finance Ministry officials, at

the behest of Ludwig, raised an indirect tax of over 11 million gulden as well as a new tax

revenue of 7 million gulden derived from the products of privileged estates of Bavaria’s elites as

part of a yearly increase in thirty-five million gulden for the state coffers.

689

Bavarian state debt

in the 1830s, however, soared to an unprecedented 110 million gulden.

690

State taxation on

overburdened farms came during a competitive tariff war as the Zollverein’s representatives

confronted the powerful merchant economies of Britain, Belgium, and France.

691

The Zollverein,

in theory, was unprecedented in scope and importance for the development of the economies of

German-speaking central European states, save for the non-participant Habsburg Empire.

692

practice, the markets available to smaller states like Bavaria, Baden, and Wurttemberg, were

dominated by stronger international competitors. These smaller southern German states, now

joined by concerned Silesian and Saxon merchants, as well as farmers, could not compete with

688

Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns, von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, 463.

689

Ibid.

690

Ibid.

691

Theodore Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, Reaction, Economics and Politics in Germany,

1815-1871, 12.

692

Keller, Wolfgang, and Carol H. Shiue. "Endogenous Formation of Free Trade Agreements:

Evidence from the Zollverein's Impact on Market Integration." The Journal of Economic

History 74, no. 4 (2014): 1168-204, 1168.

213

more powerful markets.

693

Ludwig, like the monarchs of Baden, Württemberg, and other smaller

German states, was beset by more frequent and dire calls for assistance as the land regimen so

critical to Bavarian stability buckled by the end of the 1830s.

The hierarchical Bavarian property system succumbed to the great forces of market

competition, famine, and an insurgent middle-class liberal movement in the Landtag in the

1840s. Integration into the Zollverein left the Bavarian state adrift among stronger powers and at

the mercy of forces beyond the control of even the most able statesmen. Armansperg, and his

successor, Arnold Friedrich von Mieg, could not harness the powers of the Bavarian state to

control the explosion of state debt, the degradation of land, and the severe constraints imposed

by a domineering Prussian guided customs union.

694

Ludwig, and the rulers of other south

German states, believed that the further survival of this system necessitated joining a larger trade

bloc to protect the vitality, and sanctity, of what Montgelas had so many years before dubbed

“the sacred right of property.”

695

Conclusion

The mass allodification of Bavarian land was a multi-decade process pursued by several

statesmen for the purposes of boosting agricultural yields. This process was undertaken for the

purpose of creating a robust economy. It also leant legitimacy to the rule of a sovereign by

separating notions of elite privilege from its connection to land possession. Allodification was

693

Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution, and Reaction, 13.

694

Henderson, The Zollverein, 42.

695

Graf Montgelas, Maximilian Joseph von Garnerin, “Ansbach

Memorandum." Proposal for a Program of State Reforms (September 30, 1796),” German

History in Documents and Images (GHDI), https://ghdi.ghi-

dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=3524. [accessed February 1, 2020].

214

known as “redemption” when land itself was purchased as a property. Bavaria’s leader would

provide unitary law and order above the patchwork of estates including the Catholic Church and

landed notables who possessed semi-feudal land and elite privileges. New legal definitions for

property were created in Bavaria’s cameral academies where the influence of physiocracy, an

Enlightenment school of thought emphasizing productive land use, prompted cameral faculty to

advocate for a greater role for civil servants within the Electoral state. These bureaucrats would

play a critical role in enhancing economic growth and the authority of Bavaria as an enlightened

absolutist state. The elevation of the status of cameral officials to civil servants of the Bavarian

state was itself a controversial process that provoked the ire of traditional power blocs such as

the Church and landed elites. Yet Bavaria, as a smaller German state, lacked the resources of a

much larger polity like the Kingdom of Prussia, the Habsburg Empire, or Revolutionary France.

Bavaria’s leaders could not employ many civil servants to carry out land reform. It is for this

reason, along with the power of regional enemies and influential estates of Bavarian society, that

Munich’s rulers required foreign assistance to bring this project to fruition.

Allodification, as pursued by Montgelas, though doomed to an imperfect implementation

fraught with compromises with foreign powers and nobles so critical to agricultural production,

was an unqualified success that survived an era of war, famine, debt, and social upheaval.

Montgelas diminished the power of landed elites and the Catholic Church from Bavarian politics,

funded the creation of a unified civil service for Bavaria’s Elector, and leveraged the tumultuous

era of the Napoleonic Wars to grant King Max Joseph unmitigated power over a unitary state

with a uniform legal compact. The system was tested by the personal failings of Napoleon

Bonaparte’s wars and consistent imposition on the Bavarian state for supplies for his wars.

Bavaria, perpetually trapped between the clout of much greater powers, was successfully led by

215

Montgelas through destructive conflicts, famine, debt, and military defeat. Montgelas’ land

system itself survived and “redeemed” (or claimed) much of the land. The political system,

though altered by his successors, was but a modification to his monocratic rule from 1799-1817.

Bavaria possessed a strong bill of exchange for land even in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.

Montgelas’ system survived the Napoleonic Wars and was in time altered to include a

broader cross section of the Bavarian populace in a property buying class. In 1818, a second

constitution was drafted that gave some non-noble Bavarians the opportunity to participate in the

legislative proceedings of the Landtag parliament. By the 1840s the budding Mittelstände¸ from

which manufacturers, merchants, craftsmen, professors, and lawyers came, were a powerful

liberal voice in the Landtag and in the Bavarian push towards industrialization.

In sum the process of mass allodification in Bavaria was one more defined by

compromise than consistent conflict. The power of the notables, was in time, lessened by

demands for cash, pensions, and the negotiated “redemption,” or sale of their land based on

allodified terms. Montgelas and his successor built and retained this system through persistent

challenges to its operation and in a much more generous and broad application than much larger

states such as Prussia or Austria. The problems faced by such a system are more representative

of the limitations of state power, the reach of institutional civil bureaucracy, and the

misapplication of present-day connotations of governmental authority to the early-nineteenth

century. For these reasons, Bavaria, both as a state in the “third Germany,” and as a European

power, was responsible for one of the most successful, rapid, and sustained consolidation of

centralized power and transitions from a semi-feudal economy to one of agricultural land

designated as private property.

216

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Vita

Greg Tomlinson is a San Francisco Bay Area native who received a BA in history and an

MA in modern European history from San José State University (SJSU) in San José, California

in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Greg has taught courses on German history and the Second

World War for Louisiana State University (LSU) and enjoys sharing his passion for German and

European history. He was accepted into the LSU history program in 2012. He anticipates

graduating with his Ph.D degree in August 2020. He plans to continue studying and teaching

German and European history.