Duchy of Bavaria

Bavaria was the old south German duchy from 907 to 1871, ruled for seven centuries by one family, the Wittelsbachs. It began as a Frankish frontier march settled by Bavarian tribes, and after the Carolingian collapse it rose as a stem duchy of the German kingdom. Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria both, defied Barbarossa once too often: outlawed in 1180, he lost both lands, and Bavaria went to Otto of Wittelsbach, whose heirs kept it until 1918. The dukes built Munich from a monastery ford, fought emperors and bishops with obstinate regularity, and in 1623 Duke Maximilian won the electoral hat for helping the emperor crush Bohemia in the Thirty Years' War. Catholic, beer brewing and stubbornly particular, Bavaria stayed a league of its own inside every Germany: it fielded its own army, kept its own railways and post, and under Ludwig II, the fairy tale king, raised Neuschwanstein while Bismarck negotiated around him. In 1871 the king of Bavaria, paid and flattered, proposed the Prussian crown take the imperial title, and the duchy turned kingdom turned federal state entered the German Empire with its privileges, its beer and its Wittelsbachs intact.