Germany’s Free State mixes Celts, Catholicism, and conservatism
Bavaria, officially a Free State, is Germany's largest state at 70,550 square kilometres and its second most populous, with 13.08 million people. Celts, Romans and a Frankish duchy of 555 AD shaped it, the Wittelsbach family ruled it for 738 years, and a Catholic heritage still colours its culture.
Landlocked, it borders Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony within Germany, plus Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Munich is the capital; Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg and Ingolstadt are other major cities. Today's state combines Old Bavaria with parts of Franconia and Swabia across seven administrative regions. The Bavarian dialect group, shared with Austria, has about 12 million speakers, more than any other German dialect, and the CSU, sister party of the national CDU, dominates a conservative political scene.
Humans have lived here since the Paleolithic, and Celtic tribes such as the Boii are the earliest people on record in its Alpine south; in June 2023 archaeologists unearthed a bronze sword from the fourteenth century BC preserved so well it almost shines. At Manching a semi-urban settlement with pottery kilns and metal furnaces thrived from the third century BC. Rome conquered the area in the first century BC, and a camp ordered by Augustus between 8 and 5 BC grew into Augusta Vindelicorum, capital of the province of Raetia.
The Agilolfing dukes ruled from about 554 until Charlemagne deposed Tassilo III in 788, and Saint Boniface finished converting the people in the early eighth century. Henry the Lion, founder of Munich, lost Bavaria in 1180 to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who granted it to the Wittelsbachs; they kept it until 1918. Reunited in 1506 with Munich as sole capital, the duchy became a hub of the Counter-Reformation, won electoral rank in 1623 during the Thirty Years' War, and became a kingdom in 1806 as the Holy Roman Empire collapsed.
Count Montgelas modernised the administration on French lines between 1799 and 1817, and a first constitution followed in 1808. Beaten alongside Austria in 1866, Bavaria sided with Prussia against France in 1870 and entered the new German Empire while keeping its own railways, post and peacetime army, though many Catholic Bavarians resented Protestant Prussian rule. Artists including Kandinsky and Klee gathered in Munich's Schwabing. On 8 November 1918 the socialist Kurt Eisner declared a Bavarian People's State, the first German monarchy to fall.
Source: Bavaria
