Royal Heirs in Imperial Germany: The Future of Monarchy in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg by Frank Lorenz Müller (review)

In May 1789, the six hundred non-clerical and non-noble members of the Estates-General, after having been forced to wait for two hours, were coldly received by King Louis XVI of France at Versailles. Within a few months, the outbreak of revolution had created an existential threat to the Bourbon monarchy and, in January 1793, Louis himself ascended the scaffold in Paris. Historians have often interpreted these dramatic events as the beginning of Europe's "Age of Revolution." In the following decades, the continent's remaining hereditary rulers were forced onto the defensive, fighting an increasingly desperate rearguard action against the forces of constitutionalism, parliamentarianism, republicanism, and socialism. The collapse of the three great empires of Central and Eastern Europe in the final months of the First World War served as the coda to these largely hopeless efforts to safeguard monarchical privilege in an increasingly democratic age. This narrative of inevitable decline, according to Frank Lorenz Müller, is misleading: when war broke out in 1914, monarchy had not been pushed irreversibly onto the back foot, but was still widely popular. Exploring the paths to the throne taken by the heirs to three of Germany's smaller kingdoms—Ludwig of Bavaria, Friedrich August of Saxony, and Wilhelm of Württemberg—and shifting his analytical focus to the "monarchical future" of these men, Müller seeks to uncover the reasons for the enduring relevance and surprising resilience of monarchy into the first decades of the twentieth century. After all, "notwithstanding the fact that they would end up as the last of their kind, the three princes predestined to ascend the thrones in Munich, Stuttgart and Dresden one day had every reason to expect that they and their families had a rich future ahead of them" (pp. 6–7).

This confidence in the future did not mean that Ludwig, Friedrich August, and Wilhelm could approach their royal duties with complacency. Europe during the "long nineteenth century," a period stretching from the French Revolution to the outbreak of the First World War, witnessed far-reaching economic and social changes that fundamentally altered the relationship between rulers and subjects. The revolutionary concept of popular sovereignty and the gradual appearance of a highly educated and politically ambitious middle class increased the pressure on monarchs across the continent to share their decision-making authority with ministers and parliaments. The political mobilization of the working class as a result of industrialization and urbanization created still another threat to the principle of hereditary rule. No longer confident in the unconditional loyalty of their subjects, Europe's ruling houses therefore embarked on wide-ranging public relations campaigns that exploited new forms of mass communication in order to redefine the function of monarchs in a constantly changing society. Even before they ascended their thrones, the future Ludwig III of Bavaria, Friedrich August III of Saxony, and Wilhelm II of Württemberg played important roles in these transformative efforts. Not only were they expected to demonstrate their competence in the political sphere as members of parliamentary upper houses and uphold the image of the "heroic monarchy" as high-ranking officers in their armies, the three heirs had to portray themselves as guarantors of future political stability, impartial mediators of confessional conflict, and embodiments of prevailing domestic virtues. Failing to live up to public expectations could have serious consequences. It took several years and tireless effort for Friedrich August to rebuild his image as a loving and devoted father after his wife fled to Switzerland to join her Belgian lover in December 1902.

As Friedrich August's dedication to overcoming his marital disaster reveals, the heirs to the thrones of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg clearly understood that "princes in glass houses should not throw tantrums" (p. 64). They also had to coexist with one another. While Müller convincingly depicts the three German...