History of Bavaria

Main article: History of Bavaria

A precursor to the name Bayern, was the name Bayuwaren given by the Romans to the province. A later mention was made by the Franks ca. 520. Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Bavaria resisted the Protestant Reformation, and remains strongly Roman Catholic.

From about 550 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the duchy of Bavaria, ending with Tassilo III who was deposed by Charlemagne. For the next 400 years numerous families held the duchy, rarely for more than three generations. The last, and one of the most important, of these dukes was Henry the Lion of the house of Welf, founder of Munich.

When Henry the Lion was deposed as duke of Saxony and Bavaria by his cousin, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1180, Bavaria was awarded as fief to the Wittelsbach family, which ruled from 1180 to 1918. The first of several divisions of the duchy occurred in 1255 but in 1506 Bavaria was reunited and Munich became the sole capital. In 1623 the dukes replaced their relative, the Count Palatine of the Rhine in the early days of the Thirty Years War and acquired the powerful prince-electoral dignity in the Holy Roman Empire, determining it's Emperor thence forward, as well as special legal status under the empire's laws. When Napoleon abolished the Empire, Bavaria became a kingdom in 1806, and in 1815 the Rhenish Palatinate was annexed to it. In between 1799 and 1817 the leading minister count Montgelas followed a strict policy of modernisation and lay the foundations of administrative structures that survived even the monarchy and are (in their core) valid until today. In 1818 a modern constitution (with the standards of the time) was passed, that established a bicameral Parliament with a House of Lords ("Kammer der Reichsräte") and a House of Commons ("Kammer der Abgeordneten"). The constitution was valid until the collapse of the monarchy at the end of the First World War.

After the rise of Prussia to prominence Bavaria managed to preserve its independence by playing off the rivalries of Prussia and Austria, but defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War led to its incorporation into the German Empire in 1871. In the early 20th century Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Henrik Ibsen, and other notable artists were drawn to Bavaria, notably to the Schwabing district of Munich, but the region was devastated by World War I.

Wieskirche

Socialist premier Kurt Eisner, who deposed King Ludwig III, was assassinated in 1919 leading to a violently suppressed communist revolt. Extremist activity on the right also increased, notably the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and Munich and Nuremberg became Nazi strongholds under the Third Reich. As a manufacturing center, Munich was heavily bombed during World War II and occupied by U.S. troops.

Since World War II, Bavaria has been rehabilitated into a prosperous industrial hub. A massive reconstruction effort restored much of Munich's historic core, and the city played host to the 1972 Summer Olympics. More recently, state minister-president Edmund Stoiber was the CDU/CSU candidate for chancellor in the 2002 federal election, and native son Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.