II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

of mutual succession to reside in Munich, he
left Mannheim and Schwetzingen. Only his
wife, relieved at no longer having to keep up
appearances, stayed behind, and kept a small
court at Mannheim and Oggersheim. There
still were some balls in winter in Mannheim,
and rural “fêtes” during the Oggersheim
summer. However, the excellent orchestra and
the best singers had left for Munich; great
court entertainments were a thing of the past.
The refounded Nationaltheater and the
collections that remained at the palace in
Mannheim continued to attract large numbers
of visitors, and the Schwetzingen gardens
II. Schwetzingen – A Prince Elector’s Eighteenth-Century Summer Residence
were not only maintained but enlarged. It
all came to end when revolutionary armies
swept through the electoral lands in the
1790s. The treasures of the palace were taken
to Munich, the court offi cials fl ed, and in
1802 the Palatinate as a country ceased to
exist. Carl Theodor, who during the 1780s had
unsuccessfully tried to swap Bavaria for the
Austrian Netherlands to create a “Kingdom of
Burgundy” and had thus become extremely
unpopular with his Bavarian subjects, died at
the a table in Munich in February 1799.
(Stefan Mörz)
II.
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