II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

II. Schwetzingen – A Prince Elector’s
Eighteenth-Century Summer Residence
a)
Elector Carl Theodor and his
Palatinate – a World in Transition
During the second half of the eighteenth
century, the Elector Palatine’s court was one
of the most interesting and glittering of
Germany. Mannheim was one of the European
centres of music, and visitors from all over the
continent fl ocked to the “Palatine Athens”.
The transformation of a country and city
ravaged by more than a century of almost incessant
wars into one of the places of Europe
an educated person simply had to see, was the
achievement of two electors, Carl Philipp and
his successor Carl Theodor.
A Glittering Court 1
A thoroughly Baroque despot for whom
”splendour was always more important than
reform” 2 , Carl Philipp (1661-1742), who ruled
from 1716 to 1742, had inherited the electorate
from his brother at a rather advanced age.
The new elector fi rst moved the court back
to the old residence in Heidelberg. In 1720
he chose Mannheim as his new capital. Here,
in the wide plain by the Rhine, Carl Philipp,
praised as “Palatine Aeneas”, could found a
truly baroque residence, a palace that was to
be one of the biggest in Germany, surrounded
by the spiritual and temporal pillars of
electoral might: monasteries, barracks and
no fewer than 54 aristocratic houses. Joined
to the palace was the Jesuits’ college with
its big church, a copy of Il Gesu in Rome, a
visible symbol of the close symbiosis between
the electoral house and the Catholic church.
Protestant churches, by contrast, were relegated
to the parts of town most distant from the
Elector‘s home.
1 For the follwing pages: Stefan Mörz, Haupt- und Residenzstadt.
Karl Theodor, sein Hof und Mannheim (= Kleine
Schriften des Stadtarchivs Mannheim, Nr. 12), Mannheim
1998; Stefan Mörz, Aufgeklärter Absolutismus in der Kurpfalz
während der Mannheimer Regierungszeit des Kurfürsten Karl
Theodor 1742-77 (= Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für
geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg, Reihe B,
vol. 120), Stuttgart 1991.
2 Hans Schmidt, Kurfürst Karl Philipp, Mannheim 1964, p. 88.
As neither Carl Philipp nor any of his
numerous brothers had any male offspring,
the Electorate fell into the hands of another
collateral branch of the Palatine Wittelsbachs,
the line of the dukes of Pfalz-Sulzbach (a
poor and small territory in the Upper Palatinate).
The elector’s heir was Carl Theodor
(1724-1799), a young prince, orphaned at the
age of four, who had been educated by his
great-grandmother in Brussels, a devout old
lady who imbibed him with the creeds of the
house of Sulzbach and of her age – Catholicism
and absolutism in the French/Spanish
style. His native tongue was French, and he
did not learn German until he was about six.
When he was brought to Mannheim in 1734,
his education was taken over by the 70-yearold
Elector, a thoroughly un-intellectual
soldier, who was assisted by a rather wily
Jesuit and an equally old courtier, the Marquis
d‘Ittre (1683-1766). In 1742, Carl Theodor,
shy and of fragile health, was married to the
Elector‘s grand-daughter, Elisabeth Augusta
(1721-1794), a lively and very strong-minded
young woman three years his senior who
was interested in music, theatre, hunting,
amusements and not much else. The wedding
of Carl Theodor and Elisabeth Augusta turned
out to be the grandest court spectacle that
Mannheim ever was to witness. Most members
of the Wittelsbach family were present,
the Elector-Archbishop Clemens August of
Cologne (1700-1761) married the couple, the
newly erected opera-house was used for the
fi rst time.
When Carl Philip died the night before New
Year’s Day of 1743, the 18-year-old Carl Theodor
became Elector – and at fi rst was governed
by his old instructor d’Ittre. The War of
the Austrian Succession ravaged many of the
young elector’s territories, and in 1743, even
the court’s summer sojourn in Schwetzingen
had to be broken off because of approaching
foreign troups. As tax revenues fell drastically
due to the war, d’Ittre, a stern old gentleman,
insisted on the strictest economy.
II.
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