II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

III.
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III. Schwetzingen – Historical Context
cruel fate. 7 It was not to be. Carl Theodor and,
with him, his glittering court and famous
orchestra, left the town, which as a result lost
direct access to the monarch and vital cultural
impulses. The departure of the court also
meant a severe economic setback, not only
for Mannheim, but also for the Frankenthal
industries, fi rst and foremost for the porcelain
manufacture, which now had to compete with
its Bavarian counterpart.
The late 1780s also saw violent local upheavals,
obviously infl uenced by the events in
France, where the “inalienable rights” of all
humans were invoked. Despite such ominous
“grumbles”, the Elector, frightened by riots in
Munich, returned to Mannheim for almost
a year in 1788/89. It was rumoured that
he wanted to move back his court to the
Palatinate. But things had changed: his long
absence had gradually weakened the ties
between the Mannheim and Palatine population
and the ruling house. As Sophie von La
Roche put it, 8 those Mannheimers who “expect
laughter and festivities” from their monarch
were deeply disappointed when Carl Theodor
fi nally decided to move back to Munich. “The
Elector is publicly abused in the most vicious
terms” 9 , the Austrian ambassador reported
-- again a sign of a time that witnessed the
storming of the Bastille a month later. At
fi rst, the French revolution found many a
sympathetic observer in the Elector Palatine’s
lands, and riots erupted in various parts of the
country. The government tried to counter this
develpoment by censorship and the imprisonment
of “dangerous” people. However, when
the revolutionary armies began to invade the
electorate and, quite indiscriminately, looted
the posessions of aristocrats, wealthy farmers,
enligthened civil servants and even the poor,
the sympathies waned. The vast majority of
the population just wanted to survive.
7 Memoirs of Stefan von Stengel (ed. G. Ebersold) (Schriften
der Gesellschaft der Freunde Mannheims, vol. 23), Mannheim
1993, p. 100 f.
8 Quoted in: Ingeborg Görler (Ed.), So sahen sie Mannheim,
Stuttgart 1974, p. 54.
9 Despatch of Count Lehrbach, June 7, 1789, quoted in Friedrich
Walter, Mannheim in Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 1,
Mannheim 1907, p. 774.
By 1798, the whole of the Palatine territories
on the left bank of the Rhine had fallen into
French hands and remained part of the French
Republic and Napoleon’s Empire until 1814.
The remaining “rump-electorate”, heavily
burdened by debts Carl Theodor had incurred
during the revolutionary wars, was abandoned
by the Wittelsbachs and given to the new
Electorate and later Grand-Dukedom of Baden,
under the “Reichsdeputationshauptschluß” in
1802/03. Attempts of Bavaria to recuperate
the lands between Mannheim and Heidelberg
after 1815 failed. Thus, the Rhine remained
the border between the Bavarian new “Palatinate”
created by the Congress of Vienna and
Baden.
The downfall of the German monarchies after
1918, paved the way to ideas to redraw the
borders of the German states. Some notable
reformers in and around Mannheim claimed:
“The Rhine should no longer be a border”
between lands, that were closely bound up
with each other through history and economic
development. These ideas were taken up
after the second World War. However, as the
Palatinate and Northern Baden belonged to
different zones (French and American), the
attempts to form a German state comprising
the formerly Palatine lands on the left and
right bank of the Rhine failed. Instead, a
regional network, supported by municipalities
and big industry was founded, that in the past
decades has achieved some notable successes
to create common institutions (regional public
transport, cultural events etc.). In 2005, the
“Rhine-Neckar-triangle”, as it has come to be
called, was accorded the status of a “European
Metropolitan Region”. At its heart are situated
the former electoral residences in Mannheim,
Schwetzingen and Oggersheim.
(Stefan Mörz)