Antiquity Though Bavaria has been occupied by humans since the Paleolithic era,
Celtic tribes of the Bronze Age, such as the
Boii were the first documented inhabitants of the
Bavarian Alps. In June 2023, archeologists discovered a bronze sword, dated to the
14th century BC, in a former Celtic village; its workmanship so well-preserved "it almost shines." During the early modern era, these peoples were retrospectively romanticized as the most ancient culture of Bavaria, even though the
Indo-European languages were relative newcomers to the region. Evidence of the ancient
Straubing culture,
Únětice culture and
La Tène culture may be found in what is Bavaria today. Archeologists know of a large Celtic
Iron Age settlement which was founded in
Feldmoching-Hasenbergl north of suburban Munich. The settlement featured food ovens, pottery kilns and metallurgical furnaces. An imperial military camp was built 60 km north-west of where Munich sits today, under orders of
Augustus Caesar, between 8 and 5 BC. The camp later became the town of
Augusta Vindelicorum, which would become the capital of the
Roman province of Raetia. By the late
2nd century AD, Germanic tribes, including Marcomanni people, were pushing back on Roman forces of
Marcus Aurelius and later,
Commodus in the
Marcomannic Wars. By 180 AD, Commodus had decided to abandon the annexed positions in Bavaria, leaving its control to Celtic and Germanic tribes.
Middle Ages Around the year 500 AD, some elements of that victorious Marcomanni people helped form the
Bavarii confederation, which incorporated
Bohemia and Bavaria. In the 530s, the
Merovingian dynasty incorporated the kingdom of
Thuringia after their defeat by the
Franks. The
Baiuvarii were Frankicised a century later. The
Lex Thuringorum documents an upper class nobility of
adalingi. From about 554 to 788, the house of
Agilolfing ruled the
Duchy of Bavaria, ending with
Tassilo III who was deposed by
Charlemagne.
Tassilo I of Bavaria tried unsuccessfully to hold the eastern frontier against the expansion of
Slavic peoples and the
Pannonian Avars around 600.
Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616. At Hugbert's death in 735, the
duchy passed to
Odilo of Bavaria from the neighboring
Alemannia. Odilo issued a
Lex Baiuvariorum for Bavaria, completed the process of church organization in partnership with
Saint Boniface in 739, and tried to intervene in Frankish succession disputes by fighting for the claims of the
Carolingian dynasty. He was defeated near
Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748.
Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century.
Tassilo III of Bavaria succeeded to rule Bavaria. He initially ruled under Frankish oversight but began to function independently from 763 onward. He was particularly noted for founding new monasteries and for expanding eastwards, oppressing
Slavs in the
eastern Alps and along the
Danube and colonizing these lands. After 781, however, Charlemagne began to exert pressure and Tassilo III was deposed in 788. Dissenters attempted a coup against
Charlemagne at
Regensburg in 792, led by
Pepin the Hunchback. With the revolt of
Henry II, Duke of Bavaria in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and southeast. One of the most important dukes of Bavaria was
Henry the Lion of the
house of Welf, founder of
Munich, and
de facto the second most powerful man in the empire as the ruler of two duchies. When in 1180, Henry the Lion was deposed as Duke of
Saxony and Bavaria by his cousin,
Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor (a.k.a. "Barbarossa" for his red beard), Bavaria was awarded as
fief to the
Wittelsbach family, counts palatinate of Schyren ("Scheyern" in modern German). They ruled for 738 years, from 1180 to 1918. In 1180, however,
Styria was also separated from Bavaria. The
Electorate of the Palatinate by Rhine (
Kurpfalz in German) was also acquired by the
House of Wittelsbach in 1214, which they would subsequently hold for six centuries. The first of several divisions of the duchy of Bavaria occurred in 1255. With the extinction of the
Hohenstaufen in 1268,
Swabian territories were acquired by the Wittelsbach dukes.
Emperor Louis the Bavarian acquired
Brandenburg,
Tyrol,
Holland and
Hainaut for his House but released the
Upper Palatinate for the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach in 1329. That time also
Salzburg finally became independent from the
Duchy of Bavaria. In the 14th and 15th centuries, upper and lower Bavaria were repeatedly subdivided. Four Duchies existed after the division of 1392:
Bavaria-Straubing,
Bavaria-Landshut,
Bavaria-Ingolstadt and
Bavaria-Munich. In 1506 with the
Landshut War of Succession, the other parts of Bavaria were reunited, and Munich became the sole capital. The country became a center of the Jesuit-inspired
Counter-Reformation.
Electorate of Bavaria In 1623, early in the
Thirty Years' War, the Bavarian duke replaced his relative the
Elector Palatine among the
Holy Roman Empire's powerful
prince-elector, gaining both a vote in determining the Emperor thenceforth and special legal status under the Empire's laws. During the early and mid-18th century, the ambitions of the Bavarian prince-electors led to several wars with Austria as well as to occupations by Austria during the
War of the Spanish Succession and the
War of the Austrian Succession; on one occasion, the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach secured the election of one of its own members rather than a Habsburg as emperor. To mark the unification of Bavaria and the
Electoral Palatinate, both being principal Wittelsbach territories, Elector
Maximilian IV Joseph was crowned king of Bavaria. King Maximilian Joseph was quick to change the coat of arms. The various heraldic symbols were replaced and a classical Wittelsbach pattern introduced. The white and blue
lozenges symbolized the unity of the territories within the Bavarian kingdom. The new state also comprised the
Duchy of Jülich and
Berg as these on their part were in personal union with the Palatinate.
Kingdom of Bavaria When the
Holy Roman Empire dissolved under
Napoleon's onslaught, Bavaria became a
kingdom in 1806 and joined the
Confederation of the Rhine. The Duchy of Jülich was ceded to France and the Electoral Palatinate was divided between France and the
Grand Duchy of Baden. The Duchy of Berg was given to
Joachim Murat. The
County of Tyrol and the federal state of
Salzburg were temporarily annexed with Bavaria but eventually ceded to Austria at the
Congress of Vienna. In return, Bavaria was allowed to annex the modern-day region of
Palatinate to the west of the
Rhine and
Franconia in 1815. Between 1799 and 1817, the leading minister, Count
Montgelas, followed a strict policy of modernization copying Napoleonic France; he laid the foundations of centralized administrative structures that survived the monarchy and, in part, have retained core validity through to the 21st century. In May 1808, a first constitution was passed by
Maximilian I, being modernized in 1818. This second version established a bicameral Parliament with a House of Lords (
Kammer der Reichsräte) and a House of Commons (
Kammer der Abgeordneten). That constitution was followed until the collapse of the monarchy at the end of
World War I. After the rise of
Prussia in the early 18th century, Bavaria preserved its independence by playing off the rivalry of Prussia and
Austria. Allied to Austria, it was defeated along with Austria in the 1866
Austro-Prussian War and was not incorporated into the
North German Confederation of 1867, but the question of
German unity was still alive. When
France declared war on Prussia in 1870, all the south German states (Baden, Württemberg, Hessen-Darmstadt and Bavaria) aside from Austria joined the Prussian forces and ultimately joined the Federation, which was renamed (
German Empire) in 1871. Bavaria continued as a monarchy, and retained some special rights within the federation (such as railways and postal services and control of its army in peace times).
Part of the German Empire , which was formed in 1871 and ended in 1918 When Bavaria became part of the newly formed
German Empire, this action was considered controversial by
Bavarian nationalists who had wanted to retain independence from the rest of Germany, as had Austria. As Bavaria had a heavily
Catholic majority population, many people resented being ruled by the mostly
Protestant northerners in
Prussia. As a direct result of the Bavarian-Prussian feud, political parties formed to encourage Bavaria to break away and regain its independence. In the early 20th century,
Wassily Kandinsky,
Paul Klee,
Henrik Ibsen, and other artists were drawn to Bavaria, especially to the
Schwabing district in Munich, a center of international artistic activity at the time.
Free State of Bavaria and
World War II in
Kröning, Bavaria
World War I led to the abolition of the monarchy all over Germany in 1918. The Bavarian monarchy was the first to fall when on 8 November 1918 Socialist politician
Kurt Eisner proclaimed the
People's State of Bavaria. Eisner headed a new, republican government as minister-president. On 12 November, King
Ludwig III signed the
Anif declaration, releasing both civil and military officers from their oaths, which the Eisner government interpreted as an abdication. After losing the
January 1919 elections, Eisner was assassinated in February 1919, ultimately leading to a Communist revolt and the short-lived
Bavarian Soviet Republic being proclaimed 6 April 1919. After violent suppression by elements of the German Army and notably the
Freikorps, the Bavarian Soviet Republic fell in May 1919. The
Bamberg Constitution ('''') was enacted on 12 or 14 August 1919 and came into force on 15 September 1919, placing the
Free State of Bavaria inside the
Weimar Republic. Extremist activity further increased, notably the 1923
Beer Hall Putsch led by the
Nazis, and Munich and Nuremberg became seen as strongholds of
Nazism during the
Weimar Republic and
Nazi dictatorship. In the crucial
German federal election, March 1933, the Nazis received around 43% of the votes cast in Bavaria. As a manufacturing centre, Munich was heavily bombed during
World War II and was occupied by
United States Armed Forces, becoming a major part of the American Zone of
Allied-occupied Germany, which lasted from 1945 to 1947, and then of
Bizone. The Rhenish Palatinate was detached from Bavaria in 1946 and made part of the new state
Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1949, Bavaria became part of the
Federal Republic of Germany, despite the
Bavarian Parliament voting against adopting the
Basic Law of Germany, mainly because it was seen as not granting sufficient powers to the individual states (
Länder), but at the same time declared that it would accept it if two-thirds of the other
Länder ratified it. All of the other states ratified it, so it became law. Thus, during the
Cold War, Bavaria was part of
West Germany.
Bavarian identity Bavarians have often emphasized a separate national identity and considered themselves as "Bavarians" first, "Germans" second. In the 19th-century sense, an independent
Kingdom of Bavaria existed from only 1806 to 1871. A separate Bavarian identity was emphasized more strongly when Bavaria joined the Prussia-dominated
German Empire in 1871, while the
Bavarian nationalists wanted to keep Bavaria as Catholic and an independent state. Aside from the minority
Bavaria Party, most Bavarians now accept Bavaria as part of Germany. Another consideration is that Bavaria is not culturally uniform. While inhabitants of
Altbayern ("Old Bavaria"), the regions forming the historic Bavaria before further acquisitions in 1806–1815, speak a Bavarian dialect of German,
Franconia in the north and
Bavarian Swabia in the southwest have a distinct culture including different dialects of German,
East Franconian and
Swabian, respectively. ==Flags and coat of arms==