Maximilian Karl Joseph Franz de Paula Hieronymus de Garnerin de la Thuile, Count von Montgelas (German: Maximilian Karl Joseph Franz de Paula Hieronymus de Garnerin de la Thuille Graf von Montgelas; 12 September 1759 – 14 June 1838) was a Bavarian statesman, a member of a noble family from the Duchy of Savoy. His father John Sigmund Garnerin, Baron Montgelas (German: Janus Sigmund Garnerin Freiherr von Montgelas), entered the military service of Maximilian III, Elector of Bavaria, and married the Countess Ursula von Trauner. Maximilian Josef, their eldest son, was born in the Bavarian capital Munich on September 10, 1759.
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Early life
Montgelas was educated successively at Nancy, Strasbourg, and Ingolstadt. Being a Savoyard on his father's side, he naturally felt the French influence, which was then strong in Germany, with peculiar force. To the end of his life he spoke and wrote French more correctly and with more ease than German. Nevertheless, the Munich-born Montgelas always wanted to be addressed as a Bavarian by nationality.
In 1779 he entered the public service in the department of the censorship of books. The Elector Charles Theodore, who had at first favored him, became offended on discovering that Montgelas was associated with the Illuminati, a secret society in Bavaria that held the most anti-clerical propositions of the Enlightenment. Montgelas therefore went to Zweibrücken, where he was helped by his brother Illuminati to find employment at the Court of the Duke, the head of a branch of the Wittelsbach family. From this refuge also he was driven by orthodox enemies of the Illuminati.
The brother of the Duke of Zweibrücken, Maximilian Joseph, took Montgelas into his service as a Private Secretary. When his employer succeeded to the Duchy, Montgelas was named a Minister, and in that capacity he attended the Second Congress of Rastatt in 1798, where the reconstruction of Germany, which was the consequence of the French Revolution, was in full swing.
Minister in Bavaria
In 1799, the Duke of Zweibrücken succeeded to the throne of the Electorate of Bavaria, and he kept Montgelas as his most trusted adviser. He agreed the Treaty of Bogenhausen with France in August 1805, leading Bavaria to ally with Napoleonic France in the War of the Third Coalition. Montgelas was the inspirer and director of the policy by which in 1806 the Electorate was turned into a kingdom and was also greatly increased in size by the annexation of church lands, free towns, and small lordships, such as Wallerstein. As this end was achieved by undeviating servility to Napoleon, and by the most cynical disregard of the rights of Bavaria's German-speaking neighbors, Montgelas became the type of an unpatriotic politician in the eyes of all Germans who revolted against the supremacy of France. From his own conduct and his written defence of his policy, it is clear that such sentiments as theirs appeared to Montgelas to be merely childish.
Montgelas often espoused that Bavaria had always been threatened by the Habsburg monarchy, had received Prussian support for their personal gain, and could stand against both only with aid from France, as the latter wished for their own benefit wished to counterbalance both Austrian and Prussian influence in Germany. As late as 1813, despite Napoleon's rule was visibly declining, and Montgelas recognising Bavaria's internal frailty empire from visiting Paris, he persisted in his conviction French support was lucrative to Bavaria.
The decision of the king to turn against Napoleon in 1814 was taken under the influence of his son and of Marshal Wrede rather than of Montgelas, although the minister would not have been influenced by any feeling of sentimentality to adhere to an ally who had ceased to be useful. In internal affairs, Montgelas carried out a policy of secularization and of administrative centralization by determined means, which showed that he had never wholly renounced his opinions of the time of the Enlightenment movement.
In the field in interior politics he can be regarded as the most successful German politician of the early 19th century with a long list of achievements. Already in 1796, when the Duke of Zweibrücken (after the French advance towards Zweibrücken) was a landless prince exiled in Ansbach, Montgelas had developed a masterplan for the future modernisation of Bavaria. This lengthy paper, the "Ansbacher mémoire" was rediscovered in the 1960s and published in 1970 by the Bavarian historian Eberhard Weis, who also is Montgelas' biographer. After 1799 when Maximilian Joseph succeeded to the Electorate of Bavaria, Montgelas as his primary adviser and leading statesman very much followed his concept throughout the following years in a very uncompromising manner:
Honors
In 2005 the Free State of Bavaria and the city of Munich erected a monument at Munich's Promenadenplatz in his honor.
In 2009, his 250th birth anniversary has been celebrated with the creation of honorific "Montgelas Prize" ("Montgelas-Preis" in German), awarded each year to French leaders to acknowledge their actions in favor of French-German cooperation. It has been awarded to Jean Arthuis (Head of the Committee on Budgets in the European parliament), Philippe Richert (President of the Regional Council of Alsace) and Thierry Breton (CEO of Atos and former Minister of the Economy).
Biography
Eberhard Weis: Montgelas - Zwischen Revolution und Reform 1759–1799, München, Beck Verlag, 2nd edition, 1988, ISBN 3-406-32974-8
Eberhard Weis: Montgelas - Der Architekt des modernen bayerischen Staates 1799–1838, München, Beck Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-406-03567-1