Bavarian state exhibition: Wallenstein returns to Bavaria – Bavaria

Various encyclopedias state that Waldstein Palace, also known as Wallenstein Palace, is the largest of its kind in Prague. Today the Senate of the Czech Republic meets there. It is easy to imagine that wonderful treasures glitter in the huge early Baroque building at the foot of Prague Castle. Finally, the palace was built from 1623 to 1630 by order of Albrecht von Waldstein. He was a dazzling figure, not only because Friedrich Schiller immortalized him in literature in a drama called “Wallenstein”. This is the name by which Albrecht von Waldstein is better known.

One of the art-historical pearls of Palais Waldstein is, of course, a famous portrait of Wallenstein. Until now, to see it, you had to go to Prague. This portrait is rarely given away. All the more gratifying that the House of Bavarian History has now received the approval to show the Wallenstein portrait in the state exhibition “Baroque! Bavaria and Bohemia” in Regensburg, which begins in May.

One could casually say: Wallenstein is coming to Regensburg. “Some contemporaries would certainly have wished for this headline,” suspects Richard Loibl, director of the House of Bavarian History. The Bohemian nobleman Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583-1634) was not only an imperial general, but also a war entrepreneur who experienced incredible growth during the Thirty Years’ War. Although he made use of the Emperor’s money, he still pursued his own politics, which was to have fatal consequences for the Bavarian Elector Maximilian I and his subjects.

At first everything went like clockwork. Together with Bavarian troops, Wallenstein defeated the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf on the side of the emperor and the Catholic League in 1632 near Nuremberg and Lützen. However, when the Swedish troops invaded Electoral Bavaria again in the autumn of 1633 and conquered the imperial city of Regensburg, Wallenstein behaved stubbornly. He held his troops back in the Bohemian winter quarters and hardly offered any help to the starving Bavarians.

All the pleas of the Bavarian elector and even the emperor remained in vain. Wallenstein didn’t move. It is logical that many wondered whether he was even making a pact with the enemy. His opponents in Munich and Vienna seem to have reached this point of view at the time. As cunning as Wallenstein acted, in the end he overdid it, as a mortal enemy he fell out of favor in the Catholic camp and was murdered in Eger on February 26, 1634 by officers loyal to the emperor.

Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, first fought alongside Wallenstein, but then became his mortal enemy. This bronze portrait of an elderly person is characterized by ascetic austerity and sobriety instead of glamorous baroque symbols of dignity.

(Photo: Marion von Plate/Bavarian Palace Department)

There is no doubt that Wallenstein, like Gustav II Adolf, Elector Maximilian I and General Tilly, was one of the defining figures in the great catastrophe of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Elector Friedrich V of the Palatinate, who lost the Battle of White Mountain near Prague on November 8, 1620, must also be mentioned. Ultimately, this event shook the whole of Europe. Because Friedrich was only able to stay on the Bohemian throne, which he had won in a coup, for just over a year, his enemies taunted him as the “Winter King”.

The disgrace that proud Bohemia lost its independence back then is still not forgotten there. In Czech historiography, the period after the battle until the national rebirth of the Czechs was described as “doba temna” (“dark time”).

Of course, the state exhibition should not only capture gloomy moods. In a Czech-Bavarian cooperation, the main focus is on the Baroque theme. The term not only designates a style in art, but an entire epoch in which – due to the fury of war – the transience of man was omnipresent.

As project manager Peter Wolf announced, the exhibition will show the common history from two different perspectives: While in Bavaria the term Baroque is primarily associated with churches and palaces, the Czech view of the epoch is, as already indicated, at least ambivalent. The defeat of the Czech army by the Bavarian and imperial troops weighs heavily on Czech history to this day.

It is a phenomenon that in bad and bloody times, art often takes off. It was the same in the Thirty Years’ War. Although the whole of Europe suffered unspeakably, a new architectural style spread in Bavaria and Bohemia: the Baroque, which came from Italy. Except that in Bohemia the nobility pushed development and renewal forward, but in Bavaria it was the monasteries. Here the nobility almost completely bled dry during the war that raged for another 14 years after Wallenstein’s death.

And the Bavarian dreams of becoming a great power were shattered in the end as well. In 1648, Bavaria had practically no army left, it experienced a military bankruptcy that, you can hardly believe, was even more blatant than the situation in Germany today.

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