The Margraviate of Baden-Baden was an early modern southwest German territory within the Holy Roman Empire. It was created in 1535 along with the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach as a result of the division of the Margraviate of Baden. Its territory consisted of a core area on the middle stretch of the Upper Rhine around the capital city of Baden, as well as lordships on the Moselle and Nahe.
While Protestantism took hold in Baden-Durlach, Baden-Baden was Catholic from the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) onwards. After the complete destruction of the territory in the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), Margrave Louis William, the "Turkishlouis", moved the capital to Rastatt and built Schloss Rastatt there, the first baroque palace on the Upper Rhine. Under the regency of his widow, Sibylle of Saxe-Lauenburg, further baroque structures were built. When her second son Augustus George died without heirs in 1771, Baden-Baden was inherited by the rulers of Baden-Durlach, reuniting the two margraviates.
Territory
The Margraviate of Baden-Baden consisted of a core area on the right bank of the middle Upper Rhine, centred on the cities of Baden and Rastatt, as well as further territories in the Upper Rhine region and west of the Rhine. Some of these belonged to the Swabian imperial circle, others to the Upper Rhenish Circle.
Rastatt and Baden
The core territory extended from Ettlingen to Steinbach. It was bordered to the north by the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach, to the west by the Rhine river, to the east by the Duchy of Württemberg, and in the south by the Hanauerland. Other important neighbours were Electoral Palatinate, the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer, and the Free imperial city of Strasbourg.
The Margrave's residence and capital city was Baden until 1705 and Rastatt thereafter. The cities of Ettlingen, Kuppenheim, Steinbach, and Stollhofen served as administrative centres, through which smaller settlements and the countryside were administered. The Alsatian towns of Seltz and Beinheim on the left bank of the Rhine directly opposite Rastatt also belonged to Baden-Baden. Malsch, which was initially part of Württemberg, became part of Baden in 1603. Illingen was an exclave, belonging to Speyer, but entirely surrounded by Baden-Baden territory.
Until 1660, the theoretically independent County of Eberstein, which encompassed the middle stretch of the Murgtal and had its main city at Gernsbach, was de facto part of Baden-Baden. After the extinction of the Eberstein line in 1660, Baden-Baden split the territory with Speyer.
In 1688, the core territory was extended south to Bühl, which replaced Steinbach as the local administrative centre over the course of the 18th century. In this period, Kuppenheim was also eclipsed as an administrative centre by Rastatt.
Other Upper Rhenish territories
Until 1629, Baden-Baden shared control of Lahr-Mahlberg with Nassau-Saarbrücken. After that, they partitioned the territory, with Lahr going to Nassau-Saarbrücken, while Mahlberg, Kippenheim, and Friesenheim went to Baden-Baden. In 1693, Margrave Louis William acquired Burg Staufenberg near Durbach. After the French abandoned Kehl, Emperor Leopold I assigned it to Baden-Baden in 1698. In 1701, Baden-Baden also received the rights to the Landvogty of Offenburg.
County of Sponheim
On the Moselle and Nahe rivers and in the Hunsrück, Baden-Baden shared sovereignty over the Fore and Hinter Counties of Sponheim with the Electoral Palatinate and various collateral lines of the Palatinate. The Hinter County encompassed the modern districts of Bernkastel-Wittlich and Birkenfeld. Its administrative centres were Birkenfeld, Allenbach, Dill, Herrstein, Winterburg, Kastellaun und Trarbach. The Fore County lay in Hunsrück and on the Nahe, and extended into Rhenish Hesse. The most important cities were Kirchberg, Gemünden, Kreuznach und Sprendlingen.
Other territories west of the Rhine
The Margraves controlled Rodemachern, Useldingen and Hespringen in the modern territory of France and Luxembourg. In the Palatinate Forest, they owned the Lordship of Gräfenstein, which they had shared with the Leiningen family until 1557. After Gräfenstein Castle was destroyed in 1635, the margrave shifted the administration to Rodalben.
History
The Margraviate of Baden-Baden was created in 1535, as a result of the division of the Margraviate of Baden. In the 16th century, it was heavily influenced by Bavaria. Between 1594 and 1622, the territory came under the occupation of the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach. The territory was heavily damaged by the Thirty Years' War and the Nine Years' War. The wealthy sovereigns Louis William and Sibylle maintained an expensive court culture and built many secular and religious structures in the Baroque style. After the death of Augustus George in 1771, the margraviate was inherited by Charles Frederick of Baden-Durlach.
Creation
The Margraviate of Baden-Baden was created as a result of two territorial divisions of the Margraviate of Baden.
In 1503, Margrave Christopher I had reunited the Margraviate of Hachberg-Sausenberg with the main Margraviate of Baden (from which it had been separated in 1306) and ruled over a geographically scattered but politically unified territory, which included the area around his residence in the city of Baden, lordships in the southern part of the Upper Rhine region, and estates to the west of the Rhine. He intended to avoid a re-partition of the margraviate by establishing his son, Philip as sole heir. However, Philip's older brother Bernhard did not accept his father's will and was exiled to Burgundy as punishment. Philip's younger brother, Ernest also rebelled with the help of his father-in-law, Frederick I, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. Christopher finally gave in and devised a division of his territory into three parts in 1515: Bernhard received the areas west of the Rhine, Philip got the core territory around Baden, and Ernest received the estates to the south.
When Philip died in 1533, without male heirs, Bernhard and Ernest initially planned to rule the core territory together. However, they soon came into conflict and decided to divide it. Bernhard set the dividing line (which mostly followed the River Alb) and Ernest was given the choice of portions. He chose the area north of the Alb. The territories which each of the brothers had received in 1515 remained unchanged by this deal. After the new division, Bernhard thus ruled over the areas west of the Rhine and the portion of the core territory south of the Alb. Ernest moved his residence to Pforzheim and was referred to thereafter as the Margrave of Baden-Pforzheim, while Bernhard remained in Baden and was called the Margrave of Baden-Baden. The brothers carried on further negotiations about details of the division and only finalised an agreement through the mediation of Louis V of Palatine at the end of 1536. This agreement was documented by a treaty which was signed in Heidelberg.
Bernhard's heirs, who continued to rule his Margraviate of Baden-Baden until 1771, are called the "Bernhardine line" of House Baden, after him.
Close alliance with Bavaria
When Bernhard died in 1536, his eldest son, Philibert was a newborn and his second son, Christopher, had not yet been born. Ernest claimed Bernhard's territories for himself and attempted to press his claim before the Reichskammergericht in Speyer, but he was opposed by Bernhard's widow Franziska of Luxemburg and Philipp's daughter, Marie Jacoba, who pushed for a regency. John II of Simmern, Wilhelm IV of Eberstein, and Duke William IV of Bavaria (Marie Jacoba's husband) were appointed as legal guardians of the young princes. Freiherr Henry of Fleckenstein was appointed as the actual regent in Baden-Baden.
Philibert grew up in Munich and assumed control of the government when he turned twenty in 1556. In 1557, he married Mechthild of Bavaria, who was four years older than him and had known him since childhood. He fought in Hungary against Suleiman the Magnificent and in France against the Huguenots. He died in 1569, during the latter campaign, when his son, Philip II was only ten years old.
Philip II's legal guardian was Duke Albert V of Bavaria. He had the young margrave educated at Ingolstadt by Jesuits in the doctrines of the Counter-Reformation and installed him as ruler of Baden-Baden in 1571, when he was twelve. Otto Henry von Schwarzenberg, the regent in Baden-Baden from 1570 was completely under Albert V's control. From 1572 to 1582, he had Philip's residence, the New Castle in Baden-Baden expanded by architect Caspar Weinhart, in the style of the Italian Renaissance.
Music played a central role at the court. It is reported that there were over two hundred musical instruments in the Neues Schloss in 1582. Philip II died suddenly in 1588 at the age of twenty-nine, leaving the margraviate large debts, but no heir.
Upper Baden Occupation
After Philip's death, his cousin, Edward Fortunatus became the reigning margrave. He was the grandson of Bernhard III by his son Christopher II and had grown up in London, receiving his name from Queen Elizabeth I, who was his godmother. Due to his luxurious lifestyle, the margraviate's debts grew further. Edward sought to resolve this issue by giving two Italians, Francesco Muskatelli and Paul Pestalozzi, free rein of the basement vaults of Yburg, where they were to work on alchemy and counterfeit money. When Emperor Rudolf II decided to place Baden-Baden under administration, as a result of its high debts, he installed Margrave Ernest Frederick of Baden-Durlach over the core territory of Baden-Baden in November 1594. Edward Fortunatus responded by asking the two Italians to poison Ernest Frederick. The plan failed however, and the pair were dismembered. Edward Fortunatus withdrew to his territories to the west of the Rhine, where he died in an accident in 1600. The occupation of Baden-Baden is known as the "Upper Baden Occupation".
Thirty Years' War
George Frederick, who became Margrave of Baden-Durlach after his brother's death in 1604, took both portions of Baden into the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side. The Baden Army, which had consisted of 200 cavalry and 600 infantry in 1600, had grown to 20,000 men by 1620. When the army of Ernst von Mansfeld approached the Upper Rhine in 1622, George Frederick sought to merge the Baden Army with Mansfeld's army. However, the two commanders could not agree which of them should have supreme command, so George Frederick had to fight the forces of Tilly at the Battle of Wimpfen on his own. Both sides suffered heavy losses in the battle, which took place on 6 May 1622, but Tilly was victorious. That same summer, the victorious Catholics installed William, son of Edward Fortunatus, as Margrave of Baden-Baden, ending the Upper Baden Occupation.
In 1632, the Swedes under King Gustavus Adolphus conquered the Upper Rhine, including Baden-Baden. He returned control of Baden-Baden to Baden-Durlach in 1633. However, immediately after the Swedes and their allies (including Baden-Durlach) were defeated in the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, William took over Baden-Baden once more, seizing a portion of Baden-Durlach's territory as well. In the following years, the city of Baden suffered from the passage of opposing armies - it was pillaged three times between 1642 and 1644. The population of the margraviate declined during the war by more than 50%. In the Peace of Westphalia, the territorial situation in Baden was restored to how it had been in 1550. However, since France had annexed much of Alsace, Baden-Baden now found itself on the western border of the Holy Roman Empire.
The era of the Turkish Louis
The period after the Thirty Years' War was marked by immigration and rebuilding. William's oldest son, Ferdinand Maximilian moved to Paris, where he married and had a son, whom he named after King Louis XIV. This son, Louis William would become the most famous ruler of Baden-Baden, owing to his service as a general of the Holy Roman Empire. After a dispute with his wife, Ferdinand Maximilian returned to Baden-Baden with his son and remarried to Maria Magdalena of Oettingen-Baldern. He never assumed control of the margravate because he predeceased his father in a hunting accident in 1669. Louis William, then fourteen years old, was sent on the Grand Tour by his grandfather a year later, during which he visited Genf, Milan, Florence, Rome, Venice, and Innsbruck, among other places. After that, he returned to Baden-Baden, aged 19, and enlisted in the Imperial Army, where he swiftly rose up the ranks.