Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria - Life - Interwar Years

Interwar Years

Rupprecht lost his chance to rule Bavaria when it became a republic in the revolutions that followed the war. Although some royalists still referred to him as the King of Bavaria, the 738 years of Wittelsbach rule ended in 1918. Rupprecht escaped to Tyrol in fear of reprisals from the brief communist regime in Bavaria under Kurt Eisner but returned in September 1919. While away from Bavaria, he succeeded his mother, Maria Theresia of Austria-Este, the last Queen of Bavaria, as the Jacobite heir. This occurred upon her death on 3 February 1919. As such, under his anglicized name he would be King Robert I (or Rupert) (King of England) and IV (King of Scotland), although he never claimed these crowns and "strongly discouraged" anyone from claiming them on his behalf. He was styled "Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay" because of his mother's claim.

The changed political situation however allowed him finally to marry Princess Antoinette of Luxembourg on 7 April 1921. The ceremony was carried out by the nuncio to Bavaria, Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII.

Shortly after the 1922 Washington Naval Conference, he made a statement regarding the possible ban of aerial bombing, poison gas, sea blockades and long range guns, blaming them for a majority of civilian casualties during the last war. He also advocated Germany's participation in future peace conferences, and he dismissed claims that Kaiser Wilhelm II was to blame for the first world war.

While opposed to the Weimar Republic and never having renounced his rights to the throne, Rupprecht envisioned a Constitutional monarchy for Bavaria. Upon his father's death in October 1921, Rupprecht declared his claim to the throne since his father had never formally renounced his crown in the Anif declaration. While never crowned king, he did become the head of the House of Wittelsbach after his father's death. He formed the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichfond in 1923, which was an agreement with the state of Bavaria leaving the most important of the Wittelsbach palaces, like Neuschwanstein and Linderhof, to the Bavarian people.

He was never enticed to join the far right in Germany, despite Hitler's attempts to win him over through Ernst Röhm and promises of royal restoration. Hitler confided in private to a personal dislike of the Crown Prince. The Crown Prince in turn confessed to King George V at a lunch in London in the summer of 1934 that he considered Hitler to be insane.

With the worsening of the Great Depression in 1932, a plan was floated to give Rupprecht dictatorial powers in Bavaria under the title of Staatskommissar. The plan attracted support from a wide coalition of parties, including the SPD and the post-war Bavarian Minister-President (First Minister) Wilhelm Hoegner but the legal appointment of Hitler as Reichskanzler in 1933 by Hindenburg and the hesitant Bavarian government under Heinrich Held ended all hopes for the idea.

Rupprecht continued to believe that restoration of the monarchy was possible, an opinion he voiced to the British ambassador Eric Phipps in 1935.