Life
Born in Baden-Baden, Maximilian was a member of the House of Baden, the son of Prince Wilhelm (1829–1897), third son of Grand Duke Leopold (1790–1852) and Princess Maria Maximilianovna of Leuchtenberg, a granddaughter of Eugène de Beauharnais and niece of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Maximilian de Beauharnais, and bore a resemblance to his cousin, Emperor Napoleon III.
Max attended the Gymnasium secondary school and studied law and cameralism at the Leipzig University and afterwards trained as an officer of the Prussian Army. Following the death of his uncle Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden in 1907, he became heir to the grand-ducal throne of his cousin Frederick II, whose marriage remained childless. In 1911 Max applied for discharge in the rank of a Major general.
Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he again served as a general staff officer at the XIV Corps of the German Army. Shortly afterwards however, he retired as honorary president of the Baden section of the German Red Cross and a leading member of the YMCA world alliance. Due to his liberal stance he came into conflict with the policies of the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) supreme command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. He openly spoke against the resumption of the unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, which provoked the declaration of war by the United States Congress on April 6. On the other hand, Prince Maximilian at the same time maintained a correspondence with the antisemitic author Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
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