Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Duke Max has died

November 17, 1888

Duke Maximilian in Bavaria died at 8:30 this morning "at the green old age of 80, lacking a few weeks," writes the Marquise de Fontenoy.  His wife and two of his daughters, the Countess Trani and the Duchess of Alencon, were at his bedside when he died.  His third daughter, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who was fond of spending summers at her parents' home on Lake Starnberg, near Munich, was not able to be present, as she is now traveling "for her health."  The Empress did come when her cousin, poor King Ludwig, "was laid out in state" at the Castle Berg, "just across the water from Duke Max's castle.
The Duke leaves a widow, the daughter of King Maximilian I of Bavaria, and eight children, three sons and five daughters.  The eldest son, Duke Ludwig, will not succeed his father because of his morganatic marriage to Countess Wallersee.  The new Duke in Bavaria is the second son, Duke Karl Theodor, a "famous oculist who studied medicine and surgery in Berlin and has restored to hundreds of poor people their sight without relieving their pocketbooks of single mark."
The third son is Major General Duke Max in Bavaria.   The two daughters not already mentioned are the widowed Princess of Thurn und Taxis and the former Queen of Naples.

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