Karl III. Philipp

Karl III Philipp, Elector Palatine, also known as Carl Philipp, was born on November 4, 1661, in Neuburg an der Donau and died on December 31, 1742, in Mannheim. He was initially an officer and Habsburg governor, and later the ruling Count Palatine and Elector of the Palatinate, as well as Duke of Jülich and Berg and of Palatinate-Neuburg. During his reign, he moved the residence from Heidelberg to Mannheim and strengthened the cohesion of the various Wittelsbach lines through inheritance and union treaties. Karl Philipp was the seventh of the 17 children of the Palatinate-Neuburg Elector Philipp Wilhelm and his wife, Elisabeth Amalia Magdalena of Hesse-Darmstadt. He thus belonged to an important branch of the House of Wittelsbach. His sister Eleonore Magdalene of Palatinate-Neuburg was the mother of the later Habsburg emperors Joseph I and Charles VI. Karl Philipp was also related by marriage to the kings of Spain and Portugal. As a younger son, he was initially intended for the clergy. At the age of 14, he became a canon in Cologne, and later also in Salzburg and Mainz; in 1679, he joined the Order of Malta. At the same time, he received military training. In 1684, without having taken holy orders, he ended his ecclesiastical career and entered imperial service. From 1691 to 1694, he took part in the wars against the Ottoman Empire and rose to the rank of field marshal. In 1694, he was admitted to the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1705, his nephew, Emperor Joseph I, appointed him governor of Upper and Further Austria, with his seat in Innsbruck. The office had been vacant since the death of Charles of Lorraine in 1690. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Karl Philipp devoted himself particularly to organizing and strengthening the defense of the territories. He remained in Innsbruck until 1717, although after the death of his elder brother Johann Wilhelm in June 1716 he had already succeeded him as Elector of the Palatinate and Duke of the Palatinate-Neuburg, Jülich, and Berg territories. After spending a year in Neuburg, Karl Philipp settled in Heidelberg in 1718. He rejected Düsseldorf, the residence of his predecessor, because the local estates refused to approve the funds he demanded. Since his inheritance was heavily burdened with debt, he began his reign by introducing economies at court. At the same time, he had to deal with several political and religious conflicts. A dispute with the new Electorate of Hanover over the honorary title of Arch-Treasurer paralyzed the Imperial Diet between 1717 and 1719; a final settlement was not reached until 1741. As a committed Catholic, Karl Philipp also clashed with the Reformed Church Council of the Palatinate. He wanted to turn it into a state-controlled authority, ban the Heidelberg Catechism, and use Heidelberg’s Church of the Holy Spirit entirely as a Catholic church and Wittelsbach burial site. Under pressure from the Protestant imperial estates and the emperor, he had to abandon part of his plans. In 1720, he consequently moved the residence to Mannheim. In Mannheim, Karl Philipp had a new residence built. In 1720, the foundation stone was laid for the palace, and construction began on the adjoining Jesuit college. In 1733, the foundation stone was laid for the Mannheim Jesuit Church, an outstanding work of the Catholic revival and of southern German Baroque architecture. A new opera house was also built according to plans by Alessandro Galli da Bibiena and inaugurated in 1742. Although Karl Philipp promoted Catholic interests, he did not continue his predecessor’s comprehensive policy of re-Catholicization and was generally regarded as tolerant. Karl Philipp initially opposed the Bavarian Wittelsbachs because, under the treaties of Rastatt and Baden, the Palatinate was supposed to return the Upper Palatinate and the fourth electoral dignity to Bavaria. The Wittelsbach Family Union of 1724 largely ended this internal family conflict. Among other matters, it provided for Bavaria and the Palatinate to exercise the Rhenish imperial vicariate jointly. In 1733, as part of a further settlement, the Birkenfeld line, represented by Christian III, received the Principality of Zweibrücken. From around 1725, Karl Philipp was chiefly occupied with the succession dispute over Jülich and Berg. With imperial support, he enforced the Wittelsbach claims against Brandenburg-Prussia. When Emperor Charles VI moved closer to Frederick William I of Prussia, Karl Philipp allied himself with France, despite an earlier dispute over old Palatine rights in Alsace. The alliance proved its value in 1734 during the War of the Polish Succession: Karl Philipp remained benevolently neutral toward France, and his territories were consequently spared. In 1741, the succession dispute was ended by a treaty with Prussia and Saxony. Karl Philipp continued his policy of strengthening the Wittelsbach family as a whole until the end of his life. Its high point came on January 17, 1742, with the double wedding of his granddaughters: Elisabeth Auguste married the designated successor, Karl Theodor of Palatinate-Sulzbach, while Maria Anna married the Bavarian Duke Clemens. Shortly afterward, Karl Philipp used his electoral vote to support the election of the Bavarian Elector Karl Albrecht as Emperor Charles VII. Thus, although he had originally been a close ally of Vienna, at the end of his life he stood firmly on the side of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs. Karl Philipp was married twice in dynastic unions. In 1688, he married Luise Charlotte Radziwill, who died in 1695. They had four children, of whom Elisabeth Auguste reached adulthood. In 1701, he married Theresa Katharina Lubomirska; they had two daughters, both of whom died in childhood. From 1729 onward, he was also morganatically married to Countess Violante Maria Theresa of Thurn and Taxis. Karl Philipp died at the end of 1742. As planned, he was succeeded by Karl Theodor, who was likewise descended from Philipp Ludwig of Palatinate-Neuburg. With Karl Philipp, the Palatinate-Neuburg line of the Wittelsbachs became extinct in the male line. Through his granddaughter Maria Franziska Dorothea, who married Friedrich Michael of Palatinate-Birkenfeld-Bischweiler-Rappoltstein in 1746, the later kings of Bavaria were nevertheless descended from him until 1918. Because of his long-term political strategy, Karl Philipp is regarded as one of the most important political figures among the Wittelsbachs in the first half of the 18th century.