ABSTRACT
Duke Eberhard, to satisfy his mistress’s whim and, as Montesquieu says, ‘his rage for building’, determined to create his Versailles at Ludwigsburg. Ludwigsburg is, in fact, the union of eighteen distinct buildings joined by galleries, enclosing no fewer than 452 state or living-rooms. In the ancient village of Ludwigsburg, a hamlet of barely 600 inhabitants, he caused wide streets to be laid out according to Joseph Frisoni plan. In Ludwigsburg, which would prove ruinous for his country, he tried to reproduce the magnificence of that unique model, Versailles. ‘The Duke,’ writes Keysler, ‘has a passion for the chase and there is better hunting at Ludwigsburg than anywhere else in Germany. The main figure at Ludwigsburg was the Wilhelmina von Gravenitz whose ever-increasing power was reaching its height. The Gravenitz, who had retired to La Favorite, waited in feverish impatience for a reply to the various notes she sent the Duke.
