ABSTRACT
The Electors of Saxony and the Palatinate, and the Princes of Baden, formed collections of pictures and libraries which became famous, while other small sovereigns of lesser means were content with museums of natural history or print rooms. The princes, in their unhealthy wish to imitate in all its details the impressive pomp of Versailles at their own courts, managed only to inspire, in the guise of propriety, a cold and brutal gallantry. The small German princes had two main preoccupations in life; to satisfy their vanity and to affirm their absolute power. Among the small German courts one naturally meets a number of figures whom foreign influence raised to a high degree of culture. ‘The tiny German principalities, for two centuries, had diminutive tyrants who surpassed in vice and sometimes in cruelty the most censured kings in history. Count Manteufel wrote in 1738: ‘Germany teems with princes and dukes, three-quarters of who are not right in the head.’.
