ABSTRACT
Bavarian restorationists of whatever political party or confession almost uniformly considered the Wittelsbach monarchy to be the political instrument best-suited in the long run to maintaining domestic stability and maximum freedom from the central government’s generally ill-regarded authority. On the most basic level, both the Reich Constitution and Bavaria’s “Bamberg Constitution” specified a republican form of government in which the popular will articulated by elected representative’s was to be the ultimate source of political power and legitimacy. Such minimizing by some groups and individuals of the implications for the Reich of a restored Bavarian kingdom led one monarchist journalist to brand it as parochial head-in-the-sand “ostrich politics.” Approval of a restoration by popular vote or by government emergency decree would have been only the beginning, for a return of the monarchy in Bavaria in all probability “would have provoked the Weimar Republic into a fight for existence.”.
