A Bavarian prince as King of Greece
Otto became King of Greece in 1832, and hence the gift of bronze.
Carsten Steger — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Alexander-93 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Matti Blume — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Matti Blume — CC BY-SA 4.0
Because Bavaria had been allied to France since 1805 and had gained a great deal from it: Napoleon raised it from a duchy to a kingdom in 1806 and doubled its territory. The price was supplying soldiers for his campaigns. When he invaded Russia in 1812 Bavaria sent a whole corps, of which only a small fraction returned. After Napoleon's defeat Bavaria switched sides in 1813 and joined his opponents.
No. It is a square you cross walking from Odeonsplatz to the Kunstareal or Königsplatz. Stop for two minutes, look at the obelisk and read what it stands for, then continue to the museums. But knowing its story changes what you see — from a decorative obelisk into a monument to a catastrophe.
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A circular square in Munich's Maxvorstadt where five streets meet, with a black obelisk about twenty-nine metres high at its centre. The obelisk was raised in 1833, and the material it is made of is the story: it was cast from the bronze of Turkish cannon captured by the Greeks in their war of independence, and presented to Bavaria because the Bavarian prince Otto had become King of Greece in 1832. What it commemorates is heavier: it was raised to the memory of around thirty thousand Bavarian soldiers who died in Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Bavaria was then allied to France, so its army was sent east, and little of it returned — most died of cold, hunger and disease rather than in battle. The inscription on the base says they too died for the freedom of the fatherland — a formulation trying to give meaning to death in a war that was not theirs. The square lies on the natural walk between Odeonsplatz and the Kunstareal.
Otto became King of Greece in 1832, and hence the gift of bronze.
Most of the thirty thousand perished of hunger and cold in the retreat from Russia.
They too died for the freedom of the fatherland — in a war that was not theirs.
Brienner Straße, the Maxvorstadt district