Maximilian, Margrave of Baden (Maximilian Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm; 10 July 1867 – 6 November 1929), also known as Max von Baden, was a German aristocrat, general and politician. A member of the House of Baden, in October and November 1918 he briefly served as the last chancellor of the German Empire and minister-president of Prussia.
The son of Prince Wilhelm of Baden and Maria Maximilianovna of Leuchtenberg, Max studied law at the Leipzig University before joining the Prussian Army. He became heir presumptive to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1907 upon the death of his uncle, Grand Duke Frederick I. He served as a general staff officer at the XIV Corps upon the outbreak of World War I. In 1914, he became honorary president of the Baden section of the German Red Cross, where he worked for the welfare of prisoners of war using his international connections.
Emperor Wilhelm II appointed Max chancellor in October 1918, replacing Georg von Hertling, and he was immediately tasked to approach the Allies and secure an armistice. Despite his own reservations, he began peace negotiations based on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and took steps towards transforming the government into a parliamentary system. He forced Erich Ludendorff's resignation from the Supreme Army Command when the latter threatened to derail the negotiations. As revolution in Germany rapidly spread in November 1918, Max unilaterally proclaimed the abdication of Wilhelm and handed over the chancellorship to SPD Chairman Friedrich Ebert, marking the end of the German Empire and the beginning of the Weimar Republic.
After the revolution, Max returned to Baden and spent the rest of his life in retirement. He wrote a number of books and established the private boarding school Schule Schloss Salem with the help of Kurt Hahn. He died in 1929, a year after becoming the head of the House of Baden.
Born in Baden-Baden on 10 July 1867, Maximilian was a member of the House of Baden, the son of Prince Wilhelm Max (1829–1897), third son of Grand Duke Leopold (1790–1852) and Princess Maria Maximilianovna of Leuchtenberg (1841–1914), a granddaughter of Eugène de Beauharnais. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Maximilian de Beauharnais, and bore a resemblance to his cousin, Emperor Napoleon III.
Max received a humanistic education at a Gymnasium secondary school and studied law and cameralism at the Leipzig University. Upon the order of Queen Victoria, Prince Max was brought to Darmstadt in the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine as a suitor for Victoria's granddaughter, Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. Alix was the daughter of Victoria's late daughter, Princess Alice, and Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse. Alix quickly rejected Prince Max, as she was in love with Nicholas II, the future Tsar of Russia. Max von Baden was homosexual and even listed on an according list of the Berlin criminal police as a young officer, however in 1900 he decided for dynastic reasons to marry Princess Marie Louise of Hanover and Cumberland. So did the future King Gustaf V of Sweden who married Max's cousin Victoria of Baden.
Early military and political career
After finishing his studies, he trained as an officer of the Prussian Army. Following the death of his uncle Grand Duke Frederick I of Baden in 1907, he became heir to the grand-ducal throne of his cousin Frederick II, whose marriage remained childless. He also became president of the Erste Badische Kammer (the upper house of the parliament of Baden). In 1911, Max applied for a military discharge with the rank of a Generalmajor (Major general).
Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he served as a general staff officer at the XIV Corps of the German Army as the representative of the Grand Duke (XIV Corps included the troops from Baden). Shortly afterwards, however, he retired from his position (General der Kavallerie à la suite) as he was dissatisfied with his role in the military and was suffering from ill health.
In October 1914, he became honorary president of the Baden section of the German Red Cross, thus beginning his work for prisoners-of-war inside and outside Germany in which he made use of his family connections to the Russian and Swedish courts as well as his connections to Switzerland. In 1916, he became honorary president of the German-American support union for prisoners of war within the YMCA world alliance.
Due to his liberal stance he came into conflict with the policies of the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL – Supreme Army Command) supreme command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. He openly spoke against the resumption of the unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, which provoked the declaration of war by the United States Congress on 6 April.
His activity in the interests of prisoners of war, as well as his tolerant, easy-going character gave him a reputation as an urbane personality who kept his distance from the extremes of nationalism and official war enthusiasm in evidence elsewhere at the time. Since he was almost unknown to the public, it was mainly due to Kurt Hahn, who served from spring 1917 in the military office of the Foreign Ministry, that he was later considered for the position of chancellor. Hahn maintained close links with Secretary of State Wilhelm Solf and several Reichstag deputies like Eduard David (SPD) and Conrad Haußmann (FVP). David pushed for Max to be appointed Chancellor in July 1917, after the fall of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Max then put himself forward for the position in early September 1918, pointing out his links to the social democrats, but Emperor Wilhelm II turned him down.
After the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) told the government in late September 1918 that the German front was about to collapse and asked for immediate negotiation of an armistice, the cabinet of Chancellor Georg von Hertling resigned on 30 September 1918. Hertling, after consulting Vice-Chancellor Friedrich von Payer (FVP), suggested Prince Max of Baden as his successor to the emperor. However, it took the additional support of Haußmann, Oberst Johannes "Hans" von Haeften and Ludendorff himself to have Wilhelm II appoint Max as Imperial Chancellor of Germany and Minister President of Prussia.
Max was to head a new government, based on the majority parties of the Reichstag (SPD, Centre Party and FVP). When Max arrived in Berlin on 1 October, he had no idea that he would be asked to approach the Allies about an armistice. Horrified, Max fought against the plan. Moreover, he also admitted openly that he was no politician, and that he did not think additional steps towards "parliamentarisation" and democratisation feasible, as long as the war continued. Consequently, he did not favour a liberal reform of the constitution. However, Emperor Wilhelm II convinced him to take the post, and appointed him on 3 October 1918. The message asking for an armistice went out only on 4 October, not as originally planned on 1 October, hopefully to be accepted by US President Woodrow Wilson.
Although Max had serious reservations about the conditions under which the OHL was willing to conduct negotiations and tried to interpret Wilson's Fourteen Points in a way most favourable to the German position, he accepted the charge. He appointed a government that for the first time included representatives of the largest party in the Reichstag, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, as state secretaries (equivalent to ministers in other monarchies): Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer. This was following up on an idea of Ludendorff's and former Foreign Secretary Paul von Hintze's (as the representative of the Hertling cabinet) who had agreed on 29 September that the request for an armistice must not come from the old regime, but from one based on the majority parties. The official reason for appointing a government based on a parliamentary majority was to make it harder for the American president to refuse a peace offer. The need to convince Wilson was also the driving factor behind the move towards "parliamentarisation" that was to make the Chancellor and his government answerable to the Reichstag, as they had not been under the Empire so far. Ludendorff, however, was more interested in shifting the blame for the lost war to the politicians and to the Reichstag parties.