King and Parliament

The Bavarian Constitution of 1818, which was granted by the king in a voluntary act, names the king as head of the state. He unites all rights of the state authority (Constitution, Title II § 2).

Opposite the king stood the Assembly of the Estates as a representative of the people. The Constitution of 1808 already included a national representation, which never met. The Assembly of Estates enshrined in the constitution took account of a central demand of the bourgeois public. Together with the Ministry (of the government), the King and the Assembly of Estates were the constitutive elements of the monarchical constitutional state. The period between 1818 and 1918 was thus marked by numerous debates and constitutional battles between the monarch as unifying figure of the kingdom and the representatives of the people.