Othon Ier of Greece

Othon of Bavaria of Greece was born with Salzburg on June 1st 1815 and deceased with Bamberg on July 26th 1867. It is the second wire of the King of Bavaria Louis Ier and of Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The November 22nd 1836 it married Amélie d' Oldenburg It was prince de Bavière and king of Hellènes of 1832 with 1862.

The War of Greek independence having carried out the Greece towards a future independence and seeing the failure of the democracy, having symbolized by the assassination of Jean Kapodistrias. Greece plunged slowly towards an anarchy. The powers which had helped Greece in its fight for the independence (Russia, France, Great Britain) had finally decided that the country was to be a hereditary monarchy to manage to preserve the assets of independence. They chose initially Léopold of Saxony-Cobourg-Gotha (which became finally king of the Belgians). This one refused, on the councils of Kapodistrias. The choice turned then to Othon de Wittelsbach, second wire of Louis Ier of Bavaria - a convinced philhellene which had made Munich Athens on the Isar. The new king imposed arrived to Greece on board a British frigate in January 1833. He was accompanied by 3.500 Bavarian soldiers. A Te Deum took place, on December 13rd, 1834, with the Théséion with Athens, which had just been indicated like capital of the new Greek State, to celebrate the arrival of the new king.

Othon being only seventeen years old, it was considered as minor until in 1835 and the capacity was assumed by a council of regency made up of three Bavarian (von Armansperg, von Maurer, and von Heideck). Neither the council of regency - commonly called Regency -, nor Othon once with the capacity granted constitution. The monarchy of Othon was of right divine and absolute. Dissatisfaction in Greece grew, more especially as the queen Amélie de Oldenbourg, married in 1836 had still not given of heir the king. The question of the succession quickly became thorny, because it doubled of a religious dimension. The king had indeed promised to make raise his son in the orthodoxe religion (which was that of the vast majority of the Greeks). However, for the time being, the heir to the throne of Greece remained the younger brother of the King, Luitpold, not very inclined to leave his religion to adopt that of the Greeks. September 3rd 1843, a coup d'etat obliged Othon to grant a constitution. But, with the support of its Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis, it continued to control absolutely, not without the representatives of the Powers in Greece fustigating its lack of political direction unanimously.

He was a burning partisan of the “Grande Idea”: to take again all the historically Greek territories with the Ottoman Empire, while going until the final reconquest of Constantinople. The incident Don Pacifico (1850) then the occupation of Pirée by a Franco-British fleet (1854 - 1857) consolidated it in this attitude.

The dissatisfaction generated by its policy grows again. It could not adapt at the requests of the new generation of politicians who had not known the Guerre of Greek independence. One also reproached him for still being not converted with the Orthodoxie. It chooses also the camp of Austria against the Italian unification (1859 - 1860). There was initially an attempted murder on the Amalia queen. In October 1862, Othon which refused to abdicate, is reversed by a military coup d'etat. In March of the following year, the National Assembly elects a new king in the person of prince Guillaume of Denmark which reigned under the name of Georges I {{er}}. Othon left Greece as it had come there, on a British warship. It turned over then in Bavaria, in Bamberg, where it died in 1867. It remained, until the end of its life attached to Greece, bearing for example the fustanelle one, the Greek traditional costume. One of its last acts symbolic systems was to send a financial support in Crétois revolted in 1866.

It is not buried in Athens, nor in Bamberg. First king de Grèce rests today within Theatinerkirche in Munich in the family vault of the dynasty of Wittelsbach.

Internal bonds

Frederic of Two-Bridges-Birkenfeld

Maximilien Ier of Bavaria

Wilhelmine of Hesse-Darmstadt

Louis Ier of Bavaria

Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen

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