(Bayern), a Land of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the valley of the Danube. Area, 70,600 sq km; population, 10.2 million (1967). The administrative center is Munich; the major cities (more than 100,000 inhabitants) are Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Regensburg. Bavaria is the highest region in the nation; it includes the northern slopes of the Alps (highest point, Zugspitze, 2,963 m, in the Bavarian Alps), the eastern part of the Swabian-Bavarian plateau (400–1,000 m), the Franconian Alps (or Franconian Jura; highest point, Poppberg, 657 m), the western part of the Bohemian Forest and the Sumava Mountains, and the Bavarian Forest. The average temperature in Munich in July is 17° C, and the precipitation is 935 mm per year. There is a dense network of rivers (the Danube and its tributaries) and lakes. About one-third of the territory is covered by spruce and beech forests and spruce and fir forests; there are large areas of alpine meadow.
Bavaria is an industrial and agrarian region. Of the economically active population 45.7 percent are engaged in industry and trades, 17.2 percent in agriculture and forestry, 15.9 percent in transport and commerce, and 21.2 percent in nonproductive spheres (1966). Approximately one-half of the electrical energy is produced in hydroelectric power plants. InGun-dremmingen (near Gunzburg) is located the first industrial atomic energy plant in the FRG (237,000 kilowatts). In the postwar period the petroleum-refining (in Ingolstadt and Neustadt) and the petrochemical industries have been established. (Oil is transported by pipe from the ports of Marseille, Genoa, and Trieste.) Bavaria produces one-third of the aluminum of the FRG (Töging). The leading industry, machine building, employs one-third of those engaged in industry. Included in this total are electrotechnical machine building, occupying over one-fifth of those engaged in industry (Munich, Nuremberg, Erlangen); general machine production (Augsburg, Aschaffenburg), including the production of ball bearings (Schweinfurt); transport machinery, including automobile manufacturing (Munich, Augsburg, Ingolstadt) and aircraft production (Augsburg); and precision machinery (Nuremberg). Of great importance are the textile (Hof and Augsburg) and sewing industries as well as glass-ceramic and food industries (cheese, beer, butter, and sugar).
The dairy industry is well developed in Bavaria, especially in the mountain pastures. (In 1966 there were 4.2 million head of cattle, including 2 million dairy cows, and 3.6 million pigs.) Also well developed are grain farming (1.5 million tons of wheat in 1966,1 million tons of barley) and the sowing of sugar beets (harvest, 2.3 million tons), hops (in the Danube valley and in the northwest), oats, rye, and potatoes (6.1 million tons). There is viticulture in the Main valley. About 70 percent of the farmlands and forest are concentrated in farms of the capitalist type (with plots larger than 10 hectares) and in the estates of landowners.
For the most part the railroads are electric. There is a dense system of highways. There is navigation on the Danube and Main rivers. The Bavarian Alps are a tourist region. In Bavaria there are three universities (Erlangen-Nuremberg, Munich, and Würzburg).
A. I. MUKHIN
Historical information. The name Bavaria is derived from the German tribe of Bavarians, which in the middle of the sixth century inhabited the greater part of modern Bavaria and the territory to the south and east, forming their duchy there. (The dukes were of the Agilolfing family and were dependents of the Franks.) In 788 (under Duke Tassilo III) the Bavarian Duchy was dissolved and its territory was included in the Frankish state; in the early tenth century it reemerged as one of the tribal duchies of the German kingdom. From 1070 to 1180 the Welfs ruled in Bavaria; from 1180, the Wit-telsbachs. From the end of the tenth century to the 13th century the territory of the Bavarian Duchy was reduced (by the partitioning of Karnten, the Bavarian Ostmark, Tirol, and Salzburg). Bavaria itself disintegrated into independent principalities. They were reunited under Duke Albrecht IV (1467–1508). In the 16th and 17th centuries, Bavaria became one of the most powerful territorial principalities of Germany and also one of the strongholds of Catholic reaction. Duke Maximilian the Bavarian (1597–1651) headed the Catholic league of 1609 and played an active part in the Thirty Years’ War of 1618–48, as a result of which Bavaria acquired the Upper Palatinate (1628) and became an electorate (1623, confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia of 1648). In the 17th century, monarchic absolutism developed in Bavaria. In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), Bavaria fought on the side of France. In 1777 the line of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs died out, and Bavaria passed to the line of Wittelsbachs ruling in the Palatinate. This was confirmed in 1779, after the War of the Bavarian Succession.
At the end of the 18th century, Bavaria participated in the wars against France; however, in 1801–13 it sided with Napoleon. In 1806, Bavaria became a kingdom and joined the Rhenish Confederation. During the so-called Napoleonic Wars, Bavaria substantially expanded to the northwest through the secularizing of church lands (the bishopric of Bamberg and others) and the annexation of a number of secular domains (the principality of Ansbach and others) and free imperial cities (Nuremberg, Ulm, and others). In 1813, Bavaria went over to the side of the anti-French coalition. At the beginning of the 19th century in Bavaria, as in other German states, capitalist relations were beginning to develop. In 1832 representatives of bourgeois opposition groups organized demonstrations (the so-called Hambach festival) under the slogan of the creation of a republican constitutional order and the unification of Germany. As a result of the March Revolution of 1848 the obligations of the peasantry in Bavaria were partially abolished. In the 1850’s and 1860’s, a period of increasing struggle between Austria and Prussia for ascendancy in Germany, the ruling class of Bavaria introduced the idea of a threefold alliance with Prussia and Austria of medium-sized and small German states headed by Bavaria. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Bavaria sided with Austria but signed a secret defense alliance with Prussia. In 1871, Bavaria became part of the German Empire. It continued to be a stronghold of separatism and clericalism. In the second half of the 1860’s, great secular and clerical landowners and Grossbauern (wealthy peasants) united to form the so-called Patriot Party, which at the end of the 1880’s became part of the nationwide Center Party. The unification of Germany hastened the development of capitalism in Bavaria as well; however, Bavaria lagged considerably behind the western and central regions of Germany in industrial development.
As a result of the revolution of November 1918 in Germany a republican government was formed in Bavaria. The Social Democrats and Independent Social Democrats were active in government and followed a political course of collaboration with the bourgeoisie. In April 1919 the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed, headed by the communists, but it was crushed by the German government. By the terms of the Weimar Constitution of 1919, Bavaria became a part of the German Republic as one of the states. The same year the National Socialist (fascist) Party was born in Bavaria, and in succeeding years Bavaria became one of the main hotbeds of fascism. This was facilitated by the relative weakness of the working class, which at that time in Bavaria comprised only 7 percent of the population, and by the presence of a large number of kulak farms. During the years 1924–33 the Bavarian People’s Party, similar to the national Center Party, was in power. In the period of fascist dictatorship (1933–1945), Bavaria was the traditional center of fascism; the headquarters of the fascist party were located in Munich, in the so-called Brown House, and congresses of the party took place in Nuremberg.
After the defeat of fascist Germany in 1945, Bavaria was included in the American occupation zone. Since 1949, Bavaria has been a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bavaria is one of the centers of political clericalism and neonazism of the FRG. The governing party is the Christian Socialist Union (CSU), founded in 1945. This party is allied in the FRG with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The CSU and the CDU form a single faction in the Bundestag of the FRG.
IU. A. KORKHOV and B. A. KRYLOV