A Jacobite Gazetteer - Bavaria

St. Bartholomä

The village of St. Bartholomä is located on a promontory along the western shore of the Königssee, a lake some 6 kilometres south of Berchtesgaden. Until 1918 the lake was at the centre of a private royal domain to which members of the Royal Family frequently came on vacation. After the First World War the area became part of a national park, but the Royal Family still visited here often.

St. Bartholomä church and lodge

The village consists of only a few buildings, the only substantial one of which is the old Wittelsbach hunting lodge (today a restaurant, "Historische Gasthaus St. Bartholomä") to which a small church is attached. Christopher Lockett de Baviera (eldest son of Princess Hilda) and Martha Herdt were married in the church in 1991.

Rupprechtskaser

If one walks north of the village along the path next to the lake for several hundred metres one comes to the Rupprechtskaser, a small hunting hut built by King Rupert for his first wife Marie Gabrielle, Duchess of Cornwall and Rothesay. ¹ Their sons Prince Luitpold and Prince (later King) Albert, as well as Rupert's children from his second marriage frequently played here when they were young.

Across from the hunting hut, on the shores of the lake is a memorial to Marie Gabrielle: a plinth surmounted by a bas-relief of the Madonna and Christ Child. On the plinth is a German inscription:

DEM ANDENKEN
DER EDLEN
PRINZESSIN
MARIE GABRIELE
VON BAYERN
1912.

To the memory
of the noble
Princess Marie Gabriele
of Bavaria
1912.

Memorial to the Duchess of Cornwall and Rothesay
next to the Rupprechtskaser

Princes Luitpold and Albert at the Rupprechtskaser
with their cousin Prince Leopold of Belgium

To reach St. Bartholomä it is necessary to take a 35 minute ferry cruise from the town of Königssee at the northern end of the lake (€10,50 round trip). Ferries leave at least once each hour. Ferry website.

Notes

¹ Irmingard Prinzessin von Bayern, Jugend-Erinnerungern, 1923-1950 (St. Ottilien: EOS, 2000), 57.

Image 4 (Princes Luitpold and Albert at the Rupprechtskaser): postcard, Atelier Rottmayer-Fernande, Berchtesgaden.