OTTO, king of Greece (1815-1867), second son of Louis I., king of Bavaria, and his wife Teresa of Saxe-Altenburg, was born at Salzburg on June 1, 1815, and was educated at Munich. In 1832 he was chosen by the conference of London to occupy the newly-erected throne of Greece, and on Feb. 6, 1833, he landed at Nauplia, then the capital of independent Greece. Otto, who was not yet eighteen, was accompanied by a council of regency composed of Bavarians under the presidency of Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg (1787-1853). In 1835 Otto came of age, but, on the advice of his father and under pressure of Great Britain and of the house of Rothschild, who all believed that a capable finance minister was the supreme need of Greece, he retained Armansperg as chancellor of state. The Greeks were more heavily taxed than under Turkish rule ; they had exchanged government by the sword, which they understood, for govern ment by official regulations, which they hated; they had escaped from the sovereignty of the Mussulman to fall under that of a devout Catholic, to them a heretic. Otto was well intentioned, honest and inspired with a genuine affection for his adopted country; but it needed more than mere amiable qualities to reconcile the Greeks to his rule.
In 1837 Otto married Princess Amalie of Oldenburg, who made herself unpopular by interfering in the government. Meanwhile Armansperg had been dismissed by the king, but a Greek minister was not put in his place, and the granting of a constitution was postponed. The attempts of Otto to conciliate Greek sentiment by efforts to enlarge the frontiers of his kingdom, e.g., by the
suggested acquisition of Crete in 1841, only succeeded in em broiling him with the powers. His power rested wholly on Bavarian bayonets; and when, in 1843, the last of the German troops were withdrawn, he was forced by the outbreak of a revolutionary movement in Athens to grant a constitution and to appoint a ministry of native Greeks.
For the British blockade of the Peiraeus and Greek intervention in the Crimean War see GREECE : History. Otto's position in Greece became untenable. In 1861 a student named Drusios attempted to murder the queen, and was hailed by the populace as a modern Harmodius. In October 1862 the troops in Acarnania under General Theodore Srivas declared for the king's deposition ; those in Athens followed suit ; a provisional government was set up and summoned a national convention. The king and queen, who were at sea, took refuge on a British warship, and returned to Bavaria, where, on July 26, 1867, Otto died.
See E. A. Thouvenel, La Grece du roi Othon (Paris, i8go) ; G. L. von Maurer, Das griechische Volk, etc. (1836) ; C. W. P. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, "Die Verwaltung Kdnig Ottos von Griechenland und sein Sturz" (in Preuss. Jahrbiicher, iv. 365) ; K. T. v. Heigel, Ludwig I., König von Baiern, pp. i49 et seq. (Leipzig, 1872) ; H. H. Parish, The Diplomatic History of the Monarchy of Greece from the Year 1830 (London, 1838).