Princess Mathilde was born on 17 August 1877 as the sixth child and third daughter of Ludwig III of Bavaria at the family"s summer residence of Villa Amsee in Lindau. Though she was the favorite daughter of her father, she and her mother were not close.
After her early death, Life-Dreams: The Poems of a Blighted Life, a collection of poems she wrote, was published in 1910. Marriage and issue Death Mathilde died of tuberculosis at the age of 28, on 6 August 1906, in Davos, Switzerland. Her remains are buried in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the little village of Rieden near her family home at Schloss Leutstetten.
Her husband remarried a year later to Countess Anna of Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg.
In 1910 Mathilde"s family anonymously published some of her poems as Traum und Leben: Gedichte einer früh Vollendeten. In 1913 John Heard translated and published them in English as Life-Dreams: The Poems of a Blighted Life.
Titles and styles 17 August 1877 – 1 May 1900: Her Royal Highness Princess Mathilde of Bavaria 1 May 1900 – 6 August 1906: Her Royal Highness Princess Mathilde of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duchess in Saxony.
