The grand palaces and princely villas of the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynastyNymphenburg, Schleissheim, the vast Residenzschloss in Munich, and othersimpress visitors with their great halls and intimate cabinets, dramatic stairhalls and seemingly endless rows of sumptuously decorated rooms. But these dazzling residences did not exist solely to delight the eye. In The Utility of Splendor, Samuel John Klingensmith discusses how, over the years, successive...