Maximilian and his family fled for the French Revolution to Mannheim, where they lived in very modest circumstances, as the head of the Wittelsbach family, Elector Karl Theodor refused them entry in Munich and didn't gave them an allowance; although Maximilian inherited the Dukedom Pfalz-Zweibrücken in 1795 from his dead older brother Karl. II. August, he could not take possession of his inheritance, as the French occupied the dukedom.