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.

Others included Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,[3] and Jaime, Duke of Madrid.

[1] 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.

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.