Mad Ludwig

This is a post about the Fairytale King of Bavaria, AKA Mad Ludwig, his glitteringly irresponsible life, and the crazy, colourful, wonderful palaces he built.

Europe in the early 1800s was in turmoil, largely due to Napoleon, and Germany as we know it today did not exist. Bavaria had been an Electorate within the Holy Roman Empire, but in 1806 it emerged from the chaos as a kingdom. Its Elector, Maximillian I, became a constitutional monarch, and they gained a parliament, albeit mainly comprising the elite. 

He was succeeded in 1825 by his son Ludwig I, a patron of the arts, who unfortunately fell in with an Irish showgirl and courtesan going by the name of Lola Montez, who irritated enough people to get him deposed in favour of his son, Maximilian II. There is no space here, but Lola deserves a post in her own right. 

Lola

Max II was a popular, effective and modernising monarch; he preserved Bavaria’s precarious independence and had two sons by his wife, Marie of Prussia. The eldest was unimaginatively named Ludwig. He was born in 1845, in the wonderfully named Nymphenburg Palace, a desirable detached residence with a garden in the sought-after western suburbs of Munich.

Nymphenburg Palace

Sadly, neither he nor Marie’s talents ran to the softer side of parenting. Ludwig’s upbringing is best described as the ‘boot camp’ model, aimed at rearing kings rather than humans. Within the luxury of court life, he led a demanding regimen of study and exercise. Maybe it was aversion therapy; in any event, it didn’t suit him, and his parents distanced themselves to the extent that Ludwing later used to refer to his mum as ‘my predecessor's consort’. 

King Max II & Marie of Prussia

In 1864, Max II died, and Ludwig, then 18 years old, became King. By that time, he was a tall, good-looking, shy, and eccentric young man who showed little interest in kingly business and distanced himself from the social and political scene in Munich, opting for his own company whenever he could. Here he is, tastefully commemorated at Nymphenburg.

He was a big, big Wagner fan. Many were at the time, you chose him or Brahms; the Oasis and Blur of the age. Being King, he got to meet his hero, who opined that “he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods". It is, of course, possible that this opinion was helped by the possibility of Royal largesse.

Ludwig & Wagner

Although he had female friends, notably his similarly eccentric cousin Elisabeth, who was also a Wagner fan and ended up as Empress of Austria, he was probably gay. Neither the state nor the church approved of that, the latter particularly when it actually came to sex, so it carried the risk of deposition and excommunication. 

As a teenager, his closest pal was a minor noble from his household, Prince Paul of Thurn und Taxis. Apparently, they were both into poetry and (yet again) Wagner, even going as far as staging scenes from Wagner’s operas. (But didn’t we all?) Later, Paul disappeared from the scene after marrying a commoner.

In the meantime, the Royal title was devalued. In 1871, Bavaria came second in a war with Bismarck’s Prussia, which aimed to create a unified Germany of sorts. While Bavaria kept its constitutional monarchy and some of the decorative trappings of nationhood, it lost a good deal of its independence. It's a shame: the Bavarian team kit would have looked far better in the club shop; the plume on the helmet and such a lovely shade of blue! 

Prussia vs Bavaria

I wonder how much Ludwig cared? He certainly didn't play an active role in any fighting, but undeterred by a minor inconvenience of war, he ploughed on, indulging his architectural fantasies which, sadly for Bavaria, were in the Trump class of profligate flamboyance, albeit with better taste and more imagination. He spent all of his own money, then emptied the royal coffers to pay for his palaces and fripperies, and followed this up by sending begging letters around the crowned heads of Europe and borrowing money that he could never repay.

The Government was embarrassed, so in 1886 they used his foibles, extravagances, and dodgy evidence from others to have him declared insane. But was he actually? No Englishman would blame him for being eccentric! In any event, he was deposed.

The next day, he was found dead by the side of Lake Starnberg together with his psychiatrist doctor. Drowning? Suicide? Both were mooted, with the doctor supposedly dying in trying to save him. Both seem unlikely; he was a strong swimmer, and he was not found to have water in his lungs. Or was it murder?

Although he seemed popular with the people, there were plenty of reasons why the government might want to see this national embarrassment permanently removed. As it was, the doctor was found to have been strangled and hit on the head, while a boatman declared that Ludwig had been shot from the opposite bank. So was the autopsy a cover-up? It remains a mysterious mystery.

Starnberg  Monument to Ludwig

It’s a sad story, not least because colourful nutcases keep me entertained and the media in business. Ludwig's view had always been that he wished "to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others". He succeeded. 

Wagner

At this point, I should say a bit more about Wagner, who was an old man when Ludwig was in his pomp. He was, of course, famous (ahem!) for his concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, a ‘totalising notion of performance’ to include the staging, writing, and music.

This was brought together in the Ring Cycle, an epic opera based on German legends, gothic aesthetics, and masochistic excess. It moved the dial in terms of the content, form, and presentation of classical music, and much of Europe loved it. One for binge watching, it stretched to 15 hours or four marginally less excruciating episodes. In my student days, I tried to listen to it, armed with a case of beer. I finished the beer, but not the opera. 

The Valkyries

It isn’t clear whether much of Europe loved him. The government of Bavaria and the burghers of Munich shared a widely held view that he was a ‘radical’. Ludwig bailed him out of the huge debts incurred by his lifestyle and perhaps by staging his own music, not least at his planned Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Then, presumably at the behest of the Government, he ordered him to leave. He pondered following him into exile, but Wagner talked him out of it.

At this point, put aside the Nazi connection. Many of Wagner’s prejudices were those of his age. Much later, Hitler selectively used elements of Wagner’s work to support and showcase his own distorted view of German history, a favourite ruse of populists today.

Ludwig's other idol was Louis XIV, the King of France, the 'Sun King ', whose pomp and style made him what might now be called an influencer. It was said that he turned night into day at his palace at Versailles.

Now, Ludwig is sometimes referred to as the Fairytale King, and in others as Mad Ludwig. Both are apposite. The castles and palaces are the embodiment in stone (and gold leaf) of the fantasy world in his head. What a luxury to be able to do that! 

The most famous is the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein.  If it looks like something from a Disney film, that isn't an accident, and the castle in Disneyland was modelled on it. Visit it and you will remember it. The best IMHO is Linderhof. Miss that, and you might regret it for the rest of your life.  Herrenchiemsee is the largest. It might be a bit better than the Dachshund Museum in Regensburg, the Paintbrush and Brush Museum in Bechhofen, or the Matchstick Museum near Bad Kötzting, but it’s a close-run thing. There are other, smaller residences as well as the family castles and palaces scattered around. 

This part of Bavaria is where the Alps gradually descend into the rolling hills to the south of Munich. It’s lovely, but also the in places type of Teutonic forest where you half expect to see the monstrous wolf Fenrir in the woods, or Valkyries circling in the valley skies.

Neuschwanstein sits on the side of a steep hill cloaked in pines and firs, a fairy tale remembered, with faux medieval spikes and towers poking holes in the heavens. Leaving the intervention of gods and giants aside, who would think to build such a place? 

Neuschwanstein : The Vision

For Ludwig, who was not a sociable fellow, it was a getaway from Munich and a homage to the Germany of legends depicted by Wagner. To me, it looks more like something from the Brothers Grimm. If you haven’t seen it, a good place to start is here: (Video) Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein looks great from the outside in and even from the inside out, a verdant vista of hills and lakes. (Don’t cheat by bringing a drone for the aerial photos. This is Germany; many, many things are verboten.) Inside, it is textbook OTT ‘romantacist’ style. It doesn't look comfy,  but if you enjoy overdosing on decorative opulence, this is for you. It knocks our own George IV’s beach hut in Brighton into a cocked hat. The pics below will tell you more than my poor words, although they still don't do it justice. 

There were other palaces and homes. Herrenchiemsee sits on an island in a lake to the southeast of Munich. You will have gathered that I am not awestruck. It is another homage to Louis and a tedious copy of over-grand Versailles, even to the extent of having a copy of the Hall of Mirrors. It cost as much as the others put together, took ages to build, and in the end, Ludwig only spent a few days in the unfinished building before he died, and some bits were never built, while others were demolished.

Herrenchiemsee

One of the reasons for building Neuschwanstein was apparently that Ludwig wanted somewhere that was more authentically inauthentic.

There were others, leaving aside the palaces in Munich that he avoided. Schachen was a house on top of a lonely mountain. Ideal for our own Prince Andrew, you might think. Downstairs was a cosy Swiss chalet-style affair. But this is Ludwig, so upstairs was modelled on the Ottoman Palace of Sultan Selim III, all gold leaf and tapestries with its own fountain. 

Schachen

Schachen

Hohenschwangau Castle is near Neuschwanstein and would probably be a major attraction in its own right if it weren’t. Ludwig didn’t build this, but spent his childhood there.  

Hohenschwangau

Then there is Berg House, a straightforward summer residence where he was staying when he died.

In contrast, Linderhof deserves some ink. Or pixels. Or whatever. Where to begin? It is small, a bijou palacette and the ultimate pad for a loner bachelor with only ten rooms for himself and his staff.

Linderhof

The glory of Linderhof is that it isn't just an attempt to showcase wealth, luxury and decorative bling. It is a creation of fantasy and imagination, packing in a lot of craziness and gonzo Rococo flourishes. For instance, the dining room table was effectively a dumb waiter. It could sink through the floor for the food to be served and pushed up so that Ludwig would not be disturbed by the serfs when dining with his (often imaginary) guests who, of course, also had to be fed. You can see the hoist platform under the table in the pic below.

Linderhof Table for One!

Casting a glance at the magnificence of the 'Sun King's' court at Versailles, Ludwig opted to style himself as the ‘Moon King’, presumably aiming for the opposite effect. But in craving solitude, he did not follow Louis, who was ‘attended’ at all hours of day and night, an arrangement that I cannot imagine pleased Mrs Louis. 

Unlike Louis and the conservative French, Ludwig was prepared to let new tech do the heavy lifting in creating the image and atmosphere he wanted. At home, he not only had electric lights but flush toilets and, in the two larger palaces, central heating. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a gramophone or, since a patent for an electric coffee percolator had been issued in 1865, a Nespresso.

The Bedroom

Outdoors, on his sleigh rides in the moonlight, with footmen in the clobber of an earlier and thus more romantic era, he wore more practical clothes, and the sleigh had an electric light, the first on a vehicle in Bavaria.

Also outside, there was electric mood lighting in his ‘Venus Grotto’, an artificial cave with a small waterfall and lake on which he would float around in a boat shaped as a golden shell.

The Venus Grotto

There was also a Moorish House, complete with a Peacock Throne. Here, he would read and take tea, while surrounded by servants in oriental attire and smoking hookahs.

Peacock Throne

And of course, space for working and meeting. Just like your office. 

All this was arranged in a miniature version of the gardens at Versailles with more than a hint of the English ‘natural’ style to complement it. It is a safe bet that the heroes of Wagner’s saga didn’t go in for ornamental gardening!)

The Garden

For me, the highlight was the humblest, silliest, most idiosyncratic and probably least visited building there: Hunding's Hut. Hunding appears at the beginning of the first act of the ‘Walküre’ or Valkyries from The Ring of the Nibelung. This is pure kitsch. If Ludwig's palaces ape the rococo style of the French Sun King, this is the undiluted Wagnerian world of the Ring Cycle, a copy of Wagner's vision for the stage. You can easily imagine Hunding sitting there, fletching arrows or skinning a bustard with his wife at a spinning wheel.

Hunding's Hut

As I am sure you know, Hunding is Siegmund’s brother-in-law. Their ‘umble hut is where Siegmund is unknowingly led to by Wodin and left by himself to resolve an existential pickle, assisted by a woman and a sword, neither of which has an ascertainable existential status. 

I tried to find a good video tour, but YouTube’s is overly populated with shorts narrated by Americans, following the tourist board script, with plenty of awe but no sense of humour. This is the best of them, and at least it squeezes the hut in. (video) Lindhof Tour

How would you furnish a hut of this type? Dead animals' heads hung on the wall. Check. Rough-cut timber stools and a table with drinking horns, etc. Check. Firepit. Check. Hammock. Check. A giant tree growing up through the middle. Check. Chandelier. What?

Hut Interior

There are no fripperies. It helps that the location was chosen for shelter rather than a view, that the stone is uncut, the timbers aged and used, the moss alive and the ironware rough-cast. The giant tree seems simultaneously to be pulling it to pieces and holding it up. A memory of Yggdrasil on the builder's part? It is the only one of Ludwig’s fantasy places where you can sniff the medieval air.

In fact, you don’t need to bother with this. Just read Wagner’s stage directions for Act One and ignore any hints of conformity with the building regulations. Keep in mind this is a country where those regulations control the colour of parasols and your right to store grasshoppers in your garage.

Wagner's model for the Hut

So there you have it. Was Mad King Ludwig actually mad? Or was he just a man, not of his time, not any other time, but lost in an imagined world? It is certainly hard to see how this gay dilettante and lover of luxury would have enjoyed medieval life. The palaces are his legacy. It is easy to see how the strait-laced officialdom of the time would have objected to the costs, and wonderfully ironic that they have probably paid for themselves by becoming Bavaria’s biggest tourist attraction.