The Fantasy Bavaria of Ludwig II

    
Fig. 14: Ludwig II.
Painter: Ferdinand Piloty, 1882.

King Ludwig II retreated to Hohenschangau, his father’s old castle in which he had spent so many lonely but inspired hours as a child, where he lived now in Märchen-like splendour and isolation. He removed himself into his own fairytale world where these humiliating restrictions and impositions did not impinge upon him, and began to build fantastical and extravagant castles and buildings, to behave in fantastical and extravagant ways, and to indulge himself to the full in the fantasy world that was more appealing to him than the bitter dregs of political life in a world that seemed to share none of his values or visions.

Fig. 15: Schloss Neuschwanstein

Schloß Neuschwanstein (the name was actually Neu Hohenschangau during Ludwig’s lifetime) was begun in 1969; Schloss Linderhof (based on Versailles) was begun in 1874 when Ludwig had the Königshäuschen torn down, and was the only one of his castles to be completed before Ludwig’s death; the Neues Palais, part of the Herrenchiemsee and also based on Versailles, was begun in 1878.

    
Fig. 16: Schloss Neuschwanstein
in the mist

Ludwig saw himself as the “Swan King”, hence his delight with the swan motif in Wagner’s opera, Lohengrin. His admiration for Wagner never waned, even during the difficult times when Wagner’s behaviour made him a target for outrage in the court. But Ludwig’s own increasingly bizarre actions – such as driving madly in the middle of the night in an extravagantly decorated sleigh – illustrated his wish not to conform to the mundane concerns of “normal” life, and his continued aloofness from any political hold over Bavaria led to important political figures in the country feeling that Ludwig was a detriment to any future Bavaria might have.

The situation was only worsened by the vast amounts of money lavished by Ludwig upon the castles he ordered built.

Ludwig’s death in 1888 stunned Europe; the increasingly eccentric King was declared insane in what some consider to be a political decision, and a few days later, he and the psychiatrist who had declared him insane based upon hearsay were both discovered drowned in the nearby lake.

In Ludwig’s time, then, Bavaria was a monarchy deprived of much of its international power. The tales of the Märchenprinz gave an eerie lustre to the perception of the King. The people of Bavaria were largely isolated from the rest of Europe, both by the relegation of Bavaria to a second-class sovereignty and the insistence upon tradition that played a large part in Bavaria’s culture.