King Ludwig II of Bavaria

Today is the 170th anniversary of the birth in 1845 of the future King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and the feast day of patronal namesake St Louis of France.

King Ludwig II in his robes of state soon after his accession

Image:hellenicaworld.com

There is an illustrated online biography of the King at Ludwig II of Bavaria.  

There is also online an article from the Daily Telegraph from last year, Bavaria's 'Mad King' Ludwig may not have been so mad ..., which suggests alternative diagnoses 

for his actions, and of those who suspended him from his executive powers as monarch in 1886. It also 

has links to two other articles, one of which suggests that the King was murdered. 

A painting of the King, presumably from soon after his accession to the throne in 1864

Image:withcuriouseyes.blogspot.uk

The Mad Monarchist posted the following piece some months ago about the King: Monarch Profile: King Ludwig II of Bavaria

King Ludwig II circa 1874

 Image: Wikipedia

King Ludwig II is in so many ways a tragic and troubled figure, and worthy of more than being dismissed as "Mad King Ludwig". As King of Bavaria at the time of German unification and all that that both entailed and implied it is perhaps explicable that he sought refuge in his building projects and in detachment from mundane affairs, even though such actions were of questionable help to the Wittelsbach dynasty. The evidence for his own inner demons, and those of his brother and successor King Otto suggest all was not well in the families and palaces of the rulers of Bavaria.

 The Royal Arms of Bavaria from 1835

Image:unofficialroyalty.com

It is however possible that King Ludwig II should be seen as eccentric rather than mad, and that his building programmes merely ( merely?) carried further the often lavish building projects of other nineteenth century European monarchs and aristocrats - such as the subterranean constructions of a Duke of Portland at Welbeck. How much more exotic as buildings were they than King George IV's Brighton Pavilion or re-medievalising Windsor, Queen Victoria's neo -Scottish baronial Balmoral, some of the Hohenzollern buildings of King Frederick William IV and Emperor William II or king Ferdinand's Gothic fantasy castle at Cintra? If they were more exotic and expensive it was perhaps a logical,-or illogical - development of what had gone before. There was, of course, the little practical problem that King Ludwig was exhausting the accumulated wealth of his family with his extraordinary projects - one can see why ministers worried about his schemes....More recently I suspect the Bavarian tourist authorities have rubbed their hands with glee at what he provided them with.

There is an online biography of King Otto at  Otto of Bavaria and two blog posts about him, which also discuss King Ludwig II at The Mad Monarchist: Monarch Profile: King Otto of Bavaria

and, with some interesting photographs of the family and comments at  King Otto I. of Bavaria (1847-1916) 

These may suggest that there was not a common root cause to the mental state of the two brothers.

Whatever was the cause of the mental instability, if that is what it was and it it was a common factor, of  King Ludwig and King Otto seems to have belonged to their immediate family - it did not affect, so far as anyone ever indicates,  their uncle Prince Regent Luitpold, his son King Lugwig III or his descendants the present Bavarian Royal House.

The Personal Standard of King Ludwig II

Image:crwflags.com

The Wittelsbachs and the Second World War

The Special Correspondent has been looking at a Jacobite website and found this very interesting account of the Wittelsbachs' experience of the Second World War which can be read athttp://www.jacobite.ca/essays/ww2.htm

This is in a number of ways very similar to the experience of the Habsburgs in the same period and which was discussed in a recent post by the Mad Monarchist.

Whether you regard the dynasty as merely the Bavarian Royal Family or as the "other" or even "true" British Royal Family is irrelevant to the interest of the post.

A suggestion for Frau Merkel

Reports that Angela Merkel is looking for a cross-party candidate to replace the German President who resigned yesterday - the second such holder of the largely ceremonial post to do so in succession - leads me to think that maybe Frau Merkel should reach for the Almanach de Gotha and look under families such as Hohenzollern, Wittelsbach, Wettin, Guelph and Teck, not to mention the Grand Ducal, Ducal and Princely families.

Not only would she find families with no little experience of governance but who are also not compromised by their recent careers as politicians, but who do represent the traditions of the country over many centuries. The Federal Republic could very easily become a Federal Empire, each state with its own dynasty, and with perhaps a variant on the pre 1806 arrangement to elect one or other as German Emperor. Certainly better than simply recycling tired old policos...Go on, you know it makes sense.

Arms of the German Empire from 1889

Image: Mediaphotobucket

King Ludwig II of Bavaria

This evening is the 125th anniversary of the death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

The story of King Ludwig is well-enough known, but there is a useful illustrated online biography, with references and links, here. There is a recent illustrated article here about the anniversary.

It appears clear that whatever the problems dormant in him, at his accession he was very popular, and indeed retained the affection of many until his death.

King Ludwig II in the uniform of a general and coronation robe.
Ferdinand von Piloty, Munich, 1865.

Image: Herren-Chiemse.de

Whatever explanation there is for the King's eccentric behaviour - and it is not too difficult to see why many Bavarians had their concerns about their King - there is no doubt that his patronage of the arts, both in building, notably Neuschwanstein, Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof, and in music as the admirer and patron of Wagner, he left a spectacular legacy.

King Ludwig II in the robes of the Order of St George
by Gabriel Schachinger, completed in 1887.

Image: Wikipedia

As a monarch in his era he appears to have retreated from the mundane requirements of office into his own sense of what Kingship was about. Hence the delight in ceremony and the setting for monarchy, but not the practical necessities of sitting at the desk with state papers, or indeed, avoiding near bankruptcy for the dynasty.

He brought energy to realising his vision. Perhaps this was an expression of a frustration at being relatively powerless in what seemed a mundane, modern world.

In some ways he is reminiscent of some modern figures in the world of entertainment who have everything and lose it all in a whirl of indulgence and eccentricity. The phenomenon may not be unique - what marks out "Mad King Ludwig" is who he was, and the wonderful legacy he left to his country and the world.

That said, King Ludwig was not as unusual as a builder as he might appear in some accounts of him. His building enthusiasm is only the ultimate in such activities. Nineteenth century Britain saw the re-medievalisation of the castles at Windsor and Arundel by King George IV and the Duke of Norfolk - the latter also built three future cathedrals. A similar process happened wth the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir, There was also the Marquess of Bute with Cardiff Castle, Castell Goch and the only recently completed Mount Stewart, whilst one of the Dukes of Portand built a great series of undergroud features at Welbeck, and like King Ludwig was a recluse. By contast Queen Victoria's osborne and Balmoral are rather subdued, but monarchs were still builders. So too was the church - think of the Anglican or Episcopalian cathedrals in Truro or Liverpool, Cork or Edinburgh, or the neo-gothic cathedrals of North America or Australia. What marked out King ludwig Ii was the scale in a short time in a relatively small kingdom.

He also is a witness to the appeal of German Romanticism in art and architecture, in word and music, to the middle ages. In that he was by no means unique. Other memebrs of the House of Wittelsbach and rulers like King Frederick William IV of Prussia embraced that in their buildings and ideas.

King Ludwig II, along with Kaiser Wilhelm II, is a reminder also of the vitality, or indeed hyper-vitality, of ideas about Kingship in the German Empire of those years. Not all the royal houses were as prosaic as, for example, the Kings of Wurttemburg.

There is much that is tragic, or at least painfully sad, about his life and death, and one can at least remember him in one's prayers on this anniversary and pray for the repose of his soul.

The memorial chapel erected near where King Ludwig II drowned in Lake Starnberg in 1886.



King Ludwig II lying in state in the Hofkappelle Munich in 1886.
He is wearing the robes of the Order of St Hubert.

Image: hansgreuner.de