Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Manky listener Discretion is advised. A six year old banker in Munich named Debt Love Udermont couldn't stop thinking about the day in his childhood that he and his mother had gone for tea at the home of Countess Josephine von Verba. Countess Detlev was just ten years old at the time, and though his father was a prominent financier in Munich society, Detlove was unaccustomed to the
grandeur of the Countess's home. Every surface seemed covered in velvet or gilding. Detlev's mother was uncomfortable, too, pulling at her hair to when the Countess turned away, and smiling too broadly. When the Countess returned bearing a tray of cakes, Detlov's mother smacked him under the table so that he remembered to fold a napkin on his lap. But the Countess didn't seem to notice the discomfort of either young
Debt Love or his mother. She chatted with the practiced ease of a noble woman, someone who knew how to fill this silent with lyrical laughter and conspiratorial whispers. Though Bavaria was no longer an independent kingdom, hadn't been since eighteen seventy, when it first joined the North German Confederation and then the German Empire. The Countess Josephine von Verba Countage was still old Bavarian royalty. Her family were descendants of the victuals Box, and she herself was a relative
of the former Bavarian King, Ludwig the second. Ludwig the Second had enchanted the country. He ascended the throne in eighteen young, romantic and handsome, built enormous fairy tale palaces, and then died tragically, mysteriously by a suicide by drowning at age forty in eighteen eighty six. But that was years ago. The Countess finished her tea and put the cup delicately back into its saucer. She leaned in and dramatically cast her eyes around the room before settling them
back on young debt Lev and his mother. Do you want to know, the countess said, how King Ludwig the Second really died. Without waiting for an answer, she swept to the back of the room and pulled open an antique chest. You see, The countess continued as the victuals box last remaining relatives. We've become privy to certain personal possessions with the flourish. She pulled out a gray loaded coat.
At first, debt Lev didn't notice anything strange about it until the Countess flipped it around and he could see two bullet holes, straight and clean through the back of the coat. But the king drowned. Debt Leve chirped, ignoring the scolding look from his mother. Ah. The countess said,
that's exactly what they want you to believe. Debt Lev didn't tell anyone about at strange afternoon eating cakes and drinking tea in the Countess's drawing room, not until he reached sixty and swore a signed affidavit about that memory that kept sticking in his brain. But by then it was impossible to verify. The countess's home had burned down in a fire in the nineteen seventies, a fire that killed both the Countess and her husband. Ludwig the Second,
looms large over Bavaria their fairy tale prints. His influence is physical. The massive palaces he constructed during his reign remained Bavaria's most popular tourist attractions, but he also has a philosophical hold on the people. He's a beloved tragic hero whose great misfortune was that he happened to be a romantic born at the height of the industrial age, and his death continues to fascinate and mystify. The king was found face down in a lake in water that
was only waist deep. The king had been a champion swimmer. No official reports mentioned a gray coat with bullet holes. But only a day before the king was found dead, he had been deposed by his own council, a government fed up with his obsession with building palaces, and then had him declared insane. All we know for sure is the king was found dead, and anyone who knew the whole story of how or why is long dead by now too. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is noble blood.
On June thirteenth, eighteen eighty six, just a day after being imprisoned at burgh Castle, Ludwig the Second went for a walk with his doctor. Though the former king was usually accompanied by attendants, there were none who joined on that walk down to the shores of Lake Stromberg that evening. It was just Ludwig the Second and Dr Guden, the doctor who had declared the king insane only days before
in order to remove him from power. The government commission had arrived at Ludwig's castle Nu Schweinstein at four am three days before in order to formally depose him. Ludwig had been tipped off by a servant and had local police stationed outside the palace to protect him, but it wasn't enough, nor was the flailing of forty seven year old baroness, who attacked the commission with her umbrella to
try to delay them. Eventually, a second commission of men arrived, doctor Guden among them, who seized the king as he attempted to make an escape. How can you declare me insane, Ludwig, guess the doctor you've never seen or examined me, doctor Guden cleared his throat. An examination was unnecessary, he said.
The documentary evidence was very copious and completely substantiated. It was overwhelming, and so the government installed Ludwig's uncle Luis Pold as regent king and installed Ludwig in a prison palace on the shores of Lake Starnberg. Builders were still putting bars on the windows when Ludwig and his escorts arrived the following day. After dinner, Ludwig and his doctor
went for that walk. They left at six pm, and the servants expected them back within the hour by eight p m at the latest, if the pair took the long way down the path. But eight p m arrived and the pair was still gone. Servants were dispatched into now heavy rain to find Ludwig in the doctor through gail winds and unrelenting downpour. The entire palace staff searched the grounds of the castle and the path by the lake.
It wasn't until ten thirty that night that a servant noticed the strange bobbing objects just a few feet away from the shore in the water. He shined the light towards the water and saw the former king's head and shoulders floating, his face bloated and lifeless. The servants shouted and more men came and pulled from the shallow waters of the lake both King Ludwig and Dr Guden, whose corpse was floating just a few feet away. An accident seemed implausible. The water was only waist deep, and the
king had been a strong swimmer since childhood. The autopsy report came back with no wounds on his body, but also strangely, no water in his lungs. So called dry drownings are possible, but they're rare, usually only occurring when someone dies of a heart attack or stroke before falling beneath the water. The King's watch was stopped at six fifty four. The good doctor's autopsy showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation, as if there
had been a fight. Official word came back, declaring that the death of the king and his doctor was a suicide and accidental murder. The king had been trying to kill himself and had fought against the doctor who was trying to save him. Conspiracy theorist mumble that the king had seemed in fine spirit and that an autopsy doctor could have easily been paid off to fictionalize the results. Perhaps the king had been shot while he was trying to escape, and the doctor killed as well to prevent
any witnesses. Or maybe the king had just been shot as a preventative measure. He was still beloved by the people of Bavaria, and while he was alive, the specter of his reclaiming power still loomed. Locals tell stories of overheard gunshots of commissioned boats and escape plans, but no stories are verified. All we know for sure is the king and his doctor went for a walk one evening
and never came back. As a future monarch, Ludwig was raised in lonely isolation with strict tutors who demanded focus and discipline from a prince who tended to spend most
of his time gazing out of windows. His brief moments of childhood happiness came at his family's summer palace in the mountains, where the walls were painted with fairy tale murals about the medieval night Lone Grin, the Arthurian swan king who comes to rescue a damsel in a swan drawn boat and marries her before tragedy pulls them apart. And so when young Ludwig first encountered the Upper Lone Grin by the composer Wagner, he felt as though his
life had finally come into focus. To call his interest an obsession would be an understatement. He read the libretto daily, multiple times a day. He dreamt of Wagner and his opera. When Ludwig finally got the chance to see the opera performed when he was fifteen, he wept so hard in the audience that his fellow patrons were afraid that his convulsions were seizures. From then on, Ludwig had a single
devotion Wagner. He read his work as if they were religious texts, all based on legends that were familiar to him from the Frescoes and his childhood home. In the introduction of Wagner's massive and as he had unproduced epic The Ring Cycle, Wagner wrote that he dreamt of a prince with all the resources and passion to actually ever bring the massive work to his stage. It was as if the words were meant for Ludwig alone, a plea
through time met and answered with a solemn promise. When he was eighteen, Ludwig became king, much younger than he expected, and still far more interested in fairy tales than the minutia of running a kingdom. But the kingdom adored their young, handsome, romantic king who stood at six four and whose dramatic profile was set off by a thick head of dark curls.
He was their poet king, and he knew exactly what the first thing he wanted to do with his new found power was I burn with ardor to behold the creator of the words and musings of lone grin? He wrote in a letter to Wagner just a few weeks after he became king. Ludwig included a ruby ring and signed photographs of himself as gestures of his generosity and goodwill. He instructed his chief counselor to track down the composure and bring him to court. The task was more challenging
than the counselor anticipated. Wagner was heavily in debt and in hiding. When the courts counselor first approached, Wagner fled, sure the man was a creditor come to demand payment. But soon Wagner would realize all of his financial worries were at ned. As soon as he arrived to Ludwig's court, the king wiped his debt clean, granted him an income and a place to live. You are the world's miracle. What am I without you, Ludwig wrote to Wagner. My
love for you I need not repeat. It will endure forever. He called the composer sole source of my delight. From my tenderest youth onward, my friend who spoke to my heart as no other diad. But devoted as Ludwig was to Wagner, the Bavarian people didn't quite feel the same way. The public had begun to sour to the composer, whose absorbitant spending and political dissonance clashed violently with the humbler
more pious sensibilities of the people of Bavaria. Ludwig, although he didn't publicly admit it was gay, and although there's no proof that his relationship with Wagner was ever physical, it's clear that Wagner didn't share the king's feelings. While Wagner prudently enjoyed the attention and devotion of the King, he also had a child out of wedlock with the wife of his conductor and engaged with such wild Headenism and munich that Ludwig's government all but forced the king
to banish Wagner from Bavaria. With no choice, the king acquiesced and fell into such a period of despondence that he considered renouncing his throne and following Wagner into exile. Both Wagner and the king's counselors politely dissuaded him from the idea, and so instead, while the king continued to fund Wagner from abroad. He also half heartedly began his attempt to perform at least one of his kingly duties,
providing the kingdom in air. A year after Wagner's banishment, Ludwig announced his engagement to his cousin Sophie, a young woman who shared his passion for opera. But Ludwig delayed the wedding, first once and then a second time, and then after six months he called it off entirely, My beloved Elsa, he wrote in a letter after the engagement ended, your cruel father has torn us apart eternally, yours Heinrich. He was referencing the story from the Wagner opera Lohengrin.
The King could play make believe in letters, but he couldn't bring himself to do it for an entire marriage. With no wedding and no Wagner. Ludwig found another devotion building palaces. Hugh would build the grandest palaces in Europe, play grounds for him to play, act operas and live out his life as he always wanted it, as if
he had been born a century earlier. Ludwig began commissioning drawings for castles, engaging not just architects, but theatrical set designers, so the palaces would be dramatic in every sense of the word. The first palace completed was Linderhof, a Rococo jewelry box in the style of Louis, the Son, King of France. Ludwig called himself the Moon King, the dark shadow counterpart of Louis. The two had a lot in common.
They shared the same name Ludwig is the germanization of Louis, and the same taste for formal gardens and gilded decor. At Linderhoff, Ludwig built a grotto in which he could be rowed around in a boat shaped like a swan through the new miracle of electricity. The grotto was brilliantly lit in changing colors, as if Ludwig was always on stage.
In the woods surrounding the palace, he built a replica hut from the set of Wagner's Volk, with an artificial tree and an artificial sword embedded in it, waiting for the opera's hero Sigmund to come pull it free. Another replica, a cottage from the third act of Wagner's Parsifal, was built nearby for the king to spend long afternoons reading inside his own personal petit, trying on the moon. King
was largely nocturnal. In the winter, when the moon was bright, he would have his footman in elaborate replica eighteenth century costumes escored him on sleigh rides through the snow covered meadows. Ludwig despised the company of most people. He had a clever architect designed a dining room table for him at Linderhof that descended on a pulley system down into the floor to the kitchen below. There, the staff set the
table and lay it with food. Then the table would rise again to the main dining room, without Ludwig ever having to suffer another person coming into the room to drop off a plate. But the king wasn't lonely. He spent the dinners in long conversations with the portraits he hung on the walls, heroines of French royalty, Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette. People tended to use the word
eccentric more and more often about the king. Before Linderholf was even finished, he began on nu Schwanstein, a palace that would be a celebration of all things Wagner and the Swan Knight. The name of the palace itself translates to New Swan Stone. It rose in a white froth from the wooded mountains south of Munich, swirling with high romantic turrets and towers. Inside the palace was filled with tapestries and murals depicting the legend of the Holy Grail,
and of course, the operas of Richard Wagner. Swans were everywhere, appearing in murals and carved into furniture, edged into windows in tiny porcelain form. The bedding was filled not with goostown but with swan feathers. Just off the dining room, Ludwig added an artificial indoor grotto, complete with a waterfall and a rainbow machine that could illuminate it in multiple colors. The grotto also had a false moon that moved through
regular phases. Even if you've never been to Nusch von Stein, it would look familiar to It served as the inspiration for Walt Disney when he built Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland. Most royal palaces served a public function, with spaces for the activities of royal court. Nuchvan Stein was an entirely private resident the king that's own private living, theatrical space,
a shrine to Wagner. The palace ended up costing almost twice its initial estimates and draining the king's substantial personal coffers. He opened the lines of credit all over Europe, borrowing from every foreign royal family he could. But the king
wasn't done yet. He was going to build his masterpiece, a scale replica of Versailles in Bavaria that would be grander and more ambitious than anything built before heron Kim say, would be a monument to the divine right of kings, even though by this point Bavaria had been absorbed by
Prussia and no longer operated as an independent kingdom. Ludwig would have a hall of mirrors running nearly two hundred and fifty feet lit by two thousand, one hundred eight candles, which he insisted that his servants light every night and replaced the following day with fresh candles. Obsession became mania. In the end, the king would spend less than a
week in his never finished mini Versailles. The Ludwig never used the kingdom's funds for his palaces, the government was still made uneasy by his blase attitude towards spending and debt. They begged him to take an interest in government, to meet with ministers, to do something anything other than reading and writing and dreaming and spending acting on a stage without an audience. Stories of the king's eccentric behavior kept
trickling into government officials who exchanged sideways glances. Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of six million marks to complete his mini Versailles, which was denied. Ludwig was so frustrated he publicly threatened to fire his entire cabinet and replace them all. A few weeks later, a government commission came to seize King Ludwig the Second and depose him, saying that the king was insane and unfit to rule.
A few days later, Ludwig was dead, a prince who lived in a fantasy and died in the shallow waters of the lake near prison palace. That's the story of the tragic death of King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear a little bit more about his relationship with Wagner. Today, it's almost impossible to think of Wagner without also thinking
of his racism and anti Semitism. After all, he was Hitler's favorite composer and Hitler's favorite composer for a reason, Wagner resented the success of Jewish composers Felix Mendelssohn and jiachommayer Beer, the latter who loaned Wagner money and who actually arranged the premiere of Wagner's first successful opera, Rinsey. Mayer Beer was confused and hurt when he first read about Wagner's vitriol towards him and towards all Jews in
the essay of Wagner wrote called Jewishness in Music. In that essay, Wagner argued that Jewish composers would never be able to capture a true German spirit. King Ludwig the Second, who remained devoted supporter of Wagner even after the composer was banished to Switzerland, funded a production of the opera Parsifal. Under one condition, Wagner had to accept that the opera would be conducted by Herman Levi, the son of a
rabbi and Ludwig's personal Couplemeister or head conductor. Wagner balked, saying that Levi should have to be baptized before conducting his opera. But Ludvic didn't act down. Nothing is more repugnant, nothing less edifying than such squabbles people, after all our brothers, in spite of all denominational differences, Ludwig wrote, and so in two Herman Levi conducted the first performance of Parsifal. While by all indications Wagner remained an anti Semite for
his entire life, he and Levi also remained friends. When Wagner died, Herman Levi, the son of a rabbi, was one of his pall bearers. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show was written and hosted by Danis Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M M