Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you should Know, the Very Tale King Edition.
I guess you're not the one and only so that's I could come up with. I love stories of allegedly mad kings. I've spoken before about the Madness of King George. A great film, sure, and I'm surprised noone's done a movie about this character.
I am too, as a matter of fact, because even if he's not that well known, and he's pretty well known, his castle is certainly extraordinarily well known.
Sure.
Which one, well, yeah, he made three castles, as we'll see, But the one that really takes the cake is Nushevenstein, which means new swan Stone.
Do you want to know the German pronunciation.
I just gave it.
Neus Schwanstein.
That's what I said, Oh, okay, great, is it really?
Yeah? For Ei it's always a second letter in germanis, and then nei is it's not new It's.
NOI gotcha, So uh yeah, I'll just call it new Swanstone Castle then from now on, Yes, that's what it means, right, all right, let me try my hand at this. Okay, Ludwig the Second and we're saying the W like a V.
Correct Uh yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Okay, Ludwig the Second, known as the fairy Tale King in German, fairy tale King is dear mark and kunig.
Yeah, you just got to work on your umlauts.
I thought i'd nailed it, so okay, what is that one? Then?
I think that would be uh merchenkinnig.
Okay, Well, at any rate, I love these words, I just can't pronounce them at all.
Hey, I'm going on German. I learned in nineteen eighty eight and eighty nine, and well he's still about ninety one two. I don't know if I do or not.
So as we'll see. Even if you haven't heard of Ludwig or Ludwig, he is a really appealing character in history. He was a real real life character, but he was I think he kind of taps into this universal desire that everybody has every once in a while. Some people have more than others, but we all like face times and circumstances and consequences that make us just want to turn away from the world, turn inward into like a fantasy world of our own making where we can be happy,
and most of us don't go actually do that. Ludwig the Second did just that because he had the op opportunity and he had the means to do it. And I think in that sense he's appealing in a lot of ways. Plus he's a deeply tragic romantic figure as well.
Yeah, as they say, it's good to be the king, right, sure, sure, in his case for a little while at least, well, actually for a long while.
He had a nice run, he did twenty something years.
But let's set up the stage of kind of what was going on when he came about in southeastern Germany what was known as Bavaria, and they still call that area Bavaria like that, but back then it was just Bavaria. It had its own you know, it was independent, and it had its own taxes and it had its own constitution. But it was surrounded by just a lot of upheaval in Europe at the time. And when he was born to Crown Prince Ludwig the Second, he's born in eighteen
forty five. I'm sorry that was his name. He was born to King Maximilian the Second and Marie of Prussia had a brother named Otto who suffered from mental illness looked like probably schizophrenia, and his aunt, Princess Alexandra, also suffered from some sort of mental illness because she believed one of the things. She believed that she had swallowed a piano made of glass when she was a kid, and she was protecting it and if she moved the
wrong way, it could shatter. And the reason we bring those two cases up is because Ludovig's own mental capabilities would be questioned later in life. And so you obviously look to the family a lot of times and say, hey, he also had this in his bloodline.
Yeah, I had an uncle who thought he was Saint Jerome. Right, So Ludovig was born into like get Like you said, this really strange time or time of turmoil geopolitically, and like you said, Bavaria was an independent state. It was a kingdom, and it was one of the last, one
of the last kingdoms. Like in the area, things were moving more towards more of a nation state, more of less monarchy, more constitution kind of thing, right, And Germany was very much on the brink of basically being brought together into the modern Germany that we think of it now. This happened when Ludwig was I think eighteen or nineteen or twenty years old.
Basically I think he rose to the throne at eighteen. Okay, one thing we should set up though, just you know, as far as his his palace that he would later go on to build that he's famous for, he grew up in these kinds of palaces. Obviously is royalty in Bavaria. At the time, the place where he was mainly raised was called hohen Schwangau Castle, even though he was born in Nimfenburg Palace. But both of these places, if you're looking at you know, quality castles, they were both pretty amazing.
Yeah.
Growing up in these places, little Ludwig was like, you know, this established his esthetic of what he thought was amazing and beautiful.
Yeah. And there was a quote from his mom that said that as a child, he enjoyed dressing up, took pleasure in play acting, loved pictures, and liked making presents of his property, money and other possessions.
Does that mean like giving it away?
Yeah, exactly, like here, I want you to have this. That's a good kid, right, not exactly like king type behavior. And as we'll see, he basically set the stage for himself or set the tempo for himself from a very early age, it turns out. So I think, like you said, he was eighteen when his father died and he ascended to the throne. He became king of Bavaria in eighteen sixty four, and he felt totally unprepared for it.
Yeah, he was not excited about it, like a lot of you know, kind of boy kings were. He had never he wasn't very well schooled, seems very sheltered, didn't travel abroad, really never wanted anything to do with you know, kinging or anything like that kind of throughout his life, it seems like. And he was a total pacifist at a time where there was a lot of warring going on that it corrupts people's morals, makes them unable to
entertain grand noble ideals, dulls them for spiritual enjoyment. So he was a pacifist.
Yeah. He was also very much opposed to hunting, and he loved nature, right, I love this guy. So he was apprehensive. He did have a really good education, he just felt like he didn't have enough of it to qualify as a ruler of a kingdom. But that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Sorry, king, But when he came to power within just a couple of years, despite his pacifist leanings, Bavaria was forced into two different wars, and as a result of that, the geopolitical map changed dramatically.
Yeah, for sure, they were allied with Australia because of royal bloodlines.
He said, Australia.
Really, yeah, all right.
So remove the l and there's a couple I think another vowlers so that he's.
To another A clearly meant austra They were allied with Austria. Who knows what he thought about Australia. No one ever asked, as far as I know. And so when Prussia came knocking on the door for the Seven Weeks War, that he was sort of forced to fight with Austria. And then they got their butts went pretty good. And then Bavaria was part of, or at least under the thumb of Prussia to the north. And then when the Franco Prussian War started, then they had to fight with Prussia.
Yeah, and then after the Franco Prussian War, the Prussians came out on top and at that point, they're like, all right, you know what, We're just gonna take over all of Germany, and they established the first Reich, the German Empire, that collected all these separate little kingdoms, including Bavaria,
and put them under the rule of Prussia. But rather than being Prussia, the whole group, the whole collection that was now combined was Germany as we recognize it today, although a little more because there's a bunch of Poland that was also of Prussia that would be included in that map of Germany. But that was an enormous, huge change, and for Ludwig the Second personally, it meant that he
was he had no power any longer. He was a ceremonial figurehead, and geopolitically speaking, he really was not very significant at all.
Yeah, so I imagine, I mean, from everything I know about poor little Ludwig, this probably wasn't the worst thing in the world, because all of a sudden he was forced into a figurehead sort of role, right, And I get the idea that that was probably ideal for him, Like he didn't he didn't want to govern. It seems like he didn't mind doing the day to day bureaucracy. Of the job, yes, and like you know, signing the things he needed to sign and allocating the things he needed
to allocate. But he was not interested in being king, And so all of a sudden sort of under this new I mean sort of protection in a way as being part of the German Empire and only having figurehead duties, he was free to be a fanciful boy king.
Yeah, and tadd a little nuance. He was totally fine with being king, but he wanted to be like an absolute monarch, like God's divine representative on earth, like the kings of the centuries before were considered. But that wasn't happening even if Prussia wasn't running the show, because by that time, Bavaria had become a constitutional monarchy, so even before the German Empire was founded, he wasn't nearly as powerful a king as he would have liked to have been.
So yeah, that, combined with his pacifism, combined with his proneus to fantasy, he was like, yes, this is my chance. I'll see y'all later. I'm going to go over here into this little fantasy world and it's going to be awesome. Yeah.
He got to basically pretend that he was the king that he wasn't. Yes, yeah, well put and he was a Romanticist. He was very much into Romanticism. It was that's something that had already come and gone. But just like so many teenagers are obsessed with the generations before them,
he loved the literature and the art of the movement. Obviously, Romanticism was all about emotion and art and vast imagination and history, and so all of this sort of wrapped up in this idea that he was like, all right, well, I'm going to pretend like I'm Louis the fourteenth and basically sit around all day and fantasize.
Right, And then also, really importantly, one part of Romanticism, the architectural part of is called historicism. Yeah, and it's basically a nostalgic return to past architectural styles, but rather than going for historical accuracy, you go for idealization or improvement. So it ends up being like this fantasy version of what used to be yeah, more gilded things exactly. That totally jibed with how Ludwig liked to live and think.
Should we take a break, Yeah, Well, this one's been densely packed so far.
Yeah, there's a lot of geopolitics, a lot of architecture, historic movements, what else.
Yeah, that's about it. Okay, pronunciation, Yeah, don't forget that, all right, we'll be right back, all right. So welcome to ACQ. This is where we talk about the private life of Ludwig. And I love how Livia put it in this section title.
No that was me, Oh that was you. Yeah, Oh that sounded.
A little bit like Livia. But now I see Josh all over. It was Ludwig gay. Yes, yes he was, And that's the deal. Ludwig was a gay man, a gay king. He was sort of arranged to be marriage married to his twenty two year old cousin, Elsa, which was a who was a duchess in not Australia but in Austria, and not surprisingly, he did not go through with that wedding. He blamed it on the father in law and that was just a deal. He bested up with Elsa's sister, Empress Elizabeth, and they were peas in a pod.
Yeah. They both had a disdain for war and violence. They both loved classical literature. They both liked their solitude, and so much so that Ludwig, when he had his birthday parties. Most of the people who were ever invited were the people who already worked for him, like his attendants and servants. They would dress up and come to the parties as guests. That's how how much of a loaner he was, and he liked it that way. And he was also not exactly quiet about his sexual orientation,
which is really something at the time. I mean, we're talking about the late nineteenth century in Bavaria. This is the king and he's he's just he's not exactly making it a huge secret. And in fact, while he was alive, it was like a very open secret that Ludwig enjoyed the company of men, as they were to put it back then.
Yeah, they When you were listing out the shared loves that he and Empress Elizabeth had, you left one out though they both loved Shawn Cassidy.
Seawan Cassidy. What was his one hit? He just head the one, right.
I don't know, I don't know. I remember though we were all in love with them.
Yeah, he had that great feathered hair, me.
Ludwig, the whole, all of us. Sure, So, like you said, his relationships were no, it was sort of like one of those open secrets when he had fixers. You know, he was the king, so when something happened, people would you know, would clean up after him. I think there were men in the stables that he was very fond of and perhaps had you know, physical relationships with one man named Richard Hornig, who would eventually be his private secretary.
And there was also a groom named Karl hessel Schwert who was sort of his traveling valet and apparently wingman because would help him find sexual partners. But anytime something like this would happen and it got to you know, sort of, the rumors became widespread, like people would just I was about to say, people would disappear. They wouldn't like have them snuffed out or anything, but people be relocated with other jobs and stuff like that.
Yeah. And we know all this because he wrote a lot about this in his diary entries, and from what I gleaned from it, he would basically pull out all the stops for his dates, like there'd be champagne and candles and gifts and stuff like that.
Model service.
Yeah, basically you gotta do it. Yeah. But also in his diary, very sadly, he was a devout very pious Catholic, so he had a lot of inner turmoil, but that he was conflicted between his religious beliefs and his sexual orientation, and so in that sense, that's like just one leg of the stool that make him a tragic figure.
Yeah. Absolutely. One thing that we aren't as clear about as far as relationship goes is his relationship to composer Richard Wagner. He was a big, big fan of Wagner since he was a little kid, and once he became king and had means, he found Wagner sort of on hard times financially and was able to basically say like, hey, I love your music. You're not doing too well, so why don't you let me financially support you. Yeah, and
you'll kind of just be like my private entertainer. I mean, you can still go on to make your great compositions, but you can also do these private operas and private concerts here in the court. And it was a mutually beneficial relationship for both of them.
Yeah, he was considered Ludwig was considered one of the great patrons of the arts of the nineteenth century, and he actually made Munich, which was the capital of Bavaria essentially the music capital of Europe during the time. Yeah, and to give you an idea of what people who were into Romanticism, what they talked like in their letters back then. Yeah, there's a really great quote about Wagner that he wrote to I think his mistress who would
eventually become his wife, Kozima. He said, he is unfortunately so beautiful and wise, soulful and lordly that I fear his life must fade away like a divine dream in this base world.
That's great.
Yeah, so this is what he's writing to his wife about this new patron he has. And Wagner was into women. He had a long standing affair with the woman, like I said, who would become his wife. But if you read some of their letters, and even taking into account that people expressed friendship much differently than they do today. Yeah, between men, especially even taking that into account, like the flowery language they would use and just the desperation they
would have at being a part. It's still not one hundred percent clear what all went down between Wagner and Ludwig when it was just the two of them hanging out in a castle.
Yeah, for sure, there was one quote that Wagner wrote, I think to Ludwig, right after they had been you know, in each other's company, he wrote this, how can I find words to describe you the magic of this hour? I am in your angelic arms. We are near to one another. So you know that reads is you know, possibly something happening there. And I'm certainly no expert, but was it this year or Olivia that found the LGTBQ.
History writer Olivia found that guy?
Yeah, it's a guy named Richard Norton wrote that their relationship was almost certainly physical, though not necessarily genital. So I mean, it seems like if that's correct, or if that you know, he's he's you know, it's a supposition. But if that's correct, then it may be the case of a young wealthy patron who is around his idol and the idol maybe you know, giving the patrons just some extra time and affection to stay in the in
the good graces and to stay funded. Maybe like like who knows what happened behind closed doors, But that's at least Richard Horton's take.
Yeah, And ultimately it doesn't matter what happened. I think the point is is that Ludwig was a gay icon before there were such things as gay icons, and he still is today.
It's just pallace intrigue basically.
Yeah, exactly. So from the moment Wagner showed up or was invited to court through Ludwig's death, he was supported by Ludwig financially. And there's it's pretty widely agreed that had Ludvig not supported Wagner, he probably would not have been able to create a lot of the compositions that he came up with.
Yeah.
Sure, so in that sense, Ludwig the Second gave the world a lot of Wagner's later work. And if you're familiar with Wagner in his Germanic nationalism, he was also an anti Semite. And one of the cool things about Ludwig is he objected to his friend's anti semitism. He didn't just turn a blind eye to it.
Oh nice.
Yeah, he was a great guy. The more I find out about him more I just love him totally.
So the other thing that he was really into, like we kind of mentioned early, was architecture, especially Romanticist stuff sort of Byzantine influences and Roman kind of stuff Byzantine as Roman, I guess, but he loved to build things. He loved to take on these big projects, even though he did not hunt and was against it. He built a lavish hunting retreat. He built these three palaces that you mentioned earlier, and the UNESCO World Heritage Sites had
this to say of the palaces. The monarch created artificial alternative worlds in which he could immerse himself in far distant places and past eras. Their main function was to simulate literary and ideal fantasy worlds as realistically as possible, using architecture, art and technology in order to produce an all encompassing experience, a perfect illusion.
Yeah, that says it all. I left it out of this quote, but it also was on to say he was also a really big fan of Australia. Right, So they said something, UNESCO said something. They used the word technology, and that was part of that historicism, that you took something that you loved about the past, but you improved it, you made it better. And part of that was using
modern technology. And Ludwig was an eager, enthusiastic early adopter of new technology, in particular electricity, and he was using this stuff in the eighteen seventies. It's worth pointing out Edison did not invent the light bulb, but he did produce the first best incandescent light bulb. That wasn't until eighteen eighty. Ludwig was already using light bulbs and electricity in the decade before that.
Yeah, and using them as every lovely outdoor cafe does with like string lights. He had a artificial cave, and this is at Linderhorf Castle. He had an artificial cave in a lake which had these color lights everywhere. He eventually would build a recreation of Versailles on a lake island. I believe it's called Oh Jesus, this is a tough one. Herron Shimissy Palace. But that was What do you think it is?
I don't know, but that sounds like a town along the Mississippi. It didn't sound German at all.
Well, it doesn't look German. I don't think it's I don't think it is German.
I think it is.
Herron Harron him him hem c. How would you say it?
I think I liked what you just said. I'm just gonna stick of that. I'm not attempting it. I'm just making fun.
That's all, okay, nice work.
Thanks.
That was never finished but they did finish some sections. But his most famous, the one that we're going to kind of focus on is uh, you want to try it again, tough guy?
Uh, A new Swanstone.
Neuschwanstein Castle, which I mean, you gotta look this thing up. It's it's unbelievable.
I say, we take a break and then come back and talk about Neusch von.
Stein stein man Stein. No, it is done.
You're right, you know you're just confusing me. We'll be right back, okay, everybody. So we talked about a couple of other castles, but stein Uh is the one that is most associated with Ludwig the second the first one,
Linderhoff is considered this technological amusement park. The other one that you said was like a recreation of Versailles news Swanstein was the most magical looking recreation of what's called Romanesque architecture that you would just think of essentially as like it was just like Sleeping Beauty's Castle at disney World in Disneyland, so much so that he must have been inspired by that.
Are we putting a pin in that or talking about that?
We can talk about it.
Yeah, I mean, supposedly Walt Disney visited that castle with his wife in the nineteen fifties. And if you look at the main castle there in Disney World, and I guess Disneyland has one too, right, I've never been there. Yeah, it looks a heck of a lot like Neus Schwanstein.
Yeah, and I think it is one hundred percent certain that he modeled it after that. And if you see it, like even if it wasn't a percent, and you'd be like, yeah, he totally modeled it after that. It looks like a fairy tale castle. If you are not driving right now and you're just sitting around, you have your phone or your computer a full set of stipedias or at least the ends. Look up a picture of Noise fund Stein. It is amazing, breath taking. It's the definition of the word breathtaking.
Yeah, it is gorgeous. It sits on a top of a mountain and like these are the mountains that have those, you know, it looks like the castle and frozen like. It sits on a tiny little peak, not for defense, but he loved the view there. If you look out from the castle the beautiful mountain ranges, you have the very small lake, but the shwan Sea is right there.
You can actually see the two castles. From the video I saw online was a guy standing on the deck or not the decking, but whatever you would call the outdoor areas the dance floor, hey, come out to the deck, or a patio, the hard escape. It's got to be something more grand than those words for what those were. But anyway, what we would call like the outdoor patio of Hohenschwangal and right there in the background you can see Neus Swanstein. They're only about a mile from each other.
I'm guessing is the crow flies. But it's just a gorgeous scene.
Yeah, it really is. I mean whether it's summer, fall, winter in particular which with a snow on it, it's magical. It's gorgeous. And like we said, Ludwig was an early adopter of technology. One of the things that he used, or his construction people had to use, was steam powered cranes. Yeah, because this was not an easy place to build and it was a pretty massive castle made of very heavy brick and stone. And in addition to that he had things like an elevator. In fact, he had an elevator table.
Remember we said that he enjoyed his solitude. Yes, in particular, he appreciated dining alone. He didn't even want servants around serving him. So what he would do is sit at the table in his dining room and the table would lower down, I think three stories to the kitchen. The table would be set, all the food would be put on it, and that would be raised back up for him to dine. That's how remote he wanted to be from people when he didn't want to be around people.
So I don't call it quite follow that.
Actually, imagine it's like a dumb waiter, but the whole table is the dumb waiter.
Yeah, but he would be sitting at it when it was doing this.
Well, No, so he would stay seated up in the dining room and the table would go and the table would come back up, all set and resplend it with a feast.
And then that makes sense. I thought he wrote it down, they set the table with the food, and then he wrote it back, and I was like, that doesn't. I mean, that's a lot of fun, but that doesn't prevent them from seeing anybody. No, exactly dinner time. So the throne room was is pretty impressive. You can you know, see pictures and videos of all this stuff, like full tours online that was where the Byzantine influence really came in. It has a thirteen foot tall chandelier, never had a
throne in it. But you know, this stuff is as over the top as it gets when you look at pictures and videos. It's really I mean, it's not my style, obviously, and I've never like castles are kind of fun. I've toured a couple. None of it aesthetically is like ooh, that's beautiful to me. But the ornate qualities of it I can appreciate.
Yeah, for sure. And I think photos don't do it justice either, especially like interior photos of these rooms. They all just seem garish and gaudy, and they are basically by definition. But I'm sure it's much more impressive in person than it is looking at had a photo. You know, we should go, all right, I would totally love to go. I've been wanting to go to Germany for a while.
Yeah, you know, I mean we're talking about maybe trying to do some like real European tour dates.
Oh yeah, we should do a ten person show in Germany.
Yeah, Oh I bet we could. I bet we could. Get five hundred people in a room in Germany.
You're crazy.
All right, Well, let's talk about some other stuff. We talked about that artificial cave that was pretty amazing. He also had a singers hall which was supposedly recreated from part of the Vartsburg, which was a castle where they had American idol. Essentially, it was called the singers Kreeg Singers Contest in twelve oh seven.
Yeah, which is right in the wheelhouse of when this fantasy era would have taken place the High Middle Ages from about one thousand CE to thirteen hundred CE.
Right, Yeah, totally.
There's also a winter garden, which essentially is an enclosed bow that looks out has an amazing view. But the thing that's really notable about that is that they their window panes with glass measuring nine feet tall about three meters, the largest tallest window panes made in the history of humanity up to that point. Yeah, pretty impressive.
Now it's no big deal, but yeah, at the time it was.
And then some of the other technology that he employed. He had hot and cold running water, that was not very common back then.
What else he had central heat, he had forced air, he had a little electric bell system for his servants ring it in, and he had telephone lines even though there was not you know, there was known he could really call. There are very few people he could call, but he did have telephone lines.
Apparently it would it would connect to hohen Schwangau, that his childhood castle a mile away.
Oh really, okay, well that makes sense.
Yeah. He also had flush toilets too. The thing is is it took forever for this to be constructed. When they broke ground, I think in eighteen sixty nine, he estimated to be about three years, and it took them longer than that just to build the gatehouse, which is like the first building of this massive castle complex, and that's where he lived while they were building the rest
the palace itself. But he only lived in the palace for about six months before he died, so I think actually as well, see, the whole thing went unfinished as a matter of fact. But as he was doing this, he grew deeper and deeper and deeper in debt. And you might be like boo hiss, he used the king's money to build himself a fantasy castle. That's not correct.
No, he did not use public monies. He just went into debt and traded on his family name, securing loans against that royal family name. He also got a loan from Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, who you know helped him out when he could, including vouching for him, as we'll see later. But he just you know, he was obsessed with these projects. He kept building these projects. He started another one about a year after Neus s Fenstein, which like you said, wasn't even close to being done,
and they were like, all right, this is enough. We need to get this guy out of here. And this was all like kind of the quiet talk you know, around the court, and you know, it seemed like by all appearances he was still doing the bureaucratic work of the king. Like I mentioned earlier, was he was not so interested in the public sort of warring type of
stuff and being a big public face. He liked to hide away, but he wasn't like just laying around in a dream world like would He would keep up with the paperwork and stuff like that that he had to do. But that wasn't enough. They wanted him out. So in March of eighteen eighty six, Prime Minister Johann von Lutz hired Bernard von Gouden, a very prominent psychiatrist who had already been treating his mentally ill brother, Ludwig's mentally ill brother.
And instead of and this guy seemed like a good guy, like he was against restraints and violence, and he wanted to treat patients with dignity and respect and allow them freedoms and stuff like that.
Yeah, very progressive for the time.
Super progressive. But he did not actually examine the king himself. He talked to people around him, sexual partners that he had and stuff like that, took into account the family diagnoses here and there, and came up with his own diagnosis.
Right, he did. And to be fair, von Gudden wasn't the only psychiatrist or psychologist who was tasked with preparing this report, but he was the most prominent, and in fact, he became Ludwig's personal doctor. I guess personal psychiatrist essentially, is what it came to. So three months after he was tasked with this, they released this report and they diagnosed Ludwig with paranoia, parentheses, madness, essentially saying he probably
had something like schizophrenia. And then one of the other things about that report is it touched on, but apparently didn't mention explicitly. I hadn't read it, so I'm not quite sure how they put it, but it was definitely in there, in not direct terms, the fact that he was gay, a gay king, right, right, And so I'm sure that by itself, like basically a report from a
psychiatrist saying this would have been enough. But the impression I have is it was really the public funds and being indebted to families from other nations on Bismarck, like that's a big deal, right, And then if the creditors came after him, he's like, I don't have any money. Ultimately they're going to turn on Bavaria. And I get the impression that that was what really got them the most,
right and what they were trying to protect against. So three days after that report comes out, they showed up at his doorstep and said you're under arrest. Freeze sucker.
Yeah. They they brought was it, Pam Greer?
Yeah? No, they didn't say sugar.
Oh okay, yeah, I guess that would have been sugar. They had chloroform. They had a straight jacket. Apparently they didn't have to use the straight jacket. I'm not sure about the chloroform, but they placed him under rest, sent him to the Castle of Berg. Gooden was to care for him basically kind of full time there. And here's where we get to the question of like whether or not he was genuinely mentally ill or just sort of forced out by being an eccentric, gay, young king. Well,
he wasn't super young by this point, I guess. But in twenty thirteen there was a paper in Germany from some mental health researchers who basically said it was an unreliable report that was politically motivated and they were just trying to get him out of there. He was still governing, he was still sort of doing the paperwork and doing
the things he needed to do. He had written, in fact, Von Bismarck even vouchers for this guy, saying that they had exchanged letters right up until the very end where he seemed lucid and was in touch with reality. Seven years after that, in twenty twenty, just a few years ago, there was another report from another set of German psychiatric
researchers that said, actually, it's probably pretty well founded. The fact that he was gay may have played a big part, for sure, but there's a lot of pretty good evidence here that he had a mental disorder.
Yeah, you can make a pretty good case based on the contemporaneous reports, right, Like apparently at least once he ordered a dinner for twelve people to be set and then when he arrived in the dining room it was just him, and yet he still greeted all of the empty seats before sitting down. He would also talk to a bust of Marie Antoinette quite in depth. It wasn't like a passing like love you or anything like that,
like you would have conversations with her in French. He also and this is this is this is something He would speak at a fast pace, with different ideas mixing together hallucinations and delusions. Yeah, that's a that's a big one, right. What else?
Uh? He to pay off his debts. At one point he proposed a bank robbery. Pretty good idea. It says, odd dancing and jumping movements. Who knows file that under whatever? Huh maybe just fun guy. He when they threatened his his to shut down his construction projects. Basically at one point he threatened suicide and he was he was nocturnal. He would he would be up all night, he would sleep all day. None of these things by themselves, like
you know, says aha schizophrenia. But taken altogether, it definitely paints a picture with his family history of someone who may have had something legitimate going on.
I don't know. I think the hallucinations and delusions by themselves could account for.
It, but they could have also been taking drugs.
Sure, I guess so royal nineteenth century drugs. Who knows what that is.
That's the good stuff.
But the twenty twenty paper, essentially they said he probably could have been diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, which is characterized by odd, eccentric behavior and few if any close friends,
and that definitely describes them. So it's possible, but it's certainly I mean, we're diagnosing this guy in the same way that doctor Gouden did, which was based on reports and stuff like that that people writing these papers never examined them, so it's not clear and we'll probably never know.
Yeah, I think the autopsy report was sort of a big factor. There was findings on autopsy that showed he had scars on his frontal lobes for meningitis when he was a baby, so that could have been something.
Sure, I mean that will have some sort of effect. And like you said, they performed an autopsy which strongly suggests that he died. It's a spoiler alert. He did die.
He eventually died.
I mean, he was living in the nineteenth century, so yeah, he was going to die by now anyway. But he died relatively young at age forty one. Another leg of the stool. That makes him a tragic figure. And he was remember they came and got him, Doctor Gouden and some I guess hired men by the Parliament came and took him away to Castleberg, one of his father's castles, where he was essentially under house arrest. And then the
next day he turned up dead. He and doctor Gouden went on a walk around the castle grounds their second of the day. This one was in the evening, and they never came back, so people went out to look for them, and when they did, they discovered them dead, floating face down in Lake Sternberg on the castle grounds.
Yeah, the story was Ludwig wanted to drown himself, made a break for the water. Doctor Gouden went after him. They tussled in the water and doctor Gouden was drowned, and then the king drowned himself after. There's a lot of hanky stuff the way this went down first, and like they really knowing you need to be one hanky thing in this case really is the fact that they found them floating. Yeah, because when you drown, you sink, your lungs take on water, and you know, ten seconds
you can be at the bottom of that lake. Maybe a few days or a week later, you might eventually float back up once like gases are released and stuff like that. But drowning victims don't float. And there was also no water in his lungs at the autopsy, or no foam at his mouth or nose or anything like that, Like he didn't drown. It just seems pretty clear.
Certainly doesn't seem that way. So other people say, well, no, he didn't drown. He died from being assassinated. He was shot, as was doctor Gouden, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whoever assassinated Ludwig didn't want to leave any witnesses. And there's a whole fringe belief that this was that Ludwig was assassinated
and this was covered up. And there's supposedly like the diary of a fisherman who was there at the scene, who that he left this confession or description of what really happened after he died. Supposedly somebody in the same royal family as Ludwig or the royal house had his coat that he wore that night and had two bullet holes in it, and supposedly she showed it to some
other people. All of this stuff. The big problem is it's all second and third hand accounts and all of the evidence that's referenced the physical evidence, and it's gone vanished, burned up in a house fire, no one knows where it went whatever. So there's it's just going to always essentially remain a fringe theory. Unless we find like a writing from Auto von Bismarck talking about how he had Ludvig assassinated, we're just probably never gonna know what happened
to him. And there's actually a group called the Google Monitor.
Did I say that Right's really more like MENA.
And they're essentially like a Bavarian independent society who say, not only was Ludwig assassinated, that makes everything that came after that illegitimate.
Yeah, they said it you hate himlouts? Why do you hate himlouts?
Their reasoning. So that's the thing. One of the there were very many people who had good reason to have Ludvig assassinated. He was deposed, his uncle was put into power, and Ludwig had been taken care of, so why kill him? And the Google monitor says that von Bismarck had found out that Ludwig was negotiating with France to help liberate Bavaria from this new German empire, so that he could
you take his rightful place on the throne again. And Bismarck was like, we can't have that, and assassinated him to who knows.
We'll never know. He died at forty one, that's one thing we do know, and he very much like you've been saying, it was a tragic figure. His bestie there, Empress Elizabeth, put some jasmine in his hands in his casket, which is a very sweet thing to do. French poet Verlaine called him the only true king of this century. And the irony of all this is that Neus Schwanstein, which had basically not bankrupted him but put him in dire financial Straits and may have led to his oulster.
Kind of right after he died, they opened it to tourists and it has made a ton of money since then and continues to.
Yeah, they estimate one hundred and thirty million people have visited it since they opened it a few weeks after his death. Isn't that nuts?
It's pretty great.
Also, if you go to Castlebergh in Lake Sternberg, there's a cross coming out of the water to mark the spot where his body was found. And he's even more beloved in death than he was in life. Every August twenty fourth and twenty fifth, Fusion, the town nearest the castle celebrates his birthday, So he's kind of a big deal around there, you know. Yeah, totally great, great story. I love Ludwig the second. I don't know if I got the point across or not, but he was a tragic figure.
Tragic figure.
You got anything else, I'm gonna guess no, I got nothing else. Okay, that means everybody, it's time for listener mail.
All right, I'm gonna say this is from Parker and it's about Share. I'm kind of going to bad for Share with some of her song themes and album titles. Hey guys, I hope people aren't too hard on share these days, for the title Gypsy's Tramps and Thieves, and for the song half Breed. I was a young child living in apple pie life when those songs were released, and they were my first introduction to how unfair life
can be. I felt a lot of empathy for the character singing the songs and swore to myself never to make people feel like that. Share is awesome. So thanks for that great episode. And you know that's something I don't even think we mentioned that there are certain singers who at times have sung sort of as character in character.
My own beloved Billy Joel wrote songs about, you know, seemingly from the perspective of a Vietnam vet or from a longboat, you know, long shoreman and a fisherman, and Bruce Springsteen, and you know, there's long been a rich history of sort of writing in character and as a character and singing as a character. So that is how Parker took it, and it seems like it imparted a good lesson.
Yeah, for sure, that's a great, great point, Parker. Thanks for writing in to point that out. If you want to be like Parker and write in to point something out that's very insightful. We love that kind of thing. You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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