I became interested in Ludwig II during a stop at Schloss Neuschwanstein while on a road trip through Europe. The view of the castle against the backdrop of the Alps is spectacular, but touring the inside left me with myriad questions about its builder. Here was a cultured, misunderstood man who ran through his fortune in a quest to create a world—inspired by the works of Richard Wagner—in which he would feel comfortable living. His death remains something of a mystery. The public has never been satisfied by the official explanation that he killed his doctor and then himself after he was declared insane and removed from the throne. The doctor’s body showed signs of a struggle; the king’s did not. The members of the search party who found the corpses were forced to take an oath that they would never speak about what they saw. One of them, a fisherman called Jakob Lidl, wrote about it in his diary, claiming Ludwig had engaged him to help him escape from the castle at Berg. After they boarded Lidl’s boat, a shot to the back felled the king. The fisherman, afraid he’d be killed as well, shoved the body into the lake and fled.
The countess Wrnba-Kaunitz claimed to have owned the coat Ludwig was wearing at the time of his death. It had two bullet holes in it. Dr. Rudolf Magg, who lived in the area, examined the king’s body shortly after it was found. Magg’s daughter’s physician claims to have read a confession of sorts Magg left behind, admitting that his official report was false. The king died not by drowning, but from shots to the back.
There are more stories about sketches done at the scene that show blood coming from Ludwig’s mouth and a note written by his personal physician that makes a direct accusation of murder based on what he witnessed at Lake Starnberg. The trouble is, all the physical evidence has vanished. A handwriting expert authenticated the writing in Lidl’s diary, but it disappeared after his death. There are, however, extant photographs of the key pages. No one has ever found Magg’s supposed confession, and the countess’s coat was never seen again after she and her husband died in a fire.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever know the details of Ludwig’s death. Instead, we’re left with tantalizing clues that point to conspiracy. This, in turn, feeds the public’s long-running obsession with the Mad King. The human brain craves a good story, one that makes sense, even in the absence of demonstrable facts.
After my visit to Neuschwanstein, I felt a great sympathy for Ludwig. As I started reading biographies of him, I began to see how complicated he was. He treated servants cruelly, hated everything ugly, and could be rather vicious. His diaries reveal that, as a devout Catholic, he struggled with his homosexuality. His friendship with Elisabet Ney provided him with much-needed support. In a letter to him, she wrote, “God has made you as you are. You did not create yourself … therefore you may freely admit what you are.”
Even so, he struggled to find personal happiness, alternating between throwing himself into passionate relationships with men and then chastising himself for them. He never married and never provided an heir. Could this, along with his focusing more on building projects than the difficult political situations of the time, have motivated the powers that be to have wanted him gone? Possibly not just dethroned, but dead? Whatever happened on that tragic day, Ludwig remains very much in the present-day consciousness.