Ludvig II' castles

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Megalomania in the Bavarian Alps

Neuschwanstein castle, Herrenchimsee castle and Linderhof is a trilogy, the ‘mad’ king LudvigII wrote in stone. (I do not mean he carved the stone edicts like our Ashok, but he built these three stone monuments to his own ego in the Bavarian Alpine region.)

We spent a day in summer of 2005 touring Ludvig’s castles.

It is well nigh impossible to write about Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchimsee without mentioning king LudvigII . He was a poet and a dreamer and his Linderhof (supposedly a ‘hunting lodge’) is an architectural poem, while his dreams have taken a concrete shape in Neuschwanstein. Like all dreamers, he was highly impractical and emptied the treasury to realize his dreams. Throughout our tour of his castles, a half-forgotten nursery rhyme kept running in the background of my mind:

The king was in the counting house, counting his money,
The queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey.

Poor king LudvigII !! He never understood that even a king has to count his money. Those who do not count, do not count. He did NOT count in the power politics of late 19th century Europe. Luckily, he had no queen. Had he married, his queen would have found it difficult to eat bread and honey while her husband squandered the money.

Poor king LudvigII.!! Irresponsible he might have been, but fate exacted a heavy price from him. He had to pay for the actualization of his dreams with his own life. While you admire his excellent taste evinced by his castles, you also feel pity for the person who had limitless vision but limited funds.

Linderhof was our first stop on the tour.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linderhof )

Linderhof is small. From the outside, it looked like a mansion of some rich person. It was described as a ‘hunting lodge’ in the brochure. The words ‘hunting lodge’ evoked an image in my mind of a hunting man’s den with a strong atmosphere of successful hunts undertaken in the past. There should be trophies of stuffed tiger heads or rhino heads on the wall and the floor should be carpeted with bear-skin rugs or panther-skin rugs. Elephant-foot ash-trays and whale-tooth paper-cutters make nice souvenirs strewn about. Crossed oars or crossed spears on the wall and a glass-fronted rifle-cabinet by one side complete the picture. Some palace-hotels of India, notably in Rajsthan and Madhya Pradesh, do have all this and more.

However, Linderhof had none of it. It was a small, tastefully decorated palace in the ‘rococco’ style with the usual bric-a-brac: ornate furniture, gilt ceilings, brocade drapes, crystal and ivory chandeliers etc. Nothing of the hunting man about it. It is very beautiful, with manicured lawns and a lovely sculpture in the fountain of the reflecting lake. The backdrop of Bavarian Alps gives it an added charm.

The next stop was Neuschwanstein.
( http://www.neuschwanstein.de/english/index.htm )

The name literally means ‘New Swan Rock’. LudvigII was very impressed by Richard Wagner and named the castle after the hero of the opera ‘Lohengrin’ who was a swan knight. The paintings in the castles also reflect Wagnerian operatic legends.

I was not much impressed by Linderhof, but I totally loved Neuschwanstein. Not for nothing it has been universally nicknamed as the ‘fairytale castle’. Even Walt Disney
modeled his ‘Sleeping Beauty’s castle’ in Disneyland on this castle. The castle evokes strong medieval images of damsels in distress, knights in shining armor, romantic trysts by the former and unachievable quests by the latter, intrigues by villains and chivalry by heroes. Surely that turreted tower imprisons a beautiful princess abducted by an ogre and being guarded by a dragon? Maybe I will see her long plait of golden hair being let down from a narrow window. The courtyard is just the right size for fighting duels of honor too.
Surely that bridge was defended single-handedly against a horde by a brave knight?

None of these things ever happened. The only intrigue and mystery associated with the castle concerns the king’s death. He was deposed, declared ‘mad’ and drowned in 4 feet of water of the lake, while he himself was 6 feet tall. His psychiatrist drowned with him.
No one will ever know how these two men drowned.

The rooms of the castle are majestic, the paintings beautiful, the ornaments rich, but the spiral staircases are ill-lit and nor airy. You feel as though you might encounter a ghost or may have your back stabbed by a hooded villain at any moment. Good thing that there are about a million tourists with you to witness the dark deed and bring the miscreant to justice. (Now that I have some time to think rationally, I will reduce the number of tourists to a few hundred.)

Alas ! The castle does not have a moat and a drawbridge, otherwise, my imagination would have run riot and I would have seen a brave prince swimming across the moat under the cover of darkness with passion in his heart and a dagger in his teeth.

The castle has no dungeons either, so, no scope for me to picture myself in the role of an intrepid journalist eliciting the life-story of an innocent, long-forgotten, long-unwashed, long-unshaven prisoner.

The castle has such perfect proportions that it is neither too small like Linderhof nor too large like Versailles, but just right. The Alps too lend it a mystic aura. When you glimpse it from the Marienbrucke through a light haze, it’s enchantment is complete. The waterfall below the bridge and the lake in the middle distance are a perfect setting for this jewel of a castle.

The king’s bedchamber was particularly noteworthy because his bed has such intricate and beautiful carvings of crosses upon crosses. He was a devout Christian.
Hohenschwngau was another castle we could have seen had we given up our lunch, but we were hungry and I did not want to see another castle after seeing the best of the lot, Neuschwanstain. Hohenschwangau would have been an anticlimax.

King LudvigII died a bankrupt person but he has enriched the Bavarian landscape no end.

I would highly recommend the mountain trout fried in butter-pepper at the inn. It was a dish fit for a king.

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Photos

linderhof1
Front view of Linderhof

linderhof2
View from gate of Linderhof

linderhof3
Interior view of a room in Linderhof

neuschwan1
View from Neuschwanstein

neuschwan3
View of Neuschwanstein from Marienbrucke

neuschwan4
View of Marienbrucke from Neuschwanstein

Comments

[JJ07]

Ludwig II was found drowned in Starnberger See along with his physician - was it an accident or was he assassinated? No one knows for sure. As he was probably gay, assassination seems more likely, as he was becoming / had become an embarrassment to the establishment.

[anonymous]

its look like a castle where the princess live... haha

[charuavi]

You are right. It does look regal. Charuavi