NEUSCHWANSTEIN

Neuschwanstein Castle was built in a majestic, but secluded, mountainous region southwest of Munich, the capital of Bavaria. The foundation stone was laid on September 5, 1869, after the construction of the road and the laying of water pipes. Ludwig II created the site for his dream castle by having the rocky plateau, on which two citadels had once stood, dynamited and lowered by about 8 meters.
Left unfinished at King Ludwig II's death in 1886, it is a white castle with towers and spires in the style of the Middle Ages. Surrounded by ancient trees and mountains, it embodies the 19th century romantic ideal of returning to nature.
Spectacularly sited on a high point over the Pöllat River gorge, it has an imposing position overlooking a quiet lake, Lake Starnberg, in a valley with a narrow path winding into the forest.
The king worked with three different architects in succession: Eduard Riedel, Georg Dollmann, and Julius Hofmann, all Germans who based their designs largely on a scheme produced by German stage designer Christoph Jank.
Prince Ludwig 1864
King of Bavaria 1864 - 1886, * 25. 8. 1845 Nymphenburg, † 13. 6. 1886 in Lake Starnberg.

His paradise was art; His life was drama; His ideal was freedom; His destiny was isolation; His love was an unfulfilled longing; His death in the lake - A mystery, even today.
Beloved by the people of Bavaria to this day, the prince was born on August 25, 1845 in Nymphenburg in Munich as the first child of the Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria and his wife Marie, a Princess of Prussia. The little prince was "unbelievably beautiful" and christened Ludwig. His only brother, Otto, was born three years later.
The Queen enjoyed taking Ludwig and his younger brother Otto on lengthy hikes in the nearby alps and it would have been on these occasions that Ludwig developed his love of the mountains and their solitude, as well as his lifelong devotion to the Schwangau region. He also loved to feed the wild swans that lived around the lake, and several drawings of swans that he made at this time survive today.
His grandfather and godfather Ludwig I of Bavaria, had Louis XVI of France as his godfather. This relationship with the House of Bourbon had an important influence on the way the prince saw himself throughout his life.
"Ludwig enjoyed dressing up ... took pleasure in play acting, loved pictures and the like... and liked ... making presents of his property, money and other possessions", said his mother.
This was not to change. His vivid imagination, his tendency to isolate himself, and his pronounced sense of sovereignty were also already evident when Ludwig was a child.
Both princes were strictly brought up by their father, and were not prepared at all for their future responsibilities as head of state. Prince Ludwig spent his childhood and youth in Hohenschwangau, a castle inherited and rebuilt by his father. His active mind was captivated by the many paintings on the walls, which depicted the mythological world of the history of Germany in the Middle Ages. The paintings intensified his romantically inclined emotions, and awoke in him his love for everything noble. He also greatly enjoyed wandering in the forests and valleys around the castle. He felt more and more drawn towards poetry, painting, and soon, music.
At the age of sixteen, Prince Ludwig listened to the Richard Wagner opera "Lohengrin" for the first time in the Munich State Opera House. He was fascinated by this totally new form of music. He saw all of his romantic dreams realized in Wagner's composition structure and his elaboration of the theme. Since then, Ludwig tried to collect all Wagner's compositions and publications.
An eternal mystery
Ludwig II as the Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of St George.
Even before he died, the king had already become something of a legend. "I want to remain an eternal mystery to myself and others", Ludwig once told his governess, and it is this mysterious element that still fascinates people today. The poet Paul Verlaine called Ludwig II the "only true king of this century". The shy dreamer, who had none of the typical characteristics of a popular king, lives on, still idolized, as "the Kini".
His palaces, which were barred to strangers, have been visited by over 50 million people since his death. They are records in stone of the ideal fantasy world which the king built as a refuge from reality. His historic, poetic and ideal interpretation of his role as king was finally his downfall. It is possible that he preferred to die rather than return to reality.
The young king
King Ludwig II in generals' uniform and coronation robe.
In 1864 Ludwig II acceded to the throne at the age of 18 without any experience of life or politics, but adored by women. Looking back in 1873, he described it thus:
"I became king much too early. I had not learned enough. I had made such a good beginning ... with the learning of state laws. Suddenly I was snatched away from my books and set on the throne. Well, I am still trying to learn..."
Ludwig II aided Austria against Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War in 1866 but assisted Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. In 1871 he consented to the inclusion of Bavaria in the German Empire.
In 1866 Ludwig II suffered the biggest defeat of his life: the expanding state of Prussia conquered Austria and Bavaria in the "German War". From then on, Bavaria's foreign policy was dictated by Prussia and the king was only a "vassal" of his Prussian uncle.

Eventually these building projects became impossible to finance with the King's annual income. In the beginning of 1886, Ludwig II had liabilities amounting to 13 million Marks at an annual income of 5.5 million Marks. At the King's death, these debts had increased to the amount of 21 million Marks. This money was owed to the State of Bavaria by Ludwig, i.e., by the King's family, and had to be repaid. None of the suggestions, put forward by the members of his Cabinet in an attempt to reduce the King's expenditures, was successful. So the Government decided to have doctors declare the King mentally incompetent and have his duties taken over by a Regent.

On June 8, 1886, a medical commission, under the direction of Dr. von Gudden, compiled a medical declaration that the King was insane and that as a result he could no longer carry out his official functions. In fact, however, there is substantial written evidence to the contrary, showing that the King, although unhappy, acted calmly and composedly and regarded his surroundings with rigid politeness during this period. One document claims that the medical commission wrote the declaration without even examining Ludwig. Nonetheless, the commission succeeded in forcing their will on the King. On June 12, 1886, Dr. von Gudden took the King for a walk, and they never came back. They were found dead the next day, drowned in Lake Starnberg. There have been various speculations on the cause of the strange deaths of the King and Dr. von Gudden, but none of them has been conclusively substantiated.
Mysterious Death
The real cause of King Ludwig's death has been a mystery ever since his body, together with that of his psychiatrist, was dragged from Lake Starnberg on 13 June, 1886. But the official version, which holds that he committed suicide by drowning, has never been completely refuted.
Now, 112 years after the king's death, new evidence has surfaced which suggests that the builder of Neuschwanstein castle and many other bizarrely romantic architectural follies was murdered. The details are convincing enough to increase calls for the House of Wittelsbach, King Ludwig's family, to allow his body to be exhumed from its tomb in St Michael's Church in Munich to enable a new and conclusive post-mortem examination to be conducted.
The most intriguing new material to support the murder theory has come from a 60-year-old Munich banker called Detlev Utermöhle. In a sworn affidavit issued in 2007, Mr Utermöhle recalled a scene from his childhood which he insisted he remembered vividly.
As a 10-year-old, he and his mother were invited for afternoon coffee and cakes by a Countess Josephine von Wrba-Kaunitz, who looked after some of the Wittelsbach family's assets. Mr Utermöhle recalled how the countess gathered her guests, telling them in a hushed tone: "Now you will find out the truth about Ludwig's death without his family knowing. I will show you all the coat he wore on the day he died." The countess opened a chest and pulled out a grey Loden coat. Mr Utermöhle insisted in his statement that he saw "two bullet holes in its back" and said his mother, who has since died, left him a written account of what they saw.
Unfortunately for Mr Utermöhle, the king's coat was lost after a fire at Countess Wrba-Kaunitz's home in 1973 in which both she and her husband perished. However his claims were supported by Siegfried Wichmann, a Bavarian art historian and specialist in 19th-century painting, who published a hitherto unseen photograph of a portrait of the king painted only hours after his death.
The portrait shows what Mr Wichmann said is blood oozing from the corner of Ludwig's mouth. "King Ludwig cannot have drowned. This is blood from the lungs and there is no water in it," Mr Wichmann insists.
The official version holds that the Bavarian government was driven to depose the reclusive Ludwig because he was squandering vast sums of money on bizarre building projects that were driving his kingdom to ruin. However, Leopold only used his own or borrowed money. None of the funds for buildings were appropriated from the public.
Bernhard von Gudden, his psychiatrist, diagnosed him as suffering from "paranoia" – a condition which today would be classified as schizophrenia. Ludwig was deprived of his crown and, according to the official version, he reacted by drowning himself in Lake Starnberg in a fit of paranoid pique.
Murder theorists counter with recent medical evidence which suggests that the king was, in fact, suffering from a form of meningitis and was far from insane. They say fishermen reported hearing shots at the time of Ludwig's death and claim that his opponents in the Bavarian government hired assassins to kill him as he was trying to flee across the lake. They say that Von Gudden, who was also found dead in the lake, was shot because he was a witness.
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