SYNOPSIS
Ludwig and Wagner
The Mad King and the Musical Genius
by Robert H. Moss

Ludwig II, born on 25 August 1845, was heir to the illustrious Wittelsbach family which ruled Bavaria from its capital, Munich. When Ludwig was thirteen, during the typically difficult childhood of a royal heir to the throne, his former governess wrote him describing a performance of Wagner’s Lohengrin. The Crown Prince became enraptured with the composer’s music and writings. He attended a Munich performance of Lohengrin when he was sixteen. Wagner’s call for a prince who, by his patronage, would ensure the purity and survival of German art led Ludwig to vow that he would be that prince.

Ludwig ascended the Bavarian throne at the age of eighteen. He came to the throne with high hopes, aiming to preserve Bavarian independence while strengthening ties with the other countries of the German Confederation. Yet Ludwig soon became bored with the realities of governing. His confusion about his sexual orientation added to his feelings of inner turmoil. He formed a romantic liaison with Prince Paul of Taxis, his aide-de-camp.

Richard Wagner, bastard son of an actor, rebelled against any form of schooling. Laziness, sexual dalliances, and political activity sidetracked his dream of becoming a composer. Almost everything he did struck against the norms of society. He felt the world owed him a living for his talents. Debt became his nemesis. Yet, the dream became reality as his musical works achieved production.

One of Ludwig’s first acts as King was to summon Richard Wagner to Munich. Ludwig hoped to promote a cultural renaissance in Munich through Wagner’s presence. Wagner and his music pervaded Ludwig's private life. The "Great Friend," with a "great" ego to match, became Ludwig's greatest challenge in his Kingship, and eventually the young king's greatest accomplishment. To imagine Ludwig without Wagner is as unlikely as imagining the earth without the sun. Ludwig and Wagner were inextricably linked together in life and inseparable in death. In Wagner's life, Ludwig's importance lies in his great act of patronage: he gave Wagner the means, almost one million marks, to complete his life's work, his later music-dramas and the establishment of Bayreuth as the center of his work. In his patronage of Wagner, Ludwig pursued two independent courses and, in doing so, displayed enormous courage and strength of mind in the face of criticism, malicious gossip, and the overwhelming temptation to abdicate--to throw his crown aside. In befriending what he saw to be the greatest figure in contemporary art, he displayed the hereditary traits that led his father and grandfather to patronize painters, sculptors, architects, poets and scientists. In Wagner, he found confirmation of his inner beliefs.

Wagner's rescue by Ludwig has all the charm and unreality of a fairy tale: Wagner and the Bavarians, generally, regarded King Ludwig as the personification of the romantic ideal of kingship. He was tall, strong and handsome; indeed a veritable Prince Charming.

The older Wagner could not foresee the King's future of pathetic and unhappy relationships with a succession of equerries, soldiers, and actors, but he probably realized that the young king had an unusual sensitivity, an emotional nature that would require delicate and careful handling.

The tragedy of the king's life was not caused by Wagner, but by the conflict between his own ideal world of imagination and the real world in which he had to live and rule. His lonely path, his growing isolation, and his tragic death in the cold, dark waters of Lake Starnberg were ultimately the result of the total failure of the court camarilla, the politicians, the journalists, and the gossips, to understand either man correctly. 

Politics and war had no appeal to Ludwig. His instinct was to try and avoid engagement in such affairs altogether. He often fled to his retreats at Castle Berg or Hohenschwangau, leaving the affairs of state to his court officers. He loved to be alone, to read and wander through his beloved Bavarian mountains.

Succeeding years in Bavaria were marked by continuing political turmoil. The normal governmental procedures of the Bavarian constitutional monarchy were bypassed, and important decisions undertaken without royal assent.

Ludwig, freed by the court’s assumption of power, became a nocturnal creature. His psychological detachment from his position as Bavaria’s political leader was perhaps most clearly embodied in a bizarre flight of fancy. Ludwig’s troubled state of mind was reflected in a secret diary. Its often cryptic entries refer with anguish to Ludwig’s sexual encounters with stableboys and young soldiers, which are followed time and time again by solemn oaths to refrain from what Ludwig regarded as moral turpitude: “...I swear today...that what took place yesterday night was the last time forever; atoned for by the Royal Blood—the Holy Grail. Absolutely the last time under penalty of ceasing to be King.”

Meanwhile, Wagner worked to complete the last two operas of the Ring cycle. He had settled on the town of Bayreuth, in the northern part of Bavaria, as the location of his ideal theater designed specially for the production of his work. Ludwig contributed substantially to Wagner’s vast undertaking. In 1876 Ludwig twice attended complete performances of all four Ring operas. His enthusiastic reaction was reflected in a letter to Wagner, calling him a “god-man who truly cannot fail.” Ludwig and Wagner quarreled in late 1880 over a performance of the Parsifal prelude and did not meet again, though when Wagner died in 1883 Ludwig commanded that every piano in his castles should thereafter be draped in black as a monument to the composer.

Ludwig turned his creative energies toward vast architectural projects. Neuschwanstein Castle was meant as a magical paradise that would bring the imaginary world of Wagner’s operas to life. When Ludwig died in 1886, Neuschwanstein was only half finished. His second project, Schloss Linderhof, was an ornate central structure Ludwig surrounded by strange and wonderful pavilions. Ludwig’s final project was the Palace of Herrenchiemsee, fifty miles southeast of Munich, intended as a partial copy of the Palace of Versailles.

Even for a king, such expenses had their toll. By the end of 1885 Ludwig was some 14 million marks in debt. He sent his officials on bizarre journeys in search of loans, and some of these officials only pretended to take the journeys they knew in their hearts were hopeless. His financial quandary was a disastrous embarrassment to the Bavarian government—a scandal which could only be avoided if the King were removed from office.

His government appointed a commission to find the king insane. The commission accumulated a mass of evidence that was deliberately biased against Ludwig. It declined to examine any evidence to the contrary, and declared that Ludwig was mad, that his madness was incurable, and that he was now, and would be for the rest of his life, incapable of exercising the powers entrusted to him. After some maneuvering by Ludwig, he was at last seized and taken to Castle Berg, where he was to be imprisoned. His apartments had been specially modified to permit spying on the King and to prevent his escape. Dr. Gudden, head of the insanity commission, was there to look after the monarch. On his first evening there, Gudden took Ludwig for a walk along the shore of Lake Starnberg. When they had not returned by 9:00 p.m., a general search of the grounds was ordered. Ludwig’s and Dr. Gudden’s bodies were found in the lake. What had happened remains unknown and unknowable. Was it suicide, assassination, or merely an escape attempt?

The legends and tales of the "fairy king" will always be part of Bavarian folklore.

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