Ooh! Ooh! I wanna build the secret boudoir for Lola Montez!
Small point - calling him Mad King Ludwig is most unfair. He tried to persuade Wagner out of anti-Semitism and his buildings were intended to train a generation of highly skilled craftsmen and inspire Bavarians. (Some of the “folly” buildings in England were also built to train craftspeople and keep them going when work was scarce.) He was extremely popular with ordinary Bavarians, and was only called “mad” because his family objected to his projects. Prince Charles in the UK has taken up a number of Ludwig’s ideas, and has been treated as very eccentric - till they became mainstream.
Ludwig is one of very few German kings (perhaps the only one) that most of us would actually want to meet socially.
One of his most interesting projects was a building near Regensburg which is a giant Greek temple (named Walhalla) which contains statues and busts of famous Germans, many from literature and the arts, and many Jewish. When I visited it I was told that during the Nazi era the caretaker of Walhalla is said to have buried all the statues of Jewish Germans, and then recovered and replaced them after the war. When asked why he had taken the risk he replied “That is what King Ludwig would have wanted.”
Thanks, you said that much better than I was going to.
I got to visit Neuschwanstein long ago and it was memorably impressive, even towards the end of a summer full of castles and cathedrals. They made us put on fluffy fur booties so as not to scuff up the floors. (Not that that was the only memorable part.)
But for better or worse, Mad King Ludwig is his nickname now and that sounds metal, so… maybe just don’t belittle him as “a crazy king” in the headline.
I went to Neuschwanstein about 2 months ago, during the first snowfall of the year. Magical. The fur booties have gone, but the “mad king” narrative hasn’t.
Shot by a lakeside at another castle, by agents of his evil uncle who deposed his brother Otto as well.
[Shawn Spencer voice] Crazy as in “crazy awesome”!
Sounds very cool. Maybe we could get the castle co-designed by these guys as well…
Can there be another version, where people get to build their Fourth Grade dream house?
Video arcade, helicopter pad, water park, comics library, subterranean grotto with submarine…
You know, like this:
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