From an article on Spiegel.de: Was 'Mad' King Ludwig Murdered?


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I don't think anyone really believes it was suicide, given that there were two bodies and signs of a fight. The "Mad" description is generally given to him by American tourists; the handful of Brits who know about him would recognise his behaviour as "eccentric".

Eccentric is just a word for rich nutter.

Eccentric is a given, considering the in-breeding tendencies of the European royal families. Ludwig II is just Michael Jackson in a previous incarnation.

It's nice to be talking about a conspiracy theory on TT that doesn't involve 9/11 for once, though. Well done, PES!

My daughter just did a school report on Ludwig's mysterious death. Because I was interested too, we read the webpages of the Guglmänner (http://www.guglmann.de/deutsch/index.htm). It's fascinating reading! We then visited Ludwig's grave in the St. Michael church downtown. It was interesting to note that the grave photos on the Guglmänner website do not include an iron fence around the sarcophagus. Now there is one, probably installed by the Wittelsbacher family in response to the remote camera photos the Guglmänner made of the sarcophagus's underside. They did that to support their theory that Ludwig's body was removed in the 1930s to prevent Hitler from exhuming it to check the murder theory. According to the Guglmänner, the body remains in hiding to this day - the sarcophagus is empty. While visiting the grave, I asked a few questions of the old attendant who collects the admission fees. He says that the sarcophagus is x-rayed (with a portable device??) every 3 years by the German health authorities for health reasons because it's located in an enclosed underground room. I find this somewhat odd though... The guy also said that opening the sarcophagus now would expose the corpse to air, and immediately reduce it to dust.

So, needless to say, Ludwig's death remains as mysterious as ever.

I couldn't be bothered to post about the coat when I first read of it, but the Spiegel's article is so imprecise in so many places that I cannot let it stand.

I read this about two weeks ago in the Süddeutsche Zeitung but cannot link to the article due to its not being available online any more – it was good weekend reading, though. Left you with a smile on your face. Utermöhle does not recall when this incident is supposed to have taken place, nor where. Nor was there ever any evidence except Wrbna-Kaunitz’s claim that the coat ever belonged to King Ludwig nor that – even if it had been his – he was wearing it on the day of his death, nor when the holes were caused, nor even if they were actually bullet-holes. Utermöhle claims to remember brownish marks around the holes on the outside of the coat which would mean that the gun was fired fairly close to the Ludwig’s body if he had indeed been shot. So where is the blood? Or did the murderers snatch the coat off him immediately to prevent bleeding?

Regarding Ludwig's mental illness:


Ludwig had had meningitis as a small child and various severe fevers during his adolescence, probably leading to Morbus Pick, or schizotypal personality disorder due to frontotemporal lobar degeneration. This illness might explain his mood shifts, aggression and loss of reality.


(from the article quoted by the OP)

What? He had meningitis that caused his brain to shrink, ok – and his skull to not develop normally? I would like a link to any medical reason for a shrunken brain to cause your skull not to grow.


(from the article quoted by the OP)

Some important information missing here: Ludwig’s younger brother Otto was declared king as Otto I. But seeing as he had been vegetating in Schloss Fürstenried after having been declared insane in 1875 Luitpold stepped in as Prinzregent (like George IV being Prince Regent for George III during the latter’s mental illness) and reigned until 1912.

Otto was king of Greece, too, right?

Other Otto. Otto of Greece was Ludwig I's younger brother.

Rubbish. Poppycock. Piffle. Although mad was used by 19th century Americans, in the 20th century it has fallen out of use as a synonym for crazy. To us, most often, mad means angry. And we're so awfully fond of alliteration that we say Crazy King Ludwig. It sounds better. I've never heard an American Tourist use the term Mad King Ludwig.

Well I take tours of American tourists to Neuschwanstein, and I hear the word "mad" almost every time. Whether you use the term mad or crazy, my point is that he was probably neither.

Given his Frisur (which he looks worried about in the picture as well) it looks like he died trying to get Satisfaktion from his hairdresser. Duelling is now illegal which is just as well for the hairdressers of modern Berlin where it is almost impossible to get a proper haircut from the local prussian idiots.

From my understanding of the fundamentalist strain of Bavarian culture in all its violence and intolerance, I would say it is very probable that he was murdered. Just imagine the situation: an eccentric gay with an artistic streak surrounded by power-players who have the intolerance of the time on their side. I am quite sure that one day the murder theory will be proven.

@ chipbag: Try Turkish hairdressers in Berlin! I was quite fine with them (when I still had hair, that is).

Don't the Turkish hairdressers mess around with a lighter round your ears and nose though?

Just what i was told by a fellow Brit who went to one in Hamburg.

In the nose??!! I can handle the ears, but I think a lighter up the nose would fall under sharia law hand amputation rules.

Really? I've been a Tourguide here full time for the last two years. My Tourists usually say crazy. And he was crazy as a fruit bat. There's no shame in going insane. He may have been bi-polar or just suffered from a variety of neuroses, or as above, suffered from Brain degeneration because of poorly treated encephalitis, but crazy is as crazy does. And the poor man was crazy, mad, unstable, call it what you want. Words are one thing. Symptoms are something else completely. You can change the words but his behavior stays the same no matter what you called it. And as I mentioned, Mad isn't used in American English in that context.

Meningitis*, non encephalitis** [/pedant]
*inflammation of the protective covering layer of the central nervous system
**inflammation of the brain

Don't be ridiculous. Ever hear of a "mad scientist"?

Ludwig was declared insane by a doctor that had never even met him. They wanted to get him out of the way because of his runaway spending on frivolous castles and composers. The State of Bavaria has since made a huge profit from his castles.

Who, in this case, is "they"? His own government was against him, but Bismarck didn't like him all that well either. Or was it his own family who wanted to get rid of the madness blamed on Marie Friederike's side of the family?
Lots of potential for conspiracy theories there, let's give eurovol something to do.

well apparently it was more the german dentistry that he should have had concern about... I think the ability not to be able to cut hair is an overall germanic sufferance, not simply a northern infliction. The best haircut I ever got here in the south was from an Iraqi fellow, he told me where he was from just after he started with the shave (straight razor). I have never told anyone so adamantly that I was a Canadian before in my life. I started to worry that it made me seem American. (this all happened just after the war had broken out)

iain, I used to go to a (I assume) turkish barber near me, a popular place for local turks to get their haircuts. I chatted to the couple of guys working there and they knew where I am from, but a few months after the Iraq invasion I quit going there. Maybe they had done it before and I hadn't paid any attention but one of the barbers began to PUSH MY HEAD DOWN quite forcefully as he cut my hair. It was quite a pronounced moving of my head, significantly more than a hairdresser normally re-adjusts the customer's head so they can get a better angle etc. It reminded me of how US cops push the heads of suspects down as they get into the police car, a sort of subordinating movement. Now i'm stuck with girls who are just doing this shit job until they become germany's next Pop Idol.

Ah yes because that's a phrase we use all the time. Hogwash.

1.8 million hits on Google.com and a Wikipedia entry; just because you don't know it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I was googling for an image of 'Spoilt Bastard' from Viz but somehow found this instead and became distracted.

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If clarity was population density you would be Montana. The word Mad scientist exists. If we're talking about Mad scientists then I suppose it would come up a lot. But Frankly it's not up there on the top ten thousand list of conversational topics in the US.

"Hey, how about that Cheney huh?"
"Yeah, he's a mad scientist!"
"Right on man, I know what you mean. "
"Mad scientists are cool eh?"
"Who let the Canadian in here?"
"Sorry man he knew the password"
"We have a password"
"Yep, 'mad scientists' "
"Crazy."
"I'm just looking for Tim Hortons man, you're all crazy"
"At least we're not Mad. "
"You mean angry? Or crazy?"
"Hell if I know. "

Rubbish. I'll go slow and use shadow puppets so you can be in the conversation as well. The word "mad" is not often used in the US as a conversational term for "crazy" "insane" or "drinks the tea cold, without the milk" Instead we would say "Crazy" "Insane" or "from the south, do you have any lemons."

chipbag, what you mention is an interesting notion. I moved to an area of Berlin with few Turks and no Turkish barbers on 9-12 2001 (had scheduled this long before). I had not gone to a Turkish barber since but I can well imagine what you describe.

But back to King Ludwig: in corporate new-speak, "mad" is usually replaced with "visionary". He must have seemed mad to Bavaria's royal treasurers at the time but with the wisdom of hindsight (all the tourist money) visionary is not so far off the mark

Ok, here’s a few more conspiracy theories:
Siegfried Wichmann, former head of the Bavarian Portrait Gallery, claims that an up to now unknown sketch done by Hermann Kaulbach, a famous Bavarian painter, shortly after Ludwig’s death shows blood in the corner of Ludwig’s mouth, suggesting that he was shot in the lung(s) and proving a murder conspiracy.
Yeah, I am so sure that the house of Wittelsbach let Kaulbach see the king’s corpse, unwashed and otherwise unaltered, a few days after he died.


The Guglmaenner, a band of loyalists, claim that Ludwig was chloroformed and thrown into the lake, explaining how he could drown in 80 cm of water. They quote the priest of Aufkirchen, a town on the shore of Lake Starnberg close to where Ludwig died, as having said, “There was a predominant odor of narcotics�. Even Johannes Neuhaeusler, Bishop of Munich (actually Munich and Freising) claimed in a sermon on 13 June 1970, “The king died under sedation�.
And anything a priest or bishop says is beyond doubt!


Then again, maybe Ludwig had planned an escape with his favorite cousin, Elisabeth of Austria, aka Sissi. He was swimming the lake to where she was waiting for him in a rowboat but suffered a heatstroke from leaping into water that was only 12 degrees Celsius. She, too, claims that he was murdered.


Sissi is even more legend than he is. At least her assassination by an anarchist is beyond doubt.
Then again, maybe it was all a mistake. A policeman on duty in the park of Schloss Berg saw the king heading to the lake, challenged him and – receiving no reaction – shot him in the back without further ado. The drowning theory was invented as a massive cover-up of this misadventure.
Kings just don’t answer to commoners when they want to dabble their feet in their very own lake.


The most durable version, regarded as the official one, is that Ludwig didn’t have anything to live for anymore, was suicidal anyway and wanted to avoid being locked up like his brother, Otto I of Bavaria. He attempted to drown himself, fought a desperate fight with Dr. von Gudden (remember, Ludwig was a tall, very strong man), drowning him and suffered a fatal heart attack, again due to the water temperature.


Whatever you want to think, he is dead, his castles bring massive revenue to the State of Bavaria, he was a good looking guy when he was young, and if mad, crazy or schizotypally challenged, he beats today’s monarchs and their attempts at notoriety all hollow.

You forgot to mention the other thing about him.

What, about him being a raging homosexual?

No, the other thing.

His friendship with Wagner?
Being rowed across an artificial subterranean lake in a swan-shaped boat?
His almost marrying Sissi's sister?

No, no, no, please don't force me to spell it out. Go on, you do it!

See? The whole damn family was mad. Can't think of a name to give a male child other than Ludwig, Maximilian, or Otto. So of course they all had to be assigned a cute nickname, such as "Mad King Ludwig," to distinguish him from Ludwig the Lionhearted, or whatever. It's enough to drive a tourist round the bend enough to want to actually visit all three castles in one day, and then be disappointed when Hohenschwangau wasn't on the itinerary.

King Ludwig was murdered. Influential people in his own family circle wanted to get rid of him and wanted to make it look like mysterious death. Historical documents were found. It came out recently only that he was shot.

Oh, well, if you say so...

Mad as a hatter springs to mind and brings forth memories of "Alice in Wonderland".

I've only ever heard Ludwig referred to as mad. Never crazy, insane, etc, etc.

I've never heard "crazy as a hatter", or "insane hatter".

Whether or not they're commonly used is irrelevant.

killed by the bizzies - two shots to the chest (lungs) - FACT (SZ article in German).

Interesting facts, there is an article in the SZ and it is in German.

Other than that it is the usual reporting of somebody discovering that somebody who may have worked with the dog of somebody who can spell palace once saw a vest that might have been the king's with a hole in it that could possibly have been made by something.

Fact is, Ludwig never wore vests, he was bulletproof and he died of the hiccups.

Actually, he died because Gudden opened a window. His last words were "Achtung, Herr Doktor ! Es zieht !", following which he collapsed. The doctor then drowned while disposing the body in the lake.