on the 13th of July 1886 the body of Ludwig II the so-called mad king of Bavaria was found floating in two feet of water on Lake Sternberg the timing is everything that he was forced to be removed from Neuschwanstein and within 24 hours he was in the castle of Bergen he was dead the official verdict given by the authorities was suicide by drowning but the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and the strange events that took place in the lead-up to it have led many to believe it was no suicide and that he was in fact
killed by his own government who have covered up his murder for over a hundred years there is a theory that he was actually involved in an escape attempt there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that are outlandish and strange but I think that the death of King Ludwig in my mind certainly looks like it could have been a murder and I find it very strange that we still can't see the bones of King Ludwig because I think they'll probably show that Ludwig was shot thank you it's one of the most enduring mysteries in
German history a king loved by his people but hated by his government the death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria has been the subject of intrigue and investigation for over a century how did a king once famous for his eccentric behavior and fairy tale castles end up being declared insane removed from his throne and come to be found floating face down in shallow water near the shores of a remote Lake was his death the tragic result of suicide or as many now believe the murder of a Crown Monarch foreign of Bavaria is responsible for some
of the most famous and important landmarks in Germany these castles and monuments bring in billions of euros worth of Tourism to the country each year but they are also the reason for Ludwig's downfall born in Munich in 1845 Ludwig was the eldest son of Maximilian II of Bavaria and his wife princess Marie of Prussia from the outset Ludwig was constantly reminded of his Royal duties to come knowing his son would one day be king Maximilian put him into a strict regime of study and tutoring in the hope of molding him and was strong and capable
ruler he was certainly being prepared from a very early age to take up the the mantle of King and he was certainly drilled and regimented um you know he would get up at six o'clock in the morning to do homework and study his whole day would be timetabled out right up until eight nine o'clock at night by which time he had a free time but the rest of the time it would be spent in language it would be spent in exercise it would be spent in learning Latin and Mathematics so he was already being groomed
for one without a word for the moment when he would Ascend to the throne which happened a lot earlier than anyone was expecting in the time Ludwig was a child all the people around him were talking about his special behavior because he wanted to be alone he wanted to read books he wanted to sit alone in the mountains or nearby the castle his childhood home was Castle hernshvangel near the town of fussen in modern day Germany here he would enjoy spending his time reading poetry and discovering his love of classical music and Opera even as
a child he would lock himself away from the outside world a habit that would go on to be the main cause of his troubles in later life John Whetstone is a historian of Bavarian culture specializing in the life of King Ludwig II he read a great deal and uh spent a lot of time more or less creating a world which he wanted to live in world of uh romantic stories they're old Legends and all these particular stories and myths are things that were deeply embedded in Ludwig from off he was fascinated of chairman Legends and
Frames from the Middle Ages low hang green townhouser for example he loved the mountains he loved walking in the mountains he loved sleigh rides at night he loved the open air he loved the the scenery of Bavaria he left the the The Peasants and the the farmers he felt very much at home in this world he was raised to be king from the beginning he had absolutely no choice and I believe he knew that it was a matter of time before he would become king Ludwig was a very a feat figure he had a very
romantic air and in fact he would have been a far better poet or painter or musician an artist rather than a king after a brief and unexpected illness his father Maximilian II died in March of 1864. Ludwig who had just turned 18 was crowned king of Bavaria shortly afterwards I'm not sure that he wanted to be king in the sense of it was a dream realized I think he was born to be king he saw it as his Destiny and he took that Destiny very seriously indeed his model for being a king was Louis XIV
and he was intrigued by the fact that Louise the French version of Ludwig and so for him the absolute monarch the one who ruled by divine right the one who says I am the state that was the king Ludwig wanted to be I think like any flamboyant character ostensibly flamboyant character King Ludwig was actually incredibly shy a very Solitary Man a very insecure man Above All Else he really really enjoyed the pleasures of solitude I think he liked being alone with his thoughts with literature he would read all night as king of Bavaria he had
become a monarch at a time when kings were going seriously out of fashion and so he sees the role of Monarch as being something he literally has to play so when he goes out in public he kind of adopts this very what he thinks is a very Regal walk in which he sort of pushes one foot forward the other foot forward and of course you know behind his back all his subjects are kind of laughing at him because he looks a bit preposterous described by the French poet Paul velan as the last true king of
Europe and I think to an extent that is accurate he was certainly the last true king of Bavaria as it had existed for a large part of the 19th century one of Ludwig's first acts as King was to summon the man whose work had inspired him during childhood the German composer Richard Wagner Ludwig had a lot of pet projects um and probably his most enduring Pet Project came in the form of Wagner the composer Richard Wagner um and Wagner was a man who would spend a lot of money he was often poor impecunious and desperately
in need of assistance and when this man's music talks to me you know I I am the embodiment of the true Bavaria um and this whole mythological idea of the mountains and the forests and this great Teutonic myth is both encapsulated in Wagner's music and indeed in me Ludwig so it's a brilliant cultural fit for the two men The Works of Richard Wagner would go on to become one of the foremost sources of inspiration for Ludwig's future construction projects the same construction projects that would eventually prove to be his downfall and they became very intimate
but I think it was more of an evuncular relationship in a way King Ludwig was Wagner's Muse you know the ring cycle would not have been written without King Ludwig of Bavaria Wagner himself when the ring cycle of operas is completed actually says this would not have been possible without Ludwig II when it was first performed he made a speech in a front of the stage acknowledging Ludwig II as being not just the the patron that made this possible but I think also the kind of he gave him he gave him the space he gave
him the the freedom to create these great works foreign close attention to building his cultural and artistic Legacy the Bavarian government were growing increasingly frustrated by his disinterest in the running of the country they thought that marriage May settle the errant King and also provide an heir to the throne for the continuation of the dynasty but finding a match wouldn't be easy for all his Charisma I think he was profoundly reticent profoundly shy I think the role of the king weighed heavily upon him so he was very formal even with close friends so I think
it was very difficult for him to have emotional physical relationships with anyone Miss Bish did can't survival homosexuality men again to God foreign foreign there's a part of his life during his adolescence where I believe he was heterosexual and towards the end of his life he tended to have more attraction towards men because it was less complicated as friendship it was soon noticed that Ludwig was not going to be a conventional Monarch he paid little attention to the usual mundane matters of government instead he would seek ever more creative ways to fulfill his interests Ludwig
was an absolute expert at amusing himself over a wide range of activities he would get actors to recite poetry to him all the time he loved the theater he was a devoured place and would quite often have have them perform privately for him single biggest expenditure and certainly the one that undid him in the end was the huge amount of money that he poured into his castles Ludwig had become obsessed with the idea of building a fantasy world around him a world that separated him from his people and kept out the government he had come
to loathe could it have been this decision to shut himself away that would later lead to his downfall well I don't think any other king in Europe in the late 19th century built as many palaces as King's Ludwig it was quite extraordinary I think that once it became clear to him that his role as a king was going to be quite heavily circumscribed by politics and by statecraft he moved more and more into the worlds of architecture and building particularly creating these amazing dream palaces these castles where he wished to spend most of his time
he had very little interest in government or in his people for that matter and his obsessions were channeled into building these Fantastical series of palaces there's Linda Hoff which is like a smaller Baroque Palace nestling in the Bavarian Countryside and then there's Heron kimsey this huge um tribute to the Versailles of Louis XIV um he poured massive amounts of money into these projects and became increasingly criticized for first of all spending all that money on them secondly spending all that time there or around them or supervising them rather than looking at looking after the Affairs
of his people shh probably his most famous architectural Endeavor was Neuschwanstein Castle nestled on a rugged Hilltop in the schwanger region of Germany it's a Living testament to his artistic extravagant and expensive taste venstein Castle was an homage to Wagner into the Grail Legends and the Medieval Era it was so Fantastical that Walt Disney based the Sleeping Beauty Castle on Neuschwanstein foreign Castle he was totally in love with what he built in Neuschwanstein the dramatic design was inspired by the operatic works of his friend Richard Wagner Ludwig even employed his set designer as one of
the architects it took thousands of tons of building material and over 300 Craftsmen working around the clock to try and complete it by the deadline 30 of whom lost their lives in the process but all of this came at a huge expense he wasn't interested in what anything costs so um and this definitely had an effect on his life because the other members of the family couldn't stand seeing every penny of the family fortune literally thrown out of the window as they say Bayern had spent years begrudgingly standing in for his nephew at official state
occasions while Ludwig spent his time plundering the family well could it be this continued frustration that would later lead to his involvement in a plot against the errant King a king initially funded his building projects his palaces with Sovereign wealth but when that was exhausted he turned to money lenders in Europe and when that was exhausted it became very problematic by 1885 Bavaria was on the brink of a financial Fallout and Ludwig had managed to amount a debt of over 14 million marks nearly 350 million euros in today's money the Bavarian government are getting increasingly
concerned about Ludwig's expenditure and they're realizing that it's out of control castles cost a lot of money to build they're not cheap building projects the Bavarian prime minister Johan Von Lutz urged Ludwig to economize but rather than curb his spending Ludwig made plans for even more elaborate and decorative construction projects when Von Lutz demanded he cease with any further building work Ludwig threatened to dismiss the entire government Ludwig could quite often be very capricious about his ministers and would often fire them for shall we say the flimsiest of pretexts even if they'd served him Faithfully
I think it was you ran a great risk of saying no to Ludwig you are now running into serious open hostility between the Royal household and the political world and these two are going to keep clashing under the law of the Bavarian Constitution the king had the right to fire his ministers and install a new government of his choosing but there was also another law if it could be proven that the King was not mentally fit to rule he too could be removed from power both the Bavarian government and Ludwig have an ace up their
sleeve now the Bavarian government's Ace is the ability if they can get literally declared mad they can depose him however Ludwig 2 has an Ace and he has the power to get rid of the government now that's obviously not something you can do lightly but he knows he can't just play it straight away so it's now going to be a case of who's going to Blink first is it the government or is it Ludwig fear of losing their positions the government decided to act first van Lutz hatched a plot to have Ludwig declared mentally ill
and removed from the throne to replace Ludwig he made a deal with his uncle Louis pauld who he promised to declare Prince Regent of Bavaria so long as he went along with the plan but having a king declared insane is no simple task he would need help Dr Bernhard Von Gordon was one of the most respected psychologists in Germany during the late 19th century he had also treated members of Ludwig's family in the past Dr Gooden was a Pioneer in Psychiatry and he'd been brought in to assess King Ludwig's brother Prince Otto who he actually
did declare insane Dr Gooden was asked by the government by Lutz to assess King Ludwig he was recruited by a combination of the parliament and the family to make a decision on Ludwig's stability or instability to rule as as king decides to play his Ace first and he says listen you have got to assemble as much data as you can in order to uh give me a report that shows that Ludwig is definitely mad and therefore I can depose it but Gooden had a problem how could he diagnose Ludwig without alerting him to the plot
here are the Bavarian State archives in Munich they hold a vast collection of papers relating to the life of King Ludwig director of The Archives Dr Gerhard imler has spent many years studying the collection which also includes Dr Gooden's psychological report here we have the medical report written by Dr Von Gooden and signed by three other doctors of medicine which states that the king is mentally ill the report certainly States a lot of facts which describe very eccentric strange or even silly Behavior by the king for example when a servant needs to go to the
king he is not allowed simply to go through the door or to knock at the door but he has to scratch at the door he is not allowed to speak anything he has to try to make himself understandable by signs with his hands and when the servants serve the king his meals they are not allowed to look at the king but also not to look at at the meal Dr Van guten thought that they are all proof of the king suffering of a certain mental illness which at that time was called paranoia foreign but how
could Gordon diagnose Ludwig with such a serious condition without even meeting him all this stuff has to be done remotely it has to be done through hearsay it has to be done with interviews carried out in secret and and therefore it's not probably the most reliable form of psychiatric evaluation might one might hope for legitimate it this method of compiling a medical report without seeing the patients by the fact that the king lived a extremely close life naturally there are a lot of symptoms which are correctly described as very eccentric behavior and therefore modern psychiatrists
and say that well it was not paranoia it was not paranoic schizophrenia but the king really suffered from a quite severe personality disorder thank you he had given the government the ammunition they needed to have Ludwig declared insane that was Gooden's report fair and unbiased was Ludwig actually mentally mentally escaped the islands foreign was well within the Realms of acceptable human behavior I think that he was just a somewhat unusual figure but you know being unusual uh does not see you uh condemned to an insane asylum uh actually you know he was a perfectly normal
romantic defeat um slightly Johnny head in air figure um he wasn't mad Ludwig clearly did not think he was insane when he was taken into custody but one of the things that his supporters were frustrated with is that he was not really coming up with a plan to defend himself I think he was a little bit Frozen in indecision some people have claimed that his lack of action was a sign of his mental instability but a recently discovered letter now in the possession of the Bavarian State archives is said to be the last letter ever
written by Ludwig it shows that far from him being indifferent to the situation Ludwig was well aware of the plot and was actively trying to stop it about one year ago this archive was able to acquire Ludwig's probably last letter he wrote in his life if you have it here he wrote this letter to his cousin Prince Ludwig Ferdinand and to whom he had the quite friendly relationship most beloved cousins forgive the bad scripture I'm writing this in haste today I found myself confronted by two of my ministers who tried to obtain my abdication this
is the most disreputable conspiracy who is behind this I don't know but I presume it to be Prince loopholed keep all of this temporarily to yourself but please Endeavor to find out what you can from the people you trust I have heard the rumors of my sickness these are falsities solicited from people by way of payment and not one word is true we must shine a light on this with Rock Solid trust and deep love your cousin Ludwig he asks him to explore the situation in Munich and to inform him who else is a member
of the conspiracy the king perceives which is going on against him so this letter shows that the king wrote it he was in a quite clear State of Mind but help never came after a short standoff Ludwig gave himself up to the government and was taken into custody as per his agreement with the government Louis pold was made Prince Regent to rule in his nephew's absence Ludwig was shocked uh he staggered he nearly fainted he thought that this moment was still a long way off he thought he still had cards to play he allows himself
to be detained and arrested and he knows that his monarchy is effectively over I mean this must be just an absolutely tragic moment for him when he's in effective captivity he is treated with respect but he must be internally Going Through Hell Ludwig was taken to castleberg on the shores of Lake Sternberg in Bavaria there he was to meet with Dr Gooden who had been appointed by the government to be the king's personal physician the official course of events is very straightforward uh both Gooden and Ludwig decide after dinner like a couple of gentlemen they
want to take the air and have a bit of a constitutional along the the shores of Lake starnberg came through this gate at about 6 35 in the evening and walked along this path what happens next again on the surface seems very simple these two men after some hours still haven't returned and naturally back at the Schloss there's a lot of concern Personnel at Castle Berg immediately started a search party they came down this path looking for them their search efforts were frustrated by the fact that it was raining that night windy stormy and it
took several hours until one of the members of the search party decided to search the shoreline they find two bodies floating face down in the lake they're fished out and one of them to their horror is Gooden but even greater horror the other is Ludwig for over a hundred years debate has raged about exactly what had happened on that fateful walk along the lake with many suspecting that Ludwig had been the victim of Foul Play remember assessing kindergs deaths the timing is everything that he was forcibly removed from neuschweinstein um within 24 hours he was
in the castle of berg and he was dead to my mind it's incredibly strange that two perfectly healthy grown men can go for a walk along a lake after supper and they end up face down dead drowned the official verdict released by the government concluded that Ludwig had committed suicide by drowning what is certain is that Ludwig had somehow thrown off his coat and jacket at the same time so he'd actually done it in one gesture and there were certainly signs on Von Gooden that he had been in some kind of physical struggle his his
hands were scratched and I think a nail was was missing actually this is the first place where there were signs of a struggle between Ludwig and Dr Gooden after the bodies were recovered the Physicians discovered that Dr Gooden was missing half a fingernail they later discovered that half a fingernail in Ludwig's Overcoat apparently what happened here is that Ludwig Dash and Gooden tried to grab him and in this struggle lost part of the fingernail one theory is that Ludwig now genuinely maddened by the fact he's lost his power and his status gets into a fight
with Gooden on on the sides of the lake and during the struggle uh perhaps drowns Gooden and then drowns himself or perhaps even the other way around um and that is what the official inquiry will suggest what interpretation is put on that is another matter for example they both drowned and yet they were found in floating in water that was really not deep enough for a grown man I am suspicious of the official government Theory and one reason has to do with the dry drowning Theory one of the most contentious issues about the case concerns
the fact that Ludwig was found floating on the surface of the lake which some believe indicates that his lungs had not filled up with water prior to his death this is something that is usually confirmed in the autopsy report concerning the King's death we have an autopsy report here first we have an introduction a short so-called Protocol signed by three people by the Lord Chamberlain by the minister of the royal house and Foreign Affairs and by a secretary of that Ministry the doctors don't say anything explicitly about the cause of the King's death but they
describe his mortal remains as the corpse of a man who had round in water who wrote the report didn't say anything explicitly about water in the lungs some people believe that the autopsy report which was commissioned by the government may have left out vital information pertaining to the real cause of Ludwig's death on right is a forensic consultant with a specialist interest in historical cold normally when we breathe our lungs are full of air and obviously if we enter a lake and we drown our lungs become full of water I'll demonstrate that balloon full of
air symbolizes a lung full of air if we place it in the water it floats when we drown and our lungs are filled with water and the two large air sacs that we have in our body become dead weights the balloon full of water sink slows the bottom so if Ludwig didn't die from drowning what exactly did happen many people believe that both the government and Prince lewitt board had no intention of ever letting Ludwig leave his confinement as they feared that if he could prove that he was not insane then they would be put
on trial for treason foreign conspiracy theories out there that are outlandish and strange but I think that the death of King Ludwig to my mind certainly looks like it could have been a murder and I find it very strange that we still can't see the bones of King Ludwig because I think they'll probably show that Ludwig was shot there was a fisherman living in the town of berg here on the other side of the castleberg and there is a theory that he was actually involved in an escape attempt Jakob little was Ludwig's personal fisherman working
on Lake Sternberg he is alleged to have left behind a written account of what happened that day after Ludwig's death he never talked about what happened that night there's some evidence that Jacob little confided in his diary and he wrote that he was waiting in a boat for King Ludwig and his Ludwig approached his boat and was climbing in was shot in the back by the armed guards foreign but the autopsy was commissioned by the government which could have been the same body that would have shot King Ludwig so of course they're not going to
find proof of their own foul doing in 2007 the Bavarian art historian ziegfried Vickman came forward with a sketch by the 19th century German artist Hermann karlberg vekman claimed that the subject of the drawing was none other than King Ludwig himself and it was made just moments after his death interestingly it appears to show blood oozing from the subject's mouth if this is a picture of Ludwig and this is blood this could very well indicate internal injuring or internal trauma however this may well be another individual it's very unreliable evidence and these Shadows could be
anything from pencil marks to Shadows on the drawing many experts disagree on whether the person depicted in the sketch really is King Ludwig and with little known about its Origins it is hardly solid proof Professor Wilhelm liebhart from the University of Augsburg is one of the leading authorities on King Olympic II he has a theory that instead of the king being the victim he was in fact the murderer foreign believes that a struggle broke out as Dr Gooden tried to prevent Ludwig from escaping but things turned violent and in a fit of rage Ludwig killed
the man who had caused him to be removed from his throne horrified what he had done Ludwig decided not to flee instead he walked out into the lake and took his own life he murdered he was a murderer should we simply accept the official verdict given by the government with so much conflicting information and so many unknowns will we ever really know what happened that day by the lake oh will Ludwig remain in death much as he did in life a mystery I doubt that we will ever find out what happened to him and that's
why I think this is Germany's greatest unsolved mystery King Ludwig's an enigma because we simply don't know enough about him and he died too young I suppose I think anybody who's a figure of Fascination um to the population be it Marilyn Monroe King ludwiga Bavaria will attract um conspiracy theories I suppose that might explain why people say that you know the the autopsy on King Ludwig is incorrect or it had been it had been doctored because Rick this subject for the Bavarian government for the royal family this subject is closed they're they're definitely not interested
in any um in reopening this situation drama it's it's an opera in itself and who wouldn't want to be the star of that certainly Ludwig would have loved it if you accept it's implausible that the two middle-aged men can walk along a lake and end up dead after an hour then you're gonna have to accept the fact that would have been a cover-up and the only way we could get the bottom of it is to have a look at Ludwig's bones and if there's any gunshot wounds on his bones then that will suggest that the
report was a cover-up but until we can do that it's always going to be a mystery foreign I personally believe that the mystery is far more interesting and Far More in line in keeping with Ludwig's life than any kind of solution he was a mystery he was about poetry and romance and drama and you can't get more poetic or more romantic or dramatic than dying in such strange circumstances thank you
