MAD KING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 433, 18 January 1933, Page 7

MAD KING

i LUDWIG il. OF BAVARIA . MANY IRRESPON SIBLE ACTS LEAD TO HIS BEING DEPOSED. WORSHBP OF WAGER Ludwig II, the mad King of Ba- | varia, succeeded to the throne when i he was only 18 years old. ! In youth, only the timely arrival of ! a Court official prevented him strang- ! ling his brother. At the height of I preparations for his marriage to Prini eess Sophie of Bavaria, after he had I ordered the sumptuous brideal coach, S and had niedals struck, he refused to ' aeeompany her to the altaf. In a S demented worship of Wagner, he | would dress as Lohengrin, with silver I armour and towering erest, and float ' all night in a torch-lit gilded shell on 1 the blne-dyed waters, construeted at fabulous cost, amid palms, parakeets, orcl\ids, jmusical fountains, p-ainted scenery, and heavy perfumes — ;all on the palace roof. Then claustrophobia set in. He eould not bear that his fellowmen should see him. He organised a £20,000 a night performance of Wagner operas, and made the company perform to an empty theatre. As the only sepctator of the dazzling display, he hid himself in the depths of a curtained box. He »would fly from his Court and roani incognito among his peasantry; he would go to a hut in the thick of the woods, strip ofT his clothes, and live alone dressed in skins, and he would entertain himself by p4aying on a reed. Then he would talce it into his head to dress again as Lohengrin, go to his eleetric-lit grotto at Capri, and float in armour in a barge drawn by im~ mense cloekwork swans while a prima donna sang to him from the shore. Once he took the prime donna aboard one of his Wagner boats but she was so familiar as to try to run her fingers through the King's hair, so he i pusbed her overboard, and Wagner had to reseue her with a boathook. At ! la.-t Ludwig was deposed and taken to the Castle of Berg. The next day ! (June 13, 1886) a search: party found , him and his doctor dead, floating in a lake. Ludwig's powerful hody did i not exhibit any signs of violenee, hut I the doetor's face was covered with scratches.