Noble Blood - The Swan King Went Mad

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Only days after he was deposed, King Ludwig II of Bavaria died in an apparent suicide. But was it murder? Or was it just the final act of a king who had gone mad with love and with passion, born into the wrong century? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. A 60-year-old banker in Munich named Detlev Udermol couldn't stop thinking about the day in his childhood that he and his mother had gone for tea at the third. home of Countess Josephine von Verbe Countants. Detlev was just 10 years old at the time, and though his father was a prominent financier in Munich society, Detlev was unaccustomed to the grandeur of the countess's home. Every surface seemed

covered in velvet or gilding. Detlev's mother was uncomfortable, too, pulling at her hairdo when the countess turned away, and smiling too broadly when the countess returned, bearing a tray of cakes. Detlew's mother smacked him under the table so that he remembered to fold a napkin on his lap. But the countess didn't seem to notice the discomfort of either young Detlev or his mother. She chatted with the practiced ease of a noblewoman, someone who knew how to fill the silence with lyrical laughter and conspiratorial whispers. Though Bavaria was no longer an independent kingdom, hadn't been since 1870 when it first joined the North German Confederation

and then the German Empire, the Countess Josephine von Verbe Counten was still old Bavarian royalty. Her family were descendants of the Vittles Box, and she herself was a relative of the former Bavarian king Ludwig II. Ludwig II had enchanted the country. He ascended the throne at 18,

young, romantic, and handsome, built enormous fairy tale palaces, and then died tragically, mysteriously, by a suicide by drowning at age 40 in 1886. But that was years ago. The countess finished her tea and put the cup delicately back into its saucer. She leaned in and dramatically cast her eyes around the room before settling them back on young Detlev and his mother.

Do you want to know, the countess said, how King Ludwig II really died. Without waiting for an answer, she swept to the back of the room and pulled open an antique chest. You see, the Countess continued, as the Vittles' box's last remaining relatives, we've become privy to certain personal possessions. With the flourish, she pulled out a gray Loden coat.

At first, Detlev didn't notice anything strange about it, until the Countess flipped it around and he could see two bullet holes straight and clean through the back of the coat. But the king drowned, Detlev chirped, ignoring the scolding look from his mother. Ah, the Countess said, that's exactly what they want you to believe. Detlev didn't tell anyone about that strange afternoon eating cakes and drinking tea in the Countess's drawing room.

Not until he reached 60 and swore a signed affidavit about that memory that kept sticking in his brain. but by then it was impossible to verify. The countess's home had burned down in a fire in the 1970s, a fire that killed both the countess and her husband. Ludwig II looms large over Bavaria, their fairy tale prince. His influence is physical, the massive palaces he constructed during his reign, remain Bavaria's most popular tourist attractions. But he also has a philosophical hold on the people.

He's a beloved, tragic hero whose great misfortune was that he happened to be a romantic, born at the height of the industrial age, and his death continues to fascinate and mystify. The king was found face down in a lake, in water that was only waist deep. The king had been a champion swimmer. No official reports mention a gray coat with bullet holes, but only a day before the king was found dead, He had been deposed by his own counsel, a government fed up with his obsession with building palaces, and then had him declared insane. All we know for sure is the king was found dead,

and anyone who knew the whole story of how or why is long dead by now too. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. On June 13, 1886, just a day after being in time, imprisoned at Berg Castle, Ludwig II went for a walk with his doctor. Though the former king was usually accompanied by attendance, there were none who joined on that walk down to the shores of Lake Stromberg that evening. It was just Ludwig II and Dr. Guden, the doctor who had declared the king insane only days before

in order to remove him from power. The government commission had arrived at Ludwig's castle, Neuschenstein, at four, a.m. three days before, in order to formally depose him. Ludwig had been tipped off by a servant and had local police stationed outside the palace to protect him. But it wasn't enough, nor was the flailing of a 47-year-old baroness who attacked the commission with her umbrella to try to delay them. Eventually a second commission of men arrived, Dr. Guden among them, who seized the king as he attempted to make an escape. How can you declare me insane? Ludwig asked the doctor. you've never seen or examined me.

Dr. Guden cleared his throat. An examination was unnecessary, he said. The documentary evidence was very copious and completely substantiated. It was overwhelming. And so the government installed Ludwig's uncle, Lücholed as regent king and installed Ludwig in a prison palace on the shores of Lake Starnberg. Builders were still putting bars on the windows

when Ludwig and his escorts arrived. The following day, after dinner, Ludwig and his doctor went for that walk. They left at 6 p.m. and the servants expected them back within the hour. By 8 p.m. at the latest if the pair took the long way down the path. But 8 p.m. arrived and the pair was still gone. Servants were dispatched into now heavy rain

to find Ludwig and the doctor. Through gale winds and unrued, relenting downpour, the entire palace staff searched the grounds of the castle and the path by the lake. It wasn't until 10.30 that night that a servant noticed the strange bobbing objects just a few feet away from the shore in the water. He shined a light towards the water and saw the former king's head and shoulders floating. His face bloated and lifeless. The servant shouted it and Mormon came and pulled from the shallow waters of the lake, both King Ludwig and Dr. Guden, whose corpse was floating just a few feet away.

An accident seemed implausible. The water was only waist deep, and the king had been a strong swimmer since childhood. The autopsy report came back with no wounds on his body, but also, strangely, no water in his lungs. So-called dry drownings are possible, but they're rare, usually a very. only occurring when someone dies of a heart attack or stroke before falling beneath the water. The king's watch was stopped at 6.54. The good doctor's autopsy showed blows to the head and neck and signs of strangulation as if there had been a fight. Official word came back declaring that the death of the king and his doctor was a suicide and accidental murder. The king had been trying to kill himself

and had fought against the doctor who was trying to save him. Conspiracy theorist mumble that the king had seemed in fine spirits, and that an autopsy doctor could have easily been paid off to fictionalize the results. Perhaps the king had been shot while he was trying to escape, and the doctor killed as well to prevent any witnesses. Or maybe the king had just been shot as a preventative measure. He was still beloved by the people of Bavaria, and while he was alive, the specter of his reclaimed,

power still loomed. Locales tell stories of overheard gunshots, of commissioned boats and escape plans, but no stories are verified. All we know for sure is the king and his doctor went for a walk one evening and never came back. As a future monarch, Ludwig was raised in lonely isolation with strict tutors who demanded focus and discipline from a prince who tended to spend most of his time gazing out of windows. His brief moments of childhood happiness came at his family's summer palace in the mountains, where the walls were painted with fairy tale murals about the medieval night Lonegrin, the Arthurian Swan King, who comes to rescue a damsel in a swan-drawn boat and marries her before tragedy pulls them apart. And so when young Ludwig first encountered

the opera Lonegrin by the composer Wagner, he felt as though his life had finally come into focus. To call his interest an obsession would be an understatement. He read the libretto daily multiple times a day. He dreamt of Wagner and his opera. When Ludwig finally got the chance to see the opera performed when he was 15, he wept so hard in the audience that his fellow patrons were afraid that his convulsions were seizures. From then on, Ludwig had a single devotion. Wagner. He read his work as if they were religious texts, all based on legends that were familiar to him from the frescoes in his childhood home. In the introduction of Wagner's massive and asiat-unproduced epic, The Ring Cycle, Wagner wrote that he dreamt of a prince with all

the resources and passion to actually ever bring the massive work to his stage. It was as if the words were meant for Ludwig alone. A plea through time met and answered with a solemn promise. When he was 18, Ludwig became king, much younger than he expected, and still far more interested in fairy tales than the minutia of running a kingdom. But the kingdom adored their young, handsome, romantic king,

who stood at 6'4, and his dramatic profile was set off by a thick head of dark curls. He was their poet king, and he knew exactly what the first thing he wanted to do with his newfound power was. I burn with ardor to behold the creator of the words and musings of Lonegren,

he wrote in a letter to Wagner just a few weeks after he became king. Ludwig included a ruby ring and signed photographs of himself as gestures with his generosity and goodwill. He instructed his chief counselor to track down the composure and bring him to court.

The task was more challenging than the counselor anticipated, Wagner was heavily in debt and in hiding. When the court's counselor first approached, Wagner fled, sure the man was a creditor, come to demand payment. But soon Wagner would realize all of his financial worries were at an end. As soon as he arrived to Ludwig's court,

the king wiped his debt clean, ranted him in income and a place to live. You are the world's miracle. What am I without you? Ludwig wrote to Wagner. My love for you, I need not repeat it, will endure forever. He called the composer, sole source of my delight from my tenderest youth onward,

my friend who spoke to my heart as no other did. But devoted as Ludwig was to Wagner, the Bavarian people didn't quite feel the same way. The public had begun to sour to the composer, whose absorbent spending and political dissonance clashed violently with the humbler, more pious sensibilities of the people of Bavaria. Ludwig, although he didn't publicly admit it, was gay. And although there's no proof that his relationship with Wagner was ever physical,

it's clear that Wagner didn't share the king's feelings. While Wagner prudently enjoyed the attention and devotion of the king, he also had a child out of wedlock with the wife of his conductor and engaged with such wild hedonism in Munich that Ludwig's government all but forced the king to banish Wagner from Bavaria. With no choice, the king acquiesced and fell into such a period of despondence

that he considered renouncing his throne and following Wagner into exile. Both Wagner and the king's counselors politely dissuaded him from the idea. And so, instead, while the king continued to fund Wagner from abroad, he also half-heartedly began his attempt to perform at least one of his kingly duties, providing the kingdom in her.

A year after Wagner's banishment, Ludwig announced his engagement to his cousin, Sophie, a young woman who shared his passion for opera. But Ludwig delayed the wedding, first once, and then a second time. And then, after six months, he called, it off entirely. My beloved Elsa, he wrote in a letter after the engagement ended,

Your cruel father has torn us apart. Eternally yours, Heinrich. He was referencing the story from the Wagner opera Lowengrin. The king could play make-believe in letters, but he couldn't bring himself to do it for an entire marriage. With no wedding and no Wagner, Ludwig found another devotion, building palaces.

Hugh would build the grandest palaces in Europe, playgrounds for him to play act operas, and live out his life as he always wanted it, as if he had been born a century earlier. Ludwig began commissioning drawings for castles, engaging not just architects, but theatrical set designers, so the palaces would be dramatic in every sense of the word. The first palace completed was Linderhof,

a Rococo jewelry box in the style of Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. Ludwig called himself the Moon King, the dark shadow counterpart of Louis XIV. The two had a lot in common. They shared the same name, Ludwig is the Germanization of Louis, and the same taste for formal gardens and gilded decor. At Linderhof, Ludwig built a grotto in which he could be roamed. rowed around in a boat shaped like a swan. Through the new miracle of electricity, the grotto was brilliantly lit in changing colors,

as if Ludwig was always on stage. In the woods surrounding the palace, he built a replica hut from the set of Wagner's D'Valkur, with an artificial tree and an artificial sword embedded in it, waiting for the opera's hero, Sigmund, to come pull it free. Another replica, a cottage from the third act of Wagner's Parcifal, was built nearby for the king to spend long afternoons reading inside, his own personal Petitrinon. The moon king was largely nocturnal.

In the winter, when the moon was bright, he would have his footmen in elaborate replica 18th century costumes, escort him on sleigh rides through the snow-covered meadows. Ludwig despised the company of most. people. He had a clever architect design a dining room table for him at Linderhof that descended on a pulley system down into the floor to the kitchen below. There, the staff could set the table and lay it with food. Then, the table would rise again to the main dining room without Ludwig ever having to suffer another person coming into the room to drop off a plate. But the king wasn't

lonely. He spent the dinners in long conversations with the porch. he hung on the walls, heroines of French royalty, Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette. People tended to use the word eccentric more and more often about the king. Before Linderhof was even finished, he began on Nush van Stein, a palace that would be a celebration of all things Wagner and the Swan Knight. The name of the palace itself translates to New Swan Stone. It rose in a white froth from the wooded mountains south of Munich, swirling with high romantic turrets and towers. Inside, the palace was filled with tapestries and murals depicting the legend of the Holy Grail, and, of course, the operas of Richard Wagner.

Swans were everywhere, appearing in murals and carved into furniture, etched into windows in tiny porcelain form. The bedding was filled not with goose down, but with swan feathers. Just off the dining room, Ludwig added an artificial indoor grotto, complete with a waterfall and a rainbow machine that could illuminate it in multiple colors. The grotto also had a false moon that moved through regular phases. Even if you've never been to Nuss-Vunstein, it would look familiar to you. It served as the inspiration for Walt Disney, when he built Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland.

Most royal palaces served a public function with spaces for the activities of royal court. Nushvenstein was an entirely private residence, the king's own private living theatrical space, a shrine to Wagner. The palace ended up costing almost twice its initial estimates and draining the king's substantial personal coffers. He opened lines of credit

all over Europe, borrowing from every foreign royal family he could. But the king wasn't done yet. He was going to build his masterpiece, a scale replica of Versailles in Bavaria that would be grander and more ambitious than anything built before it. Heron-Kimse would be a monument to the divine right of kings, even though by this point Bavaria had been absorbed by Prussia and no longer operated as an independent king.

Ludwig would have a hall of mirrors running nearly 250 feet, lit by 2,188 candles, which he insisted that his servants light every night and replaced the following day with fresh candles. Obsession became mania. In the end, the king would spend less than a week in his never-finished mini-Vorsi. The Ludwig never used the kingdom's funds for his palaces. the government was still made uneasy by his blazé attitude towards spending and debt. They begged him to take an interest in government, to meet with ministers, to do something, anything, other than reading and writing and dreaming and spending,

acting on a stage without an audience. Stories of the king's eccentric behavior kept trickling into government officials who exchanged sideways glances. Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of six million marks to complete his mini Versailles, which was denied. Ludwig was so frustrated he publicly threatened to fire his entire cabinet and replace them all. A few weeks later, a government commission came

to seize King Ludwig II and depose him, saying that the king was insane and unfit to rule. A few days later, Ludwig was dead, a prince who lived in a fantasy and died in the shallow waters of a lake near prison palace. That's the story of the tragic death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about his relationship with Wagner. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodeham. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, at And the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be.

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od and that's exactly what the show is about doing whatever it takes to be the odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns.

I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, no, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media,

get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Today, it's almost impossible to think of Wagner without also thinking, of his racism and anti-Semitism. After all, he was Hitler's favorite composer and Hitler's favorite composer for a reason. Wagner resented the success of Jewish composers

Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Marebier, the latter who loaned Wagner money and who actually arranged the premiere of Wagner's first successful opera, Rensie. Mayerbier was confused and hurt when he first read about Wagner's vitriol towards him, and towards all Jews, in the essay Wagner wrote, called Jewishness in music. In that essay, Wagner argued that Jewish composers would never be able to capture a true

German spirit. King Ludwig II, who remained a devoted supporter of Wagner even after the composer was banished to Switzerland, funded a production of the opera Parsifle under one condition. Wagner had to accept that the opera would be conducted by Herman Levi, the son of a rabbi, and Ludwig's personal couplemeister or head conductor. Wagner balked, saying that Levi should have to be baptized before conducting his opera. But Ludwig didn't back down. Nothing is more repugnant, nothing less edifying than such squabbles.

People, after all, are brothers, in spite of all denominational differences, Ludwig wrote. And so, in 1882, Herman Levi conducted the first one. performance of Parciful. While by all indications, Wagner remained an anti-Semite for his entire life, he and Levi also remained friends. When Wagner died, Herman Levi, the son of a rabbi, was one of his pallbearers. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio and Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky,

Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales and you can learn more about the show over at noblebloodtales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.