Ludwig II of Bavaria
Ludwig II, better known as “Mad King Ludwig” (1845 – 1886) was Bavaria’s king from 1864 until his death in 1886. A generous benefactor of the arts, he was an admirer and patron of the composer Richard Wagner, and during his reign, he devoted himself to artistic and architectural projects, including opulent fairy tale castles whose construction he lavishly funded to the point of bankrupting himself.
After Bavaria joined the German Empire in 1871, Ludwig withdrew from governance, and concerning himself only intermittently with affairs of state, went into morbid seclusion and devoted himself to his true passion: the arts. He worshipped the theater and the opera, especially the works of Richard Wagner, whose lifelong patron he became.
He also developed a mania for extravagant building projects in the Bavarian mountains. He started with the Linderhof Palace, patterned on the Trianon palace and built between 1869 to 1878. Simultaneously, he started construction of his most famous project, Neuschwanstein, a fairy tale castle precariously situated on a crag and decorated with scenes from Wagner’s operas, built from 1869 to 1886, and which inspired Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. As that one was being built, he started an even more ambitious project in 1878, the Herrenchiemsee Palace, a copy of Versailles. It was never completed because the Mad King went bankrupt.
Between the abandonment of his official duties, profligate spending, and withdrawal into the life of a recluse among other odd behavior, Ludwig’s ministers finally had enough, and in 1886 he was declared insane by a panel of doctors and sent to a remote palace by a psychiatrist. Three days later, he drowned himself in a lake and took his psychiatrist with him. Today, the Mad King’s architectural and artistic legacy includes many of Bavaria’s biggest tourist attractions.