Christopher McIntosh. The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria. London: Tauris Parke, 2003. ix + 218 pp. $14.50 (paper), ISBN 978-1-86064-892-2.
Reviewed by Steven Welch (Department of History, University of Melbourne)
Published on H-German (July, 2004)
The work under review is an unrevised reprint of a book originally published in 1982. McIntosh's biography of Ludwig II (1845-1886) is a popular treatment aimed at a general audience. With 1.3 million visitors annually herded through Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein castle alone, there is obviously a vast potential readership among those who admire Ludwig's castles and want to learn a bit more about the "fairy tale" king who ordered their construction.[1]
In addition to the vast castle constituency (an estimated 50 million visitors since 1886, according to the official website of the Bavarian Castle Administration), Ludwig II has also continued to attract attention thanks to his role as patron of the composer Richard Wagner and because of the still unresolved mystery surrounding his deposition and death in June 1886.[2] Since 2000, yet another group might potentially be on the search for more details about the Bavarian monarch: those who have seen the musical Ludwig II. Sehnsucht nach dem Paradies in the "Festspielhaus am Forggensee" with the castle of Neuschwanstein serving as the imposing natural backdrop. The synopsis indicates that the creators of the musical have taken what can only be termed extraordinary artistic license in their reconstruction of Ludwig II's biography; the preponderance of myth over fact is staggering.[3]
Those who loved the musical might not find McIntosh's book entirely to their taste, however, since his is for the most part a sober, even rather old-fashioned, biography which largely steers clear of myth-making and seeks to provide a reasonably realistic portrait of Ludwig II. In 1972, McIntosh published a biography of the French occultist Eliphas Levi, and in the opening pages of his book on Ludwig II passages such as the following initially raise fears about what may be in store for the reader: "I was pleased to find a link with my interest in occult history in that Ludwig himself towards the end of his life became interested in numerology and was obsessed by a prophecy attributed to Nostradamus which was believed to related to the House of Wittelsbach" (p. 2).[4] Thankfully, emphasis on the occult rarely intrudes in the subsequent narrative and the occult does not function as a category of analysis or interpretation. Although numerology and Nostradamus do reappear later in the book, these are only passing references and do not serve to shape McIntosh's judgements about Ludwig.
McIntosh's book draws primarily on previously published material, especially the German biographies by Gottfried von Boehm and Werner Richter, and the English works by Desmond Chapman-Huston and Wilfrid Blunt.[5] Although McIntosh states that he examined the dispatches of Sir Henry Howard, the British envoy to Bavaria from 1866 to 1871, in the Public Record Office and claims that these "contain some very interesting observations on Ludwig and his reign," he only refers to Howard's dispatches once (p. 4). His use of Ludwig's so-called "Secret Diary" (which was published in German four years after McIntosh's book originally appeared) is sparing and is linked exclusively to his discussion of Ludwig's troubled sexuality.[6] The one piece of new material drawn from the Geheimes Hausarchiv relates to a project hatched by Ludwig in 1873 to find a piece of foreign territory on which to establish a new kingdom (detailed in chapter 13). But as Wolfgang Mueller's recent book demonstrates, the Geheimes Hausarchiv contains a great deal of interesting and relevant material concerning Ludwig, and it is a pity that McIntosh did not make more extensive use of these rich archival sources.[7]
McIntosh surveys Ludwig's life with a sympathetic eye; in his preface he even describes himself as a "Ludwigite," although just what this means is never explicitly spelled out (presumably this would entail love of Wagner's music, admiration for Ludwig's "fantasies in stone" and appreciation of Ludwig's elitist and highly romantic aesthetic "vision"). But the portrait he presents is one that does not shy away from describing Ludwig's faults, acknowledging that the king was an abject failure when it came to fulfilling his political and administrative duties.
After briefly summarizing Ludwig's youth and mis-education (bad, but not as bad as that of Wilhelm II) in the opening two chapters, McIntosh focuses on five central themes: Ludwig's extraordinary friendship with Wagner (chapters 4-6, 10 and 16); Ludwig's relationships with women (chapters 8 and 9); Ludwig's building projects (chapter 12); the issue of Ludwig's homosexuality (chapter 15); and the final years of Ludwig's reign culminating in his arrest and death (chapters 17-19). His conclusions are unsurprising and basically recapitulate those presented in the earlier literature.
Ludwig's relationship with Wagner is sketched in effectively, and McIntosh makes good use of passages from the pair's correspondence. Ludwig's homosexuality is dealt with frankly, but McIntosh does not reach any firm conclusion on the question of whether Ludwig ever "crossed the threshold from sentimental friendship to physical gratification" (p. 156). Like many authors before and since, McIntosh argues that the psychiatric opinion by Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, assessing Ludwig as insane, was "a rather shoddy piece of work" (p. 186). His verdict, again in line with prevailing opinion, is that Ludwig was certainly mentally unstable but would not be judged as insane today. Following Boehm, he argues that Ludwig's deteriorating mental state and increasingly erratic behavior were probably the result of syphilis. On the issue of Ludwig's death, McIntosh briefly canvasses the possibilities--murder, suicide or accidental death while trying to escape--and, without clearly endorsing any of the options, leans toward suicide as the most likely explanation of the king's death in Lake Starnberg on the evening of June 13, 1886.[8]
Overall, McIntosh presents Ludwig as an outsider and as a victim (the chapter dealing with the process of his arrest is entitled "The Trap Closes"). He detects in Ludwig "a style and panache that are markedly lacking in modern public life" and admires a mind which he judges was "on a quest, sustained by a bright and powerful vision" (p. 204). With this overly generous and positive reading of Ludwig, McIntosh veers rather too closely to an endorsement of the romanticized image of the Swan King perpetuated by followers of the Ludwig cult.
Given the number of publications on Ludwig II in the past twenty years, it would have made sense for the book to be revised rather than simply reprinted. McIntosh's biography is, unfortunately, quite dated now. It is a competent popular treatment which will likely satisfy members of the castle constituency, but it has nothing new to offer to scholars of German or Bavarian history. We are still in need of a reliable scholarly biography of Ludwig II in English which can provide a well-grounded and critical assessment of him both as man and as monarch.
Notes
[1]. Statistics from website of the Bayerische Schloesserverwaltung at http://www.neuschwanstein.com.
[2]. Ibid.
[3]. See the musical website at http://www.ludwigmusical.com/.
[4]. Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (London: Rider, 1975).
[5]. Gottfried von Boehm, Ludwig II. Koenig von Bayern (Berlin: Engelmann, 1924); Werner Richter, Ludwig II. Koenig von Bayern (Leipzig: Rentsch, 1939); Desmond Chapman-Huston, Bavarian Fantasy (London: John Murray, 1955); and Wilfrid Blunt, The Dream King (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970).
[6]. Siegfried Obermeier, ed. Das Geheime Tagebuch Koenig Ludwigs II. von Bayern, 1869-1886 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1986).
[7]. Wolfgang Mueller, "Ein Ewig Raetsel bleiben will Ich": Wittelsbacher Schicksale, Ludwig II., Otto I. Und Sisi (Muenchen: Koehler & Amelang, 1999).
[8]. Mueller has recently argued against the suicide theory and suggested that von Gudden accidentally killed Ludwig while trying to prevent his escape and then in panic committed suicide. See Mueller, pp. 270-278.
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Citation:
Steven Welch. Review of McIntosh, Christopher, The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9630
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