Castles and Camps

Mural inside Neuschwanstein - embodiment of a fantasy.  Many other German folk tales cover the walls.  Very few people were invited to visit the King in his Fairy tale castle - perhaps that would have changed if it had been finished.

  Visions are very dangerous things - especially when their ideals are exclusive rather than inclusive. A vision of an optimal place of learning in a Christian environment kept me happily working insane hours with a team of very talented, dedicated people. That process has benefited many and will continue to, even through the practical compromises that non profit organisations always face. This 7 yr experience of developing a value adding, student focused High school from scratch has helped me to empathise with the complete insanity of two historical characters, that at first glance, seem very different. Obsession with a vision can do more than burn out the obsessee.

View of Hohenschwangau from N

On our last day in Bavaria we scheduled in visits to the manifestations of the madness of King Ludwig II and Adolf Hitler. The former has become a folk hero of the region and the latter a name so infamous that just joking about him had an acquaintance of Willow's German friend excluded from his university 3 weeks before he graduated from his Bachelor course - without it being conferred!

Ludwig II spent many of his summer holidays at Schloss (Castle) Hohenschwangau (High Swan district). His father (Maximilian II) found the ruins of it one summer ramble, named it as the Castle of the Swan Knights and had it rebuilt.  It is richly decorated in side with murals of the Germanic legend of the Swan Knight. Ludwig II was named crown prince mid childhood when his father became King of Bavaria. He was isolated from peers and seemed to have a distant and difficult relationship with both parents and his little brother Otto. He retreated into day dreams of Medieval chivalry and visions of true kingship which incorporated ideas of divine right with the seeking out and creation of beauty. He became King at 19yrs of age.

Swan motifs and artworks are numerous and often priceless - note N in the distance behind the fountain.
We weren't allowed to take photos inside.  The Palace was heated with ceramic stoves that were cleaned, fuelled and stoked by servants creeping down hollows in the walls so the royal family didn't have to be disturbed by this domestic chore.  No heating is used at all now to maintain the health of the amazing murals around all the walls.  Take a very warm coat if visiting in heart of winter.
The Queen's and King's wardrobes were on the floor above their bedrooms and dressing rooms - imagine the task of having to bring down the enormous concoctions they wore. There was a 'secret' passage between the King's and Queen's bedrooms.

Ludwig II was very image conscious and obviously considers his right side to be superior
Left: The young King      Right: One of the reason he gave for his reclusive habits, is that he didn't like the way he looked any more - the imposing style of the Sun King, after his Versailles visit, hid his distress.

Strategic placement of the Swan Knight's Castle

This young King was no puppet and frustrated his parliament by turning down Bismark's (Prussia) offer for Bavaria to remain neutral in the Prussian/Austrian war. Ludwig picked the Austrian side because of Bismark's anti Catholic policies. The Prussians won, which devastated Ludwig's fragile ego and his dreams of being a supreme ruler. The losers were treated with grace which allowed a reconciliation. In the Franco/Prussian War, Bavaria sided with Prussia and after victory Ludwig II suggested that Prussia's king Wilhelm II, become Kaiser over all Germans. Wilhelm's coronation was held in the Hall of mirrors in Versailles and at Ludwig's request Alasc-Lorraine was annexed by the new Germany to keep the French border further from his Kingdom. His time in Versailles bought a hero into his life, one he choose to emulate - Louis XIV, the Sun King. Here he found the ultimate embodiment of his dream of kingship. Another hero was the composer Wagner. His use of German legends, including Lohengrin - the Swan Knight ignited his childhood dreams. Now that he was not much more than a figurehead he used his position to make his imaginings real. To begin with he had Munich's Staatstheater am Gartnerplatz built to perform Wagner's operetta compositions.

Petal enjoying nature.  German purring sounds the same!

Left:  M hanging onto a very high bridge to get a view.     Right:  Willow in the courtyard of the Fairy tale castle

View of Neuschuwanstein from our hotel veranda in Schwangau

To keep Ludwig sweet the Prussians had been secretly paying him to keep his loyalty and perhaps to make this young popular King their fall guy.  This extra income enabled him to put his imagination into reality with his fairy tale building projects. He had set designers and artists paint his designs. He had planned another Fairytale castle to be built on Falcons ridge at the opposite end of the valley to Neuschwanstein but within sight of each other.

Willow and I preferred the carriage to take us to the top
while Petal and M walked up to the bridge

The turnstiles where the barcode on your
ticket lets you pass if it is the correct time

A completely artificial cave created for Ludwig's 'grotto. This alongside a  'Turkish kiosk' bought from an international industries fair and other quirks litter the grounds of Linderhof - an architectural playground.  He had a cave created joining his sitting room in N too, you passed through this to a conservatory  balcony overlooking the valley in the bridge photo above.

In 1873 Ludwig bought an island that had a disused a monastery on it.  He refurbished it and then built a new palace (Herrenchiemsee) having the decor and gardens reflect and rival Versailles. The state bed chamber is noted as being the most expensive room of the 19th C.  The only one of Ludwig's buildings that was completed was Linderhof Palace. Scattered around the enormous grounds - to keep his royal person isolated from the common man, are other little 'scenes' from his imagination.

Herrenchiemsee's Hall of Mirrors

Ludwig had come close to marrying but had jilted his cousin, personal diaries show his strong feelings and attraction to other men but had remorseless guilt because of his strong Roman Catholic beliefs and pressure from parliament to produce an heir. Homosexuality had not been punishable in Bavaria since 1813 but after Prussian control in 1871 this discrimination returned. The tour guide that took us through Neuschwanstein Castle suggested that the massive female figures painted around his bedroom were part of his self directed 'cure' and this shame intensified his natural tendency towards isolation and imagination. 

Even though Ludwig did not use state funds for his buildings, these projects soon had him in great debt.  His frustrations in every area of his life caused him to throw out his council and parliamentarians regularly; the statesmen of Bavaria were driven to having him declared insane. Ludwig was dragged from Schloss Neuschwanstein without ever having heard a performance staged on his just completed Singers Hall. A few days after his internment, at Schloss Berg, his body and his psychiatrists badly bashed body were found in the shallows of the lake.
His brother Otto had suffered from mental illness for a long time so was not considered competent to rule. A cousin became regent, his son declared himself King but abdicated at the end of WWI making Bavaria a 'Free State'.
Within 6 weeks of King Ludwig II's death his castles were open for tourists, Neuschwanstein alone has earned its cost many times over for the kingdom's coffers.

Waterfall on the way up to the bridge, the lake was low so maybe
this is just a piddle compared to normal?

Willow taking in the turrets that Disney's Cinderella
Castle was based on.  The intrepid climbers are on the
bridge when this photo was taken.

Ludwigs oppression and obsession created a legacy that is of great value, Wagner's completed operas and his extravagant buildings.

It also bought personal misery and a very sad end.

Just a note to others wanting to visit Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau - pre book tickets the day before! We stayed at the bottom of the mountain and got there first thing without any queues around but still we had to wait an hour before the first ticket for an English tour was available for the summer palace and they allowed 1 1/2 hours before the tour start of Neuschwanstein after the end of that.  This wasted a lot of time so we weren't able to stop in at Linderhof on our way up to Munich, although we still chose to drive the mountain road that took us past the turn off to it. There was a Bavarian Kings Museum down by the Lake which looked really interesting too but choices and priorities have to be made!  The price of souvenirs and food was predictably overrated. I was glad we had bought the mountain sheep pin for M's hat at the Weiss Church store at half the price.

Snow up on the Linderhof Road
We stopped for a snowball fight

The other Lunatic with a vision that was not as benign as Ludwig's and certainly cost Germany an awful lot more was dreamed up by another man who craved absolute power - and succeeded for a few years. Strangely it was kicked off at Versailles where the allies gave Germany no choice but to sign an agreement for repatriation for starting/losing WWI.  If the politicians of the time had remembered that Austria's ridiculous demands of Serbia (who hadn't even been behind the assassination of the heir) which Serbia had accepted to spare the bloodshed only to have Austria demand that Germany go to war against them anyway had begun the conflict, perhaps they would have been wiser in their demands and may have given no cause for Nazi's to be taken seriously. Unreasonable demands full of vitriol and revenge just fuel the cycle until a cruel and heinous vision makes sense to ordinary folk.

View from Hohenschwangau  - the Austrian Alps

Hitler's dysfunctional childhood was similar to Ludwig's as far as being able to develop meaningful relationships. If his illegitimate Father hadn't changed his name from Schicklgrube to Hielder at the urging of his uncle to take his name, and a clerk in the civic office hadn't misspelt the request, the 'Heiling' of the Third Reich may not have been quite so effective!  Ludwig was fawned upon as a future King and Adolf spoiled as the first surviving child in a marriage of relatives. Neither took kindly to reproof or advice, reacting with sudden temper fits. Adolf fantasied about cowboys and indians as a young boy leading the neighbours in after school games. The focus of this fantasy soon changed to Germanic legends when introduced to them by his Austrian History teacher and a love of Wagner's interpretation of them.  Born and bred in Austria on the border of Germany and hating his father who sent him for a technical education instead of the classical one he craved, Hitler started supporting the Kaiser in direct opposition to his father who supported the Austrian Emperor. Explains the Austrian annexation! The fantastic world of heroes and abject obedience to him that grew in young Adolf's mind was the little train that could juggernaught him to complete insanity.

Part of the Nazi vision was for an economically strong Third Reich which won the full support of the many unemployed and hungry people, slipped in with this was a form of exclusive Nationalism that envisioned a land flowing with milk and honey, peopled with fit hardworking Germans of the same colour. Hitler wasn't only dreaming about fancy buildings (he had his own architect for a pretty fancy no corrosive art museum - see the movie 'Monument Men' for a look at the plans) but of a whole nation that wouldn't ever be slighted or rejected again.

Built with prison labour.  Factories were built next to all the satellite camps to take advantage of this 'resource'.
The memorial sculpture is as stunning as it is awful. The corpses are twisted into barbed wire, the memory of their abuse forming a barrier to it ever happening again. A competition was run to select it and Nandor Glid's won.  It is about 2m wide which is difficult to see in this shot.  

The cold drizzle really bought home
how people forced to stand on parade
for hours in their thin prison uniforms
and nothing in their stomachs for days
must have thought they had arrived
in hell.

Once in power this angry man deleted all opposition.  The list was long, any one who objected was taken as a political prisoner and locked up at Dachau just outside of his adopted hometown of Munich. This was one of the first concentration camps and at first allowed visitors and if people survived their term they were let out. Artists, authors, professionals and politicians who objected to book burnings and Kristallnacht all found themselves stripped of all belongings, showered with caustic soda, shaved and pajamaed.  Dachau was a 'model camp' that other commandants were sent to for efficiency observations. Photos, personal information were all noted on individualized cards. Deaths from typhoid, starvation, hard labour(work will set you free) and experiment were listed as natural causes and those from execution or escape as suicide.

Things changed later in the war and people started being incarcerated at Dachau for ethnicity and religious views. Although a gas chamber was eventually built on the site it was never used. The executions for disobedience happened in the court of the Crematorium where the bodies were disposed of.  Out of 500 German clergy who protested SS tactics and were bought to the camp in 1944, only 82 survived the war.

When looking for the 'Dachau Concentration Camp' look for signs that say KZ Gedenkstatte or you'll never find it.

The building to the right was the Camp Commandant's. To the left are faint remains of the rail tracks bought right up to the gates of the camp.  Part of the platform still stands.  It was chilling to imagine the men thrown out of cattle cars and ordered to form ranks to march into what was left of their lives.

The punishments and medical experiments described by survivors made my skin crawl. How can one man's insanity have unleashed the horror of ungoverned cruelty in so many.  An incredible museum has been set up as a memorial. Photos, journal entries, smuggled out letters in code and much of the paperwork of the so efficient SS guards. Ever since reading my first novel set in a concentration camp I wondered what the locals had thought of the afternoon smoke.  Even without that proof of violence, in the village of Dachau (now a suburb of Munich) many of the townsfolk belonged to the Volkssturm (resistance) and assisted the few escapees. An armed attempt at liberating the camp in April 1945 became a bloodbath at the hands of SS troops.

Left: An illegal photograph taken by a Belgian prisoner of the working crematorium. There was no explanation of how.
Right: Our photograph through the bars of a gate - no access.

Left: Guard tower in the distance that looks remarkably similar to the telegraph exchange boxes dotted around Bavaria.  The ditch is a no mans land that prisoners and guards all understood that stepping foot in meant death by machine gun. Some prisoners chose this end to their misery.   Left of the people walking are the foundations - all that remains of the barracks. Two have been rebuilt as models to show typical living conditions. The barbed wire in the foreground is a clear inspiration for the close up of Glid's sculpture on the Right.

 Willow and I were only half way through the Museum when closing time came around - I was just about to enter the second half - behind Petal and M when a guard blocked my way, shook his head and said 'Nein, nein.' I know he was 'just following orders' but it made me feel angry, scared and sick all at the same time. Before I could lash out with the suppressed anger at what had happened to those who had been here in the past, I managed to get hold of my own sanity and behave with an appropriate 2014 response - thankfully leaving 1944 behind.

When it was just a political prison  - on display in the museum
I decided not to take photographs of the punishments and medical programmes that were exhibited in the museum.
I would rather dwell on the miracle that people in desperate circumstances can still have hope and create beauty.
It somehow gives you hope in humanity.

In dystopia literature, newspapers, politics and religious services, people are asked to fight for what they believe in.  I have to ask, is any vision worth the oppression and hatred it takes to force all to agree. Fight to protect against evil forces perhaps but even then only as a last resort.

There are four chapels at the end of the long avenue from the Museum to the gate to the crematorium. The one in view is the Catholic memorial. At the time of liberation this space was bursting with people. 

If little Adolf and little Ludwig had had more love and considered encouragement, perhaps they wouldn't have ended in misery. If the real world is kind and beautiful children do not need to retreat to fantasy to cope with rejection, hurt and confusion. I dread to think of the results of Syria, the Nigerian kidnappings, the Hallelujah army, misappropriated aide after natural disaster, the blocks put up against Obama's gun law amendments, stop the boat legislation...  Take care of your circle.

These Aussie girls had their first taste of falling snow on our way back to Schwangau

It didn't take too long before the snow settled.  Left: A huge farmhouse with a second story bridge to its own chapel.

See mum there will be enough for a snow man!  

Hohenschwangau with a dusting of snow.

Hoping that the road snow gauge (front left) isn't required in the morning!

Ice cream coloured streets of Fussen
as we leave Bavaria behind.

Read:
The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson Fourth Estate London 2014
I bought this novel because I really enjoyed his debut novel 'The 100yr old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared'. See my April 10 2013 blog for details.
Same engaging writing style but I could have done with a few less 'plot twist frustrations' that were really replicas of each other. Loved how he managed to tie South Africa emancipation with Swedish Republicanism, Israeli Nationalism and Chinese human rights.  The characters didn't have the depth of the 100yr old man.

A long quote because he writes long sentences and gets to his point in a curly sort of way.

"Countries and television companies all over the world were mulling over what attitude they should take towards the birthday concert that had been arranged in honour of Nelson Mandela on his 70th birthday in June 1988.  Mandela was a terrorist after all, and he would have stayed that way if only superstar after superstar hadn't thought otherwise and made it known that they wanted to attend the concert, which was to be held at Wembley Stadium in London.
For many, the solution was to recognise the event and yet not.  It was said, for example, that the American Fox Television, which broadcast the concert after the event, first edited out any part of the speeches and songs that might seem political in order to avoid irritating Coca-Cola, which had bought advertising slots during the programme.
Despite all this, more than 600 000 000 people in 67 countries ended up watching the concert.  There was really only one country that completely quashed any news of what was going on.
 South Africa."  p197