Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lola cancanned her way around the world; her increasingly lurid show was very popular with
gold miners in California and Australia. Next came a book of 'beauty secrets' and a lecture tour
featuring topics such as 'Heroines of History and Strong-Minded Women'. She shed her Spanish
identity, but in doing so, Lola - who had long publicly denied any link to her alter ego, Eliza - be-
came a schizophrenic wreck. She spent her final two years as a pauper in New York, dying of
pneumonia and a stroke aged 43.
The Mystique of Ludwig II
No other Bavarian king stirs the imagination
quite as much as Ludwig II, the fairy-tale king
so tragically at odds with a modern world that
had no longer any use for an absolutist, if en-
lightened, monarch. Ludwig was a sensitive
soul, fascinated by romantic epics, architecture
and the music of Richard Wagner. When he be-
came king at 18, he was at first a rather enthu-
siastic leader; however, Bavaria's days as a sovereign state were numbered. After it was
absorbed into the Prussian-led German Reich in 1871, Ludwig became little more than a
puppet king (albeit one receiving regular hefty allowances from Berlin).
Disillusioned, the king retreated to the Bavarian Alps to drink, draw castle plans, and
enjoy private concerts and operas. His obsession with French culture and the Sun King,
Louis XIV, inspired the fantastical palaces of Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Her-
renchiemsee - lavish projects that spelt his undoing.
In January 1886 several ministers and relatives arranged a hasty psychiatric test that
diagnosed Ludwig as mentally unfit to rule. He was dethroned and taken to Schloss Berg
on Lake Starnberg (Starnbergersee). Then, one evening, the dejected bachelor and his
doctor took a lakeside walk and several hours later were found dead - mysteriously
drowned in just a few feet of water.
No-one knows with certainty what happened that night. There was no eyewitness or
proper criminal investigation. The circumstantial evidence was conflicting and incom-
plete. Reports and documents were tampered with, destroyed or lost. Conspiracy theories
abound. That summer the authorities opened Neuschwanstein to the public to help pay off
Ludwig's huge debts. King Ludwig II was dead, but a tourist industry was just being born.
In 1923 a postage stamp cost 50 billion marks, a
loaf of bread cost 140 billion marks and US$1 was
worth 4.2 trillion marks. In November the new
Rentenmark was traded in for one trillion old
marks.
