by Jon Lackman | 15 November 2007 | Photography
German art historian Siegfried Wichmann has found evidence that “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria died not of suicide but of murder. From the Independent:
He was gay, wildly eccentric and built fairytale castles that today rate as Germany’s leading tourist attractions – but more than a century ago “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria was declared insane, deposed and three days later his corpse was found floating in a lake south of Munich. The real cause of King Ludwig’s death has been a mystery ever since his body, together with that of his psychiatrist, was dragged from Lake Starnberg on 13 June, 1886. But the official version, which holds that he committed suicide by drowning, has never been completely refuted. Now, 111 years after the king’s death, new evidence has surfaced …
Wichmann, a Bavarian art historian and specialist in 19th-century painting, who published a hitherto unseen photograph of a portrait of the king painted only hours after his death. The portrait shows what Mr Wichmann says is blood oozing from the corner of Ludwig’s mouth. “King Ludwig cannot have drowned. This is blood from the lungs and there is no water in it,” Mr Wichmann insisted on Wednesday.
