Dynastic, Social, Psychological and Psychiatric Aspects of the Bavarian Royal Drama of 1886

Abstract

In the royal drama of 1886 King Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned himself, after drowning Prof. von Gudden, who had tried to hold him back from suicide. The psychiatrist had laid the foundation for the king’s dethronement, legal incapacitation and psychiatric internment with the incorrect psychiatric assessment he had been commissioned to deliver. The scandalon was the misuse of psychiatry for the purposes of powerful princes. In civil society under Hitler’s dictatorial regime the individual misuse was replaced by a mass murder of mentally ill persons. In the Soviet Union Stalin’s psychiatrists interned political dissidents on grounds of alleged mental illness.
Influenced by his dynastic ancestry, Ludwig II had strived to establish a Louis XIV-style absolute monarchy, but failed in a period of crumbling monarchies in Germany. In 1871, as the second German Empire was created, Bavaria became a mere constituent state. The loss of sovereignty made the king increasingly disheartened. He reduced his presence in the capital and shunned the dignitaries of his kingdom, as his father, King Max II, had occasionally done. Both suffered from severe bouts of anxiety, trying to flee from anxiety-inducing situations. Ludwig II’s homosexuality only intensified his escapist tendencies.
Like some other European monarchs who built imposing castles as symbols of their waning power Ludwig II, too, erected three majestic castles and created there an ersatz world for the lost absolute monarchy. He adopted myths, legends and dynastic scenes from the paintings adorning his father’s castle and from the works of the composer Richard Wagner. His devotion to art, music, literature and radical pacifism cost him the sympathy of many of his people. Nevertheless, he accomplished his administrative duties with great consistency and accuracy until his final days. He was toppled mainly because of his increasing debt at the expense of his royal family.