King Ludwig, Musician and Madman
Count Alfred A. Hessenstein
This is the third of Count Hessenstein's four talks in this series. He gives an arresting picture of Ludwig, the eighteen-year-old king, walking like a young god, tall and slender, beside his father Maximilian's coffin. This timid young man, in whom the people of Munich saw a fairy-tale prince, became in four weeks an imperious young monarch. But the pith of the story is that he became again like a little frightened child when he first met Richard Wagner. Listeners will hear about the resentment of Franz Lenbach , the ' painter of kings ', when King Ludwig changed Munich, the city of painters, into a city of musicians. Count Hessenstein will trace the story of King Ludwig's life and reign ; his eccentricities ; his loneliness, after Wagner's death, when he became the scandal of the world.