After 3 great days in Salzburg, Austria, we crossed back into Germany to explore the largest island on Bavaria's largest lake. This area is a huge playground for the Germans and a traditional refuge for its artists.
Some call Chiemsee -- Germany's 3rd largest lake -- the Bavarian Sea. Sounds like they're channeling the chamber of commerce as not even Texans exaggerate that much. Chiemsee is less than 1% the size of Erie, the smallest of our Great Lakes. (If we're talking Alpine Lakes, our Lake Tahoe 6 times its size.) Pronounced "KEEM-zay," Chiemsee's two largest islands contain a Versailles-wannabe (Herreninsel) and a nunnery known for its liqueur and marzipan (Fraueninsel).
To some extent, the lake serves as the world's largest moat for two palaces of the same Bavarian king, the "Mad" King Ludwig. He may or may not have been mad, but he was probably reincarnated in 1958 as Michael Jackson as he was quite eccentric and attempted to bankrupt himself through real estate. (As if you haven't ever been house poor.) Ludwig's first residence here was the old Herrenchiemsee monastery which he acquired in 1873. For him, this was a modest beginning and he left the exterior unchanged since its days as an Augustine Monastery.
While the monastery was founded in 765, it entered recent history books when West Germany held its constitutional convention here in 1948 and turned itself into the Federal Republic of Germany. Note the sundial here facing south to maximize its light.
Here's a distorted panorama of the inner courtyard. These buildings are much newer from the baroque 17th and 18th centuries (but with rather austere exteriors). For its first 4 centuries, the monastery was Benedictine, changing to Augustinian in 1130. It was secularized in 1803 and eventually sold to a lumber company that intended to deforest the whole island. Note the building at far right which has...
... another sundial and some trompe-l'œil royalty looking down on us! King Ludwig bought the entire island before all the trees could be mowed down and today Herrenchiemsee serves as a natural reserve. (For instance, it holds 15 or Bavaria's 23 native bat species. Useful for castles, of course.)
Since 1998, most of these buildings have served as a museum showing some of the 1200 years of Bavarian history the monastery saw and helped make. There's also a 9-room gallery dedicated to on an artist who lived in the Chiemsee area in the early 1900s and started a school to further the avant-garde movement -- Julius Exter.
Archaeological excavations here show some church buildings from before 629. From 1215, the island held the cathedral of the Chiemsee bishops. The important baroque cathedral chapter church had its nave converted to a brewery in 1807. Above we see the former parish church of St. Maria. This simple late-Gothic structure was first built in 1469 with updates around 1630 including...
...the panel painting in the ceiling.
But most tourists come here to see the new place, another of King Ludwig II's fantasies. That was the case for these two at right who were once rich enough to be, like Ludwig, eccentric. After the 2008, market crash, they are now merely odd.
Ludwig hero-worshiped that most absolute of monarchs Louis XIV of France. This is his attempt to replicate Louie's palace at Versailles built about two centuries earlier. Ludwig spent in today's money about $125 million, mostly from his own pocket. When his advisers told him that he had to cut back, he demanded that they seek loans from all the royal families of Europe. Who knows what would have happened here if Ludwig had not run out of time and money. About all he could do was recreate the central pavilion of the Palace of Versailles -- without the wings and other buildings which enhance its magnificence. Let's look at some of the statuary here, starting with the colonnaded entrance.
After 13 different planning stages, construction finally started in 1878. Ludwig II was named after his grandfather, the equally eccentric Ludwig I whose godfather was Louis XVI of France. ("Ludwig" is the German equivalent of "Louis.") Young Ludwig was obsessed with this Bourbon connection and all things Louie XIV.
Note the chicks at left with the chain and at right with snake (maybe Eve without the apple?) Women adored Ludwig II but the affection did not seem to be returned often. Not that there's anything wrong with that but it does make it difficult to put on heirs. He was pretty much a recluse and having a huge palace on a somewhat inaccessible island probably appealed to his hermit and edifice complexes.
This looks like Lady justice, perhaps a very wise Germana. Ludwig was only 18 when he became king about the time American were killing each other through their horribly misnamed Civil War. Ludwig's area had its own North-South conflict and he tried to reconcile the differences between Germany's two great states: his Bavaria and Bismarck's 's Prussia. But he was much more interested in the arts and as time went on, he pretty much ignored affairs of the state, slipping into deeper and deeper seclusion.
How about this "blending" of spears and light poles. Without Ludwig, the Ringheads would be dead. (We're talking the operatic cycle here, not the Lord of.) He championed Richard Wagner throughout his reign even though he could not have a public friendship with the dissolute Wagner.
This group caps the colonnaded entrance but does not appear to be the crest of either Ludwig II or Louis XIV. Architects of this palace were Christian Jank (a theatrical set designer who also architected the "Disneyland" castle of Neuschwanstein), Franz Seitz, and Georg Dollman (a trained architect). The exterior was finished around 1885 and the interior -- as we shall see -- never was.
Upon his untimely death (perhaps murder, perhaps suicide) 50 of the 70 palace rooms were unfinished. Ludwig spent all of 10 days here in his life. That averages out to about $12.5 million per day.
At age 20, Ludwig made Munich ground zero for the revolution of opera by sponsoring the premiere of "Tristan und Isolde" (1865). Later came the premieres of "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" (1868), "Das Rheingold" (1869) and "Die Walküre" (1870).
Despite his many palaces, Ludwig's most lasting contribution to the arts will probably be his sponsorship of Wagner. Politically, he will be remembered as the King who lost Bavaria's independence as it became a state in the German Empire under Bismarck.
Did we fool you? This is not Schloss (Palace) Herrenchiemsee, but rather its model, Versailles. How close did Ludwig come to duplicating the magnificence of the Mansart family's baroque masterpiece? (This photo is from our 2007 trip which we'll upload to the web someday.)
Our mid-summer visit present much opportunity for gratuitous flower shots. Let's now explore the palace park designed by Carl von Effner and inspired by the fountains of Versailles.
While Louis XIV built a great palace at Versailles, all the plumbing was outside. He redirected the Seine river to power his many fountains. But inside, not a water closet was to be found. Not so for Ludwig who installed inside plumbing. Ludwig didn't want to replicate the huge gardens at Versailles but did want the view from the windows of his palace to resemble what could be seen through he windows at Versailles. Therefore the closer fountains bear the most striking similarities.
At the center of the two large fountains just in front of the palace rise tall statues mixing Wagnerian mythic figures with those from classical antiquity such as this goddess statue.
The waterworks were reconstructed from 1970 through 1994 and now run about every 15 minutes.
The Fama fountain.
A most unusual riding position. The winged trumpeter is the goddess Fama ("Pheme" in Greek). She serves pretty much as the patron saint of gossipers. The trumpet lets whispers turn into outrageous rumors. While she may be millennia old, if she came back today we'd probably give her a reality TV show.
Reclining statues strike classical poses around the peripheries of the fountains.
Vertical statues are often putti.
At middle is the other large fountain in front of the palace: The 188405 Fortuna fountain. The model here is not Versailles but a fountain at the royal palace La Granja de San Ildefonso in Spain. That palace, near Segovia, was called the "Versailles of Spain!" European kings shared an ever more restricted set of DNA and ideas about palaces. It got them birth defects and us tourist sites.
Here's a panorama of the two large rectangular fountains visible from the rooms of the palace with the Fortuna at left and the Fama at right. If you want to see fortune and fame in action, we've uploaded a couple crude videos to Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo97Rk9zp_0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtAthQHdPFU .
We toured the interior but were not allowed to take pictures. (These shots are mainly from the US Library of Congress). To some extent, this was our most dissatisfying tour of this vacation. Not only could we not take pictures, we were herded in front of boom boxes playing prerecorded descriptions.
The Ambassador's Staircase is most impressive even with its subdued colors. It imitates that of Versailles which lives on here as the one in France was torn down in 1752, a century before this was built.
This stairway may be more emblematic of the building since it, like much of the interior, was never finished.
The Hall of Mirrors (somewhat longer than even the one at Versailles) pays homage to Louis XIV by copying his exploits in the ceiling paintings at Versailles. (Thanks to Alexander Pasqazi and Wiki Commons for use of this picture.) Maybe this should be called the hall of chandeliers (33 of them) or candle stands (44).
Here's what we might have seen if our Nikon had not been muzzled. (Of course, this is a picture taken with a much lesser camera during our 2007 trip to Versailles.)
This bedroom was modeled on that of Louis XIV who made his awaking and onset of slumber state acts. Ludwig, of course, would have none of that as he became so much of a recluse that he would have Wagner's operas staged with only himself in attendance. Love that communion rail! Ludwig had the bedroom made twice the size of the Versailles model. Ludwig preferred night to day and used his bed as a throne.
I couldn't find a picture of Ludwig's dining room with its magnificent chandelier. Of more interest may be the dining room table that rose from the floor below, probably already set and furnished with food so that ever-more-reclusive Ludwig would not have to see his servants. (By the way, there is no kitchen here. During the 10 days Ludwig stayed here, he must have had to do take-out.) Thanks for viewing. See all of our other travel pictures at www.dickschmitt.com .
