Munich has a lost royal garden. As with so much that surrounds the legendary King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886), the myth has its roots in reality. That King who once said of himself ‘I want to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others’ is now an established part of Bavarian folklore in his own right, something to which his activities consciously contributed during his lifetime. Not least his nightly journeys driven by liveried footmen through the Bavarian Alps, in Neo-Rococo sleighs which survive in the Bavarian collections at Nymphenburg Palace’s Marstallmuseum [Stable Museum]. Here was a King whose childhood was romantic in the extreme, raised against a backcloth of lakes and mountains, for whom the swan became the perfect royal leitmotif, a bird of beauty, solitude and medieval saga. In Munich’s so-called Wintergarten [Winter Garden], Ludwig’s swans were present and may be seen on the graceful painting by Julius Lange.
Swans filled Ludwig’s life. Like the peacock that he loved, they were a royal bird. He made a skilled drawing of one on a lake with a tree and was painted feeding swans with his mother Queen Marie of Bavaria and younger brother Prince Otto, in watercolour by E. Rietschel when he was only aged five. At Hohenschwangau, the neo-Gothic castle of Ludwig’s childhood, swans were on the walls as was the legendary swan knight Lohengrin. There were porcelain swans at Neuschwanstein. Ludwig II would later be given a pair of swan cufflinks to Richard Wagner, his musical god, and when he died, a Lohengrin costume was pathetically, discovered amongst the clothing which the King left behind (Wilfred Blunt, The Dream King, 63).
What makes the Wintergarten so unique is the fact that it was constructed not in a palace courtyard or park, but on the roof of the Munich Residenz, the winter residential complex of the Wittelsbach dynasty in the centre of Munich. The fact that it has not survived has only contributed to its fabled quality. In this garden, we see much of the imagery of Ludwig’s childhood as well as his future architectural ideas, with his penchant for the exotic. We might think of the famous Venus Grotto at his later palace of Linderhof, with its own artificial lake and swans, across which Ludwig would be rowed in a shell boat.
The fascinating divide in Ludwig’s artistry meant that he strove for a lost medieval ideal, often embracing technology to create the false effects necessary. His Wintergarten was an early example of this. In this, Ludwig was typical of his own century, the nineteenth – which he in fact despised – an age of technical advance and Romanticism, with the love of the Gothic. We might argue that without technology, many of Ludwig’s medieval fantasies could not have been created. Ludwig said of all this: ‘I don’t want to know how it works, I just want to see the effects’. (cit., Blunt, 151).
Ludwig’s Wintergarten was not the first to be constructed at the Residenz. His father, Maximilian II had the roof next to the neo-classical Königsbau removed and planned to create a type of palm house in the space between that and the old theatre. This was built from glass and iron to the design of Franz Jakob Kreuter, whilst the actual construction was carried out under August von Voit between 1851 and 1854. Ludwig II took inspiration from his father’s ideas and wanted a Wintergarten of his own creation. This new Winter Garden was constructed in the northern tract of the Kaiserhof, on the roof of the Festsaalbau.
The descriptions of it are fantastical and the few photographs of 1870/71 that survive do not do it poetical justice. It is the lush painting by Julius Lange with its swimming swans and foliage that lends us something of its magic. Ludwig filled the Wintergarten with plants and a Moorish kiosk or pavilion, an example of which would later be built in the park at Linderhof. On the artificial lake, the young King allowed himself to be rowed about in a boat, against a backcloth showing the exotic mountains of the Himalayas (ed. Peter O. Krückman, Die Residenzen der Wittelbacher, 29).
August von Voit began on Ludwig’s Wintergarten in 1869, whilst its landscape design was supervised by the Hofgärtendirektor, [Court Gardener] Carl von Effner. Ludwig clearly loved this creation in the centre of that Bavarian capital he disliked, and by 1871, Effner was instructed to order bananas and date palms, as well as a pair of gazelles and even an elephant (Blunt, 92) but the latter were apparently not delivered. The King’s love of the Orient can also be seen in his Königshaus am Schachen, his royal house on the Wetterstein mountains, where he had his famous Turkish Room.
Extraordinary anecdotes survive about this Winter Garden on the roof in Munich. Ludwig II had made an artificial moon which apparently fell into the constructed lake and leaked into the room below where his mother, Queen Marie was sleeping. On another occasion, one of the singers from the theatre which he admired, fell into the artificial lake supposedly by accident hoping the romantic King – who was an excellent swimmer – would come to her aid. Instead, Ludwig coldly rang for a servant and simply ordered that the singer be pulled out like a fish (Ibid, 93).
The most vivid impression of the Wintergarten is the breathless account left by the Infanta Maria de la Paz, who visited it. She wrote that ‘with a smile the King drew the curtain aside… I saw an enormous garden, lit in the Venetian manner, with palms, a lake, bridges, pavilions and castellated buildings… A parrot swinging on a golden hoop cried “Good evening!” to me, whilst a stately peacock strutted past. Crossing by a primitive wooden bridge over an illuminated lake we saw before us, between two chestnut trees, an Indian town… Then we came to a tent made of blue silk covered with roses, within which was a stool supported by two carved elephants and in front of it a lion’s skin…’
The Infanta had the extraordinary privilege of being conducted over the Winter Garden by Ludwig, so her impression is all the more important, as only the very few honoured guests were given admittance to Ludwig’s oriental garden, something which undoubtedly contributed to its mythical quality: (https://schloesserblog.bayern.de/residenz-muenchen/traeumen-und-schwitzen-unter-glas-der-wintergarten-ludwigs-ii, Retrieved 24/10/2019):
‘The King conducted us further along a narrow path to the lake, in which was reflected an artificial moon that magically illuminated the flowers and water-plants… Next, we came to an Indian hut, from whose roof native fans and weapons were hanging… The King invited me to take the centre seat at the table and gently rang a little hand-bell… Suddenly a rainbow appeared. “Heavens!” I involuntarily cried. “This must be a dream!”’ (cit., Ibid, 92).
The garden was very much in keeping with those royal palm houses which stood in the parks of Europe’s palaces, such as that at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, or the Prussian palm house on the so-called Peacock Island, that belonged to King Frederick William IV (Blunt, 248). Even Nymphenburg Palace – where Ludwig was born – had its own palm house. Palms and exotic fruits filled the tables of aristocratic Europe and were a sure indication of wealth and social status because not only what you put on the table but crucially, when it was placed there, was a sign of what was affordable in and out of season. It was also for Ludwig one suspects, a form of culinary travel.
Of Ludwig’s fabled creation – unlike his castles of Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and Neuschwanstein, nothing now remains. Ludwig’s apartments at the Residenz did not survive the Second World War. The Wintergarten was abandoned almost immediately (https://schloesserblog.bayern.de/residenz-muenchen/traeumen-und-schwitzen-unter-glas-der-wintergarten-ludwigs-ii, Retrieved 24/10/2019) by the Prince Regent Luitpold after Ludwig’s deposition and death and finally dismantled in 1897 (Blunt, 92).
Today, an exhibition at the Munich Residenz’s Hall of the Knights of St George explores the Winter Gardens of Maximilian and Ludwig II in text and photographs. Both are vanished royal gardens – on roofs.
©Elizabeth Jane Timms, 2019
