King Ludwig and Queen Marie
A picture very often to be seen in Bavaria is one representing
Maximilian II. and his family in the garden at Hohenschwangau. The
Queen is sitting with Prince Otto on her lap, and the King, standing
beside her, has laid his hand on the Crown Prince's head. He is in
the full prime of his manhood; his wife is radiant with happiness
and beauty.
The lapse of a few years had transformed this family life in the
Bavarian royal castle. The bright and happy Queen had become a widow,
the proud mother a Mater Dolorosa. Prince Otto, the child of her heart,
was hopelessly insane. The admiration which Ludwig had excited, the
great hopes of which at the beginning of his reign he had been the
centre, could not outweigh her fearful anxiety for his future.
Until the middle of the seventies, she and her eldest son had been
in the habit of residing at Hohenschwangau at the same time, the
Queen-mother using the ground floor of the castle, and the young
King the first floor. Though they both loved the place equally well,
and though Hohenschwangau was Queen Marie's dower house, her son's
secluded life caused an alteration in this arrangement also: in
later years he went to Linderhof when she came to Hohenschwangau,
and upon his return she retired to Elbingen-Alp. When they met he
showed his mother great respect; and when, as sometimes happened,
disharmonies occurred between them he restrained his annoyance. But
the Queen-mother's bourgeois view of life never found the key to his
composite nature. Repulsed time after time, she relinquished the hope
of ever winning his confidence, though love still lived in the hearts
of both.
Exactly opposite Hohenschwangau stood an enormous pine-tree on a
projecting rock; lighted up by the declining sun it reminded the
Queen-mother of a Christmas-tree. One winter, when they were both
living at their favourite castle, son and mother kept Christmas Eve
together. The gifts distributed, Ludwig led his mother to a balcony
window. He drew aside the heavy velvet curtains. In the snow-covered
landscape without, glittered a magnificent Christmas-tree; it was
the spruce fir on the rock, which he had caused to be decorated with
lights in order to give her pleasure.
Marie of Bavaria loved the country population; she often and
willingly entered into personal relations with them. The customs of
the peasantry, but above all their deep, childlike sense of religion,
exercised an attraction on her pious mind. By birth a Hohenzollern,
she had been brought up in the Lutheran teaching; her own mother
had been a strict Protestant. As long as Bavaria had been a kingdom
its Queen had belonged to this Church, which the Protestant portion
of the population regarded as a support and help. Disappointment
was great when it was made known that the Queen-mother intended to
enter the Roman Catholic Church. Her relatives in Prussia were also
painfully surprised; her sister, the Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt,
even journeyed to Hohenschwangau at the last minute for the purpose of
endeavouring to dissuade her from her resolution. The German Emperor,
whose heart she had ever been very near, made representations of a
like nature. But life had brought too many trials for her to be led
away by the pressure of others from what she felt to be a matter of
conscience. Sad, but not bitter, she retired from the world and from
her people, whose respect and sympathy followed her in her loneliness.
In the little chapel at Wallenhofen, in all quietness, she changed
her religion.
There is no doubt that many hard struggles had gone before this
step. It was thought that King Ludwig did not approve of her action
because the Protestants of his country so greatly lamented it. But
with his love of free-will, he would not place obstacles in the way
of her desire. At a religious festival in Munich, he himself informed
the public of his mother's decision.