Neuschwanstein - After Ludwig's Death

After Ludwig's Death

At the time of Ludwig's death the palace was far from complete. The external structures of the Gatehouse and the Palas were mostly finished, but the Rectangular Tower was still scaffolded. Work on the Bower had not started, but was completed in simplified form by 1892, without the planned female saints figures. The Knights' House was also simplified. In Ludwig's plans the columns in the Knights' House gallery were held as tree trunks and the capitals as the corresponding crowns. Only the foundations existed for the core piece of the palace complex: a keep of 90 metres (300 ft) height planned in the upper courtyard, resting on a three-nave chapel. This was not realized, and a connection wing between the Gatehouse and the Bower saw the same fate. Plans for a castle garden with terraces and a fountain west of the Palas were also abandoned after the king's death.

The interior of the royal living space in the palace was mostly completed in 1886; the lobbies and corridors were painted in a simpler style by 1888. The Moorish Hall desired by the king (and planned below the Throne Hall) was not realized any more than the so-called Knights' Bath, which, modeled after the Knights' Bath in the Wartburg, was intended to render homage to the knights' cult as a medieval baptism bath. A Bride Chamber in the Bower (after a location in Lohengrin), guest rooms in the first and second floor of the Palas and a great banquet hall were further abandoned projects. In fact, a complete development of Neuschwanstein had never even been planned, and at the time of the king's death there was not a utilization concept for numerous rooms.

When Ludwig II died in 1886, Neuschwanstein was still incomplete. The king never intended to make the palace accessible to the public. But no more than six weeks after the king's death the regent Luitpold ordered the palace opened to paying visitors. The administrators of Ludwig's estate managed to balance the construction debts by 1899. From then until World War I, Neuschwanstein was a stable and lucrative source of revenue for the House of Wittelsbach, indeed Ludwig's castles were probably the single largest income source earned by the Bavarian royal family in the last years prior to 1914. To guarantee a smooth course of visits, some rooms and the court buildings were finished first. Initially the visitors were allowed to move freely in the palace, causing the furniture to wear quickly.

When Bavaria became a republic in 1918, the government socialized the civil list. The resulting dispute with the House of Wittelsbach led to a split in 1923: Ludwig's palaces including Neuschwanstein fell to the state and are now managed by the Bavarian Palace Department, a division of the Bavarian finance ministry. Nearby Hohenschwangau Castle fell to the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, whose revenues go to the House of Wittelsbach. The visitor numbers continued to rise, reaching 200,000 in 1939.

Due to its secluded location, the palace survived the two World Wars without destruction. Under the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzen Gebiete), a suborganization of the Nazi Party, it served until 1944 as a depot for Nazi plunder from France. The works of art were catalogued photographically. (After World War II 39 photo albums were found in the palace, documenting the dimension of the robbery. The albums are now stored in the United States National Archives.)

At the end of the war the German Reichsbank deposited gold in the palace, which in the last days of the war was taken to an unknown place.

In April 1945, the SS considered blowing up the palace to prevent the building itself and the artwork it contained from falling to the enemy. However, the plan was not realized by the SS-Gruppenführer who had been assigned the task, and at the end of the war the palace was surrendered undamaged to representatives of the Allied forces. Thereafter the Bavarian archives used some of the rooms as a provisional store for salvaged archivalia, as the premises in Munich had been bombed.

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace served as a model for the Sleeping Beauty's Castle of Disneyland and became a location for films such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955), Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it is to appear on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicized on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The palace is not on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In 2009, a plan was discussed to make it a transnational candidate jointly with Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces and two similar palaces in Romania: Peleş Castle and Pelişor Castle.

Today, with 1.3 million visitors per year Neuschwanstein is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has up to 6000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau. As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million. In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on April 6, 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte. The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si₂N₂O).