Thoughts And Trivia

Exceptional creativity arises at the boudries between normalcy and insanity. The German King Ludwig II, who was declared insane by his relatives, created one of the most beautiful Castle - which I had dreamt of visiting since I was 7 year old boy. <
When I was 7 year old, my father put up on my bedroom wall, a framed photo of a castle taken from the Calendar of Lufthansa Airways. Perhaps he wanted to pass on to his favourite child, the childlike thrill he got from the picture. The castle feavered my imagination and made me dream of the place. It was like a Fairy Tale.
My dream was fulfilled in 1988 (I was 38 yrs old), when I went for a year, to live in West Germany. I had faint memories of this childhood dream. With great difficulty, I could get a person, who could tell me the name of the castle, from my scanty description of a childhood photo.
I went round the castle in a trance. It was really like playing a part in a dream Fairy Tale. I count that visit as one of the high points of my life. The story of castle added to the mystique.
This is the castle (schloß) Neuschwanstein near Munich. Ludwig II called it the "Castle of Holy Grail".
But like all Fairy Stories, the Castle brought only curses to Ludwig. Only after six months, of moving into the castle, his uncle usurped the Reigns, after declaring Ludwig as insane. He was imprisoned in-house and was found drowned, under mysterious circumstances, in lake Starnberg, early in the morning of 12th June 1886.
But what a striking similarity this story has to another dream monument "The Taj Mahal". The Emperor Shahjahan who created Taj, was imprisoned, by his own son, who snatched power from him. Shahjahan went insane in his last days and spent all the time, watching Taj from his Prison cell in Red Castle, which overlooked Taj.
Having too much money/ Power /beauty could be a fatal disease.
Please see the official site of Neuschwanstein.

Posted by Girish Bhatnagar at Sunday, March 20, 2005