Exhibitions: Eclectic Eccentric

Everybody (well, nearly everybody) has heard of mad King Ludwig II, the eccentric scion of the Wittelsbachs, who dotted Bavaria's picturesque hilltops with an insanely extravagant clatch of castles, pavilions, hideaways and other architectural follies in the 1870s and 1880s. Was he totally deranged? Not according to Dr. Michael Petzet, 35, the Munich art historian who oversees Bavaria's state-run castle-museums (including Ludwig's). Petzet, pointing out that Ludwig was the patron of Richard Wagner, sees the king as "a creator in his own right, someone who aimed to fulfill what Wagner understood as...

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