" Rightful King "

Citizens of the U. S. know about Buckingham Palace and Versailles, yet cannot, in the main, so much as pronounce the names of those even more costly and unique royal castles of Bavaria: Herrenschiem-see, Hohenschwangau, and Neu-schwanstein. From them ruled the Wittelsbachs, among the most ancient in lineage of modern Germanic kings, a family of genius often tinged with madness. Last week the head of this venerable and royal house, onetime Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, was visited at his Munich home by delegations of thronging, cheering Bavarians who hailed him as "King Rupprecht, our Rightful King!"

Tears stood in the eyes of Rupprecht, now an aging, disappointed man. "My heart bleeds," he said, "as I see how under the rule of the Republic the beautiful structure of the past is being demolished, piece by piece. . . . The new rulers, animated by a fanatic hate, without understanding of our traditions" or our holy culture, are undermining the whole structure of the Fatherland."

"Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" roared the crowd, while only the royal colors of Bavaria (white & light blue) streamed in the breeze. Impressionable, warmhearted, those jolly South-Germans were on a veritable spree of local patriotism. Prussia, land of shaven polls and square jaws, seemed alien and dis-tant-the Enemy, with its feverish industrialism and its cold, northern Berlin. They were Bavarians, and before them stood their "Rightful King." Was he not even a Hero-King? Certainly he had been a Feldmarschall during the War, and commanded troops which struck fast and far into enemy territory. Suddenly, in a bright emotional haze, there may have swum before minds in that cheering, singing crowd a vision of "the good old days"--days that seemed not so good when they were new.

Perhaps there seem to drum in imagination's ear those feverish midnight hoofbeats which so often heralded (in winter or summer, snow or clear) the approach of the mad yet somehow great King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886). The hoofbeats become a roar, and then the gilded coach or sleigh is seen. In the darkness its powerful interior lighting reveals the King, often in his golden crown, lolling at ease yet disconsolate. A robe of rich stuff lies across his knees and those of the young officer who is always beside him--for Ludwig will have none of women. The mad King loves, and believes he has always loved, Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), wife of Louis XVI. For her Ludwig has built Linderhof, an improvement (think Bavarians) on the Petit Trianon at Versailles. Then, because he admires le grand Monarque, Louis XIV, King Ludwig has built Herrenschiemsee--to surpass even the Palace of Versailles!

The King, shrewd madman, peoples his palaces in imagination with the grands seigneurs and ladies of France. "They make the best company," says Ludwig, "because they always go at the first hint from me." Banquets are given, to "the King of France." Ludwig presides, and bewildered Bavarian lackeys must pour out wine and serve viands to a dozen guests who are not there. King Ludwig jests gravely with the empty chair in which is supposed to sit Louis XVI. To Marie Antoinette the sly Ludwig pays less attention. He must not rouse the husband's suspicions --clever Ludwig! She will slip away soon enough to the great bed, large enough for six, on which mad Ludwig lies beneath a gold embroidered coverlet which cost 2,000,000 gold marks. . . .

Of course the French Queen, King and courtiers were all hallucinations -- or were they? No one knows. Ludwig may have known that they did not exist, may have delighted only in pulling everyone's leg and in squeezing more money for his whims out of his Minister of "Finance than a sane king could ever have secured. Certain it is that he sometimes commanded lackeys to pick up objects which were not there, and, when they pretended to do so, caned them smartly. As a madman, King Ludwig demanded and obtained, among other whims: 1) lifesize clockwork peacocks made to open their wings composed of thousands of bits of colored glass; 2) a sumptuous barge drawn by mechanical swans in which he sailed about as Lohengrin; 3) an artificial grotto simulating that at Capri.

Of his grotto Ludwig made an unmitigated curse. He thought, or pretended to think, that the lighting never exactly reproduced the marvelous tint of blue for which the grotto of Capri is famed. Lights of every sort were tried. Finally enormous arc lights were installed, and in the confined space of the grotto workmen tending them were almost roasted. A courtier protested. "Stop!" commanded King Ludwig, "I don't wish to know how the light is made, I only care to see the effect. It is not right yet!"

It never was.

Such a madman, such a King, could touch the Bavarian heart, fire imaginations, make the very enormity of his follies a .source of national pride. "What country but Bavaria could produce a king so mad as ours?" asked contented tradespeople as they grew rich supplying his luxuries. Even today, Ludwig II, who drowned himself in a fury at last, seems a hero to Bavaria.

Last week "Rightful King" Rupprecht, a Wittlesbach not descended in the "mad" line, must have known not only that the demonstrations in his favor can scarcely culminate in setting him on his father's throne, but also that the demonstrations might never have occurred had not the onetime Wittlesbachs been kings so unforgettably picturesque.

Rupprecht conducts himself at present as an ordinary citizen; though he entertained handsomely at Munich recently a delegation of U. S. World War veterans of German descent who came to pay their respects to a Feldmarschall against whose troops some of them had fought.