Hohenschwangau

Title

Hohenschwangau

Description

View of the castle Hohenschwangau

ca. 1845

Artist

Poppel (1807-1882)

Poppel was a German copper and steel engraver, architectural draftsman, landscape painter and publisher. Johann Poppel first learned copperplate engraving from Johann Martin Friedrich Geißler at the Nuremberg Art School. Building on this, he learned steel engraving in 1829 from Professor Carl Ludwig Frommel in Karlsruhe, who ran a steel engraver there.

Historical Description

It was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was built by his father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria. It is located in the German village of Hohenschwangau near the town of Füssen, part of the county of Ostallgäu in southwestern Bavaria, Germany, very close to the border with Austria. Hohenschwangau was the official summer and hunting residence of Maximilian, his wife Marie of Prussia, and their two sons Ludwig (the later King Ludwig II of Bavaria) and Otto (the later King Otto I of Bavaria). The young princes spent many years of their adolescence here. Queen Marie who loved to hike in the mountains created an alpine garden with plants gathered from all over the alps. The King and the Queen lived in the main building, and the boys in the annex. King Maximilian died in 1864 and his son Ludwig succeeded to the throne, moving into his father's room in the castle. As Ludwig never married, his mother Marie was able to continue living on her floor during the summer months. King Ludwig enjoyed living in Hohenschwangau, however mostly in the absence of his disliked mother, especially after 1869 when the building of his own castle, Neuschwanstein, began on the site of the old Schwangau fortress, high above his parent's castle.