Like most secret societies that wear pointy hoods, the Guglmanner are a bunch of middle-aged men who are bitter about something. In their case, it is the reputation of Bavaria’s most famous king, Ludwig II — builder of fairy tale castles, patron of composer Richard Wagner and the last king of independent Bavaria before it was forced to join the new German Empire in 1871.
Ludwig died 128 years ago on June 13, 1886, but the Guglmanner are convinced that he did not, as the official version goes, drown in Lake Starnberg after going mad and strangling his physician.
‘ASSASSINATED’
Instead, they say that he was shot twice in the back by Otto von Bismarck’s secret Prussian agents as he was trying to escape across the lake. And so, Bavaria should never have been part of Germany in the first place.
“It’s like with Crimea and Ukraine — they never really wanted to belong,” senior Guglmann Richard H says. “The problem was that Ludwig never wanted to be part of the German Empire, but was forced into it because of the war Bavaria lost against Austria. Ludwig was always working against the empire and was secretly negotiating with France to get Bavaria free again. In the end the risk was too great for Bismarck — so Ludwig had to go.”
PUBLICITY STUNTS
The Guglmanner (Gugl is an old word for hood — they are named after the hooded mourners that accompanied medieval funerals) know how to stage a good publicity stunt. They have marched through Munich carrying flaming torches, once sank balloons into Lake Starnberg printed with the slogan “It was murder!” and this year, apart from the usual commemoration, they intend to release a 15-minute historical crime-scene sketch that will explain the “true circumstances” of the king’s death.
Despite their special demands (they once lobbied for a Bavarian euro coin featuring Ludwig, rather than Germany’s eagle, which is too Prussian for them), the Guglmanner see the EU as an opportunity.
“There are other European regions where the people had to become part of nation-states in the 18th and 19th centuries,” Richard H says. “But today, we could be given independence under the EU. The old nation-state is out of date.”
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