King Ludwig II: his life, his end by Julius Desing

This slim volume (which exists in a number of different language editions) recounts the life, obsessions, downfall and mysterious death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria – better known as ‘Mad King Ludwig’, the sponsor of Wagner and builder of the fantastic castles of Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and (most spectacularly) Neuschwanstein.

The English is quaint, the attitude distinctly uncritical (there is a minor cult surrounding Ludwig and this booklet definitely panders to it), Ludwig’s possible homosexuality is definitely not challenged and the other Bavarian politicians are painted as villains. Bismarck has a cameo role, but is generally portrayed as a hero (despite his playing little part in the story of Ludwig). No explanation is given for Ludwig’s mysterious death, and although conspiracies are hinted at, the booklet at least does little to fuel pointless speculation.

We would probably not identify Ludwig as ‘mad’, merely perhaps as a little obsessive. History has generally not been kind to him, but this booklet is a bit too much the other way.

Altbau-Elektroloks; Farbbild-Raritäten aus dem Archiv Dr. Rolf Brüning, Band 1 by Rolf Brüning

Great Britain came late to railway electrification, with the first inter-city mainline scheme – the Woodhead route between Manchester and Sheffield – not being completed until after World War 2. Things were different on the Continent: main-line electrification had been mooted since the mid-1890s and schemes were being put in place from the first decade of the 20th century onwards. The locomotives for these schemes were rather different to electric locomotives we see today: switchgear and transformers were bulkier, and motors could not initially be axle-hung as they are now, meaning that electric locomotives of the era required either connecting rods or complex transmissions to transfer motive power from motor to wheel. The configuration of electric locomotive we are familiar with, with axle-hung motors on two power bogies beneath the main bodywork of the locomotive only began to emerge in the later 1930s and 1940s; and even then, the more or less streamlined “box on wheels” only became the norm in the years after the Second World War.

The resulting locomotives were as ugly as a box of frogs but nonetheless possessed a certain amount of charm, with ventilation grilles, insulators, bonnets, pantographs and different wheel arrangements in profusion. Examples can be found all over Europe; but the Germans, as is their wont, coined a word for them in more recent times – “Altbau-Elektroloks”, or “Old-fashioned electric locomotives”.

This book celebrates the German locomotives of that first era through the colour photographs of Dr. Rolf Brüning, who spent a good part of the 1950s and 1960s puttering around Bavaria and Baden-Württemburg on a moped photographing these beasts in their natural setting. The resulting pictures do a lot to recapture that era, both in terms of the trains themselves and the landscapes they were set in. A few of the photographs are less than perfect in terms of composition or lighting, but for the most part this is an interesting collection. The second volume will cover railcars and multiple units (for which the Germans have the extremely useful portmanteau word “Triebwagen”).