On Thursday we learned that the city museum in Markoberdorf was closed on Friday, the day we had planned our visit there. Following Erich's negotiations over the telephone with employees of the city hall in Markoberdorf, we were promised that a lady would meet us at the prearranged time to open the museum for us. We had no idea what we were about to encounter.

On Friday morning we drove from Fuessen to Markoberdorf to the museum, where an elderly lady was already waiting for us. She greeted us with a friendly smile and allowed us to enter the sacred halls. She even refused money for admission.

After visiting the wonderful and interesting exhibits we visited for a short while with this kind lady and thanked her for making it possible for us to visit the museum. We told her who we were and chatted for some time about our beloved Fairytale King. The lady listened to us with interest and suddenly said:
"I have something very interesting for you!"
She then proceeded to tell us that a close friend of hers owns a document that had much information about the night the attempt was made to arrest Ludwig II. A policeman who was on duty in Schwangau during the night in question had documented this event. By now of course our interest was peaked and we asked this nice, thoughtful lady for the name of her friend. Could it be that we had found a document that had not been published yet? Needless to say that we were fairly excited. This nice lady wrote down directions to her girlfriend's hotel that she owned and since it was lunchtime we decided to go there for a bite to eat. We ordered our meal and debated how to approach the owner and convince her to let us have a copy of this document.

After lunch we asked the waitress if we could talk to the owner of the hotel. The waitress became a little nervous and asked if we had a complaint. We calmed her down by telling her that we were happy with the food and the service. By now the hotel owner had arrived at our table. We told her who we were and asked her to see the document in question. She hesitated at first and explained to us that she did not know for sure were the document was at the time and then she left. We noticed that she began talking to her husband a little distance away. A short time later she arrived back at our table along with her husband who was holding the document we were so excited to see. He handed it to us and we began to study it.

It was a document written by gendarme Ferdinand Poppeler. As one of the witnesses of the attempted arrest of the king on June 10 1886, he had documented the events of that night for the royal squadron.

We knew that this document existed. Transcripts had already been published in various literatures. However, these transcripts were always heavily edited or changed. Now we were holding the original. Reading it proofed a little more difficult because it was written in the handwriting typical of the time in old German script.

The difficult part of our undertaking was still to come. We asked both owners of the document for a copy. Luckily they were very friendly and agreed to our request. That is how we obtained this very important document for our Ludwig research.

The editors of Ludwig II website then asked Sandra, who lives in Fuessen, if she would be interested in transcribing the document for our Ludwig II friends. She eagerly agreed and reported:

"You can imagine what my answer was when I was asked if I was interested in transcribing this document. I began to decipher the writings, which proofed quite difficult at first. Once I got used to the script it no longer presented much of a problem."

Report by Erich Adami