The Swan Knight and His Medieval Legacy: Bavaria and Other Germanic realms

Recently I have had and article published on Medievalists.net in which I explored how the Swan Knight legend influenced medieval nobility, inspiring castles, heraldry, and knightly orders across Europe, with the main focus on the Germanic and Dutch ruling houses. It was a momentary departure from the Young King and the Angevins. Simultaneously I have been working on a new blog post which should be published in the opening days of January 2025. Stay tuned!

Hiltbolt von Schwangau (1195-1254), Codex Manesse, c. 1340

King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s world-famous Neuschwanstein (New Swan Castle) is a reconstruction of two medieval Bavarian swan castles, Vorderhohenschwangau and Hinterhohenschwangau. The region of Bavaria itself is called “Swan Region.”

Ludwig’s father, King Maximilian II, used the twelfth-century Hohenschwangau Castle, one of the three ‘swan’ castles, as his summer residence, after it was acquired by the Bavarian royal family. Hohenschwangau Castle was a seat of the Counts of Schwangau, whose prominent member was Hiltbolt von Schwangau (1195–1254), the minnesinger known from Codex Manesse. His helm, attire, and shield carried a black swan as a heraldic emblem. Maximilian saw himself as a successor to the knights of Schwangau and adopted their coat of arms.His son followed in his footsteps, and the swan appeared as a heraldic animal also in Neuschwanstein. Already as a young boy, Ludwig became familiar with the Swan Knight’s legend thanks to the murals in his father’s castle. On 2 February 1861, aged 16, he was introduced to Wagner’s Lohengrin in the Munich Court Opera House and instantly got hooked.

As a result, he came to see himself both as a real knight of Schwangau and the legendary Swan Knight Lohengrin... 

Continue reading here.

Written by Katarzyna Ogrodnik-Fujcik