At one time there lived a government official in Elsass. He had connections to many importat people and he understood how to gain their trust. One day he met the son of the well-known psychiatrist Dr. Bernhard von Gudden. This son, by the name Rudolf Gudden, a talented artist and Waidmann, enjoyed remarkable importance as an artist at that time. He lived isolated in an old house, far from the next village.
The official, who had always been very interested in the fate of the King and who had read a lot about the subject, somehow got into a conversation with the artist. The otherwise laconic man suddenly seemed to come to live and started to talk about the death of Ludwig II:
„...... when the King started to flee an armed gendarme started to shoot from behind the bushes. The King was hit to severely that he fell forward and bled to death in the water .....“
This information about the truth of the end of the King had already been given to the son of the artist, namely Hermann Gudden, a grandson of Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, by his father and mother, an American. After the death of his father the son not only received his hunting trophies, paintings and many other items, but also a mysterious large trunk. This trunk contained papers and records regarding the death of Ludwig II, as the journalist Volker Stutzer later secretly determined.
At the end of the 1920´s the son, Hermann Gudden, along with his wife Luise purchased the farming estate Ornatsoed. It is a historic estate of the medieval settlement period, very close to the Austrian border in the old domain Gottsdorf. The couple managed the estate in the then typical manner with farm hands, servants and horses.
At that time Volker Stutzer was still a small boy, when his parents became friendly with Hermann Gudden and his wife. Even then Stutzer noticed a shadow hanging over the family. The adults would often speak of the happenings at Starnberger See, but always in conspiring tones and Stutzer noticed that the conversation always ended abruptly whenever he entered the room to ask for a piece of cake and everyday conversation resumed.
Otherwise no-one paid attention to whatever else Stutzer did and because of that he found the trunk and later its contents. The trunk stood in one of the many side rooms of the large house and was decorated with various iron disfigurations. Hermann Gudden had once told him in passing that the trunk was probably a few hundred years old. The lid was secured by a lock.
Stutzer has exact memories of this hot summer holiday when all hands were needed for the harvest. The house was empty and he could just wander around. And so Stutzer came upon the room with the trunk and he found the lock gone. He immediately opened the lid and noticed a stack of papers. The trunk contained printed materials and writing pads, all of which appeared to be heavily worn out. Stutzer especially remembers an orange colored envelope with typeset gothic writing. The contents dealt with Ludwig II. and Dr. Bernhard von Gudden. One of the writing pads contained long passages from the King´s diary and long texts in bold print dealing with the events from right around the time of the King´s death - with word for word witness citations.
Stutzer knew he was doing something wrong and he had discovered a secret. He threw the papers back into the trunk and closed it. He ran out of the room and some of the straw shavings he had on his sandals were left on the hall floor. No-one ever said a word to Stutzer and he also remained silent. But it appeared the harmless little boy had been rummaging around. The trunk disappeared from the room and Stutzer never found out where it was taken.
Many years later, when Stutzer already was a newspaper editor, the telephone rang in his office. The hospital in Obernzell was on the line and the nurse told him to come as soon as possible because Mr. Gudden was dying and he insisted on seeing his friend. Volker Stutzer showed up at the sick bed and took his hand. Stutzer knew Gudden would soon die. In a barely audible voice he spoke to Stutzer:
„Nice of you to come. You are (...) I had to see you under all circumstances. No-one else may come, stay with me, please! (...) And I have to tell you something. A promise obligated me to stay silent. Now I am dying and I am rid it {promise}, you may and have to know {about it}. You once opened the trunk ... the family secret is no more. Talk about it, write about it! Us Guddens always knew that the King did not drown and that our uncle did not murder him and the King did not murder him. The King wanted to flee and was shot in the back from behind the bushes! As a young man I saw the King´s bullet ridden shirt ...“
Then Gudden fell silent and his throat started to rattle. Stutzer wanted to go for help but the dying man held onto his hand and moved his head from side to side as though he was saying no. Stutzer stayed with him and felt his pulse slowing down under the paper thin skin of his hands. The grasp from the hand of his friend only relaxed when his soul left him. Hermann Gudden died on April 30th, 1974.
Rudolf Gudden was already dead when Stutzer saw the trunk and the papers. His son Hermann Gudden, kept much of his inheritance. It is known that a „Gudden Archive“ existed. The papers and documents might have been part of this archive. This archive allegedly was destroyed in Prague at the end of the war.