#Financial Metrics

[lunaamorris]

Key Financial Metrics Every Amazon Seller Should Track

Amazon sellers should track key financial metrics such as revenue, profit margins, cost of goods sold (COGS), inventory turnover, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Amazon accounting ensures accurate tracking of these metrics, helping sellers evaluate performance, manage cash flow, and optimize pricing strategies. Regular monitoring allows for data-driven decisions that improve profitability and long-term business success.

[well-educatedmillennial]

How to Use the Interest Coverage Ratio for Financial Analysis

I published a new article exploring the intricacies of the Interest Coverage Ratio—a vital tool for assessing a company's financial health and its ability to meet debt obligations. Give it a read to enhance your understanding of financial analysis!

Among the myriad of financial metrics used to assess a company’s fiscal well-being, the Interest Coverage Ratio stands out as a fundamental indicator. This ratio sheds light on how comfortably a company can pay interest on its outstanding debt, offering insights into its operational efficiency and financial stability. This article delves into the intricacies of the Interest Coverage…

[asj-ventures]

EBITDA: A Key Financial Metric for Evaluating Company Performance

When it comes to assessing the financial health of a business, a variety of metrics are at your disposal. Among these, EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) is critical for evaluating a company's operational performance. Understanding EBITDA is essential for making informed decisions whether you're an investor, business owner, or financial analyst.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore what EBITDA is, why it's important, how it's calculated, and its pros and cons.

What is EBITDA?

EBITDA is a financial metric that provides insight into a company’s profitability from its core operations. By focusing on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, EBITDA strips away the effects of financing decisions, tax environments, and non-cash accounting practices, offering a clearer picture of operational efficiency.

Simply put, EBITDA measures how much profit a company generates purely from its operations before the influence of financial and accounting decisions. This makes it particularly useful when comparing companies within the same industry, as it levels the playing field by removing variables that might skew profitability comparisons.

Why is EBITDA Important?

EBITDA has gained popularity as a key metric for several reasons:

Focus on Core Operations: By excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, EBITDA zeroes in on the earnings generated by a company's core business activities. This focus allows investors and analysts to assess a company's operational efficiency without being distracted by its capital structure, tax strategies, or accounting policies.

Comparative Analysis: When comparing companies in the same industry, EBITDA is invaluable because it neutralizes the effects of differing tax rates, depreciation schedules, and financing structures. This makes it easier to see which company is truly performing better operationally.

Cash Flow Indicator: While EBITDA isn't the same as cash flow, it does serve as a proxy for a company's operating cash flow. Because it excludes non-cash expenses like depreciation and amortization, EBITDA can give a sense of how much cash a company generates from its operations, which is crucial for meeting short-term obligations.

Valuation Metric: EBITDA is often used in valuation models, such as the EV/EBITDA ratio, which compares a company's enterprise value to its EBITDA. This ratio is popular among investors because it provides a quick way to assess whether a company is undervalued or overvalued relative to its peers.

How to Calculate EBITDA

Calculating EBITDA is straightforward but requires access to a company's financial statements, specifically the income statement. Here's a basic formula:

EBITDA=Net Income+Interest+Taxes+Depreciation+Amortization

Alternatively, you can calculate EBITDA from operating income (EBIT) by adding back depreciation and amortization:

EBITDA=Operating Income(EBIT)+Depreciation+Amortization

For a more hands-on example, consider a company with the following figures:

Net Income: ₹ 500,000

Interest Expense: ₹ 50,000

Taxes: ₹ 100,000

Depreciation: ₹ 80,000

Amortization: ₹ 20,000

The EBITDA calculation would be:

EBITDA=500,000+50,000+100,000+80,000+20,000=750,000

This ₹ 750,000 represents the company's earnings from its core operations before considering interest, taxes, and non-cash expenses.

Pros and Cons of Using EBITDA

While EBITDA is a powerful metric, it's important to understand its strengths and limitations.

Pros:

Simplicity and Comparability: EBITDA is easy to calculate and widely understood, making it a useful tool for comparing companies across industries and geographies.

Focus on Operating Performance: By excluding non-operational factors, EBITDA highlights a company's ability to generate profit from its core business activities.

Excludes Non-Cash Items: Since depreciation and amortization are non-cash expenses, EBITDA can provide a clearer picture of cash flow from operations.

Cons:

Ignores Capital Expenditures: EBITDA does not account for capital expenditures, which are critical for maintaining and growing a business. A company with high EBITDA but significant capital expenditures might still struggle with cash flow.

Not a GAAP Measure: EBITDA is not a standard GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) metric, which means companies might calculate it differently. This lack of standardization can lead to inconsistencies.

Potentially Misleading: By excluding interest and taxes, EBITDA might give an overly optimistic view of profitability, especially for companies with high debt levels or those operating in high-tax environments.

EBITDA in Context: Industry Examples

Different industries have varying capital structures, tax environments, and levels of capital intensity, making EBITDA more or less relevant depending on the context.

For example:

Technology Companies: In the tech industry, where companies often have high R&D costs but relatively low capital expenditures, EBITDA can be a useful measure of operational performance.

Manufacturing: In capital-intensive industries like manufacturing, EBITDA might be less indicative of financial health because it ignores significant capital expenditures required to maintain and grow operations.

Service Industries: For service-based businesses with low capital intensity, EBITDA can be an excellent indicator of profitability since there's less need to account for depreciation and amortization.

Leveraging EBITDA for Informed Decision-Making

EBITDA is a powerful metric that can provide valuable insights into a company's operational performance, making it a staple in financial analysis. However, like all financial metrics, it should be used with other measures to get a complete picture of a company's financial health.

For investors, understanding EBITDA can lead to better-informed decisions, especially when comparing companies within the same industry. For business owners, it offers a clear view of operational efficiency, helping identify areas for improvement.

In the end, while EBITDA has limitations, its ability to cut through the noise of non-operational factors makes it an indispensable tool in the financial toolkit. Whether you're assessing a potential investment, comparing industry peers, or evaluating your own business, EBITDA should be a part of your analysis.

Get More Information at ASJ Ventures Share Market Classes - ASJ VENTURES

[artisticdivasworld]

The Power of Data Analysis and Integration for Your Business: Why You Need to Start Now

To keep your trucking business financially healthy, it’s crucial to track revenue and expenses accurately. Data analysis helps you monitor income from various brokers and customers, and keep a close eye on every cent of your expenses. By integrating financial data from multiple sources, you get a clear picture of your cash flow, enabling you to make smart decisions. We touched on this topic once…

[techmarkethunter]

Understanding Market Cap: A Comprehensive Guide and How to Calculate It

Title: Understanding Market Cap: A Comprehensive Guide and How to Calculate It Introduction: Market capitalization, commonly known as market cap, is a crucial metric in the world of finance and investing. It provides investors and analysts with valuable insights into a company’s size, relative value, and potential for growth. In this blog post, we will delve into what market cap is, its…

[threadbenderart]

Discover the distinctions between ROI (Return on Investment) and ROA (Return on Assets) in this informative guide. Learn how these financial metrics can help you make better business decisions and maximize your profitability.

[wani-yasir1]

Financial Ratios Cheat Sheet: 17 Ratios for Informed Investing

In the dynamic world of finance and investment, knowledge is power. Understanding financial ratios is crucial for investors looking to make informed decisions and optimize their portfolios. In this financial ratios cheat sheet, we’ll explore the most important financial ratios used for investing, explain how to calculate them, and demonstrate their practical applications. Whether you’re a novice…

[singhary]

Importance Of Turnover Ratio Formula And Its Examples

The turnover ratio formula is a financial metric that measures the efficiency of a company’s operations by analyzing how effectively it utilizes its assets. It is a valuable tool for investors, analysts, and managers to assess a company’s performance and make informed decisions. The formula calculates the number of times a company replaces its assets over a specific period.

The importance of the turnover ratio formula lies in its ability to provide insights into various aspects of a company’s operations. A high turnover ratio indicates that a company is efficiently managing its assets, generating substantial sales relative to its investments. This suggests that the company is effectively utilizing its resources and has strong operational efficiency. On the other hand, a low turnover ratio may imply inefficiency, excessive inventory, or underutilization of assets.

The turnover ratio formula can be applied to different asset categories such as inventory turnover ratio, accounts receivable turnover ratio, and fixed asset turnover ratio. For example, the inventory turnover ratio measures how quickly a company sells its inventory and replenishes it. A higher ratio indicates that the company is selling its inventory quickly and efficiently.

Overall, the turnover ratio formula provides valuable insights into a company’s operational efficiency and asset utilization. By analyzing and comparing these ratios over time or against industry benchmarks, investors and managers can make informed decisions regarding investment, production, inventory management, and overall business strategy.

Also, Read our blog post “What Is A Good Sharpe Ratio? — Explained With Formula!” to understand how the Sharpe ratio can help you evaluate investment performance and make informed decisions.

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

oh lord... i've done it lol... i'm going to tit lol

[smile-files]

getting my roommate to read 17776!!!!!! let's go gaymers

[well-educatedmillennial]

Earnings Per Share (EPS): A Key Metric for Well-Educated Investors

As markets evolve, understanding key financial metrics is paramount for investors worldwide. This article on Earnings Per Share (EPS) aims to equip you with essential knowledge for making more informed investment decisions.

Imagine you’re considering investing in two companies. Company A’s stock is priced at $50, while Company B’s is at $100. Which one is the better deal? At first glance, you might think Company A is cheaper and therefore a better investment. But what if I told you there’s a helpful metric that could provide additional perspective? Enter Earnings Per Share (EPS) – an important tool that can enhance…

[secretstalks]

How Paytm’s financial strategy is changing under CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma leadership

Paytm is shifting its strategic focus to achieving profitability in terms of profit after tax (PAT) instead of concentrating solely on operational profit before employee stock option (ESOP) costs. This shift was announced by founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Thursday. Previously, Paytm had committed to reaching profitability before accounting for ESOP costs, which is a measure akin to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA).

Sharma emphasized that the company is evolving beyond merely focusing on EBITDA before ESOP, as this metric alone doesn’t fully capture a company’s financial health. The new goal is to mature as an organization and attain profitability based on PAT.

For the quarter ending June 30, 2024, Paytm reported a widened loss of ₹840 crore, compared to ₹358.4 crore for the same period last year. Additionally, consolidated revenue for the quarter fell by 33.48% to ₹1,639.1 crore from ₹2,464.2 crore year-over-year.

During the annual general meeting (AGM), Sharma also highlighted the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on various sectors. He forecasted a notable increase in automated vehicles over the next five years and stressed that AI technology will significantly affect financial services. Sharma pointed out that India, having made substantial progress in financial technology, is well-positioned to lead in AI advancements as well.

Paytm plans to bolster its AI capabilities in several areas, including risk management, credit risk assessment, fraud prevention, and insurance underwriting.

Furthermore, Paytm’s Chief Financial Officer, Madhur Deora, revealed that the company has invested considerable efforts in collaborating with local law enforcement agencies, including police, cyber cells, the enforcement directorate, and the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO). These collaborative workshops are aimed at helping investigative bodies understand and address the emerging challenges and types of crimes in the digital payments sector.

READ MORE

[food-software]

Benefits of Menu Consolidation

Restaurant menu consolidation involves refining and reducing the number of items offered on a menu to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. This strategic approach can lead to several benefits for restaurants, from lowering operational costs to enhancing the dining experience. Here’s a closer look at how menu consolidation can positively impact a restaurant.

Streamline Kitchen Operations

One of the primary advantages of menu consolidation is the streamlining of kitchen operations. By reducing the menu size, chefs can focus on a smaller set of dishes, which leads to faster preparation times and a more consistent product. This efficiency can significantly decrease kitchen stress during peak hours and reduce the likelihood of errors, ensuring that customers receive their meals promptly and as expected.

With fewer dishes to prepare, restaurants can manage inventory more effectively, reducing waste and minimizing costs associated with unused ingredients. This focus also allows for better allocation of labor, as staff can become more proficient in fewer, more refined tasks.

Enhance Customer Experience

Menu consolidation can also enhance the customer experience. A smaller menu makes decision-making easier for customers, which can lead to quicker ordering and a more satisfying dining experience. Additionally, by focusing on fewer items, restaurants can ensure higher quality and freshness, factors that customers will notice and appreciate.

Consolidating the menu often encourages chefs to creatively focus on their best dishes, which can help define a restaurant’s identity and draw in customers looking for specific culinary experiences. Restaurant menu consolidation is not just about cutting down choices but enhancing the overall brand and customer satisfaction.

In conclusion, menu consolidation offers significant operational and experiential benefits. By simplifying menus, restaurants can improve both the efficiency of their service and the quality of their offerings, leading to happier customers and a healthier business model.

Read a similar article about ghost kitchen here at this page.

[dhallblogs]

Public Sector Banks to Match Private Sector on Key Metrics, Reports S&P Global.

Mumbai: According to a recent report by S&P Global, public sector banks (PSBs) in India are poised to close the gap with private sector banks on several key financial metrics. The government’s move to merge smaller public sector banks with poor performance indicators with larger state-owned lenders resulted in improved economies of scale. Simultaneously, the central bank’s focus on improving asset quality across the banking industry helped state-owned banks improve their performance in criteria such as problem loans, profitability, and return on assets, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

ALSO READ MORE- https://apacnewsnetwork.com/2024/07/public-sector-banks-to-match-private-sector-on-key-metrics-reports-sp-global/

[mcmansionhell]

on neuschwanstein castle (part 1)

This is an essay in two parts.

Neuschwanstein Concept Drawing by the stage designer (!!) Christian Jank (1869).

There exist in architecture clear precedents to the McMansion that have nothing to do with suburban real estate. This is because “McMansionry” (let’s say) has many transferable properties. Among them can be included: 1) a diabolical amount of wealth that must be communicated architecturally in the most frivolous way possible, 2) a penchant for historical LARPing primarily informed by media (e.g. the American “Tuscan kitchen”) and 3) the execution of historical styles using contemporary building materials resulting in an aesthetic affect that can be described as uncanny or cheap-looking. By these metrics, we can absolutely call Neuschwanstein Castle, built by the architect Eduard Riedel for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a McMansion.

Constructed from 1869 through 1886 – the year of Ludwig’s alleged suicide after having been ousted and declared insane – the castle cost the coffers of the Bavarian state and Ludwig himself no fewer than 6.2 million German gold marks. (That's an estimated 47 million euros today.) The castle's story is rife with well-known scandal. I'm sure any passing Swan Enthusiast is already familiar with Ludwig’s financial capriciousness, his called-off marriage and repressed homosexuality, his parasocial obsession with Richard Wagner, his complete and total inability to run his country, and his alleged "madness," as they used to call it. All of these combine to make Neuschwanstein inescapable from the man who commissioned it -- and the artist who inspired it. Say what you like about Ludwig and his building projects, but he is definitely remembered because of them, which is what most monarchs want. Be careful what you wish for.

Neuschwanstein gatehouse.

How should one describe Neuschwanstein architecturally? You’d need an additional blog. Its interiors alone (the subject of the next essay) range from Neo-Baroque to Neo-Byzantine to Neo-Gothic. There are many terms that can loosely define the palace's overall style: eclecticism, medieval revivalism, historicism, chateauesque, sclerotic monarchycore, etc. However, the the most specific would be what was called "castle Romanticism" (Burgenromantik). The Germans are nothing if not literal. Whatever word you want to use, Neuschwanstein is such a Sistine Chapel of pure sentimentality and sugary kitsch that theme park architecture – most famously, Disney's Cinderella’s castle itself – owes many of its medieval iterations to the palace's towering silhouette.

There is some truth to the term Burgenromantik. Neuschwanstein's exterior is a completely fabricated 19th century storybook fantasy of the Middle Ages whose precedents lie more truthfully in art for the stage. As a castle without fortification and a palace with no space for governance, Neuschwanstein's own program is indecisive about what it should be, which makes it a pretty good reflection of Ludwig II himself. To me, however, it is the last gasp of a monarchy whose power will be totally extinguished by that same industrial modernity responsible for the materials and techniques of Neuschwanstein's own, ironic construction.

In order to understand Neuschwanstein, however, we must go into two subjects that are equally a great time for me: 19th century medievalism - the subject of this essay - and the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, the subject of the next. (1)

Part I: Medievalisms Progressive and Reactionary

The Middle Ages were inescapable in 19th century Europe. Design, music, visual art, theater, literature, and yes, architecture were all besotted with the stuff of knights and castles, old sagas, and courtly literature. From arch-conservative nationalism to pro-labor socialism, medievalism's popularity spanned the entire political spectrum. This is because it owes its existence to a number of developments that affected the whole of society.

In Ludwig’s time, the world was changing in profound, almost inconceivable ways. The first and second industrial revolutions with their socioeconomic upheavals and new technologies of transport, manufacturing, and mass communication, all completely unmade and remade how people lived and worked. This was as true of the average person as it was of the princes and nobles who were beginning to be undermined by something called “the petit bourgeoisie.”

Sustenance farming dwindled and wage labor eclipsed all other forms of working. Millions of people no longer able to make a living on piecemeal and agricultural work flocked to the cities and into the great Molochs of factories, mills, stockyards, and mines. Families and other kinship bonds were eroded or severed by the acceleration of capitalist production, large wars, and new means of transportation, especially the railroad. People became not only alienated from each other and from their labor in the classical Marxist sense but also from the results of that labor, too. No longer were chairs made by craftsmen or clothes by the single tailor -- unless you could afford the bespoke. Everything from shirtwaists to wrought iron lamps was increasingly mass produced - under wretched conditions, too. Things – including buildings – that were once built to last a lifetime became cheap, disposable, and subject to the whimsy of fashion, sold via this new thing called “the catalog.”

William Morris' painting Le Belle Iseult (1868).

Unsurprisingly, this new way of living and working caused not a little discontent. This was the climate in which Karl Marx wrote Capital and Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. More specific to our interests, however, is a different dissenter and one of the most interesting practitioners of medievalism, the English polymath William Morris.

A lover of Arthurian legend and an admirer of the architect and design reformer John Ruskin, Morris was first trained in the office of architect G. E. Street, himself a die-hard Gothic Revivalist. From the very beginning, the Middle Ages can be found everywhere in Morris' work, from the rough-hewn qualities of the furniture he helped design to the floral elements and compositions of the art nouveau textiles and graphics he's most famous for -- which, it should be said, are reminiscent of 15th century English tapestries. In addition to his design endeavors, Morris was also a gifted writer and poet. His was a profound love for medieval literature, especially Norse sagas from Iceland. Some of these he even translated including the Volsunga Saga -- also a preoccupation of Wagner's. Few among us earn the title of polymath, but Morris' claim to it is undeniable. Aside from music, there really wasn't any area of creative life he didn't touch.

However, Morris' predilection for the medieval was not just a personal and aesthetic fascination. It was also an expression of his political rejection of the capitalist mode of production. As one of the founders of the English Arts & Crafts Movement, Morris called for a rejection of piecemeal machine labor, a return to handicraft, and overall to things made well and made with dignity. While this was and remains a largely middle class argument, one that usually leads down the road of ethical consumption, Morris was right that capitalism's failing of design and architecture did not just lie with the depreciated quality of goods, but the depreciated quality of life. His was the utopian call to respect both the object and the laborer who produced it. To quote from his 1888 essay called "The Revival of Architecture," Morris dreamed of a society that "will produce to live and not live to produce, as we do." Indeed, in our current era of AI Slop, there remains much to like about the Factory Slop-era call to take back time from the foreman's clock and once more make labor an act of enjoyable and unalienated creativity. Only now it's about things like writing an essay.

I bother to describe Morris at length here for a number of reasons. The first is to reiterate that medievalism's popularity was largely a response to socioeconomic changes. Additionally, since traditionalism - in Ludwig's time and in ours - still gets weaponized by right-wing losers, it's worth pointing out that not all practitioners of medievalism were politically reactionary in nature. However – and I will return to this later – medievalism, reactionary or not, remains inescapably nostalgic. Morris is no exception. While a total rejection of mass produced goods may seem quixotic to us now, when Morris was working, the era before mass industrialization remained at the fringes of living memory. Hence the nostalgia is perhaps to be expected. Unfortunately for him and for us, the only way out of capitalism is through it.

To return again to the big picture: whether one liked it or not, the old feudal world was done. Only its necrotic leftovers, namely a hereditary nobility whose power would run out of road in WWI, remained. For Ludwig purposes, it was a fraught political time in Bavaria as well. Bavaria, weird duck that it was, remained relatively autonomous within the new German Reich. Despite the title of king, Ludwig, much to his chagrin - hence the pathetic Middle Ages fantasizing - did not rule absolutely. His was a constitutional monarchy, and an embattled one at that. During the building of Neuschwanstein, the king found himself wedged between the Franco-Prussian War and the political coup masterminded by Otto von Bismarck that would put Europe on the fast track to a global conflict many saw as the atavistic culmination of all that already violent modernity. No wonder he wanted to hide with his Schwans up in the hills of Schwangau.

The very notion of a unified German Reich (or an independent Kingdom of Bavaria) was itself indicative of another development. Regardless if one was liberal or conservative, a king, an artist or a shoe peddler, the 19th century was plagued by the rise of modern nationalism. Bolstered by new ideas in "medical" “science,” this was also a racialized nationalism. A lot of emotional, political, and artistic investment was put into the idea that there existed a fundamentally German volk, a German soil, a German soul. This, however, was a universalizing statement in need of a citation, with lots of political power on the line. Hence, in order to add historical credence to these new conceptions of one’s heritage, people turned to the old sources.

Within the hallowed halls of Europe's universities, newly minted historians and philologists scoured medieval texts for traces of a people united by a common geography and ethnicity as well as the foundations for a historically continuous state. We now know that this is a problematic and incorrect way of looking at the medieval world, a world that was so very different from our own. A great deal of subsequent medieval scholarship still devotes itself to correcting for these errors. But back then, such scholarly ethics were not to be found and people did what they liked with the sources. A lot of assumptions were made in order to make whatever point one wanted, often about one's superiority over another. Hell, anyone who's been on Trad Guy Deus Vult Twitter knows that a lot of assumptions are still made, and for the same purposes.(2)

Meanwhile, outside of the academy, mass print media meant more people were exposed to medieval content than ever before. Translations of chivalric romances such as Wolfgang von Eschenbach’s Parzival and sagas like the Poetic Edda inspired a century’s worth of artists to incorporate these characters and themes into their work. This work was often but of course not always nationalistic in character. Such adaptations for political purposes could get very granular in nature. We all like to point to the greats like William Morris or Richard Wagner (who was really a master of a larger syncretism.) But there were many lesser attempts made by weaker artists that today have an unfortunate bootlicking je nais se quoi to them.

I love a minor tangent related to my interests, so here's one: a good example of this nationalist granularity comes from Franz Grillparzer’s 1823 pro-Hapsburg play König Ottokars Glück und Ende, which took for its source a deep cut 14th century manuscript called the Styrian Rhyming Chronicle, written by Ottokar Aus Der Gaul. The play concerns the political intrigue around King Ottokar II of Bohemia and his subsequent 1278 defeat at the hands of Grillparzer’s very swagged out Rudolf of Habsburg. Present are some truly fascinating but extremely obscure characters from 13th Holy Roman Empire lore including a long-time personal obsession of mine, the Styrian ministerial and three-time traitor of the Great Interregnum, Frederick V of Pettau. But I’m getting off-topic here. Let's get back to the castle.

The Throne Room at Neuschwanstein

For architecture, perhaps the most important development in spreading medievalism was this new institution called the "big public museum." Through a professionalizing field of archaeology and the sickness that was colonialist expansion, bits and bobs of buildings were stolen from places like North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, and Byzantium, all of which had an enormous impact on latter 19th century architecture. (They were also picked up by early 20th century American architects from H. H. Richardson to Louis Sullivan.) These orientalized fragments were further disseminated through new books, monographs, and later photography.

Meanwhile, developments in fabrication (standardized building materials), construction (namely iron, then steel) and mass production sped things up and reduced costs considerably. Soon, castles and churches in the image of those that once took decades if not a century to build were erected on countless hillsides or in little town squares across the continent. These changes in the material production of architecture are key for understanding "why Neuschwanstein castle looks so weird."

Part of what gives medieval architecture its character is the sheer embodiment of labor embedded in all those heavy stones, stones that were chiseled, hauled, and set by hand. The Gothic cathedral was a precarious endeavor whose appearance of lightness was not earned easily, which is why, when writing about their sublimity, Edmund Burke invoked not only the play of light and shadow, but the sheer slowness and human toil involved.

This is, of course, not true of our present estate. Neuschwanstein not only eschews the role of a castle as a “fortress to be used in war” (an inherently stereotomic program) but was erected using contemporary materials and techniques that are simply not imbued with the same age or gravitas. Built via a typical brick construction but clad in more impressive sandstone, it's all far too clean. Neuschwanstein's proportions seem not only chaotic - towers and windows are strewn about seemingly on a whim - they are also totally irreconcilable with the castle's alleged typology, in part because we know what a genuine medieval castle looks like.

Ludwig's palace was a technological marvel of the industrial revolution. Not only did Neuschwanstein have indoor plumbing and central heat, it also used the largest glass windows then in manufacture. It's not even an Iron Age building. The throne room, seen earlier in this post, required the use of structural steel. None of this is to say that 19th century construction labor was easy. It wasn't and many people still died, including 30 at Neuschwanstein. It was, however, simply different in character than medieval labor. For all the waxing poetic about handiwork, I’m sure medieval stonemasons would have loved the use of a steam crane.

It's true that architectural eclecticism (the use of many styles at once) has a knack for undermining the presumed authenticity or fidelity of each style employed. But this somewhat misunderstands the crime. The thing about Neuschwanstein is that its goal was not to be historically authentic at all. Its target realm was that of fantasy. Not only that, a fantasy informed primarily by a contemporary media source. In this, it could be said to be more architecturally successful.

The fantasy of medievalism is very different than the truth of the Middle Ages. As I hinted at before, more than anything else, medievalism was an inherently nostalgic movement, and not only because it was a bedrock of so much children's literature. People loved it because it promised a bygone past that never existed. The visual and written languages of feudalism, despite it being a terrible socioeconomic system, came into vogue in part because it wasn't capitalism. We must remember that the 19th century saw industrial capitalism at its newest and rawest. Unregulated, it destroyed every natural resource in sight and subjected people, including children, to horrific labor conditions. It still does, and will probably get worse, but the difference is, we're somewhat used to it by now. The shock's worn off.

All that upheaval I talked about earlier made people long for a simplicity they felt was missing. This took many different forms. The rapid advances of secular society and the incursion of science into belief made many crave a greater religiosity. At a time when the effects of wage labor on the family had made womanhood a contested territory, many appeals were made to a divine and innocent feminine a la Lady Guinevere. Urbanization made many wish for a quieter world with less hustle and bustle and better air. These sentiments are not without their reasons. Technological and socioeconomic changes still make us feel alienated and destabilized, hence why there are so many medieval revivals even in our own time. (Chappell Roan of Arc anyone?) Hell, our own rich people aren't so different from Ludwig either. Mark Zuckerburg owns a Hawaiian island and basically controls the fates of the people who live there lord-in-the-castle-style.

Given all this, it's not surprising that of the products of the Middle Ages, perhaps chivalric romance was and remains the most popular. While never a real depiction of medieval life (no, all those knights were not dying on the behalf of pretty ladies), such stories of good men and women and their grand adventures still capture the imaginations of children and adults alike. (You will find no greater fan of Parzival than yours truly.) It's also no wonder the nature of the romance, with its paternalistic patriarchy, its Christianity, its sentimentality around courtly love, and most of all its depiction of the ruling class as noble and benevolent – appealed to someone like Ludwig, both as a quirked-up individual and a member of his class.

It follows, then, that any artist capable of synthesizing all these elements, fears, and desires into an aesthetically transcendent package would've had a great effect on such a man. One did, of course. His name was Richard Wagner.

In our next essay, we will witness one of the most astonishing cases of kitsch imitating art. But before there could be Neuschwanstein Castle, there had to be this pretty little opera called Lohengrin.

---

(1) If you want to get a head start on the Wagner stuff, I've been writing about the Ring cycle lately on my Substack: https://www.late-review.com/p/essays-on-wagners-ring-part-1-believing

(2) My favorite insane nationalist claim comes from the 1960s, when the Slovene-American historian Joseph Felicijan claimed that the US's democracy was based off the 13th century ritual of enthronement practiced by the Dukes of Carinthia because Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of Jean Bodin's Les six livres de la Republique (1576) in which the rite was mentioned. For more information, see Peter Štih's book The Middle Ages Between the Alps and the Northern Adriatic (p. 56 for the curious.)

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