[1] At the request of his father to King Maximilian II of Bavaria, he was appointed on 15 November 1861 as junior lieutenant in the 2nd Bavarian artillery regiment (military registry no.

[4] In the following two years, Paul von Thurn und Taxis, who matched the king in his good looks,[5] became the closest friend and confidant of the monarch.

It was magnificently staged with Paul - dressed as Lohengrin wearing a silver shining armor - drawn over the lake by an artificial swan and the whole scenery was illuminated by electric light.

[11] Although Ludwig's feelings for his friend grew deeper and developed into great love, the friendship was so precariously balanced that the slightest tremor of reality threatened to send it plummeting to oblivion.

[14] From midst November 1866, he started to drink without limits and in a state of turmoil and distress ended up with the Jewish soubrette Elise Kreuzer of the Actien-Volkstheater.

In January 1867, Paul retired from the Bavarian army under peculiar circumstances, which were later termed as "desertion" by Minister of War Siegmund von Pranckh in 1872.

After Paul received notice that his parents had tasked the Bavarian police to trace their son in order to convince him to abandon Elise, they moved to Mannheim or Ludwigshafen in August 1867.

In 1868, Prince Paul von Thurn und Taxis was forced by his family to marry Elise morganatically, and thereafter was disowned by them and stripped of all his titles, rank and birthrights against an annual pension of 6000 florin.

At three o’clock a boat trip with the three little ones and R." Paul started a new attempt to reconcile with his father and visited him together with Elise on 3 August 1869 in Schloss Donaustauf, obviously to no avail.

[24] After his father died on 10 November 1871, his sister-in-law, Helene of Thurn and Taxis, became the unofficial head of the family until her son, Maximilian Maria, the Hereditary Prince, became of age on 24 June 1883.

Elise formed a liaison with a Prussian officer, staying at the same hotel, and eloped with him, "leaving her husband, who had given up so much for her, to die unbefriended"[27] on 10 March 1879 in Cannes.

In 1879, Paul's widow, under the name of Frau Elisabeth von Fels, joined the Municipal Theatre in Lübeck[28] together with Arno Cabisius, whom she married in 1881.