Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Wilhelm II of Germany

1859 – 1941 · Generation XXXV · German Emperor (r. 1888–1918)

Portrait of Wilhelm II of Germany

Wilhelm II was born at the Crown Prince’s Palace in Berlin on 27 January 1859, the first child of Prince Frederick William of Prussia, later Emperor Frederick III, and Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. The birth was a difficult breech delivery. It left him with a damaged left arm that never grew to full size, a disability he took pains to hide in photographs, and some historians have looked to it, and to his birth, to explain his restless and erratic temperament. His mother hoped to raise him as a liberal on the British model, but he resisted, sided with tutors who favoured autocratic rule and grew estranged from his parents. He went to school in Kassel and studied for four terms at Bonn University.

In 1881 he married Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, and they had six sons and a daughter. His grandfather Wilhelm I died in March 1888, and his father, already dying of cancer, reigned for only ninety-nine days. On 15 June 1888, at twenty-nine, Wilhelm became German Emperor and King of Prussia. Less than two years later he forced the resignation of the old chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, and set out to govern on his own terms.

The results were often damaging. His ministers let the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia lapse, and Russia soon allied with France. A telegram of 1896 congratulating the Boer president Paul Kruger on beating off a British raid angered Britain, and the battle fleet promoted from 1897 by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz alarmed it further. A visit to Tangier in 1905 to challenge French influence in Morocco backfired at the Algeciras conference, and an ill-judged interview in the Daily Telegraph in 1908 caused an uproar at home and abroad. He was given to belligerent public remarks made without reference to his ministers, and they repeatedly alarmed other governments. By the eve of war Germany could count on few allies beyond Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 he promised Austria-Hungary Germany’s full support, a pledge that helped turn a Balkan crisis into a European war. Once fighting began, his real authority ebbed. From 1916 the army command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff dominated policy, and the emperor became largely a figurehead. With defeat on the Western Front and revolution at home in November 1918, Chancellor Prince Max of Baden announced his abdication on 9 November without waiting for his consent. The next day Wilhelm crossed from army headquarters at Spa into the neutral Netherlands, and on 28 November, at Amerongen, he formally renounced both crowns.

He spent the rest of his life in Dutch exile, from 1920 at Huis Doorn, a country house he bought in the village of Doorn. Augusta Victoria died in 1921, and in 1922 he married Hermine Reuss, a widowed princess. That year he also published the first volume of memoirs denying that he had caused the war. In the early 1930s he hoped the Nazis might restore the monarchy and received Hermann Göring at Doorn, but Hitler had no use for him. Wilhelm was appalled by the pogrom of November 1938, yet in June 1940 he telegraphed his congratulations to Hitler on the fall of Paris, and in exile he voiced virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories. He died at Doorn on 4 June 1941, aged eighty-two. He had directed that his body was not to go back to a Germany without its monarchy, and he was buried in a mausoleum in the grounds of the house, which is now a museum.

Place in the family

  • Wilhelm II of Germany was a grandson of Queen Victoria.

Images

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Edward Duke of Kent → Queen Victoria → Victoria Princess Royal → Wilhelm II of Germany.

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Life

  • 1859 — Born
  • 1881 — Married Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein
  • 1922 — Married Hermine Reuss of Greiz
  • 1941 — Died

Sources

  1. Wilhelm II · Wikipedia
  2. William II (emperor of Germany) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. Wilhelm II. 1859–1941 · Deutsches Historisches Museum (LeMO)

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