Wilhelm II. Type of the Final Emperor (original) (raw)

The Fall of Bismarck and the Rise of William II

2017

Previous years must be known before the topic begins. King Frederick Wilhelm IV suffered a stroke and became mentally disabled, in 1857 Wilhelm I became the Royal Regent for his brother. Then, after King Frederick Wilhelm IV died childless, Wilhelm I became the King of Prussia in 1861. In the following years, he waged campaigns against Denmark, Austria, and, ultimately, France. In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor (Kaiser) of a now united German state. When Bismarck tells him that he will support the reorganization, Wilhelm I decided to appoint Bismarck.He took Otto von Bismarck, the well-known "blood and iron chancellery", as prime minister.With the help of Bismarck, King Wilhelm rapidly modernized Germany, making it into one of the most dominant military and economic powers in Europe. However,after these great years King Wilhelm I died on March 9th, 1888 in Berlin.He always supported his chancellor, Bismarck, in efforts to transform Germany into a modern state, and a hegemonic power in Europe. His son became Frederick III, German Emperor, but regrettably died a few months therefore became Kaiser Wilhelm II. Central to the unification of Germany and the success of the new German Empire was the relationship between the Old Kaiser (Wilhelm I), and his Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. While building the new German Empire, another less dramatic struggle unfolded was the struggle over the loyalty of the Crown Prince.

A better William? Prince Heinrich of Prussia, the younger brother of Emperor William II

In the years 1890-1894, General Albrecht von Stosch (1818-1896), the former chief of the German Admiralty, was frequently asked the same question. As he confided to his friend, the novelist Gustav Freytag, people were worried that the young Emperor William II (1859-1941), who had ascended the throne in 1888 and had since displayed “the restlessness of a maniac”, might eventually become mentally or physically ill. Therefore, they inquired of Stosch “what kind of man” Prince Heinrich, the Emperor’s younger brother, was...

1806: The End of the Old Reich

German History, 2006

German History continues the series of virtual round-table discussions by commemorating the 200th anniversary of the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In 1806, under pressure from the victorious Napoleon, a political order was abolished which, albeit significantly modified after the Thirty Years'War, had served as a framework for the government of the German lands for around one thousand years. By contrast, after 1806, Germany witnessed a quick succession of different régimes: with the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the Second Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the GDR, six distinct polities were created and demolished in less than two hundred years (and the Federal Republic dramatically transformed). Scholarly assessments of the Old Reich and its significance for the evolution of modern Germany have undergone several transformations, each shaped, to varying degrees, by current political agendas. While some have seen the Holy Roman Empire as a medieval anomaly, whose prolonged existence into the early nineteenth century delayed German national integration with fateful consequence (a view often summarized under the label of the verspätete Nation), others have seen the Reich as a model for polycentric government and regional diversity, even as a blueprint for the European Union. Yet others have argued that the view of the Empire as a loose collection of virtually independent estates is misguided, and that its central powers amounted to a form of early modern statehood, which in turn connected with the evolution of the modern German nation-state. German History has invited five historians to comment on the state of the debate and its contemporary resonances. They are Joachim Whaley (Cambridge), Wolfgang Burgdorf (München), Peter Wilson (Sunderland), Michael North (Greifswald), and Brendan Simms (Cambridge). Maiken Umbach (Manchester, and joint editor of German History) formulated the questions. 1. 'In the beginning was Napoleon'. The destruction of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation has long been seen as the endpoint of a