Wilhelm ii german emperor biography of alberta

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He thus became alienated from his parents, suspecting them of putting Britain's interests first. When Wilhelm was nearing 21, the Emperor decided it was time his grandson should begin the military phase of his preparation for the throne. When Wilhelm was in his early twenties, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck tried to separate him from his parents, who opposed Bismarck and his policies, with some success.

Bismarck planned to use the young prince as a weapon against his parents in order to retain his own political dominance. Wilhelm thus developed a dysfunctional relationship with his parents, but especially with his English mother. In an outburst in April , Wilhelm angrily implied that "an English doctor killed my father, and an English doctor crippled my arm—which is the fault of my mother", who allowed no German physicians to attend to herself or her immediate family.

As a young man, Wilhelm fell in love with one of his maternal first cousins, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt. She turned him down, and in time, married into the Russian imperial family. The couple married on 27 February , and their marriage lasted 40 years until her death in Between and , Augusta bore Wilhelm seven children, six sons and a daughter.

Beginning in , Bismarck began advocating that Kaiser Wilhelm send his grandson on diplomatic missions, a privilege denied to the Crown Prince. Petersburg to attend the coming-of-age ceremony of the year-old Tsarevich Nicholas. Wilhelm's behaviour did little to ingratiate himself to the tsar. In , also, thanks to Herbert von Bismarck , the son of the Chancellor, Prince Wilhelm began to be trained twice a week at the Foreign Ministry.

He was already experiencing an incurable throat cancer and spent all 99 days of his reign fighting the disease before dying. On 15 June of that same year , his year-old son succeeded him as German Emperor and King of Prussia. Although in his youth he had been a great admirer of Otto von Bismarck, Wilhelm's characteristic impatience soon brought him into conflict with the "Iron Chancellor", the dominant figure in the foundation of his empire.

The new Emperor opposed Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to protect Germany's "place in the sun". Furthermore, the young Emperor had come to the throne, unlike his grandfather, determined to rule as well as reign. While the imperial constitution vested executive power in the monarch, Wilhelm I had been content to leave day-to-day administration to Bismarck.

Wilhelm ii german emperor biography of alberta

Early conflicts between Wilhelm II and his chancellor soon poisoned the relationship between the two men. Bismarck had believed that Wilhelm was a lightweight who could be dominated, and he showed escalating disrespect for Wilhelm's favored policy objectives in the late s. The final split between monarch and statesman occurred soon after an attempt by Bismarck to implement far-reaching anti-Socialist laws in early According to adherents of the "Bismarck myth", the young Kaiser rejected the Iron Chancellor's allegedly "peaceful foreign policy" and instead plotted with senior generals to work "in favour of a war of aggression".

Bismarck himself once complained to an aide, "That young man wants war with Russia, and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could. I shall not be a party to it. But the origin of Bismarck's dismissal lies in home affairs. After gaining an absolute majority in the Reichstag he formed the Kartell , a coalition government of the German Conservative Party and the National Liberal Party.

They favoured making the anti-Socialist laws permanent, with one exception: giving the German police the power, similarly to the Tsarist Okhrana , to expel alleged Socialist agitators from their homes by decree and into internal exile. Even Old Liberal statesman Eugen Richter , the author of the famous dystopian novel Pictures of the Socialistic Future , opposed banning the Social Democratic Party outright and said: "I fear Social Democracy more under this law than without it".

As the debate continued, Wilhelm became more and more interested in the social problems being exploited in the propaganda of the Socialists, especially the treatment of mine workers who went on strike in He routinely disagreed with Bismarck during Cabinet meetings. Bismarck, in turn, sharply disagreed with Wilhelm's pro-labor union policies and worked to circumvent them.

Bismarck, feeling unappreciated by the young Emperor and by his ambitious advisors, once refused to co-sign a proclamation regarding the protection of industrial workers, as was required by the German Constitution , and prevented it from being made law. While Bismarck had previously sponsored landmark social security legislation, by —90, he had become violently opposed to the rise of organized labor.

In particular, he was opposed to wage increases, improving working conditions, and regulating labour relations. The final break between the Iron Chancellor and the Kaiser came when Bismarck initiated discussions with the opposition to form a new parliamentary majority without consulting with Wilhelm first. The Kartell , the shifting coalition government that Bismarck had been able to maintain since , had finally lost its majority of seats in the Reichstag due to the Anti-Socialist Laws fiasco.

In most parliamentary systems , the head of government depends upon the confidence of the parliamentary majority and has the right to form coalitions to maintain a majority of supporters. In a constitutional monarchy , however, the Chancellor is required to meet regularly with the monarch to explain his or her policies and intentions within the Government.

A Chancellor in a constitutional monarchy also cannot afford to make an enemy of the monarch, who represents the only real check and balance against a Chancellor's otherwise absolute power. This is because a constitutional monarch has plenty of means at his or her disposal of quietly blocking a Chancellor's policy objectives and is one of the only people who can forcibly remove an overly ambitious Chancellor from power.

For these reasons, the last Kaiser believed that he had every right to be informed before Bismarck began coalition talks with the Opposition. In a deeply ironic moment, a mere decade after demonizing all members of the Catholic Church in Germany as German : Reichsfeinde , "traitors to the Empire" during the Kulturkampf , Bismarck decided to start coalition talks with the all-Catholic Centre Party.

He invited that party's leader in the Reichstag, Baron Ludwig von Windthorst , to meet with him and begin the negotiations. The Kaiser, who always had a warm relationship with Baron von Windthorst, whose decades long defence of German Catholics, Poles, Jews, and other minorities against the Iron Chancellor have since attracted comparisons to Irish nationalist statesmen Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell , was furious to hear about Bismarck's plans for coalition talks with the Centre Party only after they had already begun.

After a heated argument at Bismarck's estate over the latter's alleged disrespect for the Imperial Family, Wilhelm stormed out. Bismarck, forced for the first time in his career into a crisis that he could not twist to his own advantage, wrote a blistering letter of resignation, decrying the Monarchy's involvement in both foreign and domestic policy.

The letter was published only after Bismarck's death. In later years, Bismarck created the "Bismarck myth"; the view which some historians have argued was confirmed by subsequent events that Wilhelm II's successful demand for Bismarck's resignation destroyed any chance Imperial Germany ever had of stable government and international peace.

According to this view, what Wilhelm termed "The New Course" is characterised as Germany's ship of state going dangerously off course, leading directly to the carnage of the First and Second World Wars. According to Bismarck apologists, in foreign policy the Iron Chancellor had achieved a fragile balance of interests between Germany, France and Russia.

Peace was allegedly at hand and Bismarck tried to keep it that way despite growing popular sentiment against Britain regarding the German colonial empire and especially against Russia. With Bismarck's dismissal, the Russians allegedly expected a reversal of policy in Berlin, so they quickly negotiated a military alliance with the Third French Republic , beginning a process that by largely isolated Germany.

In contrast, historian Modris Eksteins has argued that Bismarck's dismissal was actually long overdue. According to Eksteins, the Iron Chancellor, in his need for a scapegoat , had demonized Classical Liberals in the s, Roman Catholics in the s, and Socialists in the s with the highly successful and often repeated refrain, "The Reich is in danger.

In interviews with C. Sulzberger for the book The Fall of Eagles , Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia , grandson and heir of Kaiser Wilhelm II, further commented, "Bismarck was certainly our greatest statesman, but he had very bad manners and he became increasingly overbearing with age. Frankly, I don't think his dismissal by my grandfather was a great tragedy.

Russia was already on the other side because of the Berlin Congress of Had Bismarck stayed he would not have helped. He already wanted to abolish all the reforms that had been introduced. He was aspiring to establish a kind of Shogunate and hoped to treat our family in the same way the Japanese shoguns treated the Japanese emperors isolated in Kyoto.

My grandfather had no choice but to dismiss him. At the opening of the Reichstag on 6 May , the Kaiser stated that the most pressing issue was the further enlargement of the bill concerning the protection of the labourer. In appointing Caprivi and then Hohenlohe, Wilhelm was embarking upon what is known to history as "the New Course", in which he hoped to exert decisive influence in the government of the empire.

In the early twentieth century, Wilhelm began to concentrate upon his real agenda: the creation of a German Navy that would rival that of Britain and enable Germany to declare itself a world power. The last Kaiser ordered the high command of the armed forces to read United States Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan 's book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History , and spent hours drawing sketches of the ships that he dreamed of having built.

Wilhelm enthusiastically promoted the arts and sciences, as well as public education and social welfare. He sponsored the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the promotion of scientific research; it was funded by wealthy private donors and by the state and comprised a number of research institutes in both pure and applied sciences. The Prussian Academy of Sciences was unable to avoid the Kaiser's pressure and lost some of its autonomy when it was forced to incorporate new programs in engineering, and award new fellowships in engineering sciences as a result of a gift from the Kaiser in Wilhelm supported the modernisers as they tried to reform the Prussian system of secondary education, which was rigidly traditional, elitist, politically authoritarian, and unchanged by the progress in the natural sciences.

As hereditary Protector of the Order of Saint John , he offered encouragement to the Christian order's attempts to place German medicine at the forefront of modern medical practice through its system of hospitals, nursing sisterhood and nursing schools, and nursing homes throughout the German Empire. Wilhelm continued as Protector of the Order even after , as the position was in essence attached to the head of the House of Hohenzollern.

Historians have frequently stressed the role of Wilhelm's personality in shaping his reign. Thus, Thomas Nipperdey concludes he was:. Historian David Fromkin states that Wilhelm had a love—hate relationship with Britain. He was wildly jealous of the British, desiring to be British and to be better at being British than the British were, while at the same time hating them and resenting them because he never could be fully accepted by them".

Langer et al. William was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics William's personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion.

He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives, as had been the case with Bismarck, as with asserting his will. This trait in the ruler of the leading Continental power was one of the main causes of the uneasiness prevailing in Europe at the turn-of-the-century". Wilhelm was infuriated by his sister's conversion from Lutheranism to Greek Orthodoxy ; upon her marriage, he attempted to ban her from entering Germany.

Wilhelm's most contentious relationships were with his British relations. He craved the acceptance of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and of the rest of her family. Between and , Wilhelm resented Bertie, who despite being the heir apparent to the British throne, treated Wilhelm not as a reigning monarch, but merely as another nephew. Bertie's wife, Alexandra, also disliked Wilhelm.

Even though Wilhelm had not been on the throne at the time, Alexandra felt anger over the Prussian seizure of Schleswig-Holstein from her native Denmark in the s, and was also annoyed over Wilhelm's treatment of his mother. In , Wilhelm hosted a lavish wedding in Berlin for his only daughter, Victoria Louise. German foreign policy under Wilhelm II was faced with a number of significant problems.

Perhaps the most apparent was that Wilhelm was an impatient man, subjective in his reactions and affected strongly by sentiment and impulse. He was personally ill-equipped to steer German foreign policy along a rational course. There were a number of examples, such as the Kruger telegram of in which Wilhelm congratulated President Paul Kruger for preventing the Transvaal Republic from being annexed by the British Empire during the Jameson Raid.

British public opinion had been quite favourable towards the Kaiser in his first twelve years on the throne, but it turned sour in the late s. During the First World War , he became the central target of British anti-German propaganda and the personification of a hated enemy. Wilhelm exploited fears of a yellow peril trying to interest other European rulers in the perils they faced by invading China; few other leaders paid attention.

Wilhelm also invested in strengthening the German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific, but few became profitable and all were lost during the First World War. In South West Africa now Namibia , a native revolt against German rule led to the Herero and Namaqua genocide , although Wilhelm eventually ordered it to be stopped and recalled its mastermind General Lothar von Trotha.

One of the few times when Wilhelm succeeded in personal diplomacy was when in , he supported the morganatic marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria to Countess Sophie Chotek , and helped negotiate an end to the opposition to the wedding by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. A domestic triumph for Wilhelm was when his daughter Victoria Louise married the Duke of Brunswick in ; this helped heal the rift between the House of Hanover and the House of Hohenzollern that had followed Bismarck's invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover in In his first visit to Constantinople in , Wilhelm secured the sale of German-made rifles to the Ottoman Army.

The Kaiser started his journey to the Ottoman Eyalets with Constantinople on 16 October ; then he went by yacht to Haifa on 25 October. In the face of all the courtesies extended to us here, I feel that I must thank you, in my name as well as that of the Empress, for them, for the hearty reception given us in all the towns and cities we have touched, and particularly for the splendid welcome extended to us by this city of Damascus.

Deeply moved by this imposing spectacle, and likewise by the consciousness of standing on the spot where held sway one of the most chivalrous rulers of all times, the great Sultan Saladin, a knight sans peur et sans reproche, who often taught his adversaries the right conception of knighthood, I seize with joy the opportunity to render thanks, above all to the Sultan Abdul Hamid for his hospitality.

May the Sultan rest assured, and also the three hundred million Mohammedans scattered over the globe and revering in him their caliph, that the German Emperor will be and remain at all times their friend. On 10 November, Wilhelm went to visit Baalbek before heading to Beirut to board his ship back home on 12 November. His third visit was on 15 October , as the guest of Sultan Mehmed V.

The Boxer Rebellion , an anti-foreign uprising in China, was put down in by an international force known as the Eight-Nation Alliance. The Kaiser's farewell address to departing German soldiers commanded them, in the spirit of the Huns , to be merciless in battle. There were two versions of the speech. The German Foreign Office issued an edited version, making sure to omit one particularly incendiary paragraph that they regarded as diplomatically embarrassing.

Great overseas tasks have fallen to the new German Empire, tasks far greater than many of my countrymen expected. The German Empire has, by its very character, the obligation to assist its citizens if they are being set upon in foreign lands. A great task awaits you [in China]: you are to revenge the grievous injustice that has been done.

The Chinese have overturned the law of nations; they have mocked the sacredness of the envoy, the duties of hospitality in a way unheard of in world history. It is all the more outrageous that this crime has been committed by a nation that takes pride in its ancient culture. Show the old Prussian virtue. Present yourselves as Christians in the cheerful endurance of suffering.

May honor and glory follow your banners and arms. Give the whole world an example of manliness and discipline. You know full well that you are to fight against a cunning, brave, well-armed, and cruel enemy. When you encounter him, know this: no quarter will be given. Prisoners will not be taken. Exercise your arms such that for a thousand years no Chinese will dare to look cross-eyed at a German.

Maintain discipline. May God's blessing be with you, the prayers of an entire nation and my good wishes go with you, each and every one. Open the way to civilization once and for all! Now you may depart! Farewell, comrades! Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited.

Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German. On 6 March , [ 52 ] during a visit to Bremen , in an apparent assassination attempt Wilhelm was struck in the face by a sharp iron object thrown at him.

The Kaiser was riding in a coach to the railway station when the incident happened at pm, and the object thrown "afterward proved to be a fishplate ". The German Emperor was left with a deep wound, an inch and a half long, below his left eye; the Chief of the Naval Ministry would note later, "On the temple or in the eye the blow could have been devastating.

The wonder of it is that our All-Gracious Lord felt neither the object flying at him nor, in the rain, the copiously flowing blood; it was those around him who drew his attention to it at first. I am exactly the same as I was; I have become neither elegiac nor melancholic In the years —, Socialist journalist Maximilian Harden published accusations of homosexual activity involving ministers, courtiers, army officers, and Wilhelm's closest friend and advisor, [ 56 ] Prince Philipp zu Eulenberg.

Massie :. Homosexuality was officially repressed in Germany. It was a criminal offense, punishable by prison, although the law was rarely invoked or enforced. Still, the very accusation could stir moral outrage and bring social ruin. This was especially true at the highest levels of Society. The result was years of highly publicized scandals, trials, resignations, and suicides.

Harden, like some in the upper echelons of the military and Foreign Office, resented Eulenberg's approval of the Anglo-French Entente , and also his encouragement of Wilhelm to rule personally. The scandal led to Wilhelm experiencing a nervous breakdown, and the removal of Eulenberg and others of his circle from the court. One of Wilhelm's diplomatic blunders sparked the Moroccan Crisis of He made a spectacular visit to Tangier , in Morocco on 31 March