Three Episodes in the Life of Kaiser Wilhelm II

Abstract

The circumstances of the birth of Prince Wilhelm on 27 January 1859 were not without drama. For thirty-two years no male heir had been born to the House of Hohenzollern and considerable crowds stood in the falling snow before the palace of Prince Friedrich of Prussia in the Unter den Linden when it was known that his English wife, the Princess Victoria, was in labour. All Berlin was agog with hope for the birth of a prince, an ultimate heir to the throne. Only in the pseudo-gothic palace of Babelsberg, where the mind of King Frederick William IV wandered tragically in the dark mists and forests of insanity, was there no excitement.