Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser's Early Life, 1859-1888

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Oct 29, 1998 - Biography & Autobiography - 979 pages
This rich and compelling volume describes the life of Kaiser Wilhelm II from his birth in 1859 to his accession to the Prusso-German throne in 1888, a story so extraordinary that it will fascinate anyone interested in the psychology and the throng of personalities of the period. Its aim is to set the characters on the stage and let them speak for themselves, which in their letters and diaries the Victorians and Wilhelminians did with quite extraordinary clarity and persuasive power. The central theme is the bitter conflict between the handicapped Prince and his liberal parents, and in particular with his mother, the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and the utter failure of a daring educational experiment intended to turn the young Prince into a liberal Anglophile.
 

Contents

Its alive and its a prince
1
Disorder and early sorrow
19
Ambivalent motherhood
54
An English princess at the Prussian court
82
Blood and history
97
Education fit for a king
116
The Doctor
143
Trials and tribulations
174
Prince Wilhelm and the Battenberg conspiracy
516
The Crown Princes nightmares
547
The gradual seizure of power
570
Waldersee and the world conflagration
599
the Crown Prince on the eve of catastrophe
630
The flight of the Crown Prince in the face of death
645
Prince Wilhelm and Queen Victorias Jubilee
674
Crisis in San Remo
690

Experiment at Kassel
201
Spring dreams and awakening
229
Coming of age
253
The Student Prince
274
the innerear illness of Kaiser Wilhelm II
306
Cabal and love
325
The estrangement
367
Politics
396
Prince Wilhelm between England and Russia
422
Eros and Austria
452
WilhelmWedelWaldersee
490
The Stoecker Meeting and the break with the Bismarcks
713
Prince Wilhelm and the War Party
741
Preparing for power
759
The macabre race for the throne
773
Impotence and agony
790
Notes
826
List of archival sources
957
Select bibliography
959
Index
967
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

John C. G. Röhl is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sussex. His many previous publications include The Kaiser and his Court (1994) which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize as well as the two other volumes of his biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II - Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy, 1888-1900 (Cambridge, 2004), which have won the Einhard Prize for the biography of a major European figure in 2012, and Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900-1941 (2014).

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