Latest news with #WilhelmII
The Star
21-07-2025
- The Star
Escape stories and royal secrets: Inside the Netherlands' historic castles
When night falls, what was once the most secure castle in the Netherlands looms large, surrounded by black water. The water taxi from Woudrichem, a town nearby, chugs along, then departs. Now, all that's left is the wind whistling around the castle, while the boards of the jetty creak below. The castle gate is tightly locked. Sure, as a guest, you have a key – but doubts may arise as to whether it is really enough to open up the castle. But lo and behold, the gate moves and now, you're alone with the ghosts. Behind closed doors Waterfowl and wild cattle dot the landscape of ponds and flooded meadows, at the confluence of the Waal and Maas rivers, with the castle rising out of this solitude. It has hardly any windows, just bare, metre-thick walls. Slot Loevestein was once a prison for political prisoners, the most famous being Hugo Grotius. The father of modern international law became embroiled in a political power struggle in 1618 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was held behind 13 locked and heavily guarded doors. Nevertheless, he managed to escape in 1621 with the help of his wife, Maria van Reigersberch. The scholar hid in an empty bookcase and the unsuspecting guards carried him out of the castle. By the time they realised what had happened, he was already on his way to Paris. Today, you can have a much more pleasant stay in one of the 18th century soldiers' cottages. And in the morning, in the annex, you can enjoy a lovingly-prepared breakfast. The Muiderslot is located just outside Amsterdam. Buy your own prison More known for tulips and windmills, the Netherlands also has plenty of castles and palaces. Muiden Castle (or Muiderslot), near Amsterdam, matches everyone's idea of a knight's castle with its four round turrets, moat and inner courtyard. The castle is known as the setting for a medieval criminal case. When the Count of Holland, Floris V, acquired the walls in around 1285, he could not have imagined that he had bought his own prison. In 1296 he was kidnapped by rival nobles and imprisoned in Muiden Castle before he was killed by being stabbed 20 times. Another big draw in the world of Dutch castles is Doorn Manor. It's known for its interior, with furnishings dating back to German Emperor Wilhelm II, who resided there after his abdication and exile. Emperor's old clothes Wilhelm II lived in the manor house from 1919 until his death in 1941. His remains lie in a small mausoleum in the manor gardens, a few metres from the graves of his five dogs. In his will he stated that he could only be reburied on German soil upon restoration of the German monarchy. When the emperor died, the house fell into a deep sleep, which is the reason why everything still looks as it did back then. The furnishings are mainly from the Berlin Palace, Bellevue Palace and the New Palace in Potsdam, Germany, and were transported to the neutral Netherlands on five different trains. When he carried out his private correspondence, he did so in a horse's saddle screwed to a platform in front of his desk. The Wilhelmine slippers are still lying ready in the bedroom, one of his cigars is perched in an ashtray and the wardrobes are filled with the emperor's old clothes. Kaiser Wilhelm II's toilet in Haus Doorn. His special fork is still lying on the dining table with a blade on the prong on the left so that the fork can be used for cutting. This was due to the fact that Wilhelm's left arm was shorter and paralysed from birth. You can even see the imperial toilet although it doesn't look particularly luxurious by today's standards. Perhaps as fans of popular TV series Downton Abbey, today's visitors to Doorn Manor are also increasingly interested in the people from downstairs, the servants. Their living quarters in Doorn have also been completely preserved. But see Doorn Manor as a denial of history, says curator Cornelis van der Bas. 'World War I doesn't occur here. Wilhelm II acted as if it had never happened and instead reenacted the 19th century.' – dpa
Miami Herald
23-06-2025
- Miami Herald
Spooky Dutch castles, mansions and former jails well worth a visit
WOUDRICHEM, the Netherlands - When night falls, what was once the most secure castle in the Netherlands looms large, surrounded by black water. The water taxi from Woudrichem, a town nearby, chugs along, then departs. Now, all that's left is the wind whistling around the castle, while the boards of the jetty creak below. The castle gate is tightly locked. Sure, as a guest, you have a key - though doubts may arise as to whether it is really enough to open up the castle. But lo and behold, the gate moves and now, you're alone with the ghosts. Behind closed doors Waterfowl and wild cattle dot the landscape of ponds and flooded meadows, at the confluence of the Waal and Maas rivers, with the castle rising out of this solitude. It has hardly any windows, just bare, meter-thick walls. It was once a prison for political prisoners, the most famous being Hugo Grotius. The father of modern international law became embroiled in a political power struggle in 1618 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was held behind 13 locked and heavily guarded doors. Nevertheless, he managed to escape in 1621 with the help of his wife, Maria van Reigersberch. The scholar hid in an empty bookcase and the unsuspecting guards carried him out of the castle. By the time they realized what had happened, he was already on his way to Paris. Today, you can have a much more pleasant stay in one of the 18th-century soldiers' cottages. And in the morning, in the annex, you can enjoy a lovingly prepared breakfast. Buy your own prison More known for tulips and windmills, the Netherlands also has plenty of castles and palaces. Muiden Castle, near Amsterdam, matches everyone's idea of a knight's castle with its four round turrets, moat and inner courtyard. The castle is known as the setting for a medieval criminal case. When the Count of Holland, Floris V, acquired the walls in around 1285, he could not have imagined that he had bought his own prison. But in 1296 he was kidnapped by rival nobles and imprisoned in Muiden Castle before he was killed by being stabbed 20 times. Another big draw in the world of Dutch castles is Doorn Manor. It's known for its interior, with furnishings dating back to German Emperor Wilhelm II, who resided there after his abdication and exile. The emperor's old clothes Wilhelm II lived in the manor house from 1919 until his death in 1941. His remains lie in a small mausoleum in the manor gardens, a few meters from the graves of his five dogs. In his will he stated that he could only be reburied on German soil upon restoration of the German monarchy. When the emperor died, the house fell into a deep sleep, which is the reason why everything still looks as it did back then. The furnishings are mainly from the Berlin Palace, Bellevue Palace and the New Palace in Potsdam, Germany, and were transported to the neutral Netherlands on five different trains. When he carried out his private correspondence, he did so in a horse's saddle screwed to a platform in front of his desk. The Wilhelmine slippers are still lying ready in the bedroom, one of his cigars is perched in an ashtray and the wardrobes are filled with the emperor's old clothes. Denying history His special fork is still lying on the dining table with a blade on the prong on the left so that the fork can be used for cutting. This was due to the fact that Wilhelm's left arm was shorter and paralyzed from birth. You can even see the imperial toilet - although it doesn't look particularly luxurious by today's standards. Perhaps as fans of popular TV series "Downton Abbey," today's visitors to Doorn Manor are also increasingly interested in the people from downstairs, the servants. Their living quarters in Doorn have also been completely preserved. But see Doorn Manor as a denial of history, says curator Cornelis van der Bas. "The First World War doesn't occur here. Wilhelm II acted as if it had never happened and instead reenacted the 19th century." __________ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Daily Maverick
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Israel-USA war on Iran – A multitude of cats set among an infinity of pigeons
The Iranian-Israeli conflict has taken an even more dangerous turn with the attack by the US on Iran's nuclear sites. Is there a way forward from this, and does history offer us any help in understanding what can be done to bring the aerial war to an end? 'Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth.' — Mike Tyson Some serious history lessons In August 1914, German Kaiser Wilhelm II suddenly became nervous about launching an all-out war with France. This was about to take place on behalf of its ally, Austria, in its fight with Serbia, following the assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne in Sarajevo. This movement towards an invasion of France was a consequence of the tangle of treaties and agreements tying Serbia to Russia, and Russia to France – versus Germany to Austria – the infamous 'blank cheque.' But the Kaiser was informed by his army's general staff that such a halt or even a reverse of the military mobilisation would create massive chaos on the rail network, and such a precipitate, ad hoc decision like the one the kaiser had proposed simply could not be undertaken. Thereafter, it was just a series of short steps before all the major European powers (and eventually America) were drawn into prolonged war. That war destroyed four empires, opened the floodgates for a devastating influenza epidemic and set the scene for a second global conflict 20 years later as a consequence of the vindictive peace treaty enforced on a vanquished Germany. Had the German general staff been able to foresee the future, they might have given their emperor's query a second thought instead of the order to the army and the railroads to proceed as planned. Following an even more destructive World War 2 and the development of atomic weapons, soon enough it was coming increasingly clear to leaders of a growing roster of nuclear powers, especially after the Soviet Union had its own bomb, that the world had become a very different place than it had been prior to Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the 1950s, doctrines such as Mutual Assured Destruction – MAD – were helping define the strategic postures of nuclear-armed nations. But it became very clear that using nuclear weapons on the new battlefields of the world would lead to even more devastating consequences than conventional fighting. Analysts like Herman Kahn began constructing a rigorous, theoretical hierarchy of combat, the ladder of escalation, that addressed the way nations would consciously move on to increasingly destructive combat until the full-on deployment of nuclear weapons took place – but with a crucial caveat that there were off-ramps on that ladder to counterbalance such potentially dangerous ideas such as 'launch on warning'. That was the idea that if it became clear a nuclear attack was imminent on a nation by its antagonist, the intended victim would launch its own retaliatory strike before the incoming missile and rockets had actually struck their intended targets. Instead, every single move up that escalatory ladder needed to be consciously contemplated before carrying them out, automatically, lockstep, like those German troop trains, lest civilisation itself perish this time around. Or, as physicist Albert Einstein had reportedly responded to the question about what kinds of weapons would be used in a future World War 3, that while he didn't know the answer to that question, he believed World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones. There is, in fact, a frightening roster of mistakes and miscues that easily could have set off nuclear warfare, even if disaster had been averted in time. By the 1980s, many doomsday scenarios had been published in novels, or made into cinematic or made-for-television films. These included a very dark, black humour film, Dr Strangelove, and the harrowing The Day After. The former is the Stanley Kubrick classic of the end of the world by mistake, while the latter had been viewed on American television by more than 100 million people. It became the only American TV programme ever watched uninterrupted, in full, and without interpretive commentary, on Soviet TV. The Day After portrayed the destruction to the world through the circumstances of ordinary people in Lawrence, Kansas, as nuclear attacks progressively destroyed the nation. Works like this helped greatly in sensitising global publics into some serious thinking and worries about nuclear weapons. By this point, increasingly aware of the dangers of such weapons, the Soviet Union, the US and its European allies painstakingly negotiated nuclear test bans and strategic arms limitation treaties, as well as a Nuclear Proliferation Treaty to limit the expansion of nuclear-armed nations. That treaty did not, however, preclude Israel, North Korea, India or Pakistan from developing their own nuclear weapons and the missiles to deploy them at their presumed antagonists. And, presumably, too, it did not prevent Iran from undertaking some of the steps towards that as well. With these developments as prelude and foundation, we get to the heart of the challenge now roiling the Middle East – and the wider world. While the Israelis have not publicly described their nuclear weapons stockpile, let alone to even having admitted to having one, it is generally understood the Israelis have a sufficient stock of such weapons that they can creditably be seen as a bulwark against any outright military invasion of their nation by another nation – although the way those weapons would be deployed remains unclear. How could such a weapon be effectively deployed against a non-state actor like Hamas or Hezbollah, scattered into thousands of small cells, or let alone a nation that harboured them? (South Africa faced the same moral and practical conundrums once it had developed a small stockpile of such weapons – reportedly in cooperation with Israel – back in the 1980s. Could they have been used against the small, scattered formations of Umkhonto weSizwe or Apla in the frontline nations, let alone the capital city of a country like Zambia that had been harbouring those liberation group forces, or even – more horrifically, still – a black township rising in insurrection and threatening to overwhelm a nearby city? None of these possibilities has ever realistically been contemplated. The Israeli strategic doctrine and Iran's nuclear developments Over time, Israeli strategy has evolved into one of denying the possibility that any neighbouring antagonist state, such as Bashir al-Assad's Syria or Saddam Hussein's Iraq – and more recently, Iran – actually had the capability to develop nuclear weaponry to counterbalance its own undeclared but real nuclear capabilities. In accord with that policy, nuclear reactors in Iraq and Iran were effectively destroyed by Israeli air power. For years, the Netanyahu government has been pressing America for increasingly stringent measures to restrain Iranian nuclear advances. The accord hammered out during the Obama administration (the P5+1 of China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran) had reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, to ensure Iran's nuclear programme would be exclusively peaceful. It had plausibly placed limitations on Iranian nuclear developments, including various inspections and other enforcement measures. By most estimates, it had put the possibility many years off into the future of Iranian success in generating sufficient amounts of fissile material (uranium-235, the radioactive isotope of that element) through hi-tech centrifuges from the much more common uranium-238. Very foolishly, the first Trump administration abrogated American participation in the accord, thereby giving Iran licence to again make efforts to assemble stocks of the radioactive isotope well beyond the 25% concentration needed for electric power or other industrial efforts. The International Atomic Energy Agency noted such efforts were heading past the 60% level of concentration, a level close to the levels of concentration needed for weapons-grade uranium. This decision by the Trump administration helped get the ball rolling to the present crisis. Consistent with Israeli doctrine, concern that Iran was well on the way to developing nuclear weaponry, the Israelis elected to carry out attacks on a range of Iranian targets, designed to degrade the Iranian military command and control structures, kill commanders of both the regular military and Revolutionary Guards, as well as various facilities related to uranium processing. This had come after the recent missile and rocket attacks on Israel, which had been largely warded off by the Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, acting in cooperation with Western and certain Middle Eastern forces. Historical American and Iranian tensions Of course, an antagonism between Israel and Iran stretches back to 1979, following the overthrow of the US-backed Shah Pahlavi and his government in a pro-democracy popular uprising that was dominated and derailed by the Shia religious establishment led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The resultant authoritarian theocracy defined the US and Israel as enemies of the new Iran. Looking further back in history, since the early 1950s, US assistance to elements of the Iranian military, which overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh's government as part of an acrimonious dispute over control of the country's oil resources, remained a sore point for many Iranians. Over the years, political and economic reforms, plus restrictions on the power of the rural clergy, plus the growing corruption of the Shah's government – aligned with the US and Israel – gave many Iranians reasons to support the Shah's departure and a view that the US and Israel were the country's enemies. Of course, other tensions, such as a rivalry between forces backed by Iran and Saudi Arabia in civil wars elsewhere in the Middle East, have kept Iran in a state of hostility towards other regional powers. It also provides an incentive for Iran to strengthen a web of proxies such as the now-departed regime in Syria, the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran's strategic doctrine In recent months, however, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the virtual destruction of Hezbollah in Syria and southern Lebanon, and a nearly similar fate for Hamas in Gaza amid all the horrific death and destruction in that territory, probably helped nurture Israeli leaders' feelings that now was the time to deal as decisively as possible with Iran and its nuclear ambitions, despite any putative international norms about non-interference with domestic affairs or aerial attacks on another nation. Accordingly, the Israelis carried out overwhelming aerial attacks on Iran's missile launcher sites, command and control centres and, crucially, ancillary nuclear facilities. Israeli air power, however, did not extend to destroying those deep underground facilities housing those arrays of uranium centrifuges crucial to uranium isotope separation. Because of that, the Netanyahu government has been pressing hard for the Americans to deploy their massive bunker-busting bombs – devices never previously used in combat – to render grievous damage to the three key Iranian nuclear processing facilities at Nafanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. The American engagement After days of hinting about doing it – or not – the American military carried out that mission over the evening of 21-22 June. Not surprisingly, President Trump spoke in glowing terms about this very complex military effort, praising it for giving concrete form to his insistence that the US would never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. It is important to note, however, that US analysts had remained divided over whether Iran was clearly on the trajectory of actually concentrating the uranium up to weapons grade, to actually building a nuclear weapon, and to being able to marry such a device to a missile successfully. Imperial overreach? However, deep in the heart of the apparent success of such moments and exertions, there always lurks the possibility of overstretch or overreach, especially for Israel, even when the goal is not territorial aggrandisement, as opposed to neutering an opponent's military capabilities. One presumed hope on the part of the Israelis is that in the face of the damage of continuing aerial hostilities, ongoing economic sanctions and pent-up demands by many members of Iranian society for a chance at freedom of expression, Iranians will themselves rise up to put an end to the oppressive theocratic rule in Iran. This hope may well be illusory, as over the years, the regime has repeatedly been willing to engage in harsh repressive measures against popular unrest. Thus, subsequent outcomes from all this are not clear, even if Iranian nuclear ambitions appear to be shattered, at least for some time into the future. It is not clear what the future trajectories for Iran, Israel or America are in the current conflict. So far, at least, there is no indication Israelis have an intention of climbing up the ladder of escalation until they rise to the use of nuclear weaponry, however. In all this, the Iranian government may now be facing something approaching some existential territory of its own. Does it continue attempts to move forward with its nuclear ambitions, regardless of the damage and the massive cost to rebuild and restart it? Does it contemplate carrying out alternative responses, such as attempting to close – once again – the Gulf of Hormuz? That seaway transports a major share of global consumption of natural gas and oil from the wells of producer nations and any move to do so would have virtually instant impacts on oil prices and the stability of supply globally. Or, is the Iranian government willing to push the remnants of Hamas and Hezbollah (plus the Houthis in Yemen) to carry out efforts vis-à-vis Israel, despite the costs to those depleted movements? Or, perhaps, will Iran attempt to retaliate against the swathe of US military facilities well within range of its current missiles? As far as the Iranians are concerned, so far, they have appealed to global public opinion over a rather substantial violation of territorial integrity, even as they have indicated a kind of willingness, even now, for some kind of negotiations to bring the crisis to an end. Such statements, however, have not prevented them from continuing to fire missiles at Israeli cities. All of this is in the face of the US president's language that has wobbled between talk of negotiations and continuing belligerence. Ultimately, over this past weekend, the US clearly chose the latter. For the Israelis, they must confront what kind of off-ramp they are willing to enter, as opposed to an ongoing missile exchange with a wounded, but not vanquished, Iran and the terrifying potential for ascending Herman Kahn's escalatory ladder? And, if they do continue such an aerial duel, will the damage inflicted detract from any ability (or willingness) to reach a modus vivendi with the remaining Persian Gulf states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, although the latter has insisted no such embrace is possible without an end to the fighting in Gaza and a real path for a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution. As far as the Americans are concerned, their own path is also less than clear. There are something like 40,000 US military personnel scattered across the Middle East, all within destructive range of the kinds of missiles now being used against Israel. The US president has already thrown down the gauntlet to the Iranians that they not attack any of those facilities (or by inference any diplomatic facilities) unless the Iranians wish to endure yet further attacks by US forces – something clearly possible, given the success of those overnight attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. If that sequence of events were to happen, how would that affect American relationships with the rest of the region? The US President's political problems There is also a challenge for Donald Trump's own political circumstances and the possibilities for his gaining the passage of legislation he favours. There is also the troubling matter of whether the president should have (or must have) gained the formal support of Congress before launching this attack. There is already a visible, increasingly angry split among his supporters (just tune into any of the Sunday television political talk shows in America) about whether the country should continue with Trump's America First/no foreign wars promised by Trump as a presidential candidate, or should his party automatically support the muscular international interventionism this bombing run demonstrated and that many in his own party had decried as a war that should not involve the US. And elsewhere, and what next? Further afield, while the Russians may well see this engagement by the US as a way America is again tangled in a conflict seemingly without an end, given their own costly, floundering assault of Ukraine, they may not be in much of a position to do much beyond being voluble in international bodies like the UN Security Council or on social media. Further to the east, the Chinese will certainly be studying the way the US exercised its precision military capabilities thousands of miles from home bases, even as they contemplate their moves towards gaining further, additional leverage against Taiwan. The fundamental challenge for all of us is how this most dangerous Middle East conflict can be brought to a conclusion without the utter destruction and devastation of the region's two most powerful nations – or even to avoid any possible threats of the use of the ultimate weapon, should the the Israelis come to believe their existence was under imminent threat. These are dangerous times, and there is no clear way forward – at least not yet. My own truly bad-case fear is that an Iranian missile or an Iron Dome defensive missile destroys one of the holy sites that are clustered close together in the greater Jerusalem area. What would that provoke? It is important to remember that some conflicts last for decades or longer. Central Europe was devastated for a century by the effects of the Thirty Years' War. In the ancient world, the Roman-Carthaginian struggle included three actual periods of intense conflict and only ended with the virtual extinction of Carthage as a city and nation. Somehow, a way must be found to bring this current episode to an end, but how? One wonders how the recent hostilities between India and Pakistan – both nuclear powers – had been tamped down before they both started their climb up that escalatory ladder. There is a topic worthy of a doctoral study and an analysis of whether there are any lessons that can be extracted from that – or even the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, for example – for dealing with the current Middle East conflict before something even worse occurs. Finally, is there anything nations not directly involved in the fighting can do to help ameliorate things and push the combatants away from further conflict? But this may require much more than pious pleas for an end to the fighting. DM
DW
17-06-2025
- Business
- DW
Dispute with the Hohenzollerns ends after almost 100 years – DW – 06/17/2025
After years of debate, the state and the Hohenzollerns have reached a mutually beneficial deal over diverse art items, including paintings and furniture. An almost century-long dispute in Germany is coming to an end. The House of Hohenzollern — a German noble family to which the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, also belonged — had long laid claim to various objects in German museums. They had also demanded millions in compensation for expropriated palaces and inventory. The whole thing went to court — until Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, the great-great-grandson of the last German emperor, finally changed the aristocratic house's strategy in 2023. He withdrew the compensation claims and thus cleared the way for out-of-court negotiations. The talks began in late 2024, resulting in the newly-reached agreement. Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, great-great-grandson of the last German emperor Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Hirschberger Works of art to remain in museums The new German Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer (CDU) and Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia had announced the breakthrough back in May 2025. The federal government and the states of Berlin and Brandenburg had reached an agreement with the former ruling house of Hohenzollern to set up the non-profit "Hohenzollern Art Foundation" to manage the previously reclaimed art and cultural objects. Now that the supervisory bodies of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the German Historical Museum have also given their approval, the agreement has been signed and sealed. According to Weimer, the public will be the biggest winner. The collections that include around 3,000 objects will now feature in the German Historical Museum, along with museums run by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The new foundation will also manage the inventory — furniture, tableware and paintings — from around 70 palaces, villas and other properties in Berlin and Potsdam that were owned or used by the Hohenzollern family until 1945. There are also objects belonging to the family that were confiscated as early as 1918, after the end of the monarchy. #DailyDrone: Hohenzollern Castle To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video The expropriation of the 'Junkers' At the end of World War II, Soviet troops conquered the former German territories east of the Elbe River and with them the bulk of the Hohenzollern territories. The Soviet Union regarded the "Junkers" — the land-owning nobility — as the class enemy and a pillar of the Nazi system. So in 1945, all noble houses in the Soviet occupation zone were expropriated without compensation. More than four decades later, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited. From one minute to the next, many former Hohenzollern castles and estates were once again on the Federal Republic's soil. But the German Unification Treaty in 1990 stated that the land reform of 1945 would not be reversed, meaning the Hohenzollerns had to write off their old properties in the east. Some 30 years later, the heirs of the last monarch demanded millions in compensation from the German state and the restitution of cultural assets — in vain. So the matter went to court. A painting of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, painted by Philip de László in 1911 Image: Ralf Hirschberger/dpa/picture alliance Did the Hohenzollerns 'aid and abet' the Nazis? This question played a central role in the compensation dispute: Had representatives of the House of Hohenzollern colluded with the National Socialists who ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945? Specifically, had the heirs of the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, who abdicated in 1918, "significantly supported" National Socialism? And what role did the son of the last monarch and former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia play between the world wars? Did he help the Nazis come to power in order to re-establish the monarchy? The so-called "Compensation Act" of 1994, which regulates the compensation of landowners whose property was expropriated in the East in 1945, states that anyone who "significantly aided" Hitler and the Nazis has no right to compensation. In fact, historical documents prove Wilhelm's ties to Hitler, with photos and films showing the former crown prince with the dictator and other Nazi leaders. However, Wilhelm's hopes that the Nazis would crown him the new emperor were never realized and historians continue to debate Wilhelm's role in the Nazi state. What relationship did the House of Hohenzollern have with the Nazi regime? Image: akg-images/picture-alliance Seeking proximity with Hitler In their biographies, two German historians Lothar Machtan ("The Crown Prince and the Nazis") and Stephan Malinowski ("The Hohenzollerns and the Nazis") describe the crown prince as a radical anti-democrat who admired Mussolini and sought proximity to Hitler. His mission was to restore the monarchy. Malinowski and his colleague Peter Brandt concluded that Wilhelm of Prussia's behavior had "considerably aided and abetted" the establishment and consolidation of the National Socialist regime. In fact, the ex-crown prince called for the election of Hitler in the 1932 German presidential election. He later boasted to Hitler that he had procured him two million votes. Wilhelm also publicly demonstrated solidarity with the new elites. "The symbolic capital of the Hohenzollerns was very important for the Nazis in 1932/33, even if the crown prince had his own agenda in the process," said Jacco Pekelder, a historian from Münster, in a television interview." This is where the last German emperor spent his exile — at Doorn House in the Netherlands Image: Daniela Posdnjakova/DW Debate ongoing but settlement reached The editors of the anthology "Die Hohenzollerndebatte" (The Hohenzollern Debate), published in 2021, casted their doubt on these fascist ties. Historian Frank-Lothar Kroll attested to Wilhelm's "rather marginal commitment" to the Nazis. He may have pandered to Hitler, but he did not share his totalitarian ideology. For decades, hordes of lawyers, politicians and historians dealt with the restitution and compensation claims of the descendants of Wilhelm of Prussia. Now a settlement finally seems to have been reached, and the public could benefit the most. This is an updated version of an article originally written in German.
Local Germany
14-06-2025
- Business
- Local Germany
Germany and last Kaiser's heirs agree to keep treasures on display
The agreement ends a century-old dispute between the state and the Hohenzollern family, descendants of the last German emperor and king of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated after World War I. "After 100 years, we have amicably resolved a dispute dating back to the transition from the monarchy to the republic," said Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer, hailing the "historic success". The collection reportedly covers 27,000 objects including paintings, sculptures, coins, books and furniture. "Countless works of art that are of great importance to the history of Brandenburg, Prussia, and thus Germany will now be permanently accessible to the public and continue to form the centrepieces of our museums and palaces," said Weimer. Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia said in a statement that "it has always been my goal to permanently preserve our shared cultural heritage for art-loving citizens and to make it publicly accessible". "The solution now found provides an excellent basis for a new partnership between the state cultural foundations and my family." Under the agreement, previously disputed objects will be transferred to a non-profit Hohenzollern Art Heritage Foundation, with two thirds of the board made up of public sector representatives, and one third by the aristocratic family. Advertisement Lost behind Iron Curtain The ancient House of Hohenzollern ruled the German Empire from its establishment in 1871 until Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate in 1918, going into exile after Germany's defeat in World War I. The Prussian royals were initially to be stripped of their properties but a deal was later worked out under a 1926 law. The imperial family received millions of Deutschmarks and kept dozens of castles, villas and other properties, mainly in and around Berlin but also as far away as today's Namibia. However, after Nazi Germany's World War II defeat, Soviet occupation of eastern Germany and communist rule led to additional expropriations. The riches lost behind the Iron Curtain only came back into reach for the Hohenzollern family with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Under a 1994 law, people whose property was expropriated by the Soviets have a right to claim compensation -- but only if they did not "lend considerable support" to the Nazi regime. The family fought for years to recover the treasures but dropped the bid in 2023 when a family representative acknowledged that Kaiser Wilhelm II "sympathised with the Nazis at times". The deal announced on Friday was sealed after the German Historical Museum Foundation gave its approval, following the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Prussian Castles and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg.
