The Hohenzollern's
The flamboyant and erratic Kaiser Wilhelm II owned and loved to show off more than 300 military dress uniforms. He would cheerfully change his costume a dozen times daily. One of the many jokes that made the rounds in Berlin was that the Kaiser wouldn't visit an aquarium without 1st putting on Admiral's regalia, or eat a plum pudding without dressing as a British Field Marshal. He was childish is so many ways, even in 1914, when he was in his early 50's and had ruled Germany for a quarter of a century, nothing had changed about his childish ways. Not surprisingly, many of the men who were sworn to serve him regarded him not just as immature but as mentally unstable.
Wilhelm was only the 3rd member of the Hohenzollern family to occupy the throne of imperial Germany: the 2nd had been Kaiser for only months. The Hohenzollern's unlike the Hapsburg's, were in 1914 a still rising family at the top of a rising nation. Despite many interruptions that had brought them to the brink of ruin, they had been rising for 500 years, slowly emerging from obscurity in the late Middle Ages and eventually surpassing all the older and grander dynasties of Europe.
They were definitely different than the Hapsburg's. The Hohenzollern's rose in conquest threw war instead of threw matrimony like the Hapsburg's. They had a remarkable history not just of ruling countries, but of inventing the countries they wanted to rule. It is scarcely going to far to say that the Hohenzollern's-assisted, of course, by their brilliant servant Otto Von Bismarck- invented modern Germany.
The 1st Hohenzollern of note was one Count Friedrick, a member of the miner nobility who in the early 15th century somehow got the Holy Roman Emperor to appoint him Margrave of Brandenburg an area centered on Berlin in northeastern Germany. In his new position Friedrick was an elector, one of the hereditary magnates entitled to choose new emperors. His descendants increased their holdings during the next century and a half, expanding to the east by getting possession of a wild and backward territory called Prussia.
Inhabited originally by Slavs rather than Germans, Prussia had been conquered and Christianized in the 1200's by a religious order called the Teutonic Knights. It happened that, when the Protestant Reformation swept across northern Germany, the head of the Teutonic Knights was a member of the Hohenzollern family, one Albert by name. In 1525 this Albert declared himself a Protestant, which is what all the nobles at that time where doing. He declared that Prussia was now a Duchy, and that he-with no surprise-was its Duke. Albert's little dynasty of Hohenzollern's died out in the male line after only two generations, at which time a marriage was arranged between the female heir and her cousin, the Hohenzollern elector of Brandenburg.
The 1st half of the 17th century was a low point for the family; Brandenburg found itself on the losing side in a Northern European War and for a while was occupied by Sweden. Times got better with Friedrick Wilhelm, called the Great Elector, who was Margrave from 1640 to 1688 and originated the superbly trained army that forever after would be the Hohenzollern trademark and would cause Napoleon to say that Prussia had been hatched out of a cannonball. Friedrick Wilhelm made Brandenburg the most powerful of Germany's Protestant states, 2nd only to Catholic Austria to the south.
In 1701 the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor found himself in a struggle over who would inherit the throne of Spain. He needed help-and the tough little army of Brandenburg is what he wanted. The Hohenzollern elector at the time, another Fredrick wanted something in return; he wanted to be King. This presented more difficulties, but the emperor's need was real, so thing where worked out. He decided that Fredrick could have a kingdom, but it had to be called Prussia instead of Brandenburg. And by the rules, Fredrick could not be king, but he could style himself as king in Prussia. This made Fredrick's new status ridiculous, but it was a step towards real Kingship and Fredrick settled for it. He became King Fredrick 1st, the 1st Hohenzollern to be a monarch, if only in a way.
Not till two generations later, did the Hohenzollern's became Kings of Prussia. This happen during one of the most remarkable reigns in European history, that of Fredrick 2nd, who by the age of 33 was known to all of Europe as Frederick the Great. Fredrick is to big a subject to be dealt with in a few paragraphs. He was the 1st Monarch in all of Europe to abolish religious discrimination, press censorship, and judicial torture. He was also a ruthless adventurer all to eager for glory, and he and his kingdom would have been destroyed except for the lucky fact that, Fredrick happen to be a military genius. In the course of his long life, he teetered more than once on the brink of total failure-at one point he was at war with Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden simultaneously-but after many hair raising escapes, he raised Prussia to the ranks of Europe's leading powers.
He made the Hohenzollern's one of the leading dynasties of Europe despite never having or ever wanting children. So when he died in 1786, just before the French Revolution, the crown was passed to an untalented nephew.
The wars of Napoleon undid all of Fredrick's achievements. Prussia was reduced to a state of collapse, then to submissive vassalage to France. Also with humiliating the German States, theirs ignited German Nationalism. This lead to an uprising after Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia.
The Prussia Army was lethal as always and contributed significantly to the defeat of the French at Leipzig and Waterloo. Hohenzollern princes were conspicuous on the battle field; one of them was killed leading a Calvary charge. In 1815 the congress of Vienna restored Prussia back to a major power state, but in a new way; some of the kingdoms eastern most holdings were given to Russia and Austria and replaced with others in the west. Prussia thus became the only major power whose subjects were almost all German.
This was an important time when Germans everywhere were beginning to talk of unification. The big question was whether there would be a Greater Germany led by Austria or a lesser Germany from which Austria would be excluded.
The century following the defeat of Napoleon brought triumph after triumph to the Hohenzollern's. In 1864, guided by Bismarck, Prussia took the dissipated but largely German provinces of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. Two years after that it fought Austria and won so conclusively as to part its claim to leadership among the German states beyond challenge.
The Hohenzollern realm now stretched across northern Germany all the way to the border with France and included 2/3 of the population of non-Austria-Germany. In 1870 the French Emperor Napoleon III, in trouble politically and desperate to find some way of reversing his fortunes, was seduced by Bismarck into committing the folly of declaring war. With Prussia and German allied (Austria was not included) They astonished the world by demolishing the French Army at the Battle of Sedan.
In the hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, the assembled German princes declared the creation of a New German Empire, where the states can continue to have their own kings but over which there would now be a Hohenzollern Emperor. As part of the spoils of war, the German princes wanted to take the province of Alsace from France. This territory was not important, but the Germans believed it had been stolen by Louis XIV two centuries before and was German rather than French. Bismarck foresaw that France would never forgive the loss. He predicted that for Germany to keep what it had won, they would have to fight another war after a 1/2 century had passed. His was right as usual, but made no serious effort to block the annexation.
The 1st ruler of the newly united Germany, King Wilhelm I of Prussia, was unhappy about his elevation, even sullen. In his opinion, being King was a great honor, but an empire needed an emperor. He remained the King of Prussia while assuming his new title, and Prussia continued to be a distant state with its own government and military administration. It continued to be dominated by a centuries old Prussia Elite, The Junkers, whose sons went into the army and the civil administration and swore loyalty not to their county but to their King.
At this point in 1871, the Hohenzollern's stood at the pinnacle of Europe. Kaiser Wilhelm 1st, a man so stolid and methodical that the people of Berlin could set their watches by his appearances at his windows, and he ruled what was unquestionably, the most powerful and vigorous country in Europe. Plus he had a wealthy heir; his son, Crown Prince Fredrick. Who loyal to the centuries old of his family had led armies threw all the great campaigns leading up to the creation of the empire. Now the Crown Prince was happily married to the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria.
His wife was a very serious-minded young woman who had won her husband over to the idea of one, after they inherited the throne, transforming Germany into a democratic monarchy on the British model. Together, meanwhile, they were producing yet another generation of Hohenzollern's. Their eldest child was a boy who bore his grandfather's name. He had a withered, useless left arm-a troubling defect in the heir to a line of warrior Kings-but he was determined healthy otherwise and not unintelligent.
When his grandfather became Emperor, the boy Wilhelm was 12 years old, his father barely 40. But only 17 years later, filled with insecurities but determined to prove himself a mighty leader, a worthy All-High Warlord, this same boy would ascend to the throne as Wilhelm II.
