Tell me if this sounds familiar: A towering public figure who loves the sound of his own voice, who starts off by positioning himself as the face of change, something special, the man who’s going to make your nation the bestest nation of all. He’s loud, and he’s shouty, and he clearly thinks he’s a big deal. People are excited. But actually, it turns out that life and circumstances conspired to put him in a position that though he clearly thinks he was born for it, greatly outstrips his capabilities. Time goes on, and it transpires that though he’s great at the talking and the slogans and the whipping people up, he’s not so great at the doing. People begin to see through the shouting. He’s definitely not the brightest guy in the room, and he’s always flitting from one cause to another, without actually nailing down what he promises. Eventually, he just becomes exhausting. The longer he’s around, the more he becomes a bit of an embarrassment, and various government officials, politicians, family members, the press, all begin taking him less seriously. They can’t ditch him, because of the position he wields, but they back away and try and distance themselves from the rhetoric. Half the time, he talks gibberish. At times, you can picture the sensible adults in the room with their heads in their hands, very much wishing he’d just shut up.
I’ve just described the public life of Kaiser Wilhelm II from his ascension to the German throne in 1888 to the onset of the First World War. Bearing all the above in mind, I was plodding through some French books the other day, and I came across one I definitely wanted to write an article about. In 1918, a Madame Marie Méring decide to collate the Kaiser’s public speeches from throughout the First World War and publish them in one place. This is going to be good, I thought. Merci, Marie…
Making Germany Great (Again)
The Kaiser is a fascinating study. A lot of Wilhelm’s rhetoric from 1888 onwards was about reaching back into history. Germany was only unified in 1871, and so he had to, to try and generate the kind of symbolism, pomp and pageantry he wanted to inject into a monarchy that was actually new in this incarnation. Image wise, his rhetoric was all about bringing back medieval vibes, and tying himself to the perceived grandeur and the chivalry of the Middle Ages. Don’t forget he’s Queen Victoria’s oldest grandson. He’s seen this kind of precedent and imagery in action since he was a boy, and he wanted it for himself too.
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