Kaiser Wilhelm II: Germany's Last Emperor

by John van der Kiste

Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, this biography examines the complex personality of Germany's last emperor. Born in 1859, the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria, Prince Wilhelm was torn between two cultures - that of the Prussian Junker and that of the English liberal gentleman.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, 20th Century, European History, Germany, Royalty

362 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

John Van der Kiste, British author, was born in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, on September 15, 1954, son of Wing Commander Guy Van der Kiste (1912–99). He was educated at Blundell's School, Tiverton, where he briefly formed a rock band Cobweb with fellow pupil Miles Tredinnick, later vocalist with new wave band London and subsequently playwright and scriptwriter, and read Librarianship at Ealing Technical College, where he edited the librarians’ student magazine.
He has worked for several years in public and academic libraries, but is best known as a writer. His first book, Frederick III, appeared in 1981, and since then he has published over twenty historical biographies, as well as books on local history, true crime, rock music, a novel and a play. He is also a contributor to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Guinness Rockopaedia, and has produced articles on historical, musical and art subjects in national and local journals, including Illustrated London News, Royalty Digest, European Royal History Journal, Best of British, BBC History Magazine, Record Collector, Antique Collector, This England, The Independent, and Gibbons Stamp Monthly. He has reviewed books and records for the press, written CD booklet notes, and between 1991 and 1996 edited the 70s rock fanzine Keep on Rockin.
In 2002 he was a consultant for the BBC TV documentary 'The King, the Kaiser and the Tsar', first screened in January 2003.
He married professional musician and teacher Kim Graham (née Geldard) in 2003 and lives in Devon.

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a German history paper.

Even though I have some German heritage, I've never been that interested in the history of the country. I think it was because in so much of it Germany doesn't come out the best. However, I had to take a class on it for the requirements of my history degree. I ended up choosing to write the paper for the class on Kaiser Wilhelm because I have read quite a bit about him in my preferred British history era since his mother was the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria. The book was interesting, and I learned quite a bit about what he was put through in the name of medical intervention to help his handicaps. While he was not a good ruler, and he worried too much about what his family felt about him, I think the issues of his childhood made him the man that helped plunge the world into its first World War. I would like to re-read this at some point when I'm not having to use it for research since I had to stop so many times to write down reference points needed for my 15-page paper.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this and it shed so much new light on the lead up to the first world war...and the second world war that was an extension of that unfinished business.
Gave me a completely new perspecitve!

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised that the options for biographies of the Kaiser are either triple-volume tomes, or slim 200 pagers. It just seems odd to me that there are so few biographies of the man who ruled Germany during WWI.
This book was a good summary of Wilhelm's life and his complex feelings and relationships with almost everyone around him. As with most historical figures, Wilhelm's actions can't be explained as such but this biography gives us the information to make our own minds up. One of the things that surprised me was the build-up to WWI - I was always lead to believe (in school and in other books I've read) that Europe was peaceful and uneventful before a someone shot Franz Ferdinand. But in the early 20th century everyone seemed to be making treaties of support or neutrality with everyone else, and it didn't help that most of the royal families were related through Victoria the matriarch. Mix politics and family and you've got yourself a nightmare and a powder keg!
I would have liked an epilogue or afterward for this book, it would have been nice to have a summary of events and perceptions of the Kaiser since he died, perhaps some mention of how he's thought of in Germany today. Also some maps of Europe as it was in Wilhelm's reign, as well as some extra family trees would have been useful and helped with context. I struggled with some of the events because I felt the author assumed the reader would know what he was talking about, also some of the terms of German politics and some of the war terms.
This book was decent but I'd recommend you have google at the ready when you read it!

[Val · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Van der Kiste's book is scholarly. He backs up everything he says with references, usually several of them, and tries to keep opinion to a minimum. This makes the book rather dry, but I would not say it was badly written. If you want a factual biography, it is the better of the two I read.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

John van der Kiste's Kaiser Wilhelm II offers a concise, readable biography of the last emperor of the Second Reich. Van der Kirste stresses Wilhelm's difficult upbringing: a childhood disability (his left arm damaged during birth) led to brutal medical treatment and ostracization by many German nobles; he was alternately spoiled and shunned for his disability, becoming a willful, resentful child from an early age. Wilhelm inherited the throne after the untimely death of his father, Frederick III, in the aftermath of his grandfather Wilhelm and Otto von Bismarck's remarkable achievement in unifying Germany and making it one of Europe's great powers. Almost from the first, Wilhelm's erratic personality alienated political allies at home and foreign nations abroad; he fired Bismarck and surrounded himself with sycophantic advisers who enabled his worst tendencies; he shunned the Iron Chancellor's bureaucracy in favor of ad hoc policymaking that infuriated the Reichstag and inflamed German liberals; he replaced realpolitik with personal diplomacy that did more harm than good. Wilhelm's foolishness provoked rivalry with Britain, stoked feelings of ravanche in France and aggravated Tsarist Russia; as Emperor, he oversaw bloody military expeditions to China and brutal colonial campaigns in Africa, while building up his military in a gesture universally seen as provocative. Admittedly, van der Kirste breaks no fresh ground in this assessment of Wilhelm; he was more incompetent than malicious, a man who enjoyed making provocative threats while expecting he wouldn't back them up - a fatal miscalculation in July 1914, when he decided to back Austria to the hilt. Van der Kirste less flatteringly shows Wilhelm's violent misogyny (he discusses, but does not overemphasize his possible homosexuality, highlighted by his close relationship with Philipp Eulenberg), his penchant for vulgar, childish pranks (once groping the Tsar of Bulgaria in public!) and his increasingly deranged antisemitism (soon after his abdication, he proposed gassing Europe's Jews to a colleague). Unlike his cousin Tsar Nicholas, who was at least a decent family man, Wilhelm appears even less charming in private than public. Van der Kirste stresses that all the nations of Europe bear their share of blame for starting World War I; even so, it was Germany, and the world's misfortune that this coarse, blundering fool occupied the Hohenzollern throne in 1914.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5