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An Historian Goes to the Movies

~ Exploring history on the screen

An Historian Goes to the Movies

Tag Archives: Frederick III

Fall of Eagles: Wilhelm II

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by aelarsen in Fall of Eagles, History, Movies

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, Barry Foster, BBC, Empress Victoria, Fall of Eagles, Frederick III, Gemma Jones, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Otto von Bismarck

In the BBC miniseries Fall of Eagles, Kaiser Wilhelm II looms large, and is probably the closest thing it has to a main character, figuring at some point in the stories of both Austria and Russia as well as Germany. So let’s look at him briefly.

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The show devotes its second and third episodes, “The English Princess” and “the Honest Broker”, to the lives of Frederick III (Denis Lill) and his wife Victoria (Gemma Jones). They get along poorly with Frederick’s father Wilhelm I (Maurice Denham), who dislikes the couple’s Liberal political views, which contrast sharply with Wilhelm’s Conservatism. Bismarck (Curt Jürgens) convinces Wilhelm to exclude Frederick from all function in government in the second episode, and then in the third episode invites the young Wilhelm II (Barry Foster) to attend the Foreign Office. Frederick finds this insulting, but his son cannot understand why. The third episode focuses on Frederick’s growing incapacity due to his cancer of the larynx. Wilhelm I’s long life (he died at age 90), combined with Frederick’s cancer, meant that when Frederick finally became emperor in 1888, he only reigned for 99 days, during which his cancer left him almost speechless, and his long exclusion from government meant that he left almost no chance to shape government before it passed into the hands of Wilhelm II, who like his grandfather was essentially a Conservative.

The series emphasizes the poor relationship Frederick and Victoria had with their son. When his grandfather dies, he tentatively talks to Bismarck about a supposed law that says that a man who cannot speak cannot reign, but Bismarck slaps him down. When told that his father is dying, he suspects a plot by his mother. When Frederick dies a few hours later, Wilhelm enters the royal apartments with soldiers and tries to confiscate all of his father’s papers, a concern more important to him than paying his respects to his father. She laments that she feels like the ship of the nation is sinking at sea with all its hopes, and he contemptuously orders her to “go to your room!” This attempt to seize his parents’ papers did in fact happen, but Frederick and Victoria had already sent all of their papers to Windsor Castle the previous year.

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Kaiser Wilhelm II

The series presents Wilhelm in almost entirely negative terms. He is vain, self-important, militaristic, foolish, and basically incapable of appreciating anyone else’s needs. He seems to just disrespect his parents for no particular reason, other than one line in which he angrily says she had no tenderness for him as a child.

This depiction is probably unfair to Wilhelm in some respects. Far from the cold relationship with his father the series offers, Wilhelm had great respect for his father, regarding him as a hero of the German Unification. It was his relationship with his mother that was poor. When she went into labor while carrying him, complications resulted in Wilhelm’s left arm being damaged. It never healed, so his arm was crippled his whole life.

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Empress Victoria of Germany

This was a difficult issue between mother and son. Both of them blamed her for the injury, and Victoria seems to have considered his handicap an embarrassment. Victoria insisted that Wilhelm learn to ride at a very young age, even though his bad arm made this difficult, and when he fell off, as he did frequently, he was forced to get back on, even when he was crying not to. Later he wrote longingly to her of his desire for her affection, but instead she coldly corrected his grammar. So Wilhelm came to view his mother as harsh and domineering, and consequently he resisted her attempts to give him an more Liberal English-style education, and in later life he came to view his father as having been somewhat emasculated by his mother. So the poor relationship came from both sides, not simply from Wilhelm.

The series provides only hints of this dynamic. In the second episode, the young Wilhelm is shown struggling to learn to ride in one scene, but it’s not clear that his mother was demanding it. That and his comment that she had no tenderness for him (a comment that comes while he is treating her remarkably poorly) are the only hints that there was a more complex dynamic at work, and it’s clear that the series takes Victoria’s side at Wilhelm’s expense. So rather than trying to understand the man, the series simply wants to show why he was such a problematic ruler.

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Gemma Jones as the widowed Victoria

The show perhaps betrays a distinctly British view of German history. Bismarck treats Frederick and Victoria poorly and forces them into an isolated position because he wants more power than Frederick’s Liberalism will allow him. He encourages young Wilhelm’s aspirations as a way to remain in power, even though he privately disdains Wilhelm. So he supports Wilhelm against his parents. Then, at the end of the episode, the young Kaiser Wilhelm turns on Bismarck, whom he considers old-fashioned and not aggressive enough in his foreign policy. Bismarck throws one of his tantrums, which had always previously gotten him way with Wilhelm I, only to discover that it weakens his position with the young kaiser even further. Bismarck goes to the Dowager Empress Victoria seeking her help, but she points out that he’s already destroyed her political influence, so she cannot help him. So the show traces the slow growth of Conservatism, the emperor’s dominance of the government, and German aggression through the inability of Frederick and Victoria to influence the political events around them and through Bismarck’s toxic influence on Wilhelm II. If only, the show suggests, Victoria had been allowed more influence, then maybe the Great War would never have happened.

Later episodes continue this portrait of Wilhelm. He insists on commissioning bad allegorical paintings and sending them to his cousin Nicholas II of Russia, even though Nicholas doesn’t particularly want them. He thinks poorly of his relations but imagines that they respect him a great deal. He sees himself as a master statesman, despite being almost totally out of touch with popular opinion and having rather unrealistic ideas of renewing the League of the Three Emperors. None of this is untrue, but the show makes no effort to show any of Wilhelm’s more positive traits such as his intelligence, his preference for modernism over tradition, and his support for science. Contrary to his current reputation as a hawk, in 1913, the New York Times was celebrating him as one of the most important peacemakers of the previous quarter-century. Nor does the series really explore the idea that his crippled arm might have psychologically led him to embrace militarism as a way to compensate for his lack of traditional manliness. Wilhelm was a profoundly erratic and inconsistent man in some ways, but he was probably not quite the boob the series presents him as.

This review was made possible by a reader who made a generous donation to my Paypal account and requested I review this series. If you have something you’d like me to review, make a donation and tell me what you’d like me to watch.

Want to Know More? 

Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats. If you’d like to know more about Wilhelm II, John CG Röhl’s Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Concise Life is a condensed version of Röhl’s prize-winning three-volume biography of the man and would be a good short (262 pages) introduction to him.

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Fall of Eagles: The Unification of Germany

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by aelarsen in Fall of Eagles, History, Movies, TV Shows

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, BBC, Curt Jürgens, Fall of Eagles, Frederick III, Gemma Jones, Liberalism, Nationalism, Otto von Bismarck, Unification of Germany, William I of Prussia

As I discussed in my previous post, Fall of Eagles deals with major political events from the perspective of the royal families of Austria, Prussia/Germany, and Russia, but doesn’t both to explain the wider political movements that were driving many of the major events. Liberalism is frequently referenced, but never explained, and nationalism isn’t even mentioned as an ideology. The first episode deals with the Revolutions of 1848 on Austria and Hungary while focusing mostly on the limited viewpoint of Empress Elisabeth. The second episode, “The English Princess”, takes the same approach to the unification of Germany in the 1860s.

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The main viewpoint character in this episode is Crown Princess Victoria (Gemma Jones), daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick (Denis Lill), son of King William I (Maurice Denham), who is depicted as hesitant, unsure of himself, and prone to fits of tears. Historically. Victoria and Frederick were Liberals, which as I explained in my previous post means they favored a strong Parliament and other representative elements of government, whereas William I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Curt Jürgens) were Conservatives, so that they favored a strong monarch with few limits on his authority. But the viewer is left to figure this out mostly through William and Bismarck’s preference for an unrestrained military and a willingness to ignore the Prussian Parliament.

The episode focuses on the tensions between William and his son and daughter-in-law. William demands that Frederick express support for press censorship, and when Frederick gives a speech that dodges the issue, William feels betrayed and accuses Frederick of wanting to usurp the throne, and Bismarck counsels William to cut Frederick out of government duties and isolate them. The series frames this as William being unable to conceive of the idea of ‘loyal opposition’, an idea deeply embedded in British politics. Both Victoria and Frederick resent this isolation and their viewpoint is championed in the series with the way the individual scenes frame the situation.

 

The Unification of Germany

The Revolutions of 1848 demonstrated that there were many Germans who wished to see the unification of the fragmented German nation into a single nation-state. Bismarck, however, wanted to strengthen Prussia and turn it into the greatest European power. While a unified Germany was a way to make Prussia more powerful, there was a serious problem. Austria was a rival of Prussia, and unifying the Germans meant bringing both Austria and Prussia into a new German nation-state, which meant that Prussia would not be able to dominate the new Germany. So Bismarck’s Conservatism was at odds with the goals of German Nationalists.

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Otto von Bismarck

Bismarck’s solution to this problem was to use Nationalism as a way to disguise his ambitions for Prussia. Over the 1860s, he waged three wars: the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He used the Second Schleswig War as an opportunity to promote himself as the defender of the German Nation from Danish oppression, this winning favor with the German Nationalists. When Austria tried to revise the settlement by appealing to a German Diet, Bismarck accused them of violating the terms of the peace treaty and declared war. In fact, Bismarck’s goal was to force Austria into withdrawing from German politics, and the Prussian military trounced Austria brutally at the Battle of Königgrätz, forcing Austria to sue for peace.

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Bismarck watching the battle of Königgrätz

Then Bismarch orchestrated the Franco-Prussian War, editing a telegram from William I to the French ambassador in a way that suggested that William had insulted the French. This tricked Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia. In the brief war that followed, Prussia again triumphed handily. This gave Bismarck the political capital to press for a German unification that excluded Austria and which allowed Prussia to dictate the terms of the unification. The Nationalists rejoiced to see their goal of German unification advanced so far, while the Liberals looked away from Bismarch’s violent methods and toward the constitution that he offered.

On the surface, the constitution appeared to be a Liberal document, establishing universal manhood suffrage and vesting substantial power in what was essentially a two-house Parliament. The Reichstag (functionally the Lower House) was elected by all male citizens over 25, while the Bundesrat (functionally the Upper House) was appointed by the heads of the individual German states, with Prussia getting as many votes as the next four largest house combined and slightly more than 25% of the total votes. The Bundespräsidium or presidency of the German Confederacy was held by the Prussian king, who received the title of Emperor. But when looks closely at the details of the constitution, it actually grants the king of Prussia enormous power, because the Bundesrat held much more power than the Reichstag, and it was dominated by Prussian appointees, which allowed the king of Prussia to issue orders that the Bundesrat carried out. In practice, this was a Conservative constitution dressed up as a Liberal one, and it vastly increased the power of Prussia by making in the dominant state in Germany.

In the series, William I feels so unable to govern that he attempts to abdicate in favor of his son, but Frederick refuses on the grounds that Hohenzollerns do not abdicate. (Whether this detail is true I am unsure of. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of it.) Instead, William turns to Bismarck, who takes advantage of the fact that the old man just wants to be told what to do, and sets about engineering the unification of Germany to make himself more powerful. The series makes no mention of the Second Schleswig War, and then focuses on the Austro-Prussian War, which is simply blames on Bismarck’s aggression. There is an extended scene in which Bismarck, having defeated Austria in three battles in as many days now wants to negotiate for peace. William and General von Moltke want to press onward and occupy Vienna, hoping to take Austrian land. Bismarck (backed by Frederick, who dislikes war) says that Austrian land has no value to Prussia. It’s understandable why William and von Moltke can’t understand what Bismarck wants because Bismarck never clearly explains what his purpose for the war is. He gets his way by threatening to quit and then orchestrates the Franco-Prussian War, again failing to explain what his motives are. Somehow, victory over France leads the other German states to press William to become emperor, which he resists but which Frederick presses for.

If one does not know what Bismarck was actually up to, this episode would certainly not enlighten one much about the process of German unification. Bismarck comes off as a steely but emotional man who cares little for human lives other than his soldiers and has little respect for the ruler he serves.

This review was made possible by a reader who made a generous donation to my Paypal account and requested I review this series. If you have something you’d like me to review, make a donation and tell me what you’d like me to watch.

Want to Know More? 

Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats.  For those interested in Bismarck himself, try Jonathan Steinberg’s Bismarck: A Life. If you want to know more about Bismarck’s unification of Germany, take a look at DG Williamson’s Bismarck and German Unification, 1862-1890.


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