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51-572: The article was based on notes taken by British Colonel Edward Stuart-Wortley during conversations with Wilhelm in 1907. The Daily Telegraph wrote them up in the form of an interview and sent a copy to Wilhelm for his approval. Through a series of missteps made by the German chancellor and the Foreign Office, the interview was published without proper review. It raised ire in both Britain and Germany primarily over three issues: Wilhelm's statement that he

102-516: A financial reform package through the Reichstag and handed in his resignation. Nothing came of the calls from the parliamentary Left to make constitutional changes that would limit the Kaiser's powers. Bülow worked out an agreement with Wilhelm in which he promised to be more restrained and uphold his constitutional responsibilities. A proposal to summon Germany's ruling princes to Berlin for a formal protest

153-421: A granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria respectively, had suffered from a form of the dominant genetic disorder porphyria variegata , so demonstrating the validity of the theory advanced earlier by Professor Ida Macalpine and her son Richard Hunter that this illness had been the probable cause of George III 's "madness". These findings were published in the book Purple Secret: Genes, 'Madness' and

204-627: A resolution was introduced in the Reichstag condemning him on that account. The cumulative effect was that even before 1908, German contemporaries across the political spectrum had come to view Wilhelm's personal interventions in foreign policy as harmful to the nation's reputation. On a 1907 visit to England, Wilhelm stayed at the home of Colonel Edward Stuart-Wortley . The two men had a number of conversations in which Wilhelm expounded on his desire for friendly relations between Germany and Great Britain. The sympathetic Stuart-Wortley decided that relations between Great Britain and Germany could be improved if

255-525: A series of scandals in 1907–09, in three volumes under the auspices of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . This edition, published in the series Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts between 1976 and 1983, broke new ground, demonstrating the personal power wielded by the Kaiser, his court and his favourites as distinct from the state institutions in

306-514: A special gift for it. In 1901 he boasted unrealistically to King Edward VII of England: "I am the sole arbiter and master of German foreign policy, and the government and country must follow me." In January 1896, Wilhelm committed a particularly notable indiscretion with the telegram he sent to the president of the South African Republic , Paul Kruger , congratulating the Boers for repelling

357-405: Is a personal insult which I feel and resent. To be forever misjudged, to have my repeated offers of friendship weighed and scrutinized with jealous, mistrustful eyes, taxes my patience severely. ... The prevailing sentiment among large sections of the middle and lower classes of my own people is not friendly to England. I am, therefore so to speak, in a minority in my own land, but it is a minority of

408-622: The Jameson Raid and stopping a possible pro-British takeover of the Republic. Great Britain was outraged at the " Kruger telegram " and its intemperate language, although at home Wilhelm's stance reflected the opinions of many middle and upper-middle class Germans, who showed an increased sympathy for the Boers after the raid. In spite of Wilhelm's numerous false steps, some of the diplomatic failures that were blamed on his intervention had been sanctioned by

459-646: The National Humanities Center in North Carolina in 1997–98. He was given emeritus status by the University of Sussex in 1999. Röhl died from prostate cancer in Sussex on 17 November 2023, at the age of 85. After Germany Without Bismarck (1967), Röhl edited the political correspondence of Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg (1847–1921), the closest friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II until his fall from grace in

510-640: The Royal Air Force stationed at RAF Geilenkirchen on the German–Dutch border near Aachen . At Cambridge, Röhl achieved a First on both Parts of the Historical Tripos and in 1961 went on to work for a PhD under the supervision of Professor Sir Harry Hinsley . He spent the academic year 1962–63 in the archives of West and East Germany researching the history of Imperial Germany in the aftermath of Bismarck 's fall from power in 1890. The dissertation

561-759: The SS in late July 1944, the family moved to the relative safety of the remote Hungarian countryside, but in January 1945 with the imminent approach of the Red Army , Freda Röhl and her by then three children joined the stream of refugees heading westwards back to Germany. They were eventually reunited with Gerhard Röhl, who had been conscripted into a punishment battalion on the Russian front , in Ziegenrück in Thuringia, where they were liberated by

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612-527: The general elections of 1922, 1923, and 1924, and of Saffie Beechey Kingsford, great‑granddaughter of the Georgian portrait painter Sir William Beechey . At the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, John Röhl was taken by his parents first to Forst on the River Neisse in eastern Germany and then to Pécs in southern Hungary. His first languages were Hungarian and German. After the arrest of his father by

663-550: The British parliamentary debate in December 1908 on the building of new dreadnoughts . In light of the commonly perceived German threat and an increased level of public concern, the Liberal government, which had promised expensive social reforms including old age pensions, changed course and backed the immediate building of four costly dreadnoughts. Sir Eyre Crowe , an expert on Germany in

714-626: The English people knew Wilhelm's true feelings. When Stuart-Wortley and Wilhelm met again in September 1908, they discussed Stuart-Wortley's idea to have London's Daily Telegraph publish the contents of their conversations using the notes he had taken. Wilhelm agreed, and the journalist Harold Spender wrote an article in the form of an interview. The Daily Telegraph sent the draft to Wilhelm in Berlin and asked for approval to publish it. What happened next with

765-496: The Foreign Office, concluded that the "interview" was part of a German attempt to mislead British opinion about its true motives, while Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote privately of Wilhelm: "He is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe." The publication of the Daily Telegraph article caused an unprecedented wave of criticism of

816-656: The German government. The Kaiser's visit to Tangier in 1905, which sparked the First Moroccan Crisis and heightened tensions between France and Germany, was the idea of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow . Bülow also drafted the 1905 Treaty of Björkö between Germany and the Russian Empire , which was triumphantly signed by Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm. In the end it was never implemented and only made Russia, France and Britain more wary of Germany. In 1906 Bülow rebuked Wilhelm for interfering in foreign affairs after

867-422: The German navy? Surely, that is a menace to England? ... My answer is clear. Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a worldwide commerce which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. ... Who can foresee what may take place in

918-478: The Kaiser in both the German press and in the Reichstag. It was heightened by the scandal that had broken the year before following accusations that a number of Wilhelm's intimates were homosexual (the Eulenburg affair ). There were loud calls for an end to his personal rule and even open discussions, such as the one initiated by the journalist Maximilian Harden , suggesting that Wilhelm abdicate. The Reichstag debated

969-540: The Kaiser, Queen Victoria 's eldest grandchild, has appeared under the title Kaiser Wilhelm II 1859–1941: A Concise Life (Cambridge University Press 2014). In 1996, in collaboration with the geneticists Martin J. Warren and David Hunt, John Röhl exhumed the remains of the Kaiser's sister Charlotte Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen (1860–1919) in Thuringia and her daughter Princess Feodora of Reuss (1879–1945) in Poland. The analysis of their DNA showed that both women,

1020-614: The Kaiser’s temperamental outbursts and his moods, was becoming more and more widespread, even in the officer corps". He nevertheless told the Kaiser that the army was loyal and could "deal with" the Reichstag if it came to that. Chancellor Bülow's defence of the Kaiser in the Reichstag was aimed primarily at shifting blame from himself for not stopping the publication of the article, and it led to Wilhelm losing trust in his chancellor. Wilhelm replaced him in July 1909 after he ran into difficulties moving

1071-448: The Kruger telegram was an enemy of the Boers. When the British secretary of state for war, Viscount Haldane , was asked in parliament if Wilhelm's plan was in the British archives, he said "no" and that it would not be worth the effort to look for it. Since Haldane had not stated unequivocally that there was no such plan, the question became a particular embarrassment for Germany. Vorwärts ,

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1122-473: The Pacific in the days to come, days not so distant as some believe, but days, at any rate, for which all European Powers with Far Eastern interests ought steadily to prepare? Look at the accomplished rise of Japan; think of the possible national awakening of China; and then judge of the vast problems of the Pacific. Only those Powers which have great navies will be listened to with respect. Wilhelm's remarks affected

1173-496: The Reichstag rather than the Kaiser and for the Reichstag to participate in the selection of the chancellor. Criticism of Wilhelm also came from high levels of the military. In the Prussian Ministry of State, General Karl von Einem and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz said that they were horrified by the Kaiser's words. Einem added that "dissatisfaction with the Kaiser’s conduct and demeanour, the excessive growth of Personal Rule,

1224-778: The School of European Studies. He also taught Modern European History at the University of Hamburg and at the University of Freiburg . He was elected to a Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1970, at the Historisches Kolleg  [ de ] in Munich in 1986–87, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at Washington in 1989–90, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1994, and

1275-749: The US Army led by General George S. Patton . After the Potsdam Conference , the Americans offered the family safe passage from the Soviet Zone of Occupation to their headquarters in Frankfurt -am-Main, where Gerhard Röhl became an interpreter and later the headmaster of the Helmholtz- Gymnasium , a large grammar school for boys. Freda Röhl returned to England with her two daughters in December 1945; John Röhl

1326-739: The annotated draft to Stuart-Wortley on 16 October. (The source does not say whether either Stuart-Wortley or The Daily Telegraph made any of the suggested changes to the original draft.) The article, which appearted in The Daily Telegraph on 28 October, caused an uproar in both Great Britain and Germany. In many people's eyes, Wilhelm had outdone himself in his careless indiscretions. Even though he claimed that he had only friendly feelings for England, he had said that "you English are mad, mad, mad as March hares". He went on to explain: My actions ought to speak for themselves, but you listen not to them but to those who misinterpret and distort them. That

1377-529: The archival sources that reflected them. The conference papers, edited by Röhl and Sombart, were published by Cambridge University Press in 1982 under the title Kaiser Wilhelm II – New Interpretations: The Corfu Papers . A collection of essays on Wilhelm II and aspects of governance in Imperial Germany then followed entitled Kaiser, Hof und Staat (1987) and The Kaiser and his Court (1994) respectively. In 1981, Röhl began further archival research for what

1428-526: The best elements as it is in England with respect to Germany. The British press took Wilhelm's "stunning admission" that he was in a minority of Germans friendly to Britain as proof of the need to take a firm stance towards Germany. The Pall Mall Gazette wrote in an article titled "An Unbutterable Parsnip" on 29 October that Wilhelm had shown that “the actions of the German Government have not squared with

1479-524: The comments Bülow had made. Those included: "It might be better to tone down somewhat, for an English newspaper, the acknowledgement that the majority of the German people have unfriendly feelings towards England" and that the German reply to the Franco-Russian proposal for an intervention in the Boer War needed to be "amended in accordance with the actual circumstances". Wilhelm signed the cover letter and sent

1530-689: The feeling of sitting on a powder-keg did not diminish, but increased markedly. "Fundamentally the Kaiser is in fact still the same as before", [ Hofmarschall Count von] Zedlitz observed. Edward Montagu-Stuart-Wortley Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.150 via cp1114 cp1114, Varnish XID 462977893 Upstream caches: cp1114 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:29:55 GMT John C. G. R%C3%B6hl John Charles Gerald Röhl (31 May 1938 – 17 November 2023)

1581-571: The feeling that in William the Second I had before me a man who was looking with astonishment for the first time in his life on the world as it really is.” Rudolf von Valentini, Wilhelm's chief of the Privy Cabinet, described the Kaiser's later mood as one of "tired resignation" and without vitality. For months after the scandal broke he stayed largely out of the public eye, and there were no similar scandals in

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1632-532: The friendly words of the German Kaiser”. As further proof of his and Germany's friendship towards Britain, Wilhelm boasted of how he had helped the country during the Boer War . There was some truth to his statement that he had played a role in keeping France and Russia from intervening against Britain, but then he went on to claim that he had sent Queen Victoria , his grandmother, a detailed military plan and that it

1683-403: The manuscript, and especially Chancellor Bülow's role in the matter, has been a subject of historical controversy for decades. Recent scholarship has largely disproved Bülow's claim that he never read the draft and had relied on the Foreign Office to make any necessary changes and approve it. Historian John C. G. Röhl calls Bülow's version a "cynical cover-up" to deflect from himself the blame for

1734-617: The matter for two days starting on 10 October 1908. It began on the subject of what harm had been done to relations between Germany and Great Britain but quickly turned to Wilhelm's "personal monarchy". Georg von Hertling of the Centre Party , who became the Empire's last chancellor before the German revolution of 1918–1919 , said that "the German people must demand that the Reich Chancellor possess

1785-417: The monarchical-military system that had been bequeathed by Bismarck. A conference organised by Röhl, together with the cultural anthropologist Nicolaus Sombart in the Kaiser's palace on the island of Corfu in September 1979, marked the beginning of a shift in German historiography away from structuralism towards a greater interest in personalities, relationships, cultural assumptions, human emotions and

1836-541: The newspaper of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), lambasted “the atrocious incompetence” of Germany's foreign policy. The Pan-Germanists were upset as well. The nationalist Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung wrote: "The soul of the German nation will be deeply wounded by the knowledge that its Kaiser worked up a war plan with which to annihilate the valiant Boers, a people of a kindred race." A third subject about which Wilhelm's remarks caused confusion and anger

1887-461: The next day with Foreign Affairs Secretary Wilhelm von Schoen about various suggested changes, Bülow sent the manuscript to Martin Freiherr von Rücker-Jenisch, a cousin of Bülow's who was liaison with the Foreign Office in the Kaiser's suite. Jenisch sent the draft back to Wilhelm with a letter outlining three places where "exception can be taken to the wording" and noting changes in the margins based on

1938-563: The porcelain of domestic and foreign policy". Under the Constitution of the German Empire , foreign policy lay largely outside the competence of the Reichstag , leaving it at least theoretically open to the Kaiser to exercise his influence. Wilhelm frequently made use of his family connections with European royalty, especially the British, to engage in personal diplomacy in the belief that he had

1989-452: The publishing of the damaging article. It is all but certain that Bülow did read the draft that Wilhelm forwarded to him and then sent it to the Foreign Office for review. The officials there made a few minor factual corrections and sent it back to Bülow on the assumption that he would make the final decision on publication, since the matter was so highly political. Bülow personally discussed the article with Wilhelm on 12 October. After talking

2040-431: The remaining years of his reign. Historian and Wilhelm II biographer John Röhl nevertheless concluded that the scandal had little effect on Wilhelm in the long term: Instead of recognising his mistakes and drawing lessons for the future from the disaster caused by his quasi-absolutist manner of ruling, Wilhelm II still refused to accept any blame. Although he had no alternative but to restrain himself in his speeches for

2091-580: The rest of his reign. No institutional changes were made that would have restricted the Kaiser's powers to prevent another such scandal in the future. After German chancellor Otto von Bismarck resigned in March 1890 at the insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm II , the phrase "personal regiment" began to be used to describe the Kaiser's attempt at personal rule. It was generally meant pejoratively: Wilhelm insisted on his divine right, intervened unpredictably in affairs of state and made impromptu speeches that frequently "broke

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2142-425: The time being, in his letters and conversations – above all with foreign sympathisers – he gave vent to extravagant tirades of hatred for those who he considered had ‘betrayed’ him. It was not long before he saw himself as "the greatest martyr of his time". As far as his conduct and the much criticised system of Personal Monarchy were concerned, the Daily Telegraph affair made little difference. ... Among his entourage

2193-532: The will and the strength to bring the kind of influence to bear on the Kaiser without which his constitutional responsibility loses all meaning". Wolfgang Heine (SPD) said that the Reichstag should oust Chancellor Bülow (who was constitutionally dependent solely on the confidence of the Kaiser). Paul Singer, also of the SPD, went further and demanded constitutional changes. He wanted the power to declare war and make peace vested in

2244-709: Was a British historian notable for his work on Imperial Germany and European history. John Charles Gerald Röhl was born in the German Hospital in Dalston , east London, on 31 May 1938 to a German father, Hans-Gerhard Röhl, and an English mother, Freda Kingsford Woulfe-Brenan. She was the daughter of Captain Frederick Woulfe-Brenan, the Labour candidate standing against Lady Astor in the Plymouth Sutton constituency in

2295-580: Was among a minority of Germans friendly to Britain; that he had sent a military plan to Queen Victoria during the Boer War which the British Army had used successfully during its campaign; and that Germany's fleet buildup was directed not against Britain but Japan. In Germany, the article led to unprecedented criticism of the Kaiser in the press and the Reichstag . Wilhelm fell into a serious bout of depression, stepped back from his attempt at "personal rule" and played little role in German foreign affairs for

2346-446: Was dropped, and the scandal around the Daily Telegraph interview gradually faded from public view. Wilhelm was deeply shaken by the reaction to the Daily Telegraph story. His mood was described as one of profound depression or even a nervous breakdown. He went from bouts of crying to outbursts of fury. General von Einem noted that Wilhelm appeared as if broken and that he never regained his former confidence. One confidant said, “I had

2397-532: Was published under the title Germany without Bismarck: The Crisis of Government in the Second German Reich, 1890–1900 in 1967 and in German translation in 1969. Röhl was appointed to a Lectureship in History in the School of European Studies at the then new University of Sussex at Brighton in 1964. He was promoted to Reader and in 1979 Professor of European History. Between 1982 and 1985 he served as Dean of

2448-626: Was sent under the auspices of the Red Cross to an international children's home in Adelboden , Switzerland. He was reunited with his mother and sisters in Manchester in December 1946. Röhl attended Seymour Park Primary School and Stretford Grammar School , from where he won a state scholarship and a place to read History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge . Before going up to Cambridge in 1958, he completed his national service as an airframe mechanic in

2499-472: Was the Anglo-German naval arms race . In 1898 Germany had begun to expand its fleet of warships with the aim of building a navy that would be two-thirds the size of Great Britain's. Especially after the passage of Germany's 1908 naval bill speeding up the production of new ships, alarm among British the public and in the government rose. That autumn they read in The Daily Telegraph : But, you will say, what of

2550-600: Was to become a three-volume biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II , published in German by the C. H. Beck Verlag in Munich between 1993 and 2008, and in English translation by Cambridge University Press between 1998 and 2014. The biography, which was awarded the Einhard Prize for European Biography in 2013, is considered an important contribution to the ongoing controversy on the origins of the First World War . A much briefer study of

2601-456: Was “a matter of curious coincidence that the plan which I formulated ran very much along the same lines as that which was actually adopted by Lord Roberts and carried by him into successful operation”. Across Europe, including in France and Russia, reactions to Wilhelm's Boer War statements were overwhelmingly negative. London's Daily Mail found it to be a "paradox most amazing" that the author of

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