5/19/2023 0 Comments Victoria iii germany![]() ![]() Queen Victoria And The Crippled Kaiser, tomorrow, 8pm, Channel 4. Kaiser Bill was obsessed by rivalry with his English cousins. ‘He was like an over-sensitive seismograph, over-reacting to anything he perceived as a slight to himself and his country,’ explains Professor Röhl.Īfter Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, followed by Vicky’s death from cancer a few months later, Wilhelm’s ties with Britain were severed abruptly. The new Kaiser Wilhelm II, traumatised by his upbringing, was highly strung and aggressive, quick to take offence and prone to outbursts of ranting. By the time his father died of cancer in 1888 at their palace in Potsdam, Wilhelm was set in his anglophobia and loathing for his mother and her liberal English ideas.Īn English doctor had crippled his arm, he declared, and an English doctor had killed his father after misdiagnosing his cancer as benign: ‘One cannot have enough hatred for England.’ When Vicky responded with 20-page letters about politics, music and art, he didn’t bother to reply – and from then on their relationship never recovered. Never again would Wilhelm reach out to his mother. ‘He is really opening his heart to her and saying, “Take me as I am.”’ I wish you would do the same when I am in Berlin alone with you in the evening.” This is the last desperate attempt for her to understand him,’ says Röhl. You put your dear arm around my waist, pulled your glove off your dear left hand, and showed me your dear beautiful hand which I instantly covered with kisses. “I dreamt last night that I was walking with you. Wilhelm II (1859-1941), third German emperor and ninth king of Prussia ‘And he starts writing to her about this dream he keeps having. ‘Wilhelm gets a sort of crush on his mother,’ explains Professor Röhl. From there, in 1875, he wrote extraordinary letters to his mother – childish, but mildly erotic fantasies about kissing her hand. not the servants or brothers and sisters and that it should not be talked about as it would be very painful to us.’ As an adult Wilhelm too would contrive to hide his disability and in photographs always held gloves, a gun or a sword to disguise his withered arm.Īt 16, he was sent away with his tutor to a middle-class grammar school in Kassel, Germany. Vicky sketched the machine to show her mother, but begged her to ensure that if the little boy visited Windsor, ‘No one should see him with this machine on. His head generally lolled to the right, giving rise to the most barbaric treatment of all: for two years he was regularly strapped into an appliance like a horse’s bridle with a metal rod to straighten his back, and a screw to pull his head upright. ‘Such a nasty, horrid idea,’ Vicky wrote to her mother, who was both shocked and amused by this old wives’ superstition.Īs he began walking, his good arm would be tied behind his back in an effort to force him into using his paralysed left arm, a frustrating double handicap that caused Vicky to note that, ‘He gets so fretful and cross and violent and passionate that it makes me quite nervous sometimes.’įor most of his childhood, Wilhelm was subjected to electrotherapy treatments, often daily. Queen Victoria with her grandson Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (later Kaiser Wilhelm II) during the 1860's ![]()
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