In his exile in the Netherlands, William II cut down trees almost everyday – mostly to show his supporters back in Germany how strong he was and that he was ready to return to the throne. Perhaps he was frustrated too.
When reporters started to sneak onto the property to take pictures of the exiled Kaiser, William II started complaining – one of his servants told him, that it was his own fault. After all he had cut down all the trees that could have sheltered him from curious eyes.
@takingaspadetoasouffle how did Wilhelm take to being given this sort of reality check by the staff when in exile? Did it happen often?
@ladyaudleyssecrettumlbr As far as I know, it didn’t happen very often. I’ve read about this incident in the memoirs of a member of the household (Sigurd von Islemann I think), but he only said “well it’s your own fault” in the memoirs, not actually to wilhelm’s face. I do hope someone did in real life, though.
Exile was a strange “mini court” with a lot of the same etiquette (Wilhelm was addressed as “royal highness” instead of “imperial majesty”, and his second wife was also elevated in rank…but only in Doorn.) Most of the people would go by the old rules (particularly because a lot of visitors were people who’d known wilhelm before his exile), and not actually tell him unpleasant truths. HOWEVER, he did receive endless letters from all over the world telling him how awful he was; he had to put up with the “are we going to try him for war crimes?” debacle; he would have been aware of the ‘khaki election’ in Britain where David Lloyd George won with “Hang The Kaiser!” as one of his main slogans; and eventually he’d have realised that the monarchy wasn’t coming back in his lifetime. With all this in mind, I think he’d have been reasonably ok with people who weren’t his staff telling him things bluntly, but I think the old rules of the hohenzollern court would have remained for the staff. I have a feeling that von Islemann could get away with it sometimes (he was part of the entourage during the war, and followed wilhelm into exile), but I’m not sure how often he actually did it. I know that the exile entourage bitched about wilhelm in their memoirs, just like the pre-exile lot did too, so that may well have been a way to let off steam when all one wanted to do was shove the kaiser in a moat.
Waiting for Winter 