The marriage of Wilhelm’s parents in London in 1858 was intended to herald a close relationship between Great Britain, with its vast overseas empire, and the rising (and also largely Protestant) kingdom of Prussia on the Continent. The seventeen-year-old Princess Victoria, known in her family as Vicky, was the oldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the Prince Consort; her bridegroom was Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (‘Fritz’), the only son of the sixty-year-old Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia, who had recently become Regent for his mentally ill and childless brother, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. With the birth of a son, on 27 January 1859, the future of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the peace of Europe seemed to be secured for decades ahead. Significantly, the newborn Prussian prince was also given the names of his English grandparents: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert.

The birth took place on the top floor of the Kronprinzenpalais on Unter den Linden in Berlin. The circumstances surrounding the delivery of the child, for a long time shrouded in speculation, are now clearly established on the basis of documents in the royal family archives. The labour pains began in the afternoon of 26 January. Early that evening the father, who never left his wife’s side during her confinement, sent a letter by the ordinary post (!) to alert the leading Berlin gynaecologist Professor Dr Eduard Arnold Martin. At that point no one yet realised that the child was in the breech position – bottom first, with the arms stretched upwards over the head. When this complication, life-threatening for both mother and child, was recognised the following morning, the Crown Prince sent a messenger to fetch Professor Martin – who had not yet received his letter. The gynaecologist thus found himself confronted with a grave emergency when he hurried up the palace stairs into the delivery room. On his instructions the suffering mother was given a large dose of chloroform by the Scottish doctor Sir James Clark, whom Queen Victoria had sent to Berlin.