Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Reflections on John Röhl: a Laudatio
- 1 Wilhelm II and ‘his’ navy, 1888–1918
- 2 Hollow-sounding jubilees: forms and effects of public self-display in Wilhelmine Germany
- 3 The Kaiser's elite? Wilhelm II and the Berlin administration, 1890–1914
- 4 Wilhelm, Waldersee, and the Boxer Rebellion
- 5 Dreams of a German Europe: Wilhelm II and the Treaty of Björkö of 1905
- 6 The uses of ‘friendship’. The ‘personal regime’ of Wilhelm II and Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1909
- 7 Military diplomacy in a military monarchy? Wilhelm II's relations with the British service attachés in Berlin, 1903–1914
- 8 Wilhelm II as supreme warlord in the First World War
- 9 Germany's ‘last card’. Wilhelm II and the decision in favour of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917
- 10 Military culture, Wilhelm II, and the end of the monarchy in the First World War
- 11 Rathenau, Wilhelm II, and the perception of Wilhelminismus
- 12 Structure and agency in Wilhelmine Germany: the history of the German Empire – past, present, and future
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Reflections on John Röhl: a Laudatio
- 1 Wilhelm II and ‘his’ navy, 1888–1918
- 2 Hollow-sounding jubilees: forms and effects of public self-display in Wilhelmine Germany
- 3 The Kaiser's elite? Wilhelm II and the Berlin administration, 1890–1914
- 4 Wilhelm, Waldersee, and the Boxer Rebellion
- 5 Dreams of a German Europe: Wilhelm II and the Treaty of Björkö of 1905
- 6 The uses of ‘friendship’. The ‘personal regime’ of Wilhelm II and Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1909
- 7 Military diplomacy in a military monarchy? Wilhelm II's relations with the British service attachés in Berlin, 1903–1914
- 8 Wilhelm II as supreme warlord in the First World War
- 9 Germany's ‘last card’. Wilhelm II and the decision in favour of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917
- 10 Military culture, Wilhelm II, and the end of the monarchy in the First World War
- 11 Rathenau, Wilhelm II, and the perception of Wilhelminismus
- 12 Structure and agency in Wilhelmine Germany: the history of the German Empire – past, present, and future
- Index
Summary
In March 1960 Gerhard Ritter noted in the preface to the second volume of his work Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk that during his studies of the Wilhelmine era he had become aware of ‘much darker shadows’ than his generation and that of his academic teachers had considered possible. Following more than forty years of intensive research, this dark vision has noticeably expanded and has been put into even sharper relief – and as such is in stark contrast with accounts of the Kaiserreich which focus on developments in the economy, in industry and technology, the sciences and culture. The shadows apply to aspects of the Reich's constitutional law, and to its political structures and their consequences which, according to Wolfgang Mommsen, have resulted in a ‘relatively high immobility of the … system’.
A significant factor of that system, however – Wilhelm II as German Kaiser – embodied anything but immobility. His incessant activity necessarily had to lead to tensions whose general and specific effects within the system, and within society as a whole, have by no means yet been analysed to a sufficient degree by historians. The following volume presents a further step in that direction. Based to a large extent on new archival sources, the essays in this collection illuminate different aspects of Wilhelm II's ‘personal rule’, both in domestic and foreign policy, focusing particularly on the time after the turn of the century when the monarch was increasingly confronted by national and international limitations to his desire to rule Germany personally.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The KaiserNew Research on Wilhelm II's Role in Imperial Germany, pp. 1 - 5Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003