The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II's Role in Imperial Germany (review)

This collection of essays about Wilhelm II, a festschrift marking the sixty-fifth birthday of John Röhl, is sympathetic to Röhl's perspective about the wellsprings that might explain the actions of the infamous "Kaiser Bill." The writers of the collection appear to assume that readers are also cognizant of and sympathetic with Röhl's take on Wilhelm and on his views about the proper role and construction of biography in the understanding of history. Moreover, because Röhl's views on these matters implicitly constitute the background of each of the essays in the collection, it behooves general readers first to read Röhl's works before tackling the study on Wilhelm II at issue in this volume—especially his masterful study of the Kaiser's youth and early manhood. Röhl's latest German revision (1993) or the English translation of the same by Jeremy Gaines and Rebecca Wallach, Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser's early Life, 1859–1918 (New York, 1998), lays out his views on the central role that icons like Wilhelm play in history as well as the proper methodology for tracing the often complex and contradictory strands of their lives.

Röhl successfully argues that Kaiser Wilhelm's was the central political role propeling the German Second Reich; in this sense, his rule might be understood as personal. What Röhl means is that the German emperor fashioned the Reich to be a creature of his will, making Germany and Wilhelm nearly interchangeable terms. Wilhelm's dominance was partly a result of an antediluvian constitutional process unsuited to the reality of a modern industrial state. But Wilhelm well understood how to manipulate emotions to achieve his agenda. Much of the deleterious role played by the German state in the first half of the twentieth century can be laid at Wilhelm's feet. That one human could inflict so much grief on many is, to say the least, disconcerting.

Causation of individual action can be attributed to the symbiotic interaction of the inner and outer life. Reconstruction of a persona calls for broad knowledge in fields beyond the narrow one under discussion, involving research into medicine, physiology, sociology, and politics. Wilhelm II's perspective must have been affected by the people making up his always-changing entourage—parents, siblings, lovers, doctors, teachers, and confidants of various ilk. But to know the possible impact of these same people requires first to know a great deal about them.

Röhl presents much of this material in his work through exhaustive investigation of Wilhelm's private diaries, measuring them against the letters that members of his inner circle wrote to one another. Catherine Lerman continues analysis along these lines by analyzing the influence that some of his political associates had on him. Likewise, Isabel Hull and Holger Afflerbach investigate the culture and personnel within the Kaiser's military circle. Matthew Seligmann writes of the relationship between Wilhelm and various British service attaches in Berlin, and Ragnbild Fiebig-von Hase discusses the effect of Wilhelm's self- perceived friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt on his Weltanschauung. Space permits specific mention of only a few of the excellent essays enfolded in this collection. However, special mention should he made of Volker Berghahn's short concluding essay, which is an informative summary of recent scholarship dealing with the Kaiser.