The Prussian Crown of Wilhelm II

Following on from my previous post about the accession of Wilhelm II as Kaiser and King in 1888 here are pictures of the crown he commissioned as King of Prussia. The German Imperial Crown only existed as a model and in heraldric use, and there was no ceremonial investiture with it.

The Kings of Prussia did have a crown, and a coronation rite - notably as used by King Wilhelm I in 1861 at Königsberg - the first coronation of which there are photographs. In 1888 his short lived successor son Frederick III had visions of an Imperial coronation as Emperor Fredertick IV of a renewed Holy Roman Empire, but his failing health and the opposition of this Chancellor Bismarck - who pointed to the new constitutional dispendation of the post 1871 German Empire - prevented that ever being more than an idea.

The new Kaiser-King also thought of a traditional coronation at Königsberg, but Bismarck, who disliked the outward ceremonial of state dissuaded him. However the new monarch did have a new crown made as King of Prussia in 1888.

The Crown of Prussia made for Kaiser Wilhelm II

Image: Wikipedia

The crown  contains a large sapphire, supporting a diamond-studded cross, plus 142 rose-cut diamonds, 18 diamonds and 8 large pearls . It comprises eight half-arches.

Although he never wore it the crown does appear in some portraits and photographs from the early years of his reign.

When the Kaiser abdicated  in 1918 he was permitted to retain the family jewels, which included the Hohenzollern crown. To protect it from theft and destruction, during the Second World War  it was hidden in a wall in the crypt of a church. Following the war it was returned to the Hohenzollern family, and it is now kept at the family residence of Hohenzollern Castle in Swabia.

 

  King Wilhelm II's  "Hohenzollern House Crown", now at Hohenzollern Castle in Baden-Württemberg.

The older regalia survives in Berlin, and the 1701 crown clearly provided the design for the one made in 1888:

The Prussian Crown Jewels: The crown of King Frederick I - as it is today: a gold frame devoid of diamonds - together with the orb and sceptre, on display at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.

Modern model of the original appearance of the diamond-studded crown of King Frederick I of Prussia, now at Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin

Images:forum.alexanderpalace.org

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Today is the 125th anniversary of the accession of Wilhelm II as German Emperor and King of Prussia in 1888, the third Kaiser to rule in the Year of Three Emperors.

 

The young Emperor Wilhelm II

 

Image: ETA/Daily Telegraph

Reading about him, and the pivotal role he played, or is claimed to have played, in the events of the succeeding decades what emerges is a complex man.  He was intelligent and talented, yet also neurotic, and clearly suffered from mood swings. Brash at times, tactful and sensitive at others, and could certainly display charm and humour. In his public speeches and statements he was prone to sweeping rhetorical phrases, not a few of which came back to haunt him. I know various attempts have been made to analyse him in terms of pschology or as a victim of birth trauma, but I wonder if he might have suffered from a form of Asperger's Syndrome - that could account for the retentive memory and some of the social awkwardnesses he manifested. 

The physical disability he had from birth of a withered left arm, usually carefully concealed in pictures and in his daily life, clearly made his life difficult from the earliest days of educating the heir to the Prussian throne to be able to perform his public duties - for example he clearly suffered greatly as a child in being forced to learn to ride - and the conciousness of that disability may well have compounded whatever other difficulties he suffered from.

Through his upbringing and education he had a complicated relationship with his mother and her country - they were too much alike in many ways. To some Germans he was, and is, seen as half English, and not sufficiently Prussian. To the British he was a sometimes popular figure, but more often not popular one, and an object of suspicion with his Naval expansion in the years before 1914, then an object of concentrated venom, and finally, perhaps, a curious survival as the exile of Doorn.

 

 

Striking a pose - the young Emperor-King at his most grandiloquent. 

A state portrait of him as King of Prussia in 1890 by Max Koner.
He is wearing the mantle of the Order of the Black Eagle and has his crown as King of Prussia at his side

Image:Wikipedia

The other year I read Giles McDonagh's excellent biography of him The Last Kaiser and I currently have Christopher Clark's biography Kaiser Wilhelm II: A life in Power on order, which promises to be an excellent and well researched study. From what I have seen of it so far it is an insightful study into the Kaiser as monarch, and what his role actually was in government. 

The Great European Civil War

Perusing the newspapers earlier I saw that the Daily Mail was not only critical of the Bishop of London for his comments about the "baby-boomer" generation - he being a member should not criticise it etc being the argument - but also for saying that the Great War was a European civil war and that church leaders should reflect seriously on how their predecessors on all sides had endorsed men going off to fight. The Bishop's comments were apparently all the worse for being in line with an EU approach that the war had been such a civil conflict and in line with the Government apparently wanting not to blame the Germans when it came to commemorating the outbreak of hostilities next year.

Well now, the European civil war argument is not new - it was certainly used by F. Scott Fitzgerald in writing about the '20s, and strikes me as an excellent way to understand the dreadful disaster that was the 1914-18 war. You do not have to be an obsessive devotee of the modern EU to think that. One can be very Eurosceptic indeed about the structures of the Union without wanting to ignore the fact that the UK is inextricably bound up with what happens on the continental mainland of Europe - that is, after all, why we were drawn in in 1914.

As to blaming the Germans - well what actually started the war was not the Deutches Reich, but an act of terrorism against the established order in Sarajevo. That set off a tragic and disastrous series of political chain reactions that drew in most of Europe, due to mutual suspicion and the failure on all sides to look at the wider scene. It would be less than historically accurate to think that the war started when Germany invaded Belgium - that is of the "Fog in Channel, Continent cut off" school of thought.

 

 

 

 

Rebuilding the Berlin Stadtschloss

I was interested to see the report on the BBC website tonight about the commencement of the rebuilding of the shell of the Stadtschloss in Berlin. The report can be read here.

The schloss was the winter palace of the Kings of Prussia until 1918. Although damaged by bombing early in 1945 it was destroyed for ideological and political rather than structural reasons by the East German regime in 1950 when it was dynamited. Since 1989 there has been much debate about the proposal to rebuild it, and what form that should take. These disussion are summarized along with the history of the palace in the illustrated online article here.

An aerial view of the Berlin Schloss taken in 1910

Image:Wolf on Flickr

Kaiser Wilhelm II apparently did not like living in the palace - he felt it was not secure enough in case of an attack, and after the outbreak of war in 1914 he and the Empress lived at another of the Berlin palaces

Now I do feel tempted to add that if they can begin to rebuild the palace, firstly do it properly and completely, including reconstructing the interiors, and secondly, restore the people it was built for.

The Edict of Milan

Today is the date given for the publication of the edict of Milan in 313, so today marks the 1700h anniversary. 

The facts are,however, a little more complicated than that statement of facts. The Emperors Constantine and Licinius had met at Milan earlier in the year and agreed on a policy of toleration for Christians within their portions of the Roman Empire. Today's anniversary is of the publication at Nicomedia on June 13 of the agreement already made. Whereas Constantine was clearly favourable to Christianity in his westernmost part of the Empire, Licinius himself was a pagan, and what he published for his territories in the Balkans was not an edict as such but a letter notifying his officials of the policy. The text is preserved in Lactantius, and was issued after the defeat of the aggressively pagan Maximian Daia.

 

Emperor Licinius

Image: ISTORAX on Flickr

It is not clear if there was an official "Edict of Milan" at all. What was notified was the establishment of freedom of religion and to worship for Christians and also for others, and restores civil rights and property. There is an online account of the background and discussion of the issues here.

Licinius himself, of whom there is an online biography here, may possibly have converted to Christianity, but was to be defeated and deposed by Constantine in 324, and hanged in 325 for conspiring against his former colleague.  Constantine was left as the ruler of the entire Empire.

Emperor Constantine the Great

 

Image:mybyzantine.wordpress.com

St Anthony of Padua

Today is the feast day of St Anthony of Padua, 1195-1231. There is an account of the life of this noted Franciscan preacher and teacher and of his continuing role in the life of the Church here.

St Anthony of Padua

Metropolitan Museum New Yotk

Image: aug.edu

From the website which provided this fourteenth century image of the saint, which is more forceful than so many recent and modern ones which are often very sentimental, I found this piece about his iconography, which I have adapted for this post:

Those who have visited any number of Catholic churches will be familiar with the representation of St. Anthony of Padua as a young Franciscan holding the Christ Child on one arm  This tradition is based on a vision of the Christ Child that the saint is said to have had while staying with a nobleman. The man looked into the room he had provided for Anthony and saw him holding the Child in his arms.

This account did not enter the iconography until the 16th century, and even then the Child is shown standing upon the book that had until then always been Anthony's most common attribute. The book refers to Anthony's standing as the most famous preacher of his time and the Franciscan order's first Lector in Theology. The earliest images of him have the saint holding a closed book in his left hand and wearing the tonsure and habit of the Franciscan order, as above.

After the Child became a common feature, many painters put him on the opened pages of the book, as if he had appeared to Anthony while the saint was meditating on the scriptures . The Child is variously portrayed as a toddler, a boy , or even a small-scale man .

Because of the legend that he had once preached to the fish, these were sometimes used as his attribute.  He is also often seen with a lily stalk . Another convention denotes St. Anthony's visionary fervor by means of a red heart held up in the right hand , sometimes aflame .

In former Venetian areas Anthony often figures in group paintings – anachronistically welcoming into Heaven martyrs from ancient times (examples: St. Anthony of Antioch, St. Eugene) and assisting at the Invention of the True Cross . He is also shown interceding with Mary and the Christ Child for souls in Purgatory . This subject is possibly related to the story, briefly mentioned in his Vita, of a nun who feared Purgatory but who through the prayers of Anthony was able to be cleansed in this life, or perhaps to the more numerous and fully detailed accounts of the saint coming from Heaven to counsel women in despair of their salvation.

Given the large number of  portraits and statues of Anthony in Italy and worldwide , there are surprisingly few narrative images. One of the more popular types represents the "Miracle of the Mule": A Catharist said he would believe in the Real Presence only if a dumb animal were to prefer the consecrated host to a bundle of feed. Anthony arranged for a mule to be brought forward and given that choice - the mule went to the Host and knelt down in adoration.

Here is an extract from a sermon by St Anthony of Padua used in the Office of Readings for today:

We should speak, then, as the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of speech. Our humble and sincere request to the Spirit for ourselves should be that we may bring the day of Pentecost to fulfilment, insofar as he infuses us with his grace, by using our bodily senses in a perfect manner and by keeping the commandments. Likewise we shall request that we may be filled with a keen sense of sorrow and with fiery tongues for confessing the faith, so that our deserved reward may be to stand in the blazing splendour of the saints and to look upon the triune God.

St Anthony, the Christ Child and a pot of lilies

Image:communio.stglogs.org

The text for traditional blessing of lilies for the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua is available here.

The Young King

Today is the 830th anniversary of the death at Martel near Limoges of Henry the Young King, the eldest of the sons of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to reach maturity. Their second son he was born on February 28th 1155, just after his father's accession and coronation. He himself was crowned in his father's lifetime as King in 1170 - an action which enraged St Thomas of Canterbury as the coronation, a privilege of his see, was performed by Archbishop Roger Pont L'Evêque of York - but died in 1183, six years before his father. As a result he has tended to disappear from regnal lists, and indeed he has no numeral indicator; maybe we should follow the German practice and designate him King Henry (III), but that would cause confusion. Still it should be remembered that there have been nine, not merely eight, crowned English Kings called Henry - and if you are Jacobite in sympathies, then there is also Cardinal York...

One attempt to draw attention to his life is a blog Henry the Young King which offers interesting posts about him.

There is an online account of him here, which cites this description of him :  

A Latin poem by a court official written to commemorate the coronation hints at the charisma of this young prince. There he is described as a charming youth of striking beauty, tall but well proportioned, broad-shouldered with a long and elegant neck, pale and freckled skin, bright and wide blue eyes, with a thick mop of the reddish-gold hair characteristic of his dynasty.

The Coronation of Young King Henry

Image; Wikipedia

As that online account and Elizabeth Hallam's life of him in the Oxford DNB, which can be read here, show he was not universally popular with his contemporaries. This aspect is discussed in the post

A Lovely Place of Sin from the blog about his life.

Given little real authority by his father he spent much of his time jousting. A popular and affable young man, but perhaps not the strongest character - Gerald of Wales wrote of him and his brother Richard that they were "both tall in stature, rather above the middle size, and of commanding aspect. In courage and magnanimity they were nearly equal; but in the character of their virtues there was great disparity... [Henry] was admirable for gentleness and liberality...had a commendable suavity... commended for his easy temper... remarkable for his clemency... the vile and undeserving found their refuge in [Henry]... was the shield of bad men... was bent on martial sports... bestowed his favours on foreigners... [Henry's] ambition magnanimously compassed the world." 

His father's reported statement about him has genuine pathos - "He cost me much, but I wish he had lived to cost me more."

 

The head of the effigy of theYoung King in Rouen cathedral

Image: the plantagenets.com

His Queen was Margaret of France, daughter of King Louis VII and his second wife Constance of Castile; Margaret's elder half sisters, being the daughters of Queen Eleanor from her first marriage, were thus the Young King's half sisters as well. They had a son William who lived for three days in 1177. Following Henry's death she returned to the French court and married secondly King Béla III of Hungary  - thus becoming the only Queen of both England and Hungary.

The effigy in the choir ambulatory at Rouen cathedral

Image:professor-moriarty.com

A close-up of the face

Image:professor-moriarty.com

One consequence of his death was that when his brother Richard succeeded their father as King in 1189 there was not a division of the Angevin empire within France, as might have happened if the Young King and lived and Ricahrd had been left as Duke of Aquitaine. As it was the Duchy remained linked to the English crown until 1453.

 

In the weeks before his death the Young King had been plundering shrines such as St Martial at Limoges and Roqueamadour to fund a campaign against his father; struck down by dysentery he spent his last days, as is recounted in the Wikipedia article cited above, in penitence and seeking forgiveness. This, and doubtless the reaction to the death of a handsome young ruler who had a considerable following, led to an attempt to present him as a potential saint. As a result his body, on its journey for interment was Rouen as he had requested, was seized for burial at Le Mans by the Bishop before being recovered by the Dean of Rouen and taken to the cathedral there, where it was finally buried on July 22nd. The effigy over his tomb appears similar to that over the heart burial of his brother King Richard I which is also in the choir, and probably dates from the years after 1200.

 

The seal of Henry the Young King

Image; Henry the Young King blogspot