Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday 18 November 2011

An interview with Kaiser Wilhelm II


A friend has sent me a link to an interview with the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II at Doorn in May 1922. Conducted and written up by Baron Clemens von Radowitz-Nei it was published in the New York Times.

It
provides an interesting insight into the Kaiser's ideas and assessment of the situation at that time, and his comments, or lack thereof, on various contemporaries. The article can be read here - it requires a bit of scrolling down to read.

http://history-wiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/KaiserWilhelmII.jpg/95793236/KaiserWilhelmII.jpg

The Kaiser in exile.
This photograph conveys an image not dissimilar to that in the text of the interview,
although here he is in uniform.

Image: History-wiki. wikimedia.com

I recently read Giles McDonagh's biography of the Emperor and hope to post a review of it in the near future. The twenty and more years the Kaiser spent in exile at Doorn, and where he died in 1941, are interesting in themselves and would, I suspect, in the hands of the right author, make for a very good film or stage drama. This interview gives some indication of what such a work might contain.

Huis Doorn is now a museum, and there are pictures of it here.


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