Did Kaiser really say he was going to the theather to see "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha"?
Relates to English Royal family changing their German family name to a more English sounding one.

And why did they build Windsor castle so near an airport

I thought it was Queen Mary wot said it.

No reference on hand, I could be wrong.

zoo

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merry_Wives_of_Windsor

During the period of anti-German feelings in England during World War One, many German names and titles were changed and given more English-sounding names, including the royal family's from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. Kaiser Wilhelm II countered this by jokingly saying that he was off to see a performance of 'The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.'

Gareth

Can anyone tidy up or confirm the details of another example of the Kaiser's gift for sparkling wit and repartee:

At one of the great pre-war regattas, King George V accepted an invitation to go for a morning cruise aboard Sir Thomas Lipton's ocean racing yacht. When the royal party assembled for lunch, the King had not yet returned, and someone asked where he was - to which the Kaiser quipped that he had "gone boating with his grocer".

I can find references to the Kaiser referring to Lipton as "the boating grocer", but none to the more elaborate anecdote.

Another of Wilhelms quotes (which I like a lot) is:


"Zeige mir eine Frau, die wirklich
Geschmack am Bier findet, und
ich erobere die Welt."

("Show me a woman who finds beer to her liking, and I will conquer the world")

So...thats the reason why we lost that war thing i guess

Kaiser Bill, the jolly funster, unappreciated by many!

fairly 'armless, though.

For me a favorite Kaiser Bill story, not a joke tho, was that during a formal state dinner for the visiting King of Siam the King, served a finger bowl to refresh his hands, and not being familiar with formal European dining, instead picked up the warm bowl of water with lemon in it and sipped at it. The Kaiser immediately noted this, raised his head and lashed the room with eyeball laser beams, and obediently the entire large dining party raised their finger bowls and sipped away at the tepid water.

Really a nice story, which I heard a long time ago. Anyone able to corroborate or disprove this story?

Bob Lembke

Remember the German PR offensive of late 1916 making the Kaiser much more human and "sharing" the privations caused by the war. Many of these sorts of stories originated there.

That said, however, I often think of what it was like to be a real monarch with real power ... or did he even see that ... did he believe he was the servant of Generals and Admirals ... always pushed one way or the other ...

When I think of WII, I often think of him as being a "Bad" man ... he's the black hat of the modern world. I say that because after him came Evil men ... there is a difference. Total war made the effort to make him evil ... certainly Wilson saw him as evil ... but, I think we historians see him as "bad" versus "evil" ...

Maybe I speak too simplistically or whatever ....

Good job he never met my (Bavarian) partner !

A regular stand up, complete with amusing moustache

At least he never made jokes like "We start bombing in five minutes".

Just picked up a copy of 'A King's Story' by the Duke of Windsor who as PoW visited the Kaiser in 1913. He describes being shown into the Emperor's room whereupon the latter rose in a most peculiar manner from behind his extraordinarily high desk. It turned out that instead of sitting in a chair, he was sitting on a military saddle, complete with stirrups, mounted on a wooden block shaped like a horses back. Noting the PoW's "startled expression, the Emperor smiled and explained condescendingly that he was so accustomed to sitting on a horse he found a saddle more conducive to clear, concise thinking than a conventional desk chair."

The PoW sums up his impressions of the Kaiser thus
"He was impatient, haughty, equally eager to please, to frighten, or to astonish; paradoxically stubborn-minded and weak minded, and, above all, truly humourless."

Regards
Michael

Now, is this one too obscure, or does the joke just not have legs?

Oh hell... Given my girlfriend, I just get a suden desire to go MWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Heeeeelp!

Adrian

Or my British one.

Did he pass comment on Haig or any other WW! notables or only foreigners? Phil B

I have heard the same story attributed to the current Queen Elizabeth - it was rosewater and an African diplomat . but i dont actually know the origins.
Marina

Quote: Did he pass comment on Haig or any other WW! notables or only foreigners? Phil B

Phil,

WWI occupies just 20 out of the book's 400 pages so there is not very much to go on, which is very disappointing I'm afraid.
He refers to Haig as "this dour, high minded Scot" and that's about it.
However he does give the impression of being pleased to be out of Haig's way and allowed closer to the troops; perhaps Haig was "too absorbed in military strategy to worry over the safety of the Prince of Wales."
[This is in contrast to Kitchener who wanted him kept well out of harm's way. When the PoW tackled K about this and pointed out to him that as he had brothers, then getting killed was not a problem for the succession, K agreed, but said that he did not want him captured.]

Regards
Michael

Thanks, michael. Do you think PoW was in any real danger even if he was captured? Phil B

I think he would have been wined and dined by his German cousins, but it would have been damn embarrassing.

Big Willy (Wilhelm II) was, I believe, fluent in English and probably French as well as German. According to French officer POWs that "Little Willy" (the Kronprinz) entertained, he spoke excellently accented fluent French. Did PoW speak German?

I am not a student of the royals, but it seems that the Winsors, seemingly Germans who married Germans, may have been more German than the Hohenzollerns, who seemed to be Germans who married Englishwomen. Is this accurate? Prince Charles, marrying two Englishwomen, may have tilted this a bit.

I was on the Jugoslav coast traveling with a fair friend when we were chased off the island we were visiting as Charles and Diana were arriving for their honeymoon. Much more recently one of Milosovic's Serbian gangster friends attempted to buy the island and set up his own country, so to found a sovereign haven for international gangsters. He himself had successfully pulled off what might be considered a billion-dollar bank robbery.

I think that Wilhelm II gets beaten up much more than he deserves. He was quirky and sometimes a bit socially bizarre, but seems to have been intelligent, if very much a creature of his times and class. He was plagued with a coterie of syncophants and "yes-men" who constantly fed him nutty stories trying to stroke and amuse him and may have driven him half nuts.

The German Empire was a weird political Frankenstein set up for his own convenience by Bismark, who of course was a political genius. Once he was off the scene Jesus Christ Himself could not have run it.

Despite his handicap, I believe that he pushed himself and was a crack shot and a good horseman. But as a father, he probably was a pill. I understand that he visited the famous Death's Head Hussars, and at a review or some other public event, seeing his son Kronprinz Wilhelm ("Little Willy"), a unit officer riding, bellowed to the colonel: "For Christ's sake, teach the boy to ride!" Almost as bad as a friend of mine, who used to go to her son's karate class and nurse him publicly during a break.

Bob Lembke

Quotes: Thanks, michael. Do you think PoW was in any real danger even if he was captured? Phil B
&
I think he would have been wined and dined by his German cousins, but it would have been damn embarrassing. Bob

I think that Bob has it right here
Captivity in the case of this sort of VIP would not have been too hard
But it would certainly have been very difficult for the powers-that-be in London to handle

Regards
Michael

Perhaps times have changed, but I can`t see great public embarrassment here if our own dear PoW was being held in luxury somewhere overseas? We know he`d come back none the worse except perhaps a little fatter and more fluent in a foreign language. Phil B

Phil,

I'm not sure that you are entirely right there
I'm not a Mespot man but isn't there some resentment about the nature of the captivity of one of our generals there?
I may be wrong, but I also think that the government were worried about being subjected to diplomatic 'blackmail' if the PoW had fallen into enemy hands

Regards
Michael

There certainly was displeasure at the difference between Townshend`s captivity and that of the many men who died there. I wasn`t thinking in those terms about the PoW. As I say, things may have been different in those days and today`s government would probably express embarrassment but would there be real national concern today if the PoW was holed up in a chateau somewhere with servants etc?

It may have not been Townshend's fault, and he may not have even been aware of the condition of his men, but he sailed off with his captors up the river, went "birding" with them, and I think was given his own villa on his own island in the Sea of Marble near Istanbul, a lovely location. I think the officers could ship up the river, but some elected to march with their men. The ORs had to march something like 800 miles north over desert, etc., and many died as Townshend popped off quail with Turkish officers. The British ORs may not have been treated worse than Turkish soldiers in this situation; the Turks often marched their own men to death or starvation or freezing to death. (As in Enver Pasha senting an army into the mountains near Russia in winter 1914 without supplies, I think almost the whole army froze to death.)

My wife found a reference to a middle-class, eduacated Turkish father; he was drafted, given a grossly wrong size pair of boots, and marched off for the Gallipoli front till he died marching due to the mis-sized boots. My father fought with the Turkish Army at ANZAC at Gallipoli, and he loved the Turkish soldiers, and thought that they were almost the best soldiers he ever met in five years of fighting at Gallipoli, then as a Prussian Guard flame thrower trooper, and then the Freikorps in 1919. Not technically, but in spirit. But it was a tough army to be a soldier in.

A classical case of ingratitude was the French CO of Fort Vaux at Verdun. (Commandant Reynal?) Captured (Their water ran out) after terrible fighting and conditions, he was fed and rested and brought to Crown Prince William, who flattered him in his excellent French, and then said that he should bear his sword in captivity; since they seemed to have lost his sword, Wilhelm gave him a pioneer entrenching tool in honor of the defense. Reynal left, but a German officer ran after him and asked him to come back, as Little Willy wanted to talk with him again. Then Wilhelm gave him a French officer's sword that had been dug up quickly, probably from a German officer's war booty, and I believe that it also was decreed that he could not only wear a sword as a POW, but also his cane (Reynal had a bad leg), and even, I believe, his pistol!!! He also was given his dog back, and one of his soldiers as a servant. In captivity he was fed so well that he described how he used to feed his dog on his excess cake. Finally he was allowed to be paroled to Switzerland. (I wish that someone would parole me to Switzerland!)

The joke is that Reynal owned a sword, but at the front neither he or any of his officers had a sword, it was probably at home or in a caserne somewhere.

And of course, Reynal, a crusty, tough character, complained mightily about his treatment as a captive. I don't think anything would have pleased or satisfied him. He did grudgingly compliment Wilhelm on his excellent, non-accented French.

Bob Lembke

maybe just worse at English

One might ask "Why did armies treat captured senior officers so well and captured men so poorly?" I can only see one explanation. It was designed by senior officers to ensure that if they themselves were captured, they`d get similar favourable treament. It can`t be explained in military or humanitarian terms? Phil B