: Apparently, but there are lots of things that
: happen (even today, I suspect) within royal
: families that courts manage to camouflage. A
: recently widowed empress moving into another
: palace could easily be presented as an
: innocuous development. Obviously, the troops
: were rather more blatant, but a statement to
: the effect that the Kaiser was worried about
: his mother's security, coupled with the
: restrictive press laws of the Second Reich,
: might have at least cast some doubt.
: Clearly, though, you are correct that no
: such disinformation measures were taken, or
: if they were, they were not effective.
Actually, there was quite a lot that even courts couldn't always successfully camouflage. Surrounding a palace with troops in the wake of the Kaiser's death was a suspiciously odd move by any standards. Germany was a stable, well ordered country by that time so what possible concerns over his mother's security could the new Kaiser possibly have had to justify such a drastic move? After all, nothing similar had taken place after the death of Wilhelm I just a few months earlier. Such a move could only have confirmed the already prevalent rumours. Even if there had been press restrictions in Germany the foreign press, especially the British, would have been free to pick up on and enquire as to what was really going on and such enquiries (and conclusions) would inevitably have filtered back to Germany creating more rumour and gossip. Whether or not Wilhelm, Bismarck and co managed to ensure such moves received the backing of the German public, that would at least have confirmed that it was an attack on the dowager empress and that relations in the imperial family were obviously strained to the utmost.
: --Previous Message--
: Gary, it was difficult not to know about the
: estrangement between Vicky and Wilhelm even
: at the time. For one thing, Wilhelm was
: anything but subtle about it. As soon as his
: father was dead he ordered troops to
: surround the palace and had it thoroughly
: searched for evidence of any incriminating
: correspondence suggesting his mother had
: been revealing Prussian state secrets to her
: English relatives. Shortly afterwards, his
: mother was forced to leave the palace and
: retire to a country retreat with her 3
: younger daughters. It was impossible for
: newspapers and journalists of the time not
: to pick up that something strange and
: unpleasant was going on even if they didn't
: know the full details.
:
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: However, while
: reading a microfilm copy of the New York
: Times from the day after Wilhelm II's
: accession in 1888 (the entire front page was
: given over to stories related to the German
: succession, as it had been 99 days earlier),
: I came across what we'd now call an analysis
: piece in which the author said something
: like, "One wonders what it means for
: the peace of the world when a man who hates
: his own mother sits of the throne of the
: German Empire." I may not have the
: whole line exactly word for word, but I
: vividly recall being struck by that phrase,
: "a man who hates his own mother,"
: because what I had thought was a royal
: family secret was right there on the front
: page of the New York Times!
:
: "It is perhaps logical that a man who
: hates his mother does not love anything
: except himself, his country not excepted,
: and many people, the Socialists and Jews of
: Germany perhaps the most of all, may
: bitterly regret the untimely death of
: Emperor Frederick and the accession of
: William II." - New York Times, June 16,
: 1888, page 1.
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