TODAY IN BERLIN: KAISER TO THE POWER OF THREE

March 9 1888

On this day in 1888 at 8.30 AM German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm I died at his Imperial Palace (Altes Palais) in Unter den Linden 9, where he spent 50 years of his life.

He moved in in the 1830s as Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, the younger son of King Friedrich Wilhelm III and his wife, Luise (probably the most popular monarch in the history of Prussia). Their eldest - and Wilhelm’s older brother - became the next Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV.

And the future Kaiser would have led comfy and surely less eventful life of the second-to-the throne, had his brother and his wife not suffered a great tragedy: they lost her unborn baby and Elisabeth, Friedrich Wilhelm’s Bavarian wife, could never get pregnant again. Aware of the implications, the Prussian king appointed his younger brother as heir to the throne.

The fourth version of the famous Anton von Werner painting “The Proclamation of the German Empire” (with Bismarck in his white uniform - Werner made it white to have the Iron Chancellor stand out among others - being size-wise more impressive than Wilhelm I and his son, the well-meaning but unlucky 99-Kaiser, Friedrich III, to Wilhelm’s left)

Between 1857 and 1861, when he eventually died, Friedrich Wilhelm IV suffered a series of strokes which left him completely incapacitated. And so the throne was effectively passed onto Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig, Prinz von Preußen who acted as a regent in his brother’s name.

Fast forward ten years and in Versailles near Paris, the king - who took the name of Wilhelm I - was proclaimed the Kaiser of the German Reich (something, mind you, he was not exactly thrilled about).

Wilhelm I - portrait by a court photographer, Wilhelm Kuntzemüller (1884)

Wilhelm I, very fond of watching the change of guards at the Neue Wache in Unter den Linden from the window of his private room every Wednesday at noon, became a bit of a tourist attraction himself, too. Both Berliners and visitors appreciated the opportunity to see their monarch look out onto the boulevard from his imperial den. When he died, the two windows got bricked up (see the postcard above) and remained blind for years.

Friedrich III, German Kaiser for 99 days

With Wilhelm gone, it was his son’s turn to take over the imperial helm. Sadly for his successor, Kaiser Friedrich III – who married Queen Victoria’s daughter (to make the madness perfect also called Victoria - Berlin’s Viktoriapark was named after her) – it was a very short and richly dramatic reign: after only 99 days on the throne Friedrich, the second Kaiser on the German throne that year, died of larynx cancer.

Kaiser No. 3 - Wilhelm II, grandson of the British Empress, Victoria and cousin to many European monarchs (which, and those eyes and facial features do not lie, cannot be denied)

And so, enter Friedrich’s and Victoria’s son: on June 15, 1888 Germany welcomed its third Emperor within less than six months, Wilhelm II. If the year he was crowned - the Dreikaiserjahr (the Year of Three Emperors) - was anything to go by, the future that lay ahead of the empire was far from rosy. After setting the world on fire (albeit with great help from his friends and foes), Kaiser Wilhelm became the last Hohenzollern and the last German ever to carry that title. One hopes…