TODAY IN BERLIN: KAISER WILHELM I's LAST RITES
13 March 1888 in Berlin - Berlin Companion Calendar
On this day, March 13 1888 in Berlin the body of the late Kaiser Wilhelm I, who passed away on March 9th, was laid in state at the Berliner Dom - where it would stay until March 16th.
Approximately 200,000 people would come to pay their last respects to the monarch, at times causing such messy commotion that newspapers later described the situation inside the church as "life-threatening". After the first day of the monarch’s laying-in-state had come to an end, hundreds of umbrellas, gloves, hats and other paraphernalia were found strewn all over the temple's floor.
The old Kaiser was buried in the mausoleum originally built in Schloßpark Charlottenburg (the park surrounding the royal palace in Charlottenburg) for his beloved mother, the prematurely deceased Queen Luise of Prussia, and by 1888 also holding the body of his father, King Friedrich Wilhelm III. The funeral took place on March 16th, 1888 after a funeral service at the Berliner Dom.
And here is a Delicious Bit of Berlin Trivia: until four days before his death at the age of 91er Wilhelm I had a habit of appearing at the window of his office on the ground floor of the Altes Palais (aka Kronprinzenpalais) in Unter den Linden to watch the change of guards at the Neue Wache on the other side of the boulevard.
His regular appearance at the "historisches Eckfenster" became so popular an event that even the legendary “Baedeker” Berlin guide-books mentioned the fact. On one occasion (so the story), the monarch interrupted an important cabinet meeting to make sure he would be ready on his daily post when noon stroke. After all, "it stood in the Baedeker that he would".
After Wilhelm's death the window remained forever covered with black curtains.
