Kaiser Wilhelm I Worksheets
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Summary
- Background and military career
- Rule as Prussian king
- Proclamation and reign as German Emperor
Key Facts And Information
Let’s find out more about Kaiser Wilhelm I!
Born to the House of Hohenzollern, Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig intended to pursue a military career and subsequently commanded several units in the Prussian Army. He became heir to the Prussian throne and succeeded as Wilhelm I in 1861. His reign was marked by the wars of German unification. When the German Empire was created on 18 January 1871, he was proclaimed the German Emperor. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck did much of the governing during his imperial rule. Wilhelm died in 1888 at the age of 90.
Portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm I, c1887
Background and military career
- Born on 22 March 1797 in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin, Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig was the second son of Prince Frederick William and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The year that he was born, his father became Frederick William III of Prussia following the death of his grandfather.
- From 1801 to 1809, Wilhelm received his training from the Prussian theologian Friedrich Delbrück, who also supervised the education of his brother, the crown prince.
- He was a sickly child and so at a young age, he was drilling daily under supervision to help strengthen his body.
- At age ten, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Regiment of Guards in keeping with the House of Hohenzollern’s military tradition.
- Since his elder brother was slated to be king, he intended to take a separate career as a professional soldier.
- At age twelve, he became an officer in the Prussian Army, where he served from then onward.
- In 1814, the young prince made his first cavalry charge with Prussia’s Russian allies at the Battle of Bar-sur-Aube in the German Wars of Liberation against the Emperor of the French, Napoleon I.
- He subsequently committed himself to the Prussian Army and military affairs.
- For his actions at Bar-sur-Aube, he was appointed a captain and awarded the Russian Order of St George and the Iron Cross, both an honourable military decoration.
- The conflict and the struggle against France had a lasting impression on him, and he developed a profound animosity towards the French.
- Wilhelm continued to rise through the ranks and commanded several units:
- In 1815, he became major and commanded a battalion of the 1st Foot Guards. He then fought at the Battles of Ligny and Waterloo.
- In 1816, he was commander of the Stettin Guard Landwehr Battalion.
- In 1818, he was again promoted to the rank of major general.
- In 1819, he was commissioned as the inspector of the VII and VIII Army Corps. He then became a spokesman of the Prussian Army within the House of Hohenzollern. He advocated for a strong, well-trained, and well-equipped army.
- In 1820, he was commander of the 1st Guards Infantry Division.
- In 1825, he was promoted to commanding general of the III Army Corps.
- When the Russian Emperor Alexander I died in 1825, Wilhelm paid an inaugural visit to the new Russian Emperor Nicholas I in 1826.
- Nicholas I was married to Wilhelm’s sister, Charlotte of Prussia, who became Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
- Wilhelm’s visit came shortly after the Decembrist revolt, whose severe suppression and subsequent executions he considered to be outstanding. This uprising led him to develop a fear of revolutions.
- Around this time, Wilhelm struck up a romantic relationship with his cousin, Polish noblewoman Elisa Radziwill.
- In 1826, his father refused to acknowledge the relationship, as Elisa was not of equal rank to Wilhelm. Their union was thus forbidden, and Wilhelm was forced to comply.
- In 1829, Wilhelm married Princess Augusta, the daughter of Grand Duke Karl Friedrich of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Maria Pavlovna, the sister of Nicholas I. This union, which promised to strengthen Prussia’s ties with Russia, was reportedly stable.
- Wilhelm and Augusta fulfilled their dynastic obligation by giving birth to two children in the 1830s, Friedrich Wilhelm and Louise.
- Between 1835 and 1837, Wilhelm had the Old Palace in Berlin built as a new family residence.
- In 1838, he was promoted to commander of the Guard Corps, an elite force stationed in and around Berlin.
- He was tasked to quell unrest, and for this reason, his political reputation was damaged in the long term.
- His brother succeeded to the Prussian throne as Frederick William IV in 1840. Since his brother was childless, Wilhelm was appointed as heir to the throne and was henceforth called Prince of Prussia.
- Despite his convictions, Wilhelm accepted the position out of loyalty towards his brother. He came to have a greater influence on Prussian politics following this.
- His opposition to the policies of his brother eventually became evident, and there emerged tensions between him and the king.
- During the Revolutions of 1848, Wilhelm had no military command in Berlin.
- He was ordered by the king to remain in Berlin because of the imminent revolutionary unrest.
- Bloody barricade fighting broke out, resulting in the effective crushing of the revolt.
- Since Wilhelm was a symbolic figure of the military party at court, many people believed that he was responsible for starting the bloodshed.
- As a consequence of his unpopularity, there were calls for Wilhelm to be excluded from the succession. In fact, he was given the derogatory nickname ‘Prince of Grapeshot’, referring to the rumour that he ordered the use of cannons against the population.
- The king urged him to flee to England for a while, hoping that his departure would calm the public.
- Wilhelm was only permitted to return to the country after the Prussian National Assembly had convened, in which he was elected by his supporters in order to represent the anti-revolutionary sentiments.
- He resigned from his post and had no military or political duties until June 1849, when he was commissioned to suppress the revolutionary movements in the Bavarian Palatinate and Baden.
A depiction of Koblenz and the Rhine
- In October 1849, he was appointed military governor of the Rhine Province and Westphalia, with a seat at the Electoral Palace, Koblenz.
- In 1850, he moved into Koblenz, where he set up a court independent of Berlin. He and his wife surrounded themselves with several liberal scholars.
- He also continued to advocate an active Prussian policy towards a unified German state, supporting the ideas of and remaining in contact with the short-term Prussian Foreign Minister Joseph von Radowitz. Radowitz had been the mastermind of an attempt at German unification under Prussian leadership.
- In 1857, Frederick William IV became seriously ill and mentally disabled for the rest of his life. This led to Wilhelm becoming the Prince Regent in 1858, initially temporarily but after October on a permanent appointment.
- He swore an oath of office on the Prussian constitution, which the king had forbidden in his will.
- He appointed a liberal as Minister-President, and thus commenced what was called the ‘New Era’ in Prussia.
- In terms of foreign policy, Wilhelm announced that he sought to preserve friendly relations with the other major European powers.
- He also pledged to uphold the law everywhere, leading the liberals to assume the government would henceforth cooperate with Parliament.
- Nevertheless, there were conflicts between Wilhelm and the liberal majority. In fact, his government programme imposed limits on expectations of reform, especially on matters of reforming the armed forces. He also believed that the government should not be driven by liberal ideas.
Rule as Prussian king
- Following the death of Frederick William IV in January 1861, Wilhelm ascended the throne as Wilhelm I of Prussia. There had been an attempt on his life in July, but he was only lightly injured in the neck. For his coronation, he commissioned a new crown and funded the ceremony with his own resources.
- The magnificent coronation was held in Königsberg at the Schlosskirche on 18 October, which was the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig.
- He crowned himself and asserted that the crown only comes from God. He reaffirmed his oath to the constitution, which was against his brother’s will.
- A conflict between the king and the liberal Landtag, or the representative assembly, was passed down to Wilhelm. This finally escalated in 1862 over the army reform, in which Parliament rejected the three-year military service period insisted on by Wilhelm.
- This led Wilhelm to initially consider abdication. He ultimately decided to install Otto von Bismarck as Minister-President in order to force through the proposals.
- With Wilhelm’s support, Bismarck effectively directed both domestic and foreign affairs. He also often obtained the king’s assent by threatening to resign.
- Wilhelm’s reign was marked by the wars that led to the unification of Germany, during which he acted as the commander-in-chief of the Prussian forces.
Depiction of one of the battles of the Second Schleswig War
- During the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864, Prussia fought jointly with Austria. Wilhelm later entered the war zone only after the Prussians achieved early success. He insisted on Prussian possession of Schleswig and Holstein, triggering a foreign policy crisis with Austria.
- Following the conclusion of the war, a territorial division was agreed upon at Bismarck’s suggestion, with Denmark ceding Schleswig to Prussia and Holstein to Austria. The power struggle between Austria and Prussia for supremacy over the German states persisted.
- The rivalry between Austria and Prussia led to the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, in which Wilhelm was constitutionally in command. Following the Prussian victory, Wilhelm wanted to annex Austrian territories and march on to Vienna. He was dissuaded from doing so by Bismarck and the crown prince. Since Austria was willing to accept Prussian dominance, he gave up his demands for the annexation of Austria.
- After the war, the German Confederation was abolished and was partially replaced by the North German Confederation in 1867, which was a federation of the northern and central German states under the permanent presidency of Prussia, excluding Austria. Wilhelm assumed the Bundespräsidium, a monarchical office for the head of state. He was also the constitutional Bundesfeldherr, the commander of all federal armed forces. Secret treaties made with the southern German states also designated Wilhelm as commander of their armies in wartime.
Proclamation and reign as German Emperor
- Tensions between Prussia and France led to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870. Whilst Wilhelm was nominally the supreme commander on the side of the North German Confederation and the southern German state, he left the planning largely to Helmuth von Moltke as the Chief of the Prussian General Staff. During the war, Wilhelm and Bismarck directed the creation of detailed plans for the unification with the southern German states.
- As the war progressed, the south German states joined the North German Confederation. Wilhelm was later persuaded to agree to peace negotiations with France.
- With German victory all but assured, the German states declared their union as the German Empire. The title of Deutscher Kaiser, or German Emperor, replaced the title of Bundespräsidium, which was decided on by the legislative assemblies.
- Whilst Wilhelm intended to take over as imperial monarch at the head of the German nation-state, he was unwilling to accept the title of emperor unless the promotion was offered by all German princes.
- When he received their assurance, he accepted the constitutional title in December and set the day of the imperial proclamation as 18 January 1871.
- The Franco-Prussian War effectively ended on 28 January, and the subsequent peace treaty awarded the German nation-state billions of francs in war indemnity, as well as most of Alsace and parts of Lorraine.
- With the wars of German unification over, Wilhelm commissioned projects that depicted recent Prussian successes, including the construction of the Victory Column in Berlin, an army museum and a Hall of Fame in the Berlin Armoury, and the Niederwald monument in Hesse.
- Whilst he now possessed considerable power as Kaiser, he left much of the governing to Bismarck, who was now Chancellor of the German Empire.
- Wilhelm limited himself to representing the state and supporting Bismarck’s policy, such as consolidating the influence of the German Empire in Europe by entering into alliances, isolating France by diplomatic means, and avoiding conflict.
- In 1873, Wilhelm entered into an alliance with Russia and Austria-Hungary, forming the League of Three Emperors aimed at strengthening the current state of peace in Europe and aiding each other in the event of revolutions or other threats to monarchical rule.
- Wilhelm was upset by the Kulturkampf that Bismarck and the liberals waged against the Roman Catholic Church, but consistently refused to accept Bismarck’s resignation.
- In 1879, a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary against Russia was formed, known as the Dual Alliance, despite Wilhelm’s intention to reconcile with Alexander II of Russia in 1878.
- In 1878, two assassination attempts were made on Wilhelm. The first one was in May, in which the bullet missed him and the assassin was arrested, tried and executed. The second attempt was in June, which left Wilhelm seriously wounded.
- Another attempt on his life was made in September 1883, in which a group of anarchists planned to attack using dynamite. It was unsuccessful due to the weather.
- Despite the assassination attempts, Wilhelm and his wife were popular, most notably in their later years. The emperor’s popularity was helped by his frequent public appearances and press interviews.
- Wilhelm’s health deteriorated in the last ten years of his reign. At age 90, he died on 9 March 1888 in Berlin after a short illness. The funeral procession was held on 16 March, and he was buried in the Charlottenburg Palace Park. His son, who was already seriously ill at the time, succeeded as Frederick III. Numerous memorials were erected in Wilhelm’s honour over the succeeding years.
Image Sources
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Franz_von_Lenbach%2C_Kaiser_Wilhelm_I._1887_%C3%96l_auf_Holz.jpg/800px-Franz_von_Lenbach%2C_Kaiser_Wilhelm_I._1887_%C3%96l_auf_Holz.jpg
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Kurf%C3%BCrstliches_SchlossKO.jpg/800px-Kurf%C3%BCrstliches_SchlossKO.jpg
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/1866_Camphausen_Crossing_to_Alsen_anagoria.JPG/1024px-1866_Camphausen_Crossing_to_Alsen_anagoria.JPG
Frequently Asked Questions
- Who was Kaiser Wilhelm I?
Kaiser Wilhelm I, born Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig of Prussia, was the first Emperor of Germany (Deutscher Kaiser) and the King of Prussia. He reigned as Emperor from 1871 until he died in 1888 and as King from 1861 to 1888.
- What were the significant accomplishments of Kaiser Wilhelm I?
Kaiser Wilhelm I is best known for his role in unifying Germany and establishing the German Empire in 1871. He also played a key role in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).
- How did Kaiser Wilhelm I contribute to the unification of Germany?
With Otto von Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm I led Prussia in a series of wars that ultimately unified the various German states into a single empire. The victory in the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent Treaty of Versailles in 1871 were crucial to this unification.