WILLIAM II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia. - B. Jan. 27, 1859 at Potsdam, d. June 4, 1941 at Doorn (Holland). Son of Frederick III of Prussia and of Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, he became King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany upon his father's death in 1888. Having ascended the throne, he soon found himself in conflict with Bismarck, whose excessive autonomy in the conduct of the Empire's domestic and foreign policy he would not tolerate, given his egocentric conception of kingship.
It was above all on two points that the Emperor and the Iron Chancellor clashed violently: in domestic policy, W. intended to issue various social measures and did not wish to renew the law against the socialists, intentions that were not welcome to Bismarck; in foreign policy, the skilful diplomatic edifice built by the chancellor in order to secure for Germany the friendship of Russia (the so-called Reinsurance Treaty of 1887) was not appreciated by the Emperor in all its importance, and was considered irreconcilable with the commitments toward the powers that, together with Germany, made up the Triple Alliance. Collaboration between the Emperor and his chancellor proved day by day increasingly difficult: in March 1890 Bismarck was forced to resign. The failure to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia favored the alliance of St. Petersburg with Paris. The rash declarations often made by the Emperor on the occasion of speeches and newspaper interviews further alarmed England, which feared German expansionism. These fears were reinforced both by the construction of a powerful navy, carried out by Tirpitz, and by the interest shown by Germany toward Africa and toward Turkey (the Berlin-Baghdad railway) and by the open sympathy shown to the Boers who were fighting against England in 1899. These attitudes influenced, and in a certain sense determined, the outbreak of the First World War. Of absolutist tendencies, W. did not revoke, although he had promised to do so, the Prussian three-class electoral system and took no account of the peace motion approved by the Reichstag in 1917. At the end of the war he abdicated and took refuge in Holland, where he remained in exile until his death. During W.'s reign the conditions of the Catholic Church improved noticeably. The remaining laws of the Kulturkampf were gradually abolished. In 1904 the law against the Jesuits was also partially revoked.
Bibliography3 works
Silvio Furlani