William II., third German emperor and ninth king of Prussia, was born at Berlin, 27th January 1859, the son of the Crown-prince Frederick and the Princess Victoria (Princess Royal) of England. After a careful home education, he studied at the gymnasium in Cassel, passing the leaving examination. He also underwent a systematic and very thorough military training, and was early drilled in administrative methods and governmental usages. In spite of an accident at his birth which permanently weakened his left arm, he became an admirable horseman and an indefatigable hunter. He is also an enthusiastic yachtsman. Called to the throne by the death of his father, Frederick III., in 1888 (when his mother, three months an empress, retired into private life), he showed in all departments of imperial government, in all that concerned foreign relations, in the management of army and navy, an irrepressible and exuberant energy. He startled Europe by speeches in which he indicated a very exalted notion of his imperial responsibility, and intimated his resolve to maintain the high monarchical traditions of the Hohenzollern house. He made a series of tours to foreign courts—St Petersburg,
Copenhagen, Rome, &c.—and early showed himself to be restless, capricious, and strong-willed, with an overweening sense of the divine right of his imperial power. He often speaks very unadvisedly with his lips on public occasions. At once a lord of hosts, a yachtsman, a poet, a composer, a painter, and a preacher, he has had to endure the defeat or withdrawal of several favoured schemes as reactionary or impossible—a religious education bill, several anti-Socialist measures, and a vast increase of the fleet. The course of public events has been sketched at GERMANY (Vol. V. p. 186)—the succession of chancellors, the increase of the army, the growth of trade and commerce, colonial expansion, lese-majesty prosecutions, and the embitterment of relations with England. By the attitude of Germany towards Turkey before and after the Greek war the Concert of Europe was much hampered, even if the Triple Alliance has been formally maintained. As a grandson of the Queen, he was popular in England till his famous Transvaal telegram was held to reveal an enemy. By his marriage (1881) with a Sleswick-Holstein princess he had six sons and, in 1892, a daughter. In Jan. 1901, on Queen Victoria's death, he more than regained his former popularity in Britain, and at Osborne on his birthday he was made a British field-marshal by his uncle, the new king, Edward VII. See Charles Lowe, The German Emperor (1895).