Majestät brauchen Sonne (2000)

The film follows the life of Wilhelm II primarily from a cultural and historical perspective. The last German emperor was a friend of the realist arts and often had his portrait painted. In Potsdam and Berlin, he employed 20 court photographers and gave portraits of himself in various sizes to deserving subordinates, much like medals of honor. After initially viewing it with suspicion, he also became an enthusiastic supporter of the new art of film, which had become acceptable at court by 1908. The earliest film footage showing him dates from 1901 and was shot in London on the occasion of his grandmother Queen Victoria’s funeral. Wilhelm II took a great interest in the erection and inauguration of monuments; throughout the country, he had monuments to Wilhelm I, the emperor who unified the Reich, erected. In Berlin, the Siegesallee was inaugurated in 1901, featuring statues from Albrecht the Bear to Wilhelm I. At birth, the nerves in Wilhelm’s left shoulder were injured, causing a permanent disability. He could barely move his left arm, which was also considerably shorter. This is especially clear in film footage. Filming was always permitted only in “Kaiserwetter”—that is, sunshine. To everyone’s surprise, Wilhelm became German emperor in 1888, during the Year of the Three Emperors, at the age of 29. He saw self-representation as one of his main duties and visited 50 cities in 1889 alone. In the following years, too, he made a striking number of trips at home and abroad, earning him the popular nickname “the Travelling Emperor”; the initials “I. R.” (Imperator Rex) were reinterpreted as “immer reisefertig” (“always ready to travel”). Progressively minded and interested in the development of transport, Wilhelm II patronized the Imperial Automobile Club, which later developed into the AvD. He took an interest in expanding the postal service and in railway advances. He travelled by car himself, or more often by train. When his wife travelled with him, the imperial train comprised eleven carriages; when he travelled without her, seven or eight sufficed. Wilhelm II paid particular attention to the navy. He owned the imperial steam yacht Hohenzollern, on which he made an annual trip to Norway, among other voyages. At his instigation, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal was built and opened in 1895. As the “Fleet Emperor,” Wilhelm II promoted sailing and established the Imperial Naval Office. He regularly took cruises in the Mediterranean, visiting Corfu as well as Italy. In 1907, he acquired the Achilleion there, which he used as a summer residence. He also took an interest in archaeological excavations, but these were halted by the unrest in the run-up to the First World War. As he did every year, Wilhelm II travelled to Norway in the summer of 1913. That year, his gift of the colossal Frithjof sculpture to Vangsnes made him anything but universally popular. At Kiel Week in 1914, Wilhelm II learned of the Sarajevo assassination and made one last trip to Norway for his summer holiday. During the First World War, the emperor’s standing declined, and even the first propaganda films made during his visit to the Ottoman Empire could not change that. Wilhelm II increasingly fell into depression, especially as he could rule only as a shadow emperor, since real political power lay with the Supreme Army Command. The Kiel sailors’ mutiny shook him deeply, as he himself had created the fleet. He went into exile in the Netherlands and settled at Huis Doorn. From then on, he never again touched a hunting rifle—he had once been proud of his one-handed shots and hunting successes—and he gave up riding, which he had also learned to do one-handed. Instead, he devoted himself enthusiastically to felling trees and substantially reduced the number of trees on the grounds around Huis Doorn. He bitterly registered the “betrayal” by Hindenburg, who, he felt, had taken his throne. He wanted nothing to do with the National Socialists and remarked in his later years that everyone in Berlin had by then become a proletarian. He foresaw that the Germans would one day curse the swastika flag. His burial in 1941 took place with military honors on the grounds of Huis Doorn, and not in Berlin as Hitler had planned. In 1950, the statues of the Siegesallee were dismantled and buried by the Allies. They were excavated again in the 1980s and placed in a building in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where they remain today. Huis Doorn is now a museum and is open to visitors. Among other things, a molar of the last German emperor can be found in Wilhelm II’s bedside cabinet, and a museum guide remarks that Wilhelm II could be cloned on that basis.