Hohenzollern Quotes

The man who had once tramped the pavements of this city [Vienna] as a vagabond, unwashed and empty-bellied, who but four years before had assumed in Germany the powers of the Hohenzollern kings and had now taken upon himself those of the Hapsburg emperors, was full of a sense of God-given mission.

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of William II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same.

Thus in Prussia the Hohenzollern King was the head of the Church. In no country with the exception of Czarist Russia did the clergy become by tradition so completely servile to the political authority of the State.

The chief criticism that I should direct against the old sovereign is that a Seigneur of his rank, head of one of the most ancient and illustrious houses in Europe, should have allowed himself to be led by the nose by that little upstart of a country squire very intelligent for that matter but a pure parvenu like William of Hohenzollern.

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same.

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. This was the key to Sapiens’ success.

Sacrosanctis was in fact the public face of a corporate conspiracy between the leading men of three powerful European families: the Medici (in the form of Pope Leo); Jakob Fugger, head of the Augsburg banking and mining dynasty and a man often said to have been the richest in human history; and Albert, archbishop of Mainz, a member of the politically influential Hohenzollern dynasty and (not coincidentally) the man to whom Luther mailed the first copy of his Theses.

The middle classes, grown prosperous by the belated but staggering development of the industrial revolution and dazzled by the success of Bismarck’s policy of force and war, had traded for material gain any aspirations for political freedom they may have had.* They accepted the Hohenzollern autocracy. They gladly knuckled under to the Junker bureaucracy and they fervently embraced Prussian militarism. Germany’s star had risen and they—almost all the people—were eager to do what their masters asked to keep it high.

The man who had once tramped the pavements of this city as a vagabond, unwashed and empty-bellied, who but four years before had assumed in Germany the powers of the Hohenzollern kings and had now taken upon himself those of the Hapsburg emperors, was full of a sense of God-given mission. I believe that it was God’s will to send a youth from here into the Reich, to let him grow up, to raise him to be the leader of the nation so as to enable him to lead back his homeland into the Reich. There is a higher ordering and we all are nothing else than its agents.

Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organized themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there a thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago?

The history of Royal Prussia, which fell into the Polish orbit, is little known to those who approach the Prussian story from an exclusively German perspective. (The subject was actively suppressed by bans and book-burnings when the Hohenzollerns eventually took over.) Yet for 300 years this ‘Other Prussia’ flourished, not only as a separate institutional entity, but as the source of a separate political ideology and culture, based on concepts of freedom and liberty. Though the population was ethically mixed, Polish and German – with a strong German predominance in the cities – the corporate identity and fierce local patriotism of Royal Prussia digressed markedly from the values with which the name of ‘Prussia’ is usually associated.

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. This was the key to Sapiens’ success. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn’t stand a chance. Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell – and revise – stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges.

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration ‘from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which “have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law’.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a half-hearted experiment that survived for barely 200 years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilisation for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilisation?

while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social structures, the nature of their interpersonal relations, their economic activities and a host of other behaviours within a decade or two. Consider a resident o Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. This was the key to Sapiens' success. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn't stand a chance. Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell - and revise - stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenging. (p. 38)

Sacrosanctis was in fact the public face of a corporate conspiracy between the leading men of three powerful European families: the Medici (in the form of Pope Leo); Jakob Fugger, head of the Augsburg banking and mining dynasty and a man often said to have been the richest in human history; and Albert, archbishop of Mainz, a member of the politically influential Hohenzollern dynasty and (not coincidentally) the man to whom Luther mailed the first copy of his Theses. The nature of the agreement between these three was broadly thus: Albert, who was already archbishop of Magdeburg, had been permitted by the pope to become archbishop of Mainz at the same time – which made him the most senior churchman in Germany, and meant he controlled two of the seven electoral votes which determined the identity of the German emperor. (His brother already controlled a third.) Vast fees were due to Rome as a tax on taking office as an archbishop – but Albert could afford these, thanks to a loan from Fugger, who advanced the money on the basis that he would have the Hohenzollern and their electoral votes in his pocket. Albert, for his part, promised Leo he would do all he could to make sure that German Christians bought as many indulgences as possible, partly because his share of the proceeds could repay his debt to Fugger and partly so that funds would flow rapidly to Leo in Rome for the completion of St Peter’s. For the parties involved this was a neat arrangement by which they all got what they wanted – so long as the faithful did their part and kept pumping money into pardons.

Depuis que j'ai doue ans, et depuis qu'elle est une terreur, la mort est une marotte. J'en ignorais l'existence jusqu'à ce qu'un camarade de classe, le petit Bonnecarère, m'envoyât au cinéma le Styx, où l'on s'asseyait à l'époque dans des cercueils, voir L'enterré vivant, un film de Roger Corman tiré d'un conte 'Edgar Allan Poe. La découverte de la mort par le truchement de cette vision horrifique d'un homme qui hurle d'impuissance à l'intérieur de son cercueil devint une source capiteuse de cauchemars. Par la suite, je ne cessai de rechercher les attributs de les plus spectaculaires de la mort, suppliant mon père de me céder le crâne qui avait accompagné ses études de médecine, m'hypnotisant de films d'épouvante et commençant à écrire, sous le pseudonyme d'Hector Lenoir, un conte qui racontair les affres d'un fantômr rnchaîné dans les oubliettes du château des Hohenzollern, me grisant de lectures macabres jusqu'aux stories sélectionnées par Hitschcock, errant dans les cimetières et étrennant mon premier appareil avec des photographies de tombes d'enants, me déplaçant jusqu'à Palerme uniquement pour contempler les momies des Capucins, collectionnant les rapaces empaillés comme Anthony Perkins dans Psychose, la mort me semblait horriblement belle, féeriquement atroce, et puis je pris en grippe son bric-à-brac, remisai le crâne de l'étudiant de médecine, fuis les cimetières comme la peste, j'étais passé à un autre stade de l'amour de la mort, comme imprégné par elle au plus profond je n'avais plus besoin de son décorum mais d'une intimité plus grande avec elle, je continuais inlassablement de quérir son sentiment, le plus précieux et le plus haïssable d'entre tous, sa peur et sa convoitise.

Carol I must not be confused with his nephew’s son, Carol II. Whereas the latter was undisciplined and sensual, the former was an anal-retentive Prussian of the family of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who, in the course of a forty-eight-year rule (1866–1914), essentially built modern Romania, complete with nascent institutions, from an assemblage of regions and two weak principalities. Following 1989, he had become the default symbol of legitimacy for the Romanian state. Whereas Carol I signified realism and stability, the liberal National Peasant Party leader Iuliu Maniu, a Greek Catholic by upbringing, stood for universal values. As a mid-twentieth-century local politician in extraordinarily horrifying circumstances, Maniu had agitated against the assault on the Jews and in favor of getting Antonescu to switch sides against the Nazis; soon after, during the earliest days of the Cold War, he agitated against the Soviets and their local puppets. Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop once demanded Maniu’s execution. As it turned out, the Communist Gheorghiu-Dej regime later convicted Maniu in a show trial in 1947. Defying his accusers, he spoke up in court for free elections, political liberties, and fundamental human rights.16 He died in prison in 1953 and his body was dumped in a common grave. Maniu’s emaciated treelike statue with quotations from the Psalms is, by itself, supremely moving. But there is a complete lack of harmony between it and the massive, adjacent spear pointing to the sky, honoring the victims of the 1989 revolution. The memorial slabs beside the spear are already chipped and cracked. Piaţa Revoluţiei in 1981 was dark, empty, and fear-inducing. Now it was cluttered with memorials, oppressed by traffic, and in general looked like an amateurish work in progress. But though it lacked any

Most people are not aware that there is a German royal family. In fact as a young man I dated a young lady who was part of these royals, whose heritage predates Hitler’s Third Reich, Paul von Hindenburg, or even the Weimar Republic. To this day, members of the Hohenzollern family remain very aware of their royal position and, although legal matters regarding land and property have for the greatest part been settled, there are still matters of status and hierarchy that are in dispute. Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preußen who was born on June 10, 1976, is the current head of the Royal House of Hohenzollern and heir to the German throne.

In the Hundred Years’ War that dragged France and England through the 14th century, both sides would have liked to quit but could not, for fear of losing power and status; hate and mistrust fed by the war prevented them from talking. In the ghastly toll and futility of 1914–18, no end could be negotiated short of victory for one side or the other, because each felt it must bring home to its people some compensating gain in the form of territory or a seaport or industrial resource to justify the terrible cost. To come home empty-handed might mean a revolt against the rulers at home—or at least the loss of their position and place in society, as the Kaiser and the Hohenzollerns were thrown out in 1918.

Divorce was legalized in Maryland and Holland adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1701. On that same date the German Hohenzollern royal family was developed from former emperors, kings, princes who were descended of the Germanic kingdoms scattered throughout central Europe. On April 9, 1865, in America, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate States of America, ended the Civil War by surrendering to General Ulysses S. Grant, Commander of the United States Forces. It wasn’t even a week later, when on April 14th, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, while watching “Our American Cousin” at the Ford Theater. The following day, as Lincoln lay dying in Washington, D.C., Otto Von Bismarck, a conservative Prussian statesman was elevated to the rank of Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen in Europe. During the second half of the 19th century as Bismarck ran German and dominated European history, Cuba fought for its independence from Spain. On April 25, 1898, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the United States declared war against Spain. The century ended with turmoil in Europe, a free Cuba and the United States as the new world power!

Hohenzollerns,

They overdid everything, especially their greed for money. All three generations of Rumanian Hohenzollerns had a passion for wealth and were incredibly stingy besides, Carol more so than the others.

The story illustrated the extent to which Germans adopted mission-oriented command during Moltke’s tenure, as no less a leader than a Hohenzollern prince informed a subordinate commander that he could disobey orders when the situation called for it.

All these considerations, conscious and unconscious, strengthened my opinion that war could be avoided only at the cost of the honour of Prussia and of the national confidence in it. Under this conviction I made use of the royal authorisation communicated to me through Abeken, to publish the contents of the telegram; and in the presence of my two guests I reduced the telegram by striking out words, but without adding or altering, to the following form : `After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the imperial government of France by the royal government of Spain, the French ambassador at Ems further demanded of his Majesty the King that he would authorise him to telegraph to Paris that his Majesty the King bound himself for all future time never again to give his consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature.

Aussitôt que les pousses étaient moissonnés, le bétail mis à l’étable, et les moutons rassemblés dans les « stinas », leurs quartiers d'hiver, les Marinescus partaient pour leurs maisons de campagne. Certains allaient à Paris, où ils possédaient des palais sur le boulevard Saint-Germain, où on les appelait « Prince » et « Princesse », et tenaient des salons où se divertissaient les hommes les plus célèbres des arts et des lettres. D'autres allaient à Florence, à Venise, et lors des dernières années, vers les années 1890, quelques membres de la famille, qui s'étaient finalement réconciliés avec la cour des Hohenzollerns, qui régnaient en Roumanie, passaient l'hiver à Bucarest. Les Marinescus furent les derniers des boyards à pardonner le changement de capitale du pays de Jassy à la cité sur la rivière Dâmbovița.

In 1870, the throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Had the Prince rejected the offer at once, there might have been no Franco-Prussian war, and Napoleon III might have ended his days still on the throne. Alas, he accepted. France was appalled, how possibly could she accept being the sausage the middle of a German sandwich.

Considering that the GDR—to adapt Mirabeau’s description of Hohenzollern Prussia—was little more than a security service with a state, it demonstrated in the glow of retrospect a remarkable capacity to evoke affection and even longing.

Andere Stellen [der Aufzeichnungen Wilhelm II.]lesen sich wie Vorwegnahmen der Abgründe der kommenden Jahre. Dies trifft etwa auf den Sekt zu, den der Kaiser um August 1921 entkorken ließ, als die Nachricht von der Ermordung Matthias Erzbergers in Doorn eintraf. Die Reaktion auf die Ermordung Walther Rathenaus im Folgejahr fiel ähnlich aus.

Doorn [Exilort Wilhelm II. in Hollang] war eine Außenstelle der Gegenrevolution. Ein Ort ernster politischer Arbeit mit Verbindungen in alle Teile Deutschlands. Ein Ort, von dem aus die Republik von ihrem ersten bis zum letzten Tag angegriffen wurde.

Als Hitler an die Macht gehebelt wird, wie es Ian Kershaw formuliert, stellt die Familie Hohenzollern halbherzige Befürworter und begeisterte Unterstützer. Gegner stell sie nicht.

The risk of leaving East Prussia, hearth of Junkerdom and the Hohenzollerns, to be held by only nine divisions was hard to accept, but Frederick the Great had said, “It is better to lose a province than split the forces with which one seeks victory,” and nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Siamo tutti di sangue misto noi austriaci, specialmente noi cosiddetti austriaci di ceppo germanico: figli di un impero dalle più disparate etnie, razze, religioni. Se non ci ostinassimo comicamente a sentirci tuttora austriaci, anche dopo la scomparsa di quel leggendario impero, dovremmo riconoscere di essere addirittura americani... ma per arrivare a questo ci manca l’acume politico... È così purtroppo: le idee sono spesso surrogate dalle emozioni. Sono più dure a morire, resistono meglio al tempo, e tanto meglio quanto più sono irrazionali. Per esempio il grande sogno tedesco, il sogno dell’Impero, dello scomparso Sacro Romano Impero di Nazione Germanica di Carlo Magno... già l’imperatore Barbarossa ci si è addormentato su così profondamente, là sul Kyffhauser, che la barba gli è dovuta crescere attraverso il tavolo di pietra sul quale si appoggia... Ricostituire questo impero, riunificarlo, " farlo rivivere in tutta la sua potenza e il suo mistico splendore – ebbene: questo era già cent’anni fa il proposito della gioventù di lingua tedesca, è ancor oggi il suo sogno e la sua aspirazione, e non importa se questa gioventù, tedesca di lingua, tedesca di pensieri, tedesca di sentimenti, ha probabilmente nelle vene, là sulle rive del Reno, fin dai tempi di Arminio il Cherusco e dei suoi avversari romani, sangue in buona parte nubiano e libico, e nelle regioni a est dell’Elba, soprattutto in quelle che sono il cuore della riedizione bismarckiana di quell’lmpero, soprattutto sangue borussico e finnico e vendico; e perfino lungo il fiume dei Nibelunghi, nei paesi così cari al nostro cuore, sangue sloveno e boemo... Non importa: ha sentimenti germanici questa gioventù tedesca, imperial—germanici, pan- germanici, nevvero? Incalzata da quest’ansia, nei suoi sogni si vede già all’ombra della grande, fluttuante bandiera nero-rosso— oro — questa bandiera giovane più di tutte le bandiere, con quel nero che è presagio di morte, quel rosso che è ribollire di sangue e quell’oro che è inebriante promessa di vagheggiati destini... In verità mi chiedo commosso: chi son io mai perche' mi sia dato ancora di vivere una simile emozione! Un giovane tedesco, uno sbarbatello, se mi è consentito di esprimermi così liberamente, neppure adolescente, ancora un ragazzo: e già si esibisce orgogliosamente nella divisa dei campioni della libertà, epigoni dello Sturm und Drang nell’ideale della sempre vagheggiata e sempre fallita rivoluzione tedesca. Attestiamo il sogno tedesco, qui, nella culla dei voivodi rumeni, tra i fiumi Prut e Siret, circondati da rumeni, ruteni, polacchi, lipovani ed ebrei galiziani, orgogliosamente incuranti dell’eventuale rischio di esporci al ridicolo in un travestimento che ricorda il gatto con gli stivali —- com’e‘ bella anche questa fedeltà al patrimonio favolistico popolare tedesco!... No no, non dobbiamo vergognarci, siamo nel giusto, in ogni senso: anche questo regno di Romania nel quale oggi viviamo, è ancora talea e pollone dell’Unico Grande Impero, al suo vertice sta pur sempre un monarca della casa Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, un principe tedesco... Mi si permetta di esprimere la mia incondizionata ammirazione per un atto di fede tanto coraggioso da spazzar via ogni meschina considerazione di opportunità politica!

One of many legends of the Impaler is that, trapped in a loveless marriage, he wandered the streets of his capital, Tirgoviste, picking up prostitutes on the way. So, too, Carol II Hohenzollern, king of Romania when archaeologists first came looking for Dracula’s grave had his string of mistresses.

The Ascanian dynasty that ruled Brandenburg for centuries eventually died out. Disease, war and famine stalked the land. The Holy Roman Emperor decided to name a new ruler for this neglected area, a scion of a Nuremberg family that had flourished as hereditary castellans of that powerful imperial free city. The family was called Hohenzollern. Its members would rule here through triumph and disaster for 500 years.

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. It had lasted 1,563 days, claimed the lives of some ten million soldiers, wounded twenty million others, and devoured more than $300 billion of the world's treasure. It destroyed empires and dethroned dynasties—the Hohenzollerns in Germany, the Hapsburgs in Austria, the Romanovs in Russia. In the war's final hours, new regimes were aborning in Vienna, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Dublin, while revolutionaries huzzahed through the streets of Berlin and Petersburg.