Royal Kinship Anglo German Family Networks 1815 1918

Whenever the British Press wants to attack the Royal Family, they make a jibe about “their foreign roots”. The Royals – as they say – are simply a posh version of German invaders. But did German relatives really influence decisions made by any British monarchs or are they just an “imagined community”, invented by journalists and historians? The Royal Archives at Windsor gave the authors – among others John Röhl, doyen of 19th century monarchical history – open access to Royal correspondences with six German houses: Hanover, Prussia, Mecklenburg, Coburg, Hesse and Battenberg.

Political and Legal Perspectives highlights the impact of political change, or "democratization," on religious reform in Northern Europe.

Anglo-German Scholarly Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century explores the complex and shifting connections between scientists and scholars in Britain and Germany from the late eighteenth century to the interwar years. Based on the concept of the transnational network in both its informal and institutional dimensions, it deals with the transfer of knowledge and ideas in a variety of fields and disciplines. Furthermore, it examines the role which mutual perceptions and stereotypes played in Anglo-German collaboration. By placing Anglo-German scholarly networks in a wider spatial and temporal context, the volume offers new frames of reference which challenge the long-standing focus on the antagonism and breakdown of relations before and during the First World War. Contributors include Rob Boddice, John Davis, Peter Hoeres, Hilary Howes, Gregor Pelger, Pascal Schillings, Angela Schwarz, Tara Windsor.

Using detailed studies of fifteen exiled royal figures, the role of Exile in European Society and in the evolution of national cultures is examined. From the Jacobite court to the exiled Kings' of Hanover, the book provides an alternative history of monarchical power from the 16th to 20th century.

In 1701, Frederick I crowned himself the first King in Prussia. This title required a process of royal status construction in conjunction with other European rulers, and Frederick found his most willing partners in the English monarchy. This volume examines their ceremonial and military cooperation. Diplomatic ceremonial was the medium through which the English state and its representatives recognised the new royal rank of the Hohenzollern dynasty. In exchange, Frederick engaged in extensive military cooperation with the English in the War of the Spanish Succession. Yet English statesmen and diplomats also instrumentalised Anglo-Prussian relations for their own status production, furthering their careers and elevating their rank via the symbolic construction of Prussian royal dignity. This book investigates this reciprocal construction of status and rank, exploring the aims and actions of actors involved, and assessing the extent to which they succeeded. Consequently, this book represents an actor-centred work of ‘new diplomatic history’ that simultaneously reinterprets the reign of Frederick I and assesses a crucial yet understudied chapter in the rise of Prussia. This book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern diplomatic history, as well as general readers interested in the history of England and Prussia.

This book explores the recreation and subsequent development of the British Monarchy during the twentieth century. Contributors examine the phenomenon of modern monarchy through an exploration of the establishment and the continuing impact of the Windsor dynasty both within Britain and the wider world, to interrogate the reasons for its survival into the twenty-first century. The successes (and failures) of the dynasty and the implications of these for its long-term survival are assessed from the perspectives of constitutional, political, diplomatic and socio-cultural history. Emphasis is placed on the use of symbols and tradition, and their reinvention, and public reactions to their employment by the Windsors, including the evidence provided by opinion polls. Starting with George V, and including darker times such as the challenge of the abdication of Edward VIII, this collection considers how far this reign was a key transition in how the British royal family has perceived itself and its role through examination of the repackaging for mass consumption via the media of a range of state occasions from coronations to funerals, as well as modernization of its relations with the military.

This biography evokes the pervasive importance of religion to Queen Victoria's life but also that life's centrality to the religion of Victorians around the globe. The first comprehensive exploration of Victoria's religiosity, it shows how moments in her life—from her accession to her marriage and her successive bereavements—enlarged how she defined and lived her faith. It portrays a woman who had simple convictions but a complex identity that suited her multinational Kingdom: a determined Anglican who preferred Presbyterian Scotland; an ardent Protestant who revered her husband's Lutheran homeland but became sympathetic towards Roman Catholicism and Islam; a moralizing believer in the religion of the home who scorned Sabbatarianism. Drawing on a systematic reading of her journals and a rich selection of manuscripts from British and German archives, Michael Ledger-Lomas sheds new light not just on Victoria's private beliefs but also on her activity as a monarch, who wielded her powers energetically in questions of church and state. Unlike a conventional biography, this book interweaves its account of Victoria's life with a panoramic survey of what religious communities made of it. It shows how different churches and world religions expressed an emotional identification with their Queen and Empress, turning her into an embodiment of their different and often rival conceptions of what her Empire ought to be. The result is a fresh vision of a familiar life, which also explains why monarchy and religion remained close allies in the nineteenth-century British world.

In 1613 a beautiful Stuart princess married a handsome young German prince. This was a love match, but it was also an alliance that aimed to weld together Europe's two great Protestant powers. Before Elizabeth and Frederick left London for the court in Heidelberg, they watched a performance of The Winter's Tale. In 1943, a group of British POWS gave a performance of that same play to a group of enthusiastic Nazi guards in Bavaria. When the amateur actors suggested doing a version of The Merchant of Venice that showed Shylock as the hero, the guards brought in the costumes and helped create the sets. Nothing about the story of England and Germany, as this remarkable book demonstrates, is as simple as we might expect. A shared faith, a shared hunger for power, a shared culture (Germany never doubted that Shakespeare belonged to them, as much as to England); a shared leadership. German monarchs ruled over England for three hundred years - and only ceased to do so through a change of name. Miranda Seymour has written a rich and heart-breaking story that needs to be heard: the vibrant, extraordinary history - told through the lives of kings and painters, soldiers and sailors, sugar-bakers and bankers, charlatans and saints - of two countries so entwined that one man, asked for his allegiance in 1916, said he didn't know because it felt as though his parents had quarrelled. Thirteen years of Nazi power can never be forgotten. But should thirteen years blot out four centuries of a profound, if rivalrous, friendship? Speaking in 1984, a remarkable Jew who fought for Germany in one war and for England in the next called for an end to the years of mistrust. Quarter of a century later, that mistrust remains as strong as ever and Hitler remains Germany's most familiar face. The stories that Miranda Seymour has recovered from a wealth of unpublished material and exceptional sources, remind us, poignantly, wittily and tragically, of all that we have chosen to forget.