Were the three German Emperors (Wilhelm I, Frederick, and Wilhelm II) crowned in formal coronations? If so where were these coronations held?
Memorabilia of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s coronation, Berlin, 1888.
Hohenzollern crown made for Kaiser Billy “in his role as King of Prussia” - “used only for heraldic purposes” (I guess this means he never wore it).
No, the Imperial German crown was never made and used only for heraldic purposes. Wilhelm II used the Hohenzollern crown in his capacity as King of Prussia.
Ah. Alles klar.
Might better have said it “existed only as heraldry.”
Before opening this thread, I thought it was about the Wholly Roamin’ Umpire, rather than those Prussian upstarts. I assume the HRE had a crown, but don’t really know.
The Holy Roman Emperor had a really nice one.
Thank you, CA. That’s sufficiently gaudy for an emperor.
here is a picture of the hypothetical German Imperial Crown.
For what it’s worth, the Middle Ages had a viewpoint, founded in what would later become ‘nationalism’, that a ‘people’ had one king; other people might have monarchial or near-monarchial authority, but there was only one king per ‘people’ (nationality). The ‘German King’ was either the Holy Roman Emperor or his son and heir. Hence the Grand Dukes, Margraves, and such who effectively ruled the constitutent states of the Empire were precluded from kingship, as they were Germans, under the German King. The exception to this is an actual case of ‘proving the rule’: Bohemia, being a Czech state in the Empire and not German, had a king. So the various margraves and grand dukes sought out small states outside ‘Germany’ that they could become kings of. The Margraves of Brandenburg became Kings of Prussia, formerly a nation of Balts with German junkers in authority over them. The Archdukes of Austria became Kings of Hungary and later of Bohemia. The Grand Dukes of Saxony got themselves elected Kings of Poland. The dukes of Holstein became Kings of Denmark (which they had a hereditary connection to). And so on.
Despite what that website says, those relate not to Wilhelm II’s ‘coronation’, which never took place, but to his opening of the Reichstag.
The section from John Röhl’s biography of Wilhelm II on the significance of that ceremony and on the decision not to hold a coronation can be found here.