Crthuky

I'd like to know how the Kaisers treated the servants in their palace, along with where I can find more information on this subject. In The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany by John Röhl, an essay claims that Wilhelm II was prone to fits of rage and that he would beat, or even stab, his own servants. However, I have been unable to find this anecdote anywhere else, leading me to wonder if it is true. I am also unable to find any information about servants to the royal family of Germany anywhere.

I was lent a copy of George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I, and rather enjoyed the read. While I don't remember a lot of material specifically about servants, it was flat out about the behavior and mindset of those three men.

Suffice to say the picture that it painted of Wilhelm was definitely one of someone for whom that behavior wouldn't be at all out of character. Rather than just list out his purported bad qualities, I'll just say the character of King Joffre in Game of Thrones might well have been partially modeled on Carter's portrayal of Wilhelm (the timing is wrong though. A Clash of Kings predates this book by a decade). That's certainly what I thought of immediately when I watched it on HBO.

Wilhelm II was prone to fits of rage and that he would beat, or even stab, his own servants.

This is essentially true, but misleading nonetheless.

He was prone to express anger in rage, but more characteristically his default strategy for any type of conflict was yelling before and during a conflict, but then "disengagement", just like after the war when he fled to the Netherlands.

The misleading part in the summary is that it might be read as his fits of rage resulting in beating or stabbing his personnel.

That he probably wasn't the best master for his servants is also true, but especially in his younger years he didn't really beat the daylights out of servants for misdeeds or unwanted behaviour. A simple slap seemed to be quite undignified but he interpreted his position as giving him the right to do so.

He was quite fond of what he viewed as pranks on his servants. "Stabbing" evokes the picture of broad sword or at least stiletto. But what is meant by that is really the usage of needles, on chairs on pillows for example, so as to draw some joy form someone yelling ouch.

That is quite different from torture or killing a servant. You might even call that sadistic.

Some of his servants kept diaries. One such would be:

Paul Schönberger & Stefan Schimmel: "Kaisertage. (Unveröffentlichte Aufzeichnungen aus den Jahren 1913 bis 1918 der Kammerdiener und Adjudanten Wilhelms II", Südverlag: Konstanz, 2018.