Germany -- Politics and government -- 1888-1918; William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941
When one thinks of the Court of Berlin one should not forget that the
New Palace, the Emperor's residence at Potsdam, sixteen miles distant
from the capital, is as much, and as important, a part of it as the
royal palace in Berlin itself. The Emperor divides his time between
them, the former, when he is not travelling, being his more permanent
residence, and the latter only claiming his presence during the winter
season and for periods of a day or so at other parts of the year, when
occasion requires it. It is only during the six or eight weeks of the
winter season that the Empress and her daughter, Princess Victoria
Louise (now Duchess of Brunswick), go into residence at the Berlin
royal palace. There is a railway between Potsdam and Berlin, but since
the introduction of the motor-car the Emperor almost always uses that
means of conveyance for the half-hour's run between his Berlin and
Potsdam palaces.
The other section of the Court, if Potsdam may be so described, is
hardly less rich in memories than the old palace by the Spree. Indeed
it is richer from the cosmopolitan point of view, for though Frederick
the Great was born in the Berlin Schloss and spent some of his time
there, it was at Potsdam that, when not campaigning, he may be said to
have lived and died. To this day, for the foreigner, his personality
still pervades the place, and that of the Emperor sinks,
comparatively, into the background. The tourist who has pored over his
Baedeker will learn that Potsdam has 53,000 inhabitants and is
"charmingly situated"--it depends on your temperament what the charm
is, and to guide-book framers all tourists have the same
temperament--on an island in the Havel "which here expands into a
series of lakes bounded by wooded hills." He will learn that the old
town-palace, which few visitors give a thought to, was built by the
Great Elector, that Frederick the Great lived here in "richly
decorated apartments with sumptuous furniture and noteworthy pictures
by Pater, Lancret, and Pesne"; that it contains a cabinet in which the
dining-table could be let up and down by means of a trap-door, and
"where the King occasionally dined with friends without risk of being
overheard by his attendants"; that the present Emperor, then Prince
William, lived here with his young wife when he was still only a
lieutenant. He will drive to the New Palace--now old, for it was built
by Frederick the Great in 1769, during the Seven Years' War, at a cost
of nearly half a million sterling--and gaze with interest at the
summer residence of the Emperor. If he is an American he may think of
his multi-millionaire fellow-citizen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, when
driving up to call on his erstwhile imperial schoolfellow and friend,
was nearly shot at by a sentry for whom the name Vanderbilt was no
"Open Sesame." He will see before him a main building, seven hundred
feet in length, three stories high, with the central portion
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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