A ROYAL HOUSE

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1929, Page 13

A ROYAL HOUSE

FALLEN FROM POWER HISTORY OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS. SOME FAULTS OF THE FAMILY. It would be a shabby, not to say a dastardly, act to attempt to pour ■scorn and ridicule upon a once Regal House now "fallen from power, writes Dr. Herbert Eulenberg in the Foreword to his volume, “The Hohenzollerns,” but that consideration docs not deter him from setting out in plain language the many faults and failures of the members of the princely race of Hohenzollern.

He invites his readers to a tour of the ancestral portrait gallery of this Royal House in order that the members may be presented in all simplicity as they gaze down from the canvas on what they did and what they left undone. . Tho first of them was Frederick, tho sixth Burgrave, of Nuremburg, who, in the early fifteenth century was rewarded with the Mark of Brandenburg by the Emperor Sigismund for services rendered in securing votes and replenishing the imperial money chests. In breaking down the resistance of noble families which objected to his rule Frederick brought into use a terrible new Frankish weapon, by means of which he captured the strongholds of the refractory nobility. This was known as “Lazy Greta,” a counter part of the Terrible “fat Bertha” of the World War, one of tho most powerful pieces of ordnance, and thus named because of the difficulty of transporting it.

THE “IRON MAN.” By bloodshed, tho sword, the wheel, and ’ other more disgraceful penalties, such as t’he hempen halter, he slowlly made himself master.” There was Frederick 11, tho “Iron Tooth” or “Iron Man,” so-called because “of the remarkable tenacity, not to say cruelty, with which he withstood -the desire of the towns, particularly of Berlin, for independence,” and who knew so well how to combine piety and utility. To tho intelligent, artistic and brilliant Elector Albert Achilles life “was one continual joust and tourney, and tho warlike strain in the Hohenzollern blood that can never be happy away from the smell of powder no doubt derives from this ancestor.” A warrior and a swashbuckler on the grand scale was Albert. His love letters to the Saxon Princess 'he married are among “the most magnificent love letters that have come down to us from the late Middle Ages,” Dr. Eulenberg

tells us. Elector Joachim I, or “Nestor,’’ was only 15 years old when he came to the throne, but he- had a heavy hand. With axe, dungeon and halter ho chastised the insurgent nobles more ruthlessly than any of his ancestors. One of the bold knights made this little ballad about him: “Joaehimkin, Joachimkin Look to thyself! If wc catch thco We will hold thee. If we hold thee We will hang thee. Joachimkin, Joachimkin Look to thyself!’

’But Joachim did not appreciate such levity. The bold bad knight who was guilty of it was caught, hanged, drawn and quartered and hanged in the Elector’s very sleeping chamber, and the head -was stuck above the great gate of the capital, Berlin. A number of poor Jews were “broken on the wheel or burned in the new market-place in Berlin, where the Luther monument proudly stands to-day.”

He foamed and raged against the Lutheran heresy and ‘at the Diet of Worms,’ from winch Luther escaped despite Joachim’s efforts to destroy him, he did all he could still further to incense the Emperor.’ He “died cursing Lutheranism.” ,

John Sigismund professed the Reformed Faith when he was on the throne, but “his relations with his wife, though they are said to have-been very ardent at first, grew worse year by year — their six children nothwithstanding. John Sigismund used to threaten her sometimes in his cups, whereupon she, being the hardy and dominant woman she was, would defend herself by hurling plates and glass about his tipsy ■head.”

Of Frederick the Great, when he was old and weak, Maria Theresa wrote: “Tho powerful beast will outlast us, one and all.” The women wlfb flocked about tho new ruler, Frederick William 11, were wild with impatience for the despot’s death. “Wilhelmina Enke, the longest established and best-loved of Frederick William’s mistresses,” wrote at the time to her mother: “The old vulture is at his last gasp.” And yet lie was the strongest of the Hohenzollerns and the best of the Kings of Prussia,” while his son, around whom the women flocked, had an “unmistakable love for the low and the vulgar,” and had a number of illegitimate children, some of whom duly received titles.

EXHAUSTED DON JUAN. Prematurely aged and decrepit, after frenzied excess of exterior piety, this exhausted Don Juan died in the marble palace at Potsdam. His body lay in state in tho royal stables, ami was apparently forgotten by his son who succeeded him. But the funeral eventually took place. On an enormous 23ft pyramid was inscribed in letters of gold the extraordinary tribute:— Frederick William IT, the father of