Volume 43, Number 10 · June 6, 1996
The Abominable Emperor
By Noel Annan
An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Russia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm
by Hannah Pakula
Simon and Schuster, 700 pp., $35.00
Blood and Iron: From Bismarck to Hitler: The von Moltke Family's Impact on German History
by Otto Friedrich
Harper Collins, 434 pp., $30.00
The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany
by John C.G. Röhl, translated by Terence F. Cole
Cambridge University Press, 304 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Stauffenberg: A Family History 1950-1944
by Peter Hoffmann
Cambridge University Press, 424 pp., $39.95
After 1919 dispossessed royalty and their courtiers deluged the public with memoirs whose absurdity was matched by their banality. Cecil Beaton decided to write a spoof that was illustrated with sumptuous photographs and drawings. It purported to be by a penniless exile in New York called Baroness von Bülop. Beaton got his friend Tony Gandarillas to pose in drag as the Baroness and the beautiful Tilly Losch to pose as her aunt, the Grand Duchess, whose confidante the Baroness became. To von Bülop's dismay she found that her aunt had a penchant for stout guardsmen, midnight escapades, intrigue, and had been 'coquetting with the Revolutionary Party.' The Grand Duchess tired of the dull, homely creature and married her off to a vieille tante. Later, to cover her tracks at the time of an insurrection, she let slip that it was the Baroness who had sold an incriminating locket to the Communists, and she dismissed von Bülop from the court.
Review, 6865 words
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