Huis Doorn

Instead of hunting today, I took AW to Huis Doorn in, well, Doorn, of course.  I'd passed it by yesterday on the way to and from Cothen, but I'd already been there years ago as well, without AW, which is why seeing it along the route yesterday reminded me that he might find it interesting.  And it was, too.  We both love history and the house and exhibits taught us many things.

By the way, Huis Doorn can simply be pronounced as 'House Doorn' ('ow' with a twist of 'i').  The Scots would say 'Hoos' and actually some dialects make it sound a bit like that, too.  The Facebook translation is irritating -- 'Home Doorn'.  As we know, a 'house' isn't necessarily a 'home', and, besides, this isn't exactly a 'house' but more of a 'castle'.  Some might call it a palace, but I would not, and I think many people here will agree.  Who owned it?  None other than Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German emperor who was defeated at the end of WW1.

Queen Wilhelmina allowed him to go into exile here, and the Dutch were kind and tolerant towards him because The Netherlands had stayed neutral during the whole of the Great War, so he wasn't an enemy in the technical sense of the word.  According to what we learned from the exhibits, 64 train compartments were needed to transport his belongings from Berlin to Doorn.  The authorities of the newly-formed German republic allowed him to move his things.  Huis Doorn, though, became a kind of headquarters where a lot of politicking took place.  Wilhelm II thought the Nazis would allow him to eventually return and the monarchy would be restored in Germany, which was, as we know, not the case at all.  Hitler used Wilhelm II to garner political support from many other members of the aristocracy to bolster his own Nazi party and give it more legitimacy, but never intended to relinquish power and hand it back to Wilhelm.  The moment he had all the support he needed, he discarded Wilhelm, who naturally realized that he was betrayed.  Towards the end of his life, Wilhelm continued to hope he could go back but stated that he would never return to Germany unless the monarchy in its absolute form was restored.  That never happened, and so he was buried on the grounds of Huis Doorn.  He's still there, occasionally visited by his family, descendants of what used to be the mighty house of the Hohenzollerns, the very same family that has its own crypt in the Cathedral of Berlin.  Wilhelm II was a grandson of Queen Victoria through her eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, who married the Emperor of Prussia.  When she was still alive, she remarked anxiously that Wilhelm was 'too Prussian, too German', in the negative sense.  I think she somehow foresaw what was going to happen.

We left at a little past 13.00 and arrived there after slightly over an hour.  You need to book in advance and choose a time slot, so I chose 14.40.  We were in around 14.20 and had time for a relaxed walk towards the House.  For social distancing purposes, only about 6 per group are allowed, every 10 minutes.  After touring inside, we had coffee/tea and apple pie in the café, and then walked to the WW1 exhibit in another building.  I found the cartoons and caricature of Wilhelm II amusing -- how the once mighty emperor had to hide behind the skirts of an ordinary Dutch woman.  Had he not been given asylum, he would have been captured by the allies, incarcerated, interrogated, sentenced, and hung.  Some years after WW2, one of his grandsons requested the Dutch government to declare the property as 'owned by a non-enemy' so that the family could formally take possession of it as a piece of private property.  The Dutch government refused, and rightly so.  The Netherlands had suffered greatly during WW2.  So now, it's a museum managed by a foundation interested in preserving history.

The day ended with the Burgundians.  And with a lot of discussion with AW as to how history continues to be relevant and worth studying.  Some people would freak out, perhaps, but as we're both 'weirdos', we couldn't really care.  :D))