SPIEGEL:
Anyone who really wants to can wear a Prince Charles corona mask with a Queen Elisabeth T-shirt today, sip tea from a Kate and William cup and go to bed in Harry pajamas.
Ms. Witt, Mr. Cortjaens, you are in charge of the everyday culture and applied arts collections at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
Was there a royal souvenir industry even at the time of the German emperors?
To the people
Sabine Witt
is a historian and head of the collection for everyday culture: everyday history - technology - agriculture - toys - sound carriers at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.
The art historian
Wolfgang Cortjaens
heads the Applied Art and Graphics Collection there.
Sabine Witt:
Yes!
Our everyday culture collection shows the range of such souvenirs and memorabilia.
It ranges from ashtrays and dolls dishes, machine tins, dressing-up and cut-out figures to lanterns for light parades or pocket mirrors with depictions of the monarchs.
The tin boxes for the confectionery vending machines of the Dresden company Hartwig & Vogel also prove that royal merchandising was not only related to the emperor: Identical in shape and form, inexpensive and mass-produced and printed, they show the imperial couple Wilhelm II and Auguste Viktoria as well as the Crown Prince couple Friedrich Wilhelm and Cecilie or the monarchs of other German countries.
SPIEGEL:
Monarch tins as candy packaging!
Was everyone allowed to make something like this or did you need a license?
Wolfgang Cortjaens: As far as I
know, there was no authorized merchandising.
The Royal Prussian Porcelain Manufactory is an exception to the rule: KPM actually had a monopoly on luxury goods with portraits of members of the Hohenzollern family, such as the example of a magnificent vase with the hand-painted likeness of Wilhelm I on the front and the Berlin Palace on the Reverse shows.
SPIEGEL:
Why did you put something like that in your apartment?
Cortjaens:
In the private sphere, such objects documented loyalty and allegiance to the king, but also a class, because only members of the upper class could afford such a showpiece.
Many of these KPM products were made for the palaces of the royal family, but also for public institutions.
SPIEGEL:
The Kaiser himself put Kaiser memorabilia in the palace?
Cortjaens:
Most of them were custom-made products that were commissioned by high-ranking individuals, associations or partnerships as a gift of homage to the king and later emperor.
The then Prussian Rhine Province, for example, presented the emperor with a golden laurel wreath on the occasion of the founding of the empire in 1871.
Usually there is a direct reference to current historical events or the service anniversary of high-ranking personalities and the military.
This also applies to the centerpiece in the form of a memorial, which is crowned by the figure of Wilhelm I and which is reminiscent of the Bismarck monument in the Berlin zoo.
SPIEGEL:
An indoor memorial probably only works well if the apartment is also the right size.
Surely little people bought smaller souvenirs too?
Cortjaens:
Inexpensive souvenirs and devotional items such as tankards, pipe bowls, trays or wall plates could be described as the "poor people's variant" for the walls or the buffet in the bourgeois living room.
Witt:
And some of these souvenirs show a more playful approach to the monarchy.
In the collection we have, for example, dressing figures of Wilhelm II, who could choose between three of his preferred parade uniforms: Wilhelm II. As General of the 1st Guard Regiment on foot with large medals, in the white parade uniform of the Garde du Corps- Cuirassiers or in the dress of his life guard hussar regiment.
SPIEGEL:
Many of the Kaiser souvenirs that can still be found today date from the time of the First World War.
Witt:
Yes, at that time a new "branch" of very popular, at least still today widely offered and collected memorabilia was produced: souvenir plates and cups, ashtrays, tins, pocket mirrors, but also dolls' dishes.
They adorned the portraits of the "brothers in arms united in battle" Wilhelm II and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary - sometimes as a triple alliance with the Ottoman ruler Mehmed V.
SPIEGEL:
Many souvenirs look very bizarre these days.
Did you really buy a beer mug in the shape of an emperor's head out of admiration, or was there humor and ironic distance involved?
Cortjaens:
From today's perspective, such a tankard or pipe bowl seems, of course, quite bizarre.
But as a historian you know that figurative drinking vessels had a long tradition, think of the "Bartmann jugs" that have been popular since the Middle Ages.
Rather, it is a form of corruption that is barely permissible, because after all, the emperor, as head of state, was the most highly respected person.
Paragraph 95 of the penal code for the German Reich that came into force in 1872
In the event of a lese majesty, depending on the severity, provided for imprisonment or even imprisonment for between two months and five years.
SPIEGEL:
In Hamburg, imperial police spies on the lookout for critics of the system recorded the conversations of bar guests.
But to fill the Kaiser and Chancellor with beer - that was apparently still within the acceptable limits.
Cortjaens:
In a very regulated epoch like the Wilhelminian era, it may have been liberating for people to take the emperor from his pedestal and into the "parlor" over a bottle, so to speak.
So, in a sense, to "raise" one with him.
You also have to keep in mind that at that time there was a flourishing club life.
Social get-togethers were the order of the day, for example in good relations.
How, against the background of Paragraph 95, the handkerchief with the portrait of the emperor was supposed to have been used without offending Her Majesty, I actually cannot imagine ...
SPIEGEL:
In the United States, auctioning a Bismarck beer mug can bring you 2,500 euros.
Are imperial souvenirs investments, and do you have to fear forgeries?
Cortjaens:
You can find Kaiser souvenirs at auctions and private sellers, even at flea markets.
But I tend not to think that there is a lot of counterfeiting in this area.
If only because it is not financially viable.
In the general perception today, these objects are more like “junk”, and the international market is rather limited.
I would find the question of why the USA is such a good sales market exciting.
China too, by the way, because of the German colony of Tsingtau!
And Japan anyway.
SPIEGEL:
Where in Germany can you see collections of such souvenirs today?
Cortjaens:
In addition to the German Historical Museum, the Stadtmuseum Foundation should be mentioned for Berlin; outside of Berlin, for example, the Waldenbuch Castle Museum of Everyday Culture, a building belonging to the Württemberg State Museum.
It is also often worth taking a look at the small city and regional museums, where you can discover interesting and weird objects from the Wilhelmine era.
But the imperial era in all these museums is of course only a part of the offer and adapted to the respective narrative of the permanent and temporary exhibition.
There is no museum from the imperial era in Germany, and it might not be contemporary.
In addition, it is precisely this epoch in the general perception that has a negative connotation, because the historiography after 1945 has mostly interpreted it one-sidedly as the prelude to two world wars.
Icon: The mirror
