Charles Saxe-Coburg-Gotha has had a very successful German tour this week. Whoops! I mean Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, aka King Charles III.
But he would have been a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had his great-grandfather George V not changed the royal surname during the First World War, thanks to embarrassment over the German name bequeathed to the Royal Family by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband.
In 1917, when anti-German sentiment was at its height, the surname was changed. Alternatives included Tudor, Stuart and Plantagenet. They settled on Windsor.
It didn’t help that bombs falling on London were dropped by planes called Gotha G.IV. Or that Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, fought on Germany’s side during the First World War. Anglo-German relations only worsened during the Second World War, when many of Charles III’s German relations fought for the Nazis.
But now, finally, 78 years after the end of the Second World War, the anti-German jibes can come to an end. You can see why Basil Fawlty made those funny jokes at Fawlty Towers about mentioning the war and performed a Nazi goosestep. That was only 30 years after the war, when many veterans were still literally feeling the pain of their war injuries. Now, there are only a few surviving heroes aged in their 90s and over 100 who fought in the war. It would be perverse and unpleasant to continue associating modern Germany with the conflict.
Now King Charles can openly celebrate Germany’s magnificent achievements before the wars – and since then, in the way it has faced its Nazi past head-on.
And Charles, and the Germans, too, can now salute the buckets of German blood that have floated through British royal veins since George I of Hanover came to the throne in 1714. Since then, there has been a German-born king, queen or prince consort on the British throne for the vast majority of the time.
It wasn’t just the monarch or the consort who were German. Many leading British aristocrats had German titles until the First World War. During that war, Prince Louis of Battenberg had to step down as First Sea Lord and change his name to the Marquess of Milford Haven.
Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, became the Marquess of Carisbrooke. George V’s wife, Queen Mary – who spoke with a German accent – had German brothers, Princes of Teck (the name of their German castle), who became the Marquess of Cambridge, and the Earl of Athlone.
Jokes persisted about the royals’ German blood. David Lloyd George, the prime minister from 1916 to 1922, said before his audiences with George V: “I wonder what my little German friend will have to say today.” It didn’t help that the Duke of Windsor, after his abdication, showed distinctly Nazi leanings towards Adolf Hitler.
He visited him in Germany with the Duchess of Windsor in 1937. As recently as 2015, a 1933 cinefilm was unearthed of the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, aged seven, doing a Nazi salute, as did her uncle, later the Duke of Windsor, and her mother.
Still today, at Sandringham, the Royal Family follow the German tradition of opening presents on Christmas Eve. The late Prince Philip spoke German as his first language. His sisters married German aristocrats. And King Charles is proficient in German, too, as he showed at this week’s state banquet in Berlin. But there was no embarrassment in him doing so – and no Nazi jokes. For all of us, thank God, the war is finally over.
Harry Mount is author of Et Tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever (Bloomsbury)
