Anyone who, after this humorous, warm-hearted and simply winning performance by Charles, is wondering whether such a king would not do us Germans good, let me say:
The last German monarch was such a historical misfortune, a humorless know-it-all, an incredible loudmouth, in short: a full-grown simpleton before the Lord that we should spare ourselves such nightmares.
Charles and the last German monarch – would such a king do us any good?
There is not only this difference in character between Wilhelm Zwo and Charles Drei, but also in the understanding of the state: Charles is trying to bring about peace in his country. Wilhelm cultivated strife at home and elsewhere, and German megalomania, a legacy Germans still gnaw on. Because all the fuss about German special paths in Europe, the separate agreements with Russia at the expense of Europe, they didn’t start with Adolf Hitler, but long before that with the rightly last German monarch.
And where the one-man rule in Germany continued after 1945, there was no haven of peace, friendship, international understanding and prosperity, but a state prison with restricted access.
And the fact that their heirs, of all people, shortly before complained about the allegedly “out of date” state visit including a speech in the German Bundestag by a British monarch is at least forgotten in history. In fact, it’s also a joke. The fact that the Left Party then applauded Charles in the Bundestag was also cowardly.
This Charles is the complete alternative program to the late Queen
After this memorable appearance by the Briton, many wondered when his compatriots would find their way back to Europe. FDP man Johannes Vogel, who wished the British “maybe even one day back in the EU”, was not the only one. Charles spoke so heartrendingly about Germany and Britain that many became painfully aware of how great the Brexit loss is for Europe – especially for the Germans, who have lost an important ally – for example in questions of debt policy.
The Germans always celebrated the Queen, Charles “Mummy”. Her son thanked him for it. And yet this Charles is the complete alternative program to the Queen, whose main characteristic was apolitical composure, self-possession. How different her son.
The British king is on the left, a Green and yet there is a difference
Charles is political through and through, and he lives it up to the limit of what the British constitutional monarchy allows. The joint German-British military maneuvers over the Baltic States, the strong, including military, support for the Ukraine from Great Britain and Germany, climate change as perhaps the biggest problem of the time. In general, social policy: Charles even spoke of “equality” and the important sign that the British and German women’s national soccer teams would have set on this occasion. (Britain won.)
By popular local standards, this British king is left-leaning, a green man, but someone who relies on technology – typically British: “hands on”. The fully electric British taxi in Berlin, the digital street lamps made in Germany in London, this is how eco deals work.
Maybe you can put it like this: With his complete composure, life-experienced confidence and openness to technology, with his aversion to moral instruction and didactic pointing fingers, this king is what you could call a “good green man”. Anyone who gave their first eco-speech more than 50 years ago, in 1968, no longer needs to be bombarded with climate cling.
Incidentally, Charles’s best sentence was this: “We laughed a lot together – at and with each other.” That’s a sentence that authoritarian figures like Putin and Xi and Trump are simply not structurally capable of.
