This article is taken from the November 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

In her death, as in her long life, Queen Elizabeth II has shown that the British monarchy still exercises an unseen but immense influence abroad. Nobody in our history has wielded so much “soft power” to such effect. 

Nowhere is this more true than in Germany. On the day she died, German state broadcasting was interrupted, the Bundestag observed a minute’s silence and countless Germans wept as if for an old friend.

“There are no words that can even come close to honouring the outstanding importance of this Queen,” said Angela Merkel. In dubious taste, she enlisted Elizabeth II in the cause of   “Europe”, but her “deepest gratitude” for her encounters with the Queen was doubtless sincere. Every Federal German Chancellor since the first, Konrad Adenauer, has felt the same.

Other German politicians rightly emphasised her contribution to postwar reconciliation. President Steinmeier recalled the Queen’s state visit in 1965, which marked a turning point in relations between Britain and Germany. Footage of that visit shows ecstatic crowds greeting the young monarch, elated by her affirmation that Germans could once again hold their heads high. Her appearance in West Berlin (the first of seven visits to the city) was a beacon of hope for that bastion of freedom at the height of the Cold War.

Why, though, did Germans feel such a special affinity with “die Königin”? The most obvious reason is that the Royal Family is, to a great extent, of German extraction. The connections go back more than a thousand years to the Anglo-Saxons, but in modern times they begin with George I and the House of Hanover. This reverse takeover of the British monarchy by the Germans transformed the institution in countless ways. They may be summarised in four words: music, the military, the constitution and Christmas. 

Music was a language that united the English and the Germans. The key figure was, of course, Handel (left) — the first and pre-eminent but by no means the last Anglo-German composer. Born in Halle, Georg Friedrich Händel had briefly been George I’s Kapellmeister in Hanover yet had already established himself in England before the Prince Elector of Hanover inherited the British throne in 1714. 

In London — then in the process of overtaking Paris and Amsterdam to become the commercial capital of Europe — he discovered hitherto undreamt-of possibilities. There he founded three opera companies, for which he supplied more than 40 operas, and adapted a baroque Italian art form, the oratorio, to suit English Protestant tastes. 

His coronation music, such as the anthem, Zadok the Priest, imbued the Hanoverian dynasty with a new and splendid kind of sacral majesty. But he also added to its lustre by providing the musical accompaniment for new kinds of public entertainment, such as his Music for the Royal Fireworks: 12,000 people came to the first performance. 

Along with music, the Germans brought a focus on military life. Whereas for the British Isles, the Civil War and the subsequent conflicts in Scotland and Ireland had been something of an aberration, war was second nature to German princes. Among them, George II was not unusual in leading his men into battle, although he was the last British monarch to do so. 

Still, the legacy of such Teutonic martial prowess was visible in the late Queen’s obsequies: uniforms and decorations, pomp and circumstance, accompanied by funeral marches composed by a German, Ludwig van Beethoven. Ironically, the German state now avoids any public spectacle that could be construed as militaristic, yet most Germans harbour boundless admiration for the way that the British monarchy enlists the ceremonial genius of the armed services. 

Even more important was the German contribution to the uniquely British creation of constitutional monarchy. 

Each successive dynasty has left its mark on the monarchy’s evolution: from the Anglo-Saxons and Normans (the common law) to the Plantagenets (Magna Carta and Parliament) and Tudors (the Reformation). Only the Stuarts failed this test, at least until 1688. Even after the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights and other laws that conferred statutory control over the royal prerogative, the constitutional settlement still hung in the balance when Queen Anne, the last Stuart  ruler, died in 1714. 

Coming from a region dominated by the theory and practice of absolute monarchy, the Hanoverians had no choice but to adapt immediately and seamlessly to the realities of politics in Britain, where their role was strictly limited. Robert Walpole and the long Whig ascendancy, during which the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty embedded itself irrevocably, could not have taken place without the acquiescence and active support of the new dynasty. 

George III has been accused of attempting to reverse this process. The charge is unjust. Rather, as Andrew Roberts demonstrates in his new biography, he was “a monarch who understood his extensive rights and duties under the constitution”. He still had the right to refuse royal assent to parliamentary bills, but in half a century he never once exercised his veto (the last monarch to do so was the Stuart, Queen Anne in 1708). 

At a time when enlightened despotism was de rigueur on the Continent, the Hanoverians were content to participate in an unprecedented constitutional experiment in their newly acquired United Kingdom. It was neither the first Brexit, nor the last, but it happened courtesy of a Royal Family that was still very German.

The Hanoverians were, indeed, merely the pinnacle of a multifaceted German immigration and assimilation that flourished throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I recently encountered a relic of this when I spoke at St George’s German Lutheran Church in Whitechapel. This small but perfectly preserved church, built by German sugar bakers in 1762, retains its box pews, Walcker organ, memorials and inscriptions in German. London was a magnet for migrants from Germany, whose states were, in the main, poorer, more provincial and more repressive.

If George III had played the key role in creating the British model of constitutional monarchy, it was his granddaughter Queen Victoria whose strictly moral yet public ideal of domesticity created the modern idea of the Royal Family. As a woman, Victoria could not inherit the Electorate of Hanover, but she reinforced the Anglo-German connection by marrying her first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. It was the Prince Consort who popularised the Christmas tree and other traditions of the festive season from his homeland (George III’s German wife, Queen Charlotte, having first introduced the tree at Windsor) and Victoria and Albert continued the Hanoverian patronage of German musicians, from Mendelssohn to Wagner. 

All the Hanoverians up to and including Queen Victoria spoke English with a slight German accent. (George III was the first of his dynasty to speak English as his first language and even he corresponded with his father, Prince Frederick, in German). In private, Victoria and Albert spoke German and their posthumous influence was still felt at the courts of their son, Edward VII and grandson, George V. 

In Berlin, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter Vicky married the Crown Prince Friedrich (like her, a liberal), briefly became Empress of the newly formed German Reich, and mother of the (fiercely illiberal) Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1879, the Crown Princess (who had expressed curiosity about “Carl Marx”) was reassured by her friend Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff to hear that the Red Prussian had spoken “both of your Imperial Highness and of the Crown Prince … invariably with due respect and propriety”. The English preference for constitutional rather than violent methods had seemingly tamed the author of The Communist Manifesto. Grant Duff reassured Victoria that “it will not be [Marx] who … will turn the world upside down”.

Yet by the time the future Queen Elizabeth was born, the First World War had transformed this heritage into an embarrassment. Before an audience with George V, the wartime Prime Minister Lloyd George reportedly remarked: “I wonder what my little German friend has got to say to me.” Such was the anti-German sentiment by 1917 that George V decided to rename his clan the House of Windsor, prompting his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II to joke that he would look forward to a performance of “The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg”.

At that point the House of Hohenzollern, of course, had just a year left before its downfall. The collapse of the Russian, German and Austria-Hungarian monarchies in quick succession was a shock for the Windsors. The Germans had exported their princes to the British; now that Marx’s ideas had indeed turned the world upside down, would the revolution be imported too? 

It is surely no coincidence that after the Great War, the Germanic aspects of the Royal Family became much less visible. Even so, George V followed in his grandfather Prince Albert’s footsteps by creating a Christmas tradition of his own: the royal broadcast.

Though George VI had German lineage on both sides (his mother, Queen Mary, was Princess of Teck), he married a Scottish noblewoman and ensured that English was the only language spoken in his household. All the same, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the later Queen Mother, had been educated by a German-Jewish governess, Käthe Kübler, which must have helped her to fit in with the Windsors.

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret did not learn German, but they could hardly ignore the tensions caused by the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. In her own family, the future Queen’s Uncle David (Edward VIII) and his American wife Wallis Simpson had strong pro-German sympathies. The Britain in which the young Elizabeth grew up was reluctantly facing the prospect of another war within a generation.

George VI found himself caught up in the crises that culminated in the Second World War. Despite having been privately sympathetic to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, the King immediately gave his full support to Winston Churchill’s refusal to compromise with Hitler in May 1940. He encouraged Elizabeth to serve in the ATS, doing her bit for the war effort. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were rescued from France and sent to govern the Bahamas, out of harm’s way. On a prewar visit to Hitler, the Duke had given Nazi salutes. Churchill feared that if the German invasion, Operation Sea Lion, had been successful, “Uncle David” might have been restored, to reign as a Nazi puppet. 

The war could have put an end to Elizabeth’s German connections. There was, however, a far more intimate one. Elizabeth had fallen for a young naval officer: Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. Philip’s lineage was even more Teutonic than hers: his father Prince Andrew hailed from the House of Glücksburg, while his mother, Princess Alice, was the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg. 

Having been obliged by the    anti-German frenzy to resign as First Sea Lord in 1914, Louis anglicised the family name to Mountbatten. Philip’s maternal uncle and godfather, the later Lord Mountbatten, became his mentor. In 1947, he took Mountbatten as his surname, instead of his paternal one of Glücksburg. (As viewers of The Crown will be aware, some Glücksburgs had been Nazis.)

Despite their Germanic lineage … Elizabeth and Philip became the most visible embodiment of Britishness 

Despite their Germanic lineage, however, Elizabeth and Philip became the most visible embodiment of Britishness, to the very ends of the earth. The Queen’s contribution to rebuilding the Anglo-German relationship has displayed the monarchy’s soft power at its best. That rebuilding is no mere metaphor. It is shown by her close involvement in the restoration of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, a baroque masterpiece destroyed by Allied bombing. Without the Queen, it would have taken longer for the two nations to become military allies, economic partners and cultural companions.

There’s no doubt that this invisible bond will outlive the late Queen. Its strength flows not just from one person, however remarkable, but from our uniquely durable constitutional monarchy. Few Germans lament the loss of their own emperors and kings, but they admire the British idea of kingship all the more. 

The Federal Republic and the UK may have drifted apart in the last few years, but Charles III knows Germany and the Germans almost as well as did his mother. He and his son William may no longer be able to draw on her wisdom; they can, however, build on her solid legacy. The late Queen was revered in Germany no less than in Britain, not because they believed her to be a kind of German, but because they knew her to be the best of what it is to be British.