End of the Line for Germany's Last Emperor

[cinrit]

His mummified corpse is draped with a flag displaying the black eagle of Prussia. On the manicured lawn outside the white mausoleum containing his remains, a stone plaque marks the grave of his dog Senta which accompanied him throughout the catastrophe of the First World War. Visitors to the final resting place of Germany's often reviled last monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II, could be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled on a bizarre attempt to create a modern equivalent of an Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb. Yet the eerie atmosphere of House Doorn – the 17th-century manor house near Utrecht where Queen Victoria's grandson found exile after Germany's defeat in 1918 – does not end there. "We do everything we can to keep the house exactly as it was when the Kaiser lived here," explained Doorn's director, Eymert-Jan Goossens.

If the plans of the Netherlands' recently elected coalition government are implemented, House Doorn will close its doors to the public on 1 January 2013. The country's cultural advisory body, which oversees the manor house and its 15-acre estate, has decreed that it "is not Dutch enough" to warrant its ¤441,000 (£354,000) in annual funding.

End of the line for Germany's Last Emperor - Europe - World - The Independent 

Cindy