Germans are fascinated with royalty, according to a report filed by the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on 20July, 2006, “Royalty Still Very Much in Vogue in Republican Germany.” [This came to me from the Melbourne based Monarchist Alliance . The text can be read in the royalist_today report, by Harold. Links to both will be inserted in the version of this column posted on the ACM site.]
The report says that while Queen Elizabeth II is not Germany’s queen, the Germans love hearing about her and her family. “Germany might not have its own royal family anymore, but that doesn’t mean Germans aren’t fascinated by aristocratic goings-on in other countries. Royal fever is alive and well…”
The report confirms a phenomenon which must distress those republicans in Australia who say, as former Senator Ryan has, that they need merely wait until monarchists die, or as the Hon Nicola Roxon observed recently, there are no new constitutional monarchists being born. The report finds a new interest in monarchy among younger German generations.
And unlike the old guard republicans in the Australian media, the German media is only too happy to help sate the public’s growing appetite for monarchy. Unlike our own ABC, which until this year minimised programmes about The Queen of Australia, and still failed to show The Trooping the Colour ceremony, or the service for The Queen’s Eightieth birthday, the German public televisions regularly show such programmes.
Meanwhile, in an interview on his 70th birthday published on 31 July, 2006 in the German newspaper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the influential head of the House of Württemberg, which is over 900 years old, has declared that he would welcome Germany becoming a constitutional monarchy. Duke Carl Herzog von Württemberg said that, in his opinion, constitutional monarchy is the ideal system of government.
As a sort of postscript to the above, Harold wrote on 30 July 2006 : “Believe it or not, but the German audience will be able to watch "Trooping the Colour" again.Honouring Her Majesty’s 80th birthday, the German TV station ARD had broadcast it live on 17 June 2006 (as they have done for the past 30 years). This year, the whole parade will be shown again next Saturday (5 August) from 14.45 to 18.00 giving the Germans a glimpse of monarchist glamour which they miss in their republic. The Australian people will not get this opportunity because the TV stations here just don’t get the message: People want to see monarchy in action”.
Well said, Harold!