Greetings to both citizen dduff442 and the community as a whole. Howdy dduff442! Well sir, in respect to your now vintage introductory posting of Thursday - January 05, 2006 - 9:36pm, old Uncle Bob will digress from the central thrust of your topic of interest and interject the Twenty First Century into the body of your thread. It has been one hundred years since the abdication and exile of Kaiser Wilhelm II and it is my belief that it is high time to relegate the historical and societal foibles of Kaiser Wilhelm II to the pages of history. With that said, as an outsider looking in, might not this be an auspicious opportunity for the fine burghers of the contemporary Fatherland to reinstitute the now century absent House of Hohenzollern? Elected chancellors may come and go, but a reigning monarch has symbolic permanence. My social democratic leanings notwithstanding, the great-great-grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II just might fit the dual role as both a constitutional monarch and a symbol of non-partisan national continuity. So, how does the personage of Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preussen grab you? After all, the good prince is the titular head of the House of Hohenzollern. Incidentally, the gentleman did his two year mandatory national service in the Bundeswehr in the Mountain Troops and presently holds the rank of major in the Bundeswehr Reserve. Finally, unlike the contemporary British Monarchy, old yours truly is of the school of thought that any potential German Monarchy ought to be financially self supporting. In other words, the German Monarchy must either draw its sustenance from its own investments or from the generosity of public contributions. Under no circumstances should the German Taxpayer ever foot any of their bills! Well, that's my initial two cents or pfennigs worth on this monarchial topic from yesteryear - for now anyway. In any case, I would like to bid you a copacetic day no matter where you just might happen to find yourself on Terra Firma.
Best Regards,
Uncle Bob
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it - Robert E. Lee
Sure, there probably where a fair deal of sycophants in the German General Staff in both wars but c'mon... This was the organization that was supposedly the most professional General Staff in the world, and they almost won two world wars... (I said "almost" 
