The Nature and Dynamics of Factional Conflict

Ernst Ludwig, was not only cousin to Kaiser Wilhelm II, but also grandson to Queen Victoria and cousin and brother-in-law to Tsar Nicholas II. One of the most fascinating and complex figures of modern European history, his life offers us a prism through which to see the history of Germany in the first half of the twentieth-century and tells a very different story than the one we might expect. Ernst Ludwig was a prince who fought the forces of absolutism, war, revolution and fascism that, after his death in 1937, would destroy Germany. Andrew Vereker, who has had complete access to his papers, uses Ernst Ludwig's life as a framework to write a history of the liberal German counter-culture he represented.