A colleague of mine (he was born and raised in Germany) teases me by calling me ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’ now and again. Hopefully it’s just because of the similarity between our first names!
I read on Wikipedia of the Kaiser ‘Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview that cost him most of his power in 1908′.. He was partly responsible for starting World War I, then was an ineffective war leader, lost the support of the army, and abdicated in November 1918.