ABSTRACT
In July 1900, at the launching of the battleship Wittelsbach, Kaiser Wilhelm II advised the world: "No great decision may now be made without the German Empire and the German Emperor". The main drawback of Wilhelm's naval reorganization schemes was that they all broke away from the unified command principle established in 1871. Wilhelm's famous naval tables giving the size of the German fleet prominently displayed in the rotunda of the Reichstag. The Kaiser actively participated in technical design of coastal forts, ships, houses, motors; he submitted sketches of warships to the Navy Office, frequently attempting to combine the battleship and the cruiser into "fast capital ship", his pet project. Wilhelm spent more than one-third of his reign on board the royal yacht Hohenzollern, at times as much as 200 days of the year. On 1888 Wilhelm had appointed the first naval officer, Vice-Admiral Alexander Graf v. Monts, the son of a Prussian Army general, to head the Admiralty.
