Bert von Stuelpnagel will discuss the family background, personality, and disastrous rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Perhaps the most colorful historical figure opening the door to the 20th Century was the vainglorious Wilhelm II. How do you explain the fact that the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria led Germany into a deadly fight with the countries governed by his cousins King George V and Tsar Nicholas II? The Great War has been analyzed and discussed in thousands of works, but to this day many questions remain.
A DMA member, Bert has extensively researched the history of the Hohenzollern. In this he has been motivated by the fact that a number of his ancestors worked for the Crown, including his grandfather who was a senior administrator of the Kaiser. The “Second Reich” was not called that until Hitler engineered the third one — and when the Austrian WWI corporal used, or abused, Prussian traditions and military symbols to legitimize his dictatorship. The 20th Century cannot be understood without examining the impact of the last Kaiser at its onset.
Bert was born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1950 and graduated from Bad Toelz High School in 1969. After military service and training in banking he worked in the financial industry during his entire career, including 35 years at the New York Branch of BayernLB, a German public sector bank. He retired in 2015 as Executive Vice President U.S. Capital Markets. He holds a Masters degree in Political Sciences from State University of Bavaria, and an M.B.A. in Finance from Pace University. Bert served on the DMA board as Treasurer and is currently chairman of the DMA endowment fund