Why a German Prince almost became the King of Finland
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- Опубліковано 25 вер 2024
- In this video, we'll find out how Finland managed to gain independence from one of the largest empires of all time and why exactly it chose to be led by a German, albeit only for a few months.
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Link to the February Manifesto:
www.histdoc.ne...
Sources:
G. Besier, 'The Intervention of the German Empire in the Finnish Civil War 1917/18: From Revolutionary State to Kingdom', in 1917 and the Consequences , ed. by G. Besier and K. Stokłosa (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 47-79.
B. Biener, 'Inniges Verhältnis zu einem Land, in dem er nie war', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 June 2018.
J. Osmo, S. Hentila and J. Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy to Modern State: Political History of Finland Since 1809 (London: Hurst & Company, 1999).
J. Osmo, 'The historical background of the February Manifesto of 1899', Journal of Baltic Studies 15 (1984), 141-147.
R. Schweitzer, '100 Jahre „ Februarmani fest“ Zar Nikolaus’ II.
-„ Jubiläum“ eines Traumas: Rückblicke im Finnland des Jahres 1999 auf den Versuch zum Abbau der finnischen Autonomie im Russischen Reich', Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur, 1 (2000), 47-66.
Music Used:
Sibelius - Scenes Historiques, Op. 25
Sibelius - Cassazione, Op. 6
Sibelius - Pelleas et Melisande, Op. 46: No. 4 A Spring In The Park
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio
As an American who has lived in Finland nearly 12 years...Leaning Finnish is like getting a long tattoo. It will hurt and hurt and hurt until it just becomes numb. Everything, numb.
My condolences
I'm sorry you must suffer 😔
No it isn't, it just isn't proto indo european, nor germanic. So like. You gotta get the perspective, because pronunciation you can't get wrong once you realice the pronunciation is IPA. But like it's really condensed. Like the page on wikipedia has almost everything you need, but english grammar spans like 10 volumes of thicc af books with exceptions everyplace.
Like there are 2 classes of conjugation, god grammar words make this hard, You use the word "noun" where we have "nomini" which is one way things get all the prefixes, and you got "verbs" or "predicates" which is totally different. So its just 2 sets of rules, free word order. No need for redundancy. The basic rule was, "every phrase must contain a predicate/verb" "on/olla".
So like don't try to read the rules, learn them with repetition and tables fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/Liite:Verbitaivutus/suomi/olla . After the on verbi, i presume 10 years you know everything i'm saying, but if you know these, and also know the casuses of nomines like listed fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/kissa . If you understand the rules that make these act like this, so using more words but like it's more about understanding the logic, rather than those 10 volumes of grammar. Also nobody speaks "bookfinnish" if not reading from a teleprompter(media and politicians)
The Finnish language is one of those which is quite isolated from the rest, it's only close relative is Estonian
And Hungarian
The preparation had been crazy. We had prepared a crown, a castle was planned, uniforms for the royal guard, and even a badass title to the king: "King of Finland and Karelia, Duke of Åland, Grand Duke of Lapland, lord of Kaleva and the North."
All those preparations were probably done to really solidify the legitimacy of the Kingdom of Finland, noone could have known that his rule would be so short ;)
would be really cool if this all went through
Those are nice titles
@@august8696 As a Finn I say No. In modern world monarchies should exist in fairy tales only.
@@rickrandom6734Take less oestrogen.
He will always be king in Kaiserreich.
Came down to find this comment
@@fadhillahsidik thanks
I have to try that run, any recommendations? I'm not used to play Kaiserreich
@@TheRewasder97 Japan
OLDENBURG
Criminally underrated channel
Agreed.
@@adamkerman475 Still is!
@@cbhlde indeed, However his subscriber count is rising very rapidly as of late!
@@adamkerman475 And that is great. I am new, too. :)
I don't think you know what underrated is.
As the Polish November Uprising was briefly mentioned in the video, I have an excuse to share a fun fact: there was a certain Finnish-Swedish guy, who joined the Uprising - August Maximilian Myhrberg. He previously fought for the liberals in Spain and in the Greek War of Independence. Later in his life he served in the Swedish colony of Saint Barthélemy for some time, and after returning to Europe, was involved in organizing support for yet another Polish uprising in 1863 (the January Uprising).
Thanks for sharing this information, mate :D that might have been too much excitement for one lifetime
Interesting.
@@SirManateee As Lithuanian i am offended then you called PLC "Poland"
Back in 9th grade hostory class, my teacher mentioned that the king had even been given the title ”Yrjö I”, roughly translating to ”George I” (I’m a Finn, btw). Another fun fact, while Yrjö is an old name in Finland, nowadays yrjö means barf. We could have had a long line of King Barfs.
Honestly, now I'm sad we couldn't have King Barf on the throne
It wasn’t Yrjö I. He was given the name Väinö I.
I thought he was proclaimed Frederick Charles I, or in Finnish Fredrik Kaarle?
@@Edmonton-of2ec Fredrik Kaarle was a finnicized name of Friedrich Karl but the reign/ruler name was Väinö I. Similar to Charles still being Charles even though his ruler name is Charles III or could have chosen something else like George XIV (or whatever the real number is).
@@christianheikkonen Technically the only reason anyone suggested Charles choose George is because his full name is Charles Philip Arthur *George*
Anyway, the idea that he took the name Väinö comes from a Finnish newspaper publication in 1927. The document electing him king said Fredrik Kaarle
Can't believe he had to spend alot of time learning the finish language. It's extremely difficult and they have written and spoken finish. All for nothing hahaha
Yeah I don't envy him
Good luck for him, then, that Germany was defeated and he got out of that commitment.
What's the story behind Ylilauta's mascot, though?
Funny thing about the mentioned Swedish law that would stay in Finland. It's still in effect, so the oath of judges is to "deliver justice by god, law and the king of Sweden.
Interesting, you'd think they would have gotten rid of that a long time ago.
Not anymore. It was effectively repealed in 2017.
Kings residence is still in helsinki in the middle of the Botanical gargen in Kaisaniemi right next to the central railway station. It's a professional botanical museum, open on request.
I didn't know that :o what's it called?
@@SirManateee Looks like youtube ate my response because of the link. It's "helsinki botanical garden" and the main building "botanical museum" was supposed to be the royal residence. It's just a bit northeast from the central railway station.
Great summary of a very complex era of Finnish history, but the title is kind of wrong. Friedrich Karl never accepted the Finnish crown and obviously wasn't crowned so he never ruled over Finland. Unlike in Hungary where Horthy made himself regent of the kingdom without a king, Finland never became a kingdom and the interregnum continued until 1919 when the first Finnish constitution confirmed Finland to be republic as was already stated in the declaration of independence in 1917.
Good point, a king can't really be a king if he never got crowned or even set foot on his kingdom. I just will change the title, thanks for pointing that out! :)
A great an underrated matter of history well presented
I find it very intresting as this would have connected the royal lineage of Sweden and Finland, through the house of Hesse-Kassel that ruled in Sweden during 1720-1751 under the monarch Frederick I.
Well… eh. Frederick I didn’t have any legitimate descendants, so it would been a very… ephemeral connection at best
Kaarle's paternal grandmother was an Oldenburg.
Some further details about the February manifesto and the nature of the Grand Duchy of Finland:
Alexander I had sworn that the laws existing in Finland in 1809 would remain in force and would be respected, thus leading to the interpretation that Finland was a constitutional monarchy in personal or real union with the Russian Empire through the throne of the czar. None of the czars before Nikolai II had spoken anything to the contrary to this interpretation and imperial decrees didn't go against the diet or the senate. Furthermore each had sworn during their crowning to retain the oath that Alexander I had made. Thus the concept of the emperor being an autocrat never took root, like it was in Russia.
Finnish state structures were formed under the watch of the czar, including the post office, mass transit, local currency, local legislature and a local military consisting of a number of marksman battalions as well as squadrons of dragoons. While these units were sent out to fight in Russia's wars, they were Finnish troops.
Therefore the February Manifesto was seen as the czar breaking his oath of office and moving to dismantle the very state structure of Finland. Since the Finns were loyal to their emperor, subsequent rebuffs by the czar to reverse the decision were seen as a dastardly betrayal of that loyalty.
German princes trying not to found another dozen of dynasties across Europe (impossible)
Apparently, King Kaarle of Finland had gotten some Danish roots due to his paternal grandmother (Louis Charlotte) being the granddaughter of King Frederik V of Denmark (thus upsetting the Swedes). Meanwhile, his aunt Louise of Hesse-Kassel married King Christian IX and gave birth to Kaarle's cousin Frederik VIII.
Couple of important details that you missed.
- Russo-Japanese war caused lots of domestic issues in Russia too. So it wasn't just the Finns who caused the Russians to back down.
- The continuation of Russofication meant that Finns understood that they had to revolt in order to avoid becoming Russians. This meant that during the Second Russification period Finns were totally opposed to the Russification and were already planning a revolt. This is also the reason why Finns went to Germany for military training as Finns understood that they needed proper soldiers for the revolution to succeed.
- During WW1 Finland did experience hardship due to its trade being hurt by the war as Finland lived by foreign trade, but Germany kept the Blatic Sea at hold and the trade to Russia couldn't counter the losses. This created economic hardship and increased prices which meant that the poor had much worse than before.
- And finally Mannerheim, the leader of Whites wanted to win the war before Germans arrived. So the Battle of Tampere was fully a Finnish operation and the win there meant that the Whites would win the war. The Germans then landed in the South creating an encircling operation which led to the collapse of Red lines West of Lahti.
Otherwise a good video. Cheers.
Ahhh Hessian Finnland. One of my favourite what ifs.
Nice video. One detail was missing. Finnish parliament is and was 200 strong so 64 is not very stable majority. 92 red members of parliament was not present because of civil war and many were executed during it.
Long live the king
1:44 Not only polish, Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine participated on a same level for their independence.
We also considered a Danish candidate, i believe the second son of the Danish king. We dodged a bullet there.
Imagine if he actually did become the King of Finland, due to the process being shorter/quicker than in real life. I'd imagine that he'd still abdicate (if he'd still do) when Germany surrendered, so Finland could make better relations with the Entente nations.
So what would then happen, if he got the crown sooner AND managed to do things that made him stand out or make the people love/like him in the short period? Would he still abdicate then?
Well abdication was never really a tradition amongst German monarchs unless they were compelled to do so, so it’s very likely that if Frederick Charles had managed to become King and keep his throne, he’d have stayed on it until his death in 1940. He would’ve then been succeeded by his second son Wolfgang (since his elder son Philipp was to inherit the massive Hesse-Kassel estate in central Germany), followed by the childless Wolfgang’s nephew Karl Adolf, and following his death in March 2022, his son Christoph who was born in 1969.
If he actually managed to get a coronation, I don't think that the Entente would've cared that much. France might've moaned a bit, but it was France. The UK would've never supported the forceful dethroning of a monarch, the US was all about self-determination, so because he got that vote in parliament, they wouldn't have said anything, and Italy was Italy. At the end of the day, Finland would've been a rabidly anti-communist democracy. It would've made no difference if the head of state was a king (either Karl or his second son, Wolfgang/Valno) or a president.
Keep on going Sir. Your channel will soon become big. You do amazing work.
Weiter so!
"Svinhufved" actually means "pigshead", in Swedish.
He also became the first president.
@@mikitz *third. He was the first prime minister thou.
His father was the brother of queen Louise, who was married with king Christian 9th of Denmark, making him the cousin of Christian & Louise's children:
- Frederik 8th, king of Denmark
- Alexandra, queen in UK (married with Edward 7th)
- George 1st, king of Greece
- Dagmar, tsarina in Russia (married with Alexander 3rd)
- Thyra, duchess in Cumberland and Teviotdale (married with Ernst August, claiming the obsolete throne of Hannover)
- Valdemar, Danish prince.
In 1863, when king Frederik 7th of Denmark died without a heir, his cousin, Friederich Karl's father, was the closest male relative, but as part of the London protocol of 1853 he had renounced his claim to the Danish throne to his brother-in-law Christian.
As someone who lives in Sweden I can approve calling Finnish a cursed language.
Oldenburg
Nah, even kids can learn Finnish.
Very historical, very nice, easy to understand for them foreigners. All in all good job
nice to see some light shun on our king ;)
this almost happened in ireland too. some of the leaders of the 1916 rising wanted some german called prince joachim to be the king of ireland
Prince Joachim of Prussia .... Kaiser Wilhelms son... they discussed offering the crown of Ireland to him if Germany won the war....
@@endajordan4406 JOACHIM'S SUCCESSORS AS KING OF IRELAND:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Karl_Franz_of_Prussia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Franz_Wilhelm_of_Prussia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_George_Mikhailovich_of_Russia
Great video and channel, must say, it's underrated.
Btw, does someone know why they didn't just turn a Finnish monarch, I think Finland was a Grand Duchy, into their king?
at 9:32 its not an offical map bot the dream of a dude named Kutschke. Its basically the equivalent of today's EU4 maps on reddit.
Very good looking crown -- kind of Bauhaus...
Wow, thanks, I never knew anything of that!
11:00 If we take into account that 91 socialdemocratic MPs out of the total 200 MPs in the Finnish parliament were put into camps by the Whites after the civil war, the vote for the king was actually 64/200 😅 It's quite funny that even though the "stub parliament" only consisted of the bourgeois parties, the kingdom idea still didn't get the full 108 votes 😁
9:50 crazy how Romania got a Hohenzollern king instead, could you make a video on this?
I always wondered why Finland never revolted against Russia, thanks for the great video, mate. You deserve so many more subscribers.
you might find, russia was revolting enough without the finns doing anything
As always, Russia ruins the good things they have going for themselves.
I still have the Reichsmarine uniform buttons my great great grandfather recieved when training with the Prussians in 1917
As a Fin this is like watching a video someone else cut together of your family trip 10 years ago and they weren't there and have no idea in what order or how things played together.
Why? Is it false or misleading?
Hey, nice crown!
My great granfather was one of the Jaegers
why were kings of england russia spain and france german? because yes
Yes
there sure was a lot going on in 1918, wasn't there.
I didn't know that Finland had ever been a kingdom.
a grand duchy (whatever that is) and republic, but a 72 day kingdom? nope.
I am drunk as a finn
Edit: long live the autocorrect
The fact that you had to edit your comment is hilarious.
When Germany had its 150th Anniversary, it only got big on the Internet like on Twitter and that only through patriots, but nowhere else. The German chancellor congratulating Finland's Anniversary is like your Mother going to the birthday party of the neighbour's kid but not coming to yours.
Nonsense. Germany's anual celebration is october 3, the day of the unification. It's a national holiday btw and of course the German chancellor does address this event.
@@karlkarlos3545 That's the day of the annexation of the east, and NOT the unification of all minor German states under Prussia (except Austria and Switzerland). That is nonsense, and celebrating that as the only unification without remembering the unification of 1871 is insulting and prideless.
@@3chmidt All right.... I'm now walking slowly away from the deranged bubbling nutcake.
Take that, Bismarck
I wonder if they had picked a Swedish prince if they would’ve kept the monarchy
Wasn’t he the Grand Duke of Hesse within the German empire?
0:31 “burger burger Finland eipz kultural”
Di bu-burger nurburger Finlanz*
Wish a monarch lead us to this day.
🇫🇮
7:22 who is that person under kyösti kallio he has terrible hand writing!
Could of a Swedish King Worked for Finland or would that only heighten the Aland conflict?
No one wouldve accepted a swedish king
Excellent info here, but for the next time: it’s just Ukraine, not “the Ukraine”.
Yeah, I blame that on the force of habit because Ukraine has an article in German. And one year ago, I was not aware yet that saying it like this in English could have any negative connotations, so I apologise in retrospect
@@SirManateee oh, you’re German? You speak such excellent English, but then the German sounded really natural, too. Greetings from Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮
@@SirManateee don't apologize, "the Ukraine" is correct
We used to say the Ukraine in Belgium too. I wonder where that habit comes from. I think it sounds kinda neat TBH. Don't know what negative connotations it has.
@@marysartr it’s not correct
I wish we became a monarchy
Name checks out.
Would have been interesting during the cold war without Kekkonen, nr. 2 hardass leader of Finland. Just above Koivisto, who served as Degtyaryov machine gunner with the legendary Lauri Törni and just below Mannerheim, de facto leader of Finland during the wars. Finland has been blessed with awesome leaders. At least during the hard times...
@@alaric_ that’s interesting to think about! It’s still possible that Kekkonen would come to power as it’s likely that the King would not have absolute power but who knows.
Hell nah
@@kaksidaksi3455 Hell yah!
I can't believe the Finnish didn't pick a Finn to become King once the German option did not pan out. Or maybe from one of the other Scandinavian houses? It's whatever i guess but I'm happy the Finns were able to pick a government they were okay with.
Well it still could have gone that way later
We stole Portugals flag XD I think the Belem tower was just their own old flag
Tragedy.
Hmmm... the Spring Offensive was the last credible possibility for Germany to win the war, I guess.
11:16 I mean they were Germans... so not THAT hard?
5:30 YeY
Lol probably the same way a guy named mannerheim became prime Minister
Long live king Kaarl
mfw they finnish the crown
After WW2 they could have made Mannerheim their king, wasted oppertunity.
Mannerheim was offered the power already after the Monarchy plan didn't work out. He declined and only then did Finland become a republic.
To bad for Finland they became a republic. Living in republics sucks.
IMHO it was the safest thing to do I believe Germany was on the right side fighting evil at the time ,what happened to the tsar of Russia was tragic and it was spreading west im sticking to facts Finland had every right to safeguard its borders ,I hope they don't suffer the same fate as some of the rest of todays European countries especially England 🏴 🇫🇮
Well said.
Yes.
digga du bist doch deutsch
:o
If I remember correctly from history class, the reds were generally richer and more educated than the whites. As the white movement was sort of an aristocrat-peasant alliance while the reds consisted mostly of workers and students. You can see on the map that the reds controlled most if not all major towns and cities in Finland. While the whites controlled mostly rural areas and forests.
The reds were usually poorer and from the countryside.
They were also pretty poor aswell, i could say everyone in Finland were poor back then except Aristocrats and the Bourgeois.
Sorry, king ever ruled in independent Finland… he never ruled. Fact!