**AWARDED THE GERMAN NON-FICTION PRIZE 2022**
'Malinowksi's work is a near-masterpiece, relating a story not synthesised in this way before, and about which any number of self-serving myths exist' - Simon Heffer, The Telegraph
'Stephan Malinowski's brilliant book strikes a balance between the forensic analysis of individual behaviour and a new understanding of how the toxic political culture of a defeated monarchy helped to disrupt democracy in Germany' - Christopher Clark

The disappearance of the Hohenzollern family from the history of Germany in November 1918 as the Kaiser fled into Dutch exile is one of the most startling, rapid instances of a once all-powerful royal family becoming almost overnight irrelevant and marginal. Except this is not exactly what happened.

Stephan Malinowski's German bestseller is an extraordinary work of recovery. It suited both the Weimar Republic and then the Third Reich to view the Hohenzollerns with contempt, and yet the royal family's hatred of the former and approval of the latter were for millions of Germans a significant factor in their own view of their country and its government.

With forensic and often shocking detail, Malinowski shows that, far from being ridiculous, marginal figures the Hohenzollerns lay at the heart of Germany's ongoing nig