The next reference, and the only one in which a divine "right" to rule in Prussia is formally claimed, occurs four years later at Koenigsberg, the ancient crowning-place of Prussian kings. Here he said:--
"The successor (namely himself) of him who _of his own right_ was sovereign prince in Prussia will follow the same path as his great ancestor; as formerly the first King (of Prussia, Frederick I.) said, 'My crown is born with me,' and as his greater son (the Great Elector) gave his authority the stability of a rock of bronze, so I too, like my imperial grandfather, represent the kingship 'von Gottes Gnaden.'"
At Coblenz in 1897, in reference to the first Emperor William's labours for the army and people:--
"He (Emperor William) left Coblenz to ascend the throne as the selected instrument of the Lord he always regarded himself to be. For us all, and above all for us princes, he raised once more aloft and lent lustrous beams to a jewel which we should hold high and holy--that is the kingship von Gottes Gnaden, the kingship with its onerous duties, its never-ending, ever-continuing trouble and labour, with its fearful responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no human being, no minister, no parliament, no people can release the prince."
Here, too, if the words "responsibility to the Creator alone" be taken in their ordinary English sense, the allusion to a divine right may be construed, though it is observable that the word "right" is not actually employed.
In Berlin, when unveiling a monument to the Great Elector, the Emperor was filled with the same idea of the God-given mission of the Hohenzollerns. After briefly sketching the deeds of the Elector--how he came young to the throne to find crops down-trodden, villages burnt to the ground, a starved and fallen people, persecuted on every side, his country the arena for barbarous robber-bands who had spread war and devastation throughout Germany for thirty years; how, with "invincible reliance on God" and an iron will, he swept the pieces of the land together, raised trade and commerce, agriculture and industry, in for that period an incredibly short time; how he brought into existence a new army entirely devoted to him; how, in fine, guided by the hope of founding a great northern Empire, which would bring the German peoples together, he became an authority in Europe and laid the corner-stone of the present Empire--after sketching all this, the Emperor continues: