Eva Giloi is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Rutgers University, Newark.

• 1. Introduction: the material culture of monarchy; 2. Collecting royal relics, 1750s–1850s: means, motives, and meaning; 3. Relics under Friedrich Wilhelm III, 1797–1830; 4. Entr'acte: culture and power - a long-term outlook; 5. Frederick the Great in the Vormärz: relics and myth, 1830s–1840s; 6. The Neues museum, 1850s–1870s: relics in retreat; 7. Wilhelm I: relics and myth; 8. Consumerism and the gift-giving economy; 9. The Hohenzollern museum; 10. Image as object: the carte-de-visite photograph as souvenir; 11. Wilhelm II and the Hohenzollern legacy: the Kaiser takes charge; 12. The fragmentation of a myth after 1888; 13. Conclusion and epilogue: the success of a dynasty?

"This important book presents a new understanding of popular ideas about the Prussian royal family. Giloi’s nuanced findings shed light on attitudes toward consumption, material cultures of the nineteenth century, and everyday life over a period from the 1700s to the early twentieth century." -Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, The Journal of Modern History