In 1898, on receiving an important royal commission from Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, Zwiener returned to Berlin as the King would not order furniture from overseas makers when furnishing his palaces, preferring to order work from native Germans only. He was then known as Julius Zwiener. Many of the pieces executed by Zwiener for the Prussian royal palaces were brought to Huis Doorn in Utrecht in 1918, where the Kaiser lived in exile until his death in 1941.
In 1895 his workshop was taken over by the important émigré and ébéniste, François Linke, who Christopher Payne speculates may have worked under Zwiener when he first arrived in Paris in 1875. Linke is known to have also taken on Zwiener’s sculptor Leon Messagé. For this reason many of Zwiener’s pieces have often been attributed to Linke.
Zwiener continued to work in Germany, after giving up his Paris workshop in 1895: in 1900 he participated in the German section of the Paris Exhibition, where he exhibited the famous bedroom suite made for the Kaiser. Zwiener is credited with introducing into Berlin the ‘meuble de style’ and his work is renowned for the Louis XIV and Régènce styles and inspiration from Caffieri and Cressent.