Bülow also understood the need to mirror Eulenburg’s fervent admiration of William II. “We cannot be sufficiently thankful37 that we have a monarch who always reminds me of the heroic... emperors of our medieval period,” he wrote to Eulenburg in August 1890. “The Emperor’s personality grows indubitably more arresting every day.” Eulenburg, naturally, was delighted to help the career of a man who seemed so warm and wise. Bülow’s promotion from Bucharest to Rome in 1893 was largely Eulenburg’s doing. In 1895, when Bülow had been at the Palazzo Caffarelli for only two years, Eulenburg, who had still larger ambitions for his friend, wrote to the Kaiser, “Bernhard is the most valuable38 official Your Majesty possesses—the predestined Imperial Chancellor of the future.” William liked the idea. “Bülow will be my Bismarck,”39 he told Eulenburg.
The two friends—Eulenburg was Ambassador to Austria, Bülow Ambassador to Italy—met secretly in the Tyrol in 1896. The meeting, Eulenburg wrote afterwards to Bülow, was based “on our boundless love40 for our King [of Prussia; i.e., William]. How, in this complicated world, could... [anyone] have understood this personal, human love for the best of all Kings, or our natural, heartfelt friendship for one another?” Eulenburg, meanwhile, was working steadily to have Marschall removed as State Secretary. “Your Majesty will allow me41 to remind you that I made full arrangements for Marschall’s dismissal last year,” Eulenburg wrote to William. “Your Majesty decided to keep him in office for opportunistic reasons.” At last, in June 1897, Eulenburg was successful: Marschall was dismissed; Bülow was summoned from Rome and made State Secretary. Bülow paid for his promotion with a letter he knew Eulenburg would like: “As a personality,42 His Majesty is charming, touching, irresistible, adorable.... I hang my heart more and more every day on the Emperor. He is so remarkable!... far and away the greatest Hohenzollern that has ever existed. He combines in a manner that I have never seen before the soundest and most original intelligence with the shrewdest good sense. He possesses an imagination that can soar on eagle wings... and what energy into the bargain! What a memory! What swiftness and sureness of apprehension!”
Eulenburg, overjoyed, replied: “You are our dear good sovereign’s43 last card. No other can—and still less will—do all for him that you are doing.... Another might have genius or erudition but love and loyalty will always be lacking, the love of a faithful servant which with you has taken the form of a father’s love for a difficult child. How terribly alone the poor Emperor stands.” When Bülow was appointed Imperial Chancellor, Eulenburg congratulated him again: “One of the best things44 God has given me to do was my intervention in your career—an intervention which I always felt to be my mission. I am possessed by the sense that after terrible storms I have at last steered the ship we may call ‘The Emperor’s Reign’ into at least a tolerably safe anchorage.”
With Bülow at the helm, Eulenburg’s direct political influence diminished, which, he said, was his wish. He maintained his personal friendship with the Kaiser through the annual cruises to Norway and the hunting parties at Romintern and Liebenberg. His friendship with William became, if anything, more possessive. At Romintern, Eulenburg told Bülow, he had been appalled by the Empress’s “wrinkled, prematurely aged45 face and grey hair” and by the fact that “all night long, the Empress made scenes with her weeping and screaming.” Eulenburg was deeply upset. He “told me with feverish agitation,”46 said Bülow, “that the Empress was in such a nervous state that it would be very advisable if she were separated from the Kaiser soon.” Dona remained and Eulenburg’s revulsion continued. Three years later, he complained that the Empress’s “love for His Majesty47 is like the passion of a cook for her sweetheart who shows signs of cooling off. This method of forcing herself upon him is certainly not the way to keep the beloved’s affections.”
Meanwhile, Eulenburg had begun to weary of official life. “Ten years of uphill work48 for our dear Master have completely exhausted me,” he wrote to Bülow in 1898. The following year, he broke with Holstein. Although in 1900, William elevated his old friend to the rank of prince, Eulenburg’s fortunes were declining. His “sweet, affected piety49... repulsed” a diplomatic colleague. Eulenburg himself explained, “At a certain age,50 men go through a period of bodily change, just as women do.” This was particularly true, he said, of “men who in their sensitivity51 have... a kind of feminine sensibility.” In 1902, Eulenburg’s mother died. Plagued by worries, heart disease, and gout, he departed Vienna after eight years as ambassador, and secluded himself at Liebenberg. Eulenburg continued to be invited to autumn hunts and on Norwegian cruises, but declined on the grounds of health. On Eulenburg’s birthday, the Kaiser always visited Liebenberg. “As Phili will never come to me52 now,” said William, “I have to come to him.” In an exception to his normal seclusion, Eulenburg made the Norwegian cruise of 1903. He was ill throughout the voyage and found that his distaste for the holiday had grown; he described the Hohenzollern as “this floating theatre,”53 where “things were much as in the most frivolous lieutenant’s mess.” By 1905, Eulenburg seemed better. That autumn, the Russian Count Sergei Witte, returning home from negotiating the Russo-Japanese peace treaty at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, visited the Kaiser at Romintern. He found Eulenburg seated grandly like a monarch in a huge armchair, while William sat on the arm of the same chair, excitedly talking and gesticulating like a lieutenant. It seemed that Philip Eulenburg, the Kaiser’s dearest friend, was resuming his role as a maker and breaker of men in Imperial Germany.
Once Holstein had decided that it was Eulenburg who had brought him down, he burned for revenge. For years, through his spidery network of sources, he had made himself privy to police files on leading government figures. He was aware that in the eighties Philip Eulenburg’s name had been included on the secret list of persons suspected of homosexual behavior. On May 1, 1906, Eulenburg received a letter from Holstein. It began with accusation: “My dear Phili54—you needn’t take this beginning as a compliment since nowadays to call a man ‘Phili’ means—well, nothing very flattering. You have now attained the object for which you have been intriguing for years—my retirement. And the general press attacks on me are also all that you can wish.” In the letter, Holstein hurled an insult: “I am now free55 to handle you as one handles such a contemptible person with your peculiarities.”
Eulenburg understood that Holstein meant to ruin him. Considering it “a matter of life and death,”56 Eulenburg decided that only a duel could clear his name. He challenged Holstein to “exchange pistol shots57 until disablement or death.” When he informed Tschirschky, the State Secretary—imagining the scandal of two prominent, elderly men, formerly occupying the highest positions in the German Empire, attempting to maim or kill each other—“literally collapsed into his chair.”58 Withdraw the challenge “for God’s sake and the Emperor’s,”59 Tschirschky begged Eulenburg. Eulenburg agreed to do so if Holstein would apologize. On May 3, Holstein wrote: “Prince Eulenburg having assured me60 on his word of honor that he had neither hand, act, nor any part in my dismissal, and has in no way been concerned in any of the attacks on me in the press, I hereby withdraw the offensive remarks made upon him in my letter.” Despite this retraction, Eulenburg—who once had likened Holstein to a bloodthirsty weasel—did not feel safe. “I cannot say61 that I consider Holstein’s attacks really disposed of,” he wrote. “He will revenge himself in his accustomed fashion.”
Holstein was already at work. He enlisted the aid of a man he had for years despised, Germany’s most famous journalist, Maximilian Harden, founder and editor of the Berlin socialist weekly Die Zukunft (“The Future”). That summer and autumn, when a series of critical articles began to appear in Die Zukunft, Eulenburg understood that a new alliance had been formed. The articles blamed Germany’s defeat at Algeciras on the sinister, pacifist influence of what Harden described as the “Liebenberg Round Table,” the group of friends who gathered every autumn with the Emperor at Prince von Eulenburg’s Liebenberg estate. The g
roup, Harden wrote sardonically, consisted of “nothing but good people.62 Musical, poetic, spiritualistic; so pious that they expect better cures from prayer than from the wisest doctor.... In their intercourse, oral and written, [they are] of touching friendliness. This would all be their private affair if they did not belong to the Kaiser’s closest round table and... from visible and invisible positions, spin the threads which suffocate the German Empire.” Harden described Eulenburg, the leader of the circle, as an “unhealthy, late romantic63 and clairvoyant” who “with unflagging zeal64 has whispered and whispers still to William the Second that he is chosen to rule alone.” “For years,”65 Harden charged, “no important post was filled without... [Eulenburg’s] help” and during this time, “he took care of all his friends.”
Harden had three reasons for attacking Eulenburg. He opposed the Kaiser’s inclination toward personal rule, which, he—rightly—believed was encouraged by Eulenburg. He had agreed with Holstein’s policy of humiliating France and sundering the new Anglo-French Entente. When that policy was frustrated at Algeciras, Harden blamed Eulenburg for persuading the Kaiser to be conciliatory. Further, because of Eulenburg’s close friendship with Raymond LeCompte, First Secretary of the French Embassy in Berlin, Harden suggested that Eulenburg was passing to LeCompte assurances that Germany was not prepared to back her diplomacy with threats of war. Harden’s third reason was more personal and more poisonous. LeCompte, one of the German experts in the French Foreign Office, had known Eulenburg years before in Munich; once assigned to Berlin, LeCompte was included in the annual Kaiserjagd at Liebenberg. Harden had evidence that LeCompte was homosexual. Adding this to rumors he had heard about Eulenburg—rumors now reinforced by information from Holstein’s files—Harden created, first by innuendo, then by increasingly direct accusation, the image of a circle around Eulenburg which was at least homoerotic if not openly homosexual.
Harden was treading on dangerous ground. Homosexuality was officially repressed in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe. In the Reich, it was a criminal offense, punishable by prison, although the law was rarely invoked or enforced. Still, the very accusation could stir moral outrage and bring social ruin. This was especially true at the highest levels of Society. In Austria, the Archduke Ludwig Victor (known as “Luzi-Wuzi”), brother of Emperor Franz Josef, had an affair with a masseur and was sent into exile. In Germany, Fritz Krupp, head of the giant armaments firm and friend of the Kaiser, was accused of pedophilia on Capri and, amidst the scandal, killed himself. A shadow had fallen close to Eulenburg in 1898 when his only brother, Friedrich von Eulenburg, a cavalry officer, was convicted of homosexuality and forced to resign from the army. The Kaiser, outraged, had demanded that Philip Eulenburg never see or speak to his brother again. A bitter Eulenburg told Bülow that he would not obey. Harden, by accusing Eulenburg and his Liebenberg circle, drew close to accusing the Kaiser himself. Philip Eulenburg had been William’s closest friend for over twenty years. If the charge were true and the Emperor had not known, what did that suggest? Worse, what if the Emperor had known?
Eulenburg asked Bülow how he should respond to Harden’s attacks. The Chancellor, aware that Holstein’s vendetta against Eulenburg sprang from the former First Counselor’s belief that Eulenburg was responsible for the Kaiser’s acceptance of his resignation, advised his friend to leave Germany for a while, until things calmed down. Since his other friend, the Kaiser, who did not read Die Zukunft, treated him as warmly as before, Eulenburg did not heed the advice. In October, the Emperor joined his friends as usual at Liebenberg; in January 1907 he summoned Eulenburg to Berlin, where he invested his “dear Phili” with the highest Prussian decoration, the Order of the Black Eagle.
Harden waited until April 1907 before renewing his attack. In that month he published an article specifically naming three of the Kaiser’s military aides-de-camp, all members of the Liebenberg group, as homosexuals. The story astounded Berlin; still, the Kaiser was oblivious. Eventually, when they were alone in the Palace garden, Crown Prince William showed the Kaiser the Zukunft article and other press clippings. “Never shall I forget66 the pained and horrified face of my father who stared at me in dismay,” reported the Crown Prince. “The moral purity of the Kaiser was such that he could hardly conceive the possibility of such aberrations.”
William reacted quickly. He demanded the immediate resignation of the three aides-de-camp and of Count Kuno von Moltke,fn1 military commander of Berlin, whom Harden had also implicated. If Moltke was innocent, the Kaiser insisted that he immediately sue Harden for libel. As for Eulenburg, also included in Harden’s attack, the Emperor wrote to Bülow: “I insist that Philip Eulenburg67 shall at once ask to be retired [from the Diplomatic Service]. If this accusation against him of unnatural vice be unfounded, let him give me a plain declaration to that effect and take immediate steps against Harden. If not, then I expect him to return the Order of the Black Eagle and avoid scandal by forthwith leaving the country and going to reside abroad.”
Eulenburg resigned immediately and sent back his Black Eagle. To Bülow, whom Eulenburg still considered a friend, he wrote: “The loss of an old imperial friendship68 was not the cruel deception which perhaps you expected it to be since I know, only too well, the character of this pilot who shouts ‘abandon ship’ in every case long before it is necessary.” As to Harden’s accusation, he said, “I know myself69 to be entirely innocent.” Bülow, in his Memoirs, claimed that at this stage he believed Eulenburg: “I was convinced70 that the accusations of unnatural practices brought against him were unfounded. His affectionate relations with wife and children, the deep and passionate love with which his charming and distinguished wife still clung to him, made such vile assertions appear monstrous.”
Obeying the Imperial command, Moltke and Eulenburg moved to sue Harden for libel. As both had been government officials, they asked the Prussian Crown Prosecutor to take the case; he refused, claiming that the matter was personal. Eulenburg then withdrew, but Moltke persevered. Harden’s trial began in Berlin Municipal Court on October 23, 1907. The editor was represented by Max Bernstein, Crown Prosecutor of Bavaria, acting in a private capacity. Bernstein immediately seized the offensive, attempting to implicate both Moltke and Eulenburg in the unquestioned activities of the three aides-de-camp. “Disgusting orgies”71 involving soldiers of the elite Garde du Corps Regiment at the home of one of the incriminated aides were described. One witness “thought he recognized72 Count Moltke as one of those present.” Another witness testified that he had been debauched ten years before by a man who might have been Count Eulenburg. Moltke’s former wife declared that Eulenburg had gone down on his knees before her, begging that she give up her husband. Harden, who had been an actor before he became an editor, played his role with flair. At one point, the judge begged him “in the interests of our whole country”73 to compromise. Harden melodramatically leveled his finger at Moltke across the courtroom and shouted, “Between that man and me,74 there is no possibility of compromise on this earth.” Bernstein scored his most damaging point when he emphasized that the Emperor had demanded Moltke’s and Eulenburg’s resignations and that both had immediately complied. Harden was acquitted and walked out of the courtroom into a street filled with cheering people.
During the trial, Bülow privately continued to pose as the sympathetic friend and confidant of the embattled Eulenburg. In fact, the Chancellor and the government remained deliberately aloof. “In these painful circumstances,”75 Bülow wrote the Kaiser, “we must see that the Crown is kept... completely removed from all connection with the affair.” Eulenburg always assumed that the friend whom he had enthusiastically supported remained a friend. During the Harden-Moltke trial, Eulenburg repeatedly wrote to the Chancellor, “begging me,”76 said Bülow, “to see that his name did not appear; to use all my influence to keep him out of the case. ‘I ask for your protection and friendship,’” Bülow quoted Eulenburg. “‘I do not beg for myself, but for my wife and children.... Stand by
me, if only for their sakes.... I know myself entirely innocent.’” Bülow received these appeals coldly, writing in his Memoirs, “As the highest official77 in the Empire, I could not interfere with the action of an independent judiciary.”fn2
Harden’s triumph was brief. On December 19, the government overturned the Municipal Court verdict on a technicality and ordered a new trial. This time, Eulenburg was summoned and, under oath, testified that he had never violated Paragraph 175 (prohibiting anal intercourse) of the Criminal Code. Pressed by Bernstein as to whether he had engaged in other homosexual acts, Eulenburg declared, “I have never done anything dirty”;79 “I have never practiced any abominations.” Moltke’s former wife was proven a liar and the testimony of other witnesses in the first trial was discredited. The second trial ended on January 3, 1908, and Harden, found guilty of libel, was sentenced to prison. Moltke, presumably vindicated but socially ruined, retired to his country estate.