Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  The greatest influence on Philip von Eulenburg's life, he always said, was his mother. Alexandrine von Rothkirch-Eulenburg was a woman of artistic temperament who delighted in music and showed considerable skill as an amateur painter. From his mother, Philip inherited his enthusiasm for nature, art, music, and poetry, and a desire for intimate friendships. Countess von Eulenburg lived until her son was fifty-five and spent as much time at his side as possible; when apart, they wrote to each other daily.

  Eulenburg's father, an old-fashioned, hardbitten Prussian who had been a soldier, found little good in the artistic interests of his wife and children. Philip was as closed with his father as he was open with his mother. "I could never put into words," he wrote later, "what the world of the imagination meant to me in childhood… The narrow world in which my parents lived at that time, my father's perpetual injunctions to reduce expenses, filled me with bitterness."

  Heir to a Junker, a young Count von Eulenburg would become a soldier, and Philip was entered as a cadet in the Garde du Corps (the Royal Bodyguard Regiment) at Potsdam. He was inept and hated the "torment of unfair, narrow-minded, and coarse-natured superiors." When the Franco-Prussian War broke out and the regiment went to the front, his commanding officer left him behind. Eventually, he was transferred to a staff position in which he so charmed his new commander that, although Philip had never been in combat, the officer procured for him an Iron Cross for bravery. When the war ended, his mother won his father's permission for Philip to leave the army. He went to Leipzig and Strasbourg universities, earned a doctorate in law, and began to work, without enthusiasm, in the courts. At twenty-eight, he married a Swedish countess, who over eleven years produced eight children. Marriage was an ordeal for Eulenburg. His wife, said a friend, was "terribly boring." "Her conversation was negligible," said another friend. "She was entirely eclipsed by the brilliant Phili whom she looked up to in idolizing love and wonderment." "I enjoy family life little," said Eulenburg. "I gladly go my way."

  Eulenburg embarked on a diplomatic career believing that this profession would give him more time to develop as an artist. "My official career as a diplomat was to me a torment," he said later. "An artist every inch of me, and certain of success, I fought like a desperate creature against my father, who in his Old Prussian way recognized nothing but an official career, and looked upon all artistic activity as a pastime, a toy, for a Count Eulenburg." He entered the Foreign Office at thirty through his friendship with Herbert Bismarck. (Eulenburg's sister, Adda, was an intimate of the Chancellor's daughter, Marie.) During Herbert's unhappy love affair with Princess Elisabeth Carolath, Eulenburg had played a dual role: to the lovesick son he was the intimate friend to whom all could be confessed; to the worried parents he was the sensible young man who could guide their son back to the path of reason. Subsequently, a grateful Herbert had suggested that "dear Phili" join him in the diplomatic service.

  Eulenburg's career proceeded slowly. He was thirty-four before he received his first foreign assignment, in 1881, as Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. His six-month tour was marked by the beginnings of a friendship with the Embassy's Second Secretary, Bernhard von Bülow. Eulenburg's second post was Munich, where he served as First Secretary of the Prussian Legation. His official duties were light and he was able to plunge into the cultural and artistic life of the Bavarian capital. Eulenburg had considerable amateur talent, and in each field he was self-taught. He wrote children's stories which extracted enthusiastic praise from as unlikely a source as Friedrich von Holstein. Eulenburg's plays were professionally produced in Berlin and Munich. Without formal architectural training, he designed Italianate halls and pavilions for the family estate at Liebenberg. He was proudest of his music. His "Rosenlieder" (Rose Songs) had three hundred printings over twenty-five years and sold 500,000 copies; he created ballads, "Skaldengesange," based on Norse sagas; these songs and ballads he frequently sang himself in a pleasant voice. He hoped to write an opera. Once in Paris, he sang one of his compositions for a famous professional singer, who urged him to study counterpoint. Offended, Eulenburg told Bülow as they were leaving, "I shall take care never to study counterpoint. It would only lame the wings of my genius."

  These talents, along with his brilliance as a conversationalist and raconteur, appealed to Prince William of Hohenzollern when Eulenburg, at thirty-nine, met the twenty-seven-year-old future Kaiser at a hunting party in May 1886. Eulenburg, tall, with a broad forehead, neatly trimmed beard, and large, expressive eyes, immediately captivated the younger man. While Philip sat at the piano, playing and singing his songs, William turned the pages. Beginning that summer William and Augusta invited him frequently to Reichenhall, where, William wrote later, Eulenburg "used to enliven our evenings with his piano playing and ballad singing. One of his finest compositions, the 'Submerging of Atlantis,' was my favorite piece of music. He was, like me, a great lover of nature and my wife and I had long, stimulating talks with him on art, music, and literature on our walks. He was great on the Italian Renaissance especially, and had many friends and acquaintances among notable artists in Munich." William noted his new friend's storytelling ability: "He was one of those fortunate people to whom, particularly when traveling, something comical always happens. Phili could tell these stories to universal hilarity." Soon, William was introducing Eulenburg to his former tutor, Hinzpeter, as "my bosom friend, the only one I have." "Whenever he came into our Potsdam home," William recalled later, "it was like a flood of sunshine on the routine of life."

  Eulenburg responded enthusiastically to William's friendship. His letters to the Prince were flowery: The Prince's friendship, he said, "has become a radiance in my life; a letter from Prince William "I will lay among my most treasured gifts"; a visit to Eulenburg's home drew from Eulenburg's children the relayed expression "that Prince William looked 'so very handsome' in uniform." When William was downcast, Eulenburg lavished sympathy; when William was excited, Eulenburg heaped on praise. William received an unpleasant telegram: "He was very pale," Eulenburg wrote to his friend Bülow, "and looked at me, half afraid, half miserable, questioning me with his beautiful blue eyes." As Kaiser, William had given a speech: afterward, Bülow recorded, "Phil was so excited that he ran up… and kissed both His Majesty's hands with the words, 'I am overcome. I am overwhelmed!' "

  The Bismarcks approved of the friendship. "It was very useful, your going to see Prince William," Herbert wrote to Eulenburg in August 1886. "He thinks a great deal of you and has sung your praises to me in every kind of way. You must make use of this and… talk to him and get an influence over him. For the heaven-storming strain in most of his opinions must be more and more toned down, so that the Potsdam lieutenant's outlook may gradually give way to statesmanlike reflections. Except for that, the Prince is really a pearl." At the end of the summer, the two friends, William and Philip, set out together for Bayreuth to listen to Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal and to meet Wagner's family, whom Eulenburg already knew. Again, Herbert Bismarck wrote approvingly: "So you are going to be in Bayreuth with Prince William… I hope you will distract his mind so that the Wagnerian trombones may not damage his bad ear with their discords. Six hours of the Music of the Future would inflame even my drums. I am always afraid that the Prince will do too much, so energetic as he is in everything; and he must be prevented from that, for his health is of quite inestimable importance to the German nation."

  At this time, with Prince William's father, Crown Prince Frederick, in apparent good health, it seemed unlikely that Prince William's health would matter much to the German nation for a number of years. In fact, twenty-four months later, the young man was to become German Emperor. Even then, the Bismarcks continued to approve of the friendship. When William as Kaiser was forming a party for his first Norwegian cruise, Herbert suggested that Eulenburg go. "Your influence on His Majesty is an excellent one," he said. Eulenburg's unique relationship as bosom friend of the Emperor and trusted confidant of the Bismarcks ended in
March 1890 with the Chancellor's dismissal. In the great schism which divided society and the bureaucracy in the 1890s, Eulenburg chose William. When he attended Otto von Bismarck's funeral in 1897, he walked up to Herbert to offer sympathy. Herbert coolly and ostentatiously turned his back.

  When William ascended the throne, Eulenburg worried that the friendship would end, but the new monarch reassured him. "I would never have dreamed that my Kaiser would be the one who alone understands… [my] sensibility," Eulenburg wrote to William. His intimacy with the young, assertive Emperor quickly gave Eulenburg a key role in the Imperial Government. Once Caprivi had replaced Bismarck and Marschall became State Secretary, Holstein assumed a dominant role at the Foreign Office. William and the reclusive First Counselor did not meet and the task of mediating between them fell to Eulenburg, whose unofficial title became "Ambassador of the German Government to the Kaiser." In 1890, Marschall, nominally Eulenburg's superior-Eulenburg was serving as Prussian Minister to the German state of Oldenburg-recognized Eulenburg's influence: "If I feel a certain degree of confidence in setting to work, I owe that feeling not least to the kind, cordial words which you have been so good as to say to me. The confidence and friendly feeling that you offer me, I respond to with the heartfelt request that you will help me further by word and deed, in case of necessity, as also by unhesitating criticism."

  Holstein wrote to Eulenburg almost daily, requesting help in steering the Kaiser: "Perhaps His Majesty could say…"; "A useful subject for conversation would be…"; "You might suggest to His Majesty that he…"; "You must utter a warning against…" Holstein motivated Eulenburg with a blend of gratitude and warning about the Kaiser's position: "Your letter of today… gives me hope that with your help we may still restrain the Emperor-without it, we shall not…"; "The reason I feel it my duty to inform you in good time is that this directly concerns the personal prestige of your Imperial friend. That prestige is not in any case increasing- on the contrary. The nation does not take him seriously."

  Eulenburg carried out his "Embassy to the Emperor" primarily by letter; when the matter was urgent, he traveled to Berlin. Eulenburg also saw the Kaiser regularly at the annual Kaiserjagd (Royal Hunt) at Romintern; at shooting parties at his own Liebenberg estate near Berlin; sailing aboard the Meteor at Kiel Week (the only picture on William's desk in his small cabin was Eulenburg's), and on the annual all-male Norwegian cruises every July. During these Wilhelmine vacations, Eulenburg enjoyed special privileges. His cabin aboard the Hohenzollern was always next to the Kaiser's. When William summoned his elderly generals on deck for morning exercises, making them squat so that he could come up behind to give them a push and send them sprawling, Eulenburg was absent. "The Emperor has never touched me," he said. "He knows I would not suffer it." At shooting parties, where all were forced to wear green court shooting-dress with choking high collars and high brown boots with silver spurs, Eulenburg alone dared to reach up and unfasten his collar so that he could breathe.

  Eulenburg's great influence on the Kaiser in the middle 1890s led to speculation that he might be appointed State Secretary, or even Chancellor. Eulenburg rejected this talk, explaining that an official relationship with the Emperor "would impair my influence." In 1894, when Caprivi was weakening and Eulenburg's name was mentioned as a replacement, he begged the Kaiser never to ask him to accept the office. William laughed. "I agree with you that in one way you are entirely unfit to be Imperial Chancellor-you are too good-natured."

  Eulenburg felt comfortable rejecting the demanding role of State Secretary because he had found an intimate friend-an alter ego-who could do it for him. Bernhard von Bülow, Eulenburg's Paris colleague, was ambitious and had the taste for power that Philip lacked. From the beginning, Bülow had seen in Eulenburg a useful friend. "I soon fell under the spell of 'Phili' Eulenburg," Billow wrote of their early years. Subsequently, Bülow said, Eulenburg became "the friend who has been nearest to my heart." Eulenburg quickly put his talents to Billow's use. When Bülow was maneuvering to marry the divorced Countess Maria Donhoff, Eulenburg worked to smooth Billow's path at the Wilhelmstrasse. In 1888 Billow was posted to Bucharest, where he was marooned for five years -and counted on Eulenburg to rescue him. Bülow understood Eulenburg's effusive nature and wrote to him in the same language: "I have a great longing to see you again, dearest Philip"; "Nothing will ever be able to part us from each other"; "in the depths of our souls we think and feel alike… ever since I have known you I have… loved you from my heart." In 1893, when there was talk that Eulenburg would replace Marschall as State Secretary, Philip shared his reservations with Bernhard: "A poor barndoor fowl like me, cockered up into an eagle. I can hear myself cackling instead of clawing, and see myself laying an egg instead of sitting with flaming eyes on the gable of 76 Wilhelmstrasse. The thing is out of the question." Bülow indignantly rejected this self-description: "I-not as a friend but quite dispassionately speaking-consider you the ideal Secretary of State. You would not run about in the yard like a barnyard fowl, but as a faithful, wise and noble watchdog would guard the Emperor's door. You have… intuitive genius… His Majesty's complete confidence… a great name, social charm-in short, you have everything."

  Bülow also understood the need to mirror Eulenburg's fervent admiration of William II. "We cannot be sufficiently thankful 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. Billow'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 valuable official Your Majesty possesses-the predestined Imperial Chancellor of the future." William liked the idea. "Bülow will be my Bismarck," he told Eulenburg.

  The two friends-Eulenburg was Ambassador to Austria, Billow Ambassador to Italy-met secretly in the Tyrol in 1896. The meeting, Eulenburg wrote afterwards to Btilow, was based "on our boundless love 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 me 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, 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's 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 things 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 dire
ct 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 aged 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," 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 Majesty 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 work 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 piety… repulsed" a diplomatic colleague. Eulenburg himself explained, "At a certain age, men go through a period of bodily change, just as women do." This was particularly true, he said, of "men who in their sensitivity 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 me now," said William, "I have to come to him." In an exception to his normal seclusion, Eulenburg made the Norwegian cruise of 1903.