Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War
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He was ill throughout the voyage and found that his distaste for the holiday had grown; he described the Hohenzollern as "this floating theatre," 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 Phili-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 free 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," Eulenburg decided that only a duel could clear his name. He challenged Holstein to "exchange pistol shots 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." Withdraw the challenge "for God's sake and the Emperor's," Tschirschky begged Eulenburg. Eulenburg agreed to do so if Holstein would apologize. On May 3, Holstein wrote: "Prince Eulenburg having assured me 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 lik-
ened Holstein to a bloodthirsty weasel-did not feel safe. "I cannot say 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 group, Harden wrote sardonically, consisted of "nothing but good people. 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 romantic and clairvoyant" who "with unflagging zeal has whispered and whispers still to William the Second that he is chosen to rule alone." "For years," 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 ereated, 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 Bulow 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 Bulow 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 forget 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,* 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 Bulow: "I insist that Philip Eulenburg 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 a
broad."
Eulenburg resigned immediately and sent back his Black Eagle. To Bulow, whom Eulenburg still considered a friend, he wrote: "The loss of an old imperial friendship 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 myself to be entirely innocent." Bulow, in his Memoirs, claimed that at this stage he believed Eulenburg: "I was convinced 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" involving soldiers of the elite Garde du Corps Regiment at the home of one of the incriminated aides were described. One witness "thought he recognized Count Moltke as one of those present." Another witness
* Moltke had been the Kaiser's senior aide-de-camp for eight years, 1894-1902. When William sent two bottles of old wine to Bismarck at Friedrichsruh in 1894 as a conciliatory gesture, Moltke was the messenger.
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" to compromise. Harden melodramatically leveled his finger at Moltke across the courtroom and shouted, "Between that man and me, 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, Bulow 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," Bulow 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," said Bulow, "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,' " Bulow 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.' " Bulow received these appeals coldly, writing in his Memoirs, "As the highest official in the Empire, I could not interfere with the action of an independent judiciary."*
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"; "I have never practiced
* Immediately after the Moltke-Harden trial, Bulow himself was accused of homosexuality by Adolf Brand, a journalistic crusader for homosexual rights. The Crown Prosecutor, who had refused to undertake libel cases on behalf of Moltke and Eulenburg, quickly took up the case on behalf of the Imperial Chancellor. Eulenburg, cited as a witness, appeared on Bulow's behalf. Bulow's name was rapidly cleared and Brand was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. During the trial, Bulow testified that he "considered the practices in question loathsome in the highest degree and quite incomprehensible."
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.
Harden, free on appeal and foiled by Moltke, redoubled his attack on Eulenburg. Eulenburg had testified under oath that he was not homosexual; if Harden could prove that he was, Eulenburg would be guilty of perjury. In April 1908, Harden opened a new case in Munich, promising evidence of Eulenburg's flagrant homosexual behavior when he was in the Bavarian capital twenty-five years before. On May 8, Bulow intervened. He ordered his old friend arrested and charged with perjury. The case was transferred to Berlin. Eulenburg, who suffered from heart trouble and severe rheumatoid arthritis, was ill and his doctors pleaded that he not be held in prison; a compromise was reached and the Prince was incarcerated for five months in Berlin's Charity Hospital. When the trial began on June 29, the defendant was carried into court every day on a stretcher.
In preparation for the trial, Harden and Bernstein assembled 145 witnesses against Prince Eulenburg. One by one-thieves, blackmailers, mentally ill persons, and homosexuals-each was brought into Eulenburg's hospital room to stare at the prince for identification. Before the trial began, most had been dismissed; twelve remained. During the first week of court proceedings, the twelve were reduced to two. One of these had thirty-two previous convictions, running from bribery to indecent exposure. He was disqualified when it was learned that, even after the trial had begun, he had tried to blackmail Prince Eulenburg. This left only Jacob Ernst.
Ernst's connection with Eulenburg went back twenty-five years, to the early 1880s. While serving in Munich, Eulenburg had taken a villa on Lake Starnberg, between the city and the Alps. He liked to compose music and poetry while fishing on the lake. His regular boatman on these excursions was a seventeen-year-old boy, Jacob Ernst. Eulenburg employed Ernst, who seemed to him simple and innocent, as a house servant, and took him along on trips. When Ernst married, he was put in charge of the Starnberg villa. Twenty-five years later, at the time of the trial, Ernst had fathered eight children, was partially deaf, and was addicted to alcohol. Before any legal proceedings had begun, when rumors of homosexuality were at first whispered, Ernst-unaware of his future involvement-had written to Eulenburg:
"Could you ever have believed, my lord Prince, that any people in this world could behave like that to such a good man as you are? I couldn't… I have known you for a long time, my lord Prince. You have never shown me or my family anything but kindness, and never been the slightest trouble to any of us. Don't be afraid-it will be all right. I made someone explain the paragraph to me-it is simply shocking to say such things about you. Such a normal healthy man as you are. I will close now, hoping you will get the better of the scandal."
In the Munich trial, Ernst had sworn that he had never had indecent relations with Eulenburg. In Berlin, when Bernstein cross-examined him, threatened him with confrontation by a witness, with conviction of perjury, and with speedy removal to prison, Ernst changed his story. On one occasion in 1883, he said, Eulenburg had made advances to him in a boat and he had accepted. Bernstein also produced a letter from Eulenburg to Ernst, written after Ernst had first appeared before the court in Munich. "Besides," Eulenburg had written, "if anything of the kind ever had taken place, it was such an old story that there could no longer be any question of punishment." Bernstein described this as an admission of guilt; Eulenburg explained it as an attempt to calm and reassure a terrified former servant.
Bernstein's case hing
ed entirely on Ernst. "Harden sent 145 printed accusations into court against me," Eulenburg wrote to Bulow. "Of these-all of which were exposed for the lies they were- one was enough to ruin me." The trial was never completed. Before Princess von Eulenburg could present her testimony-"in the long period of 34 years comprising our married life, I have never perceived the smallest sign of anything but a perfectly normal emotional life or manner of life"-Philip Eulenburg fainted in court. His leg was badly swollen; doctors diagnosed thrombosis and refused to allow him to return to court. The court moved to Charity Hospital. Eulenburg's health worsened and the trial was adjourned. In September, he was no better and the case was suspended. The following summer, 1909, the trial resumed, Eulenburg collapsed again, and the case was postponed indefinitely.
Bulow, by August 1909, was no longer in power. In writing to him, Eulenburg, still unaware of the former Chancellor's role in Holstein's downfall, allowed himself only a mild reproach for Bulow's behavior: "Only one thing seemed difficult to explain: the fact that neither the official nor even the semi-official press cared to take up the cudgels on behalf of one of the highest German functionaries and fight scandal and scandal-mongering newspapers." From Rome, where he lived in retirement, Bulow oozed condolence: "My dear Phili: For many years we lived on the closest terms of friendship. How could I, therefore, ever be indifferent to your misfortune? All I could do within the limits of my duty as Chancellor, I did, to prevent these deeply tragic events which, as a man, cut me also to the heart. I did whatever was in my power to make your position somewhat easier." In writing his Memoirs, Bulow appeared to make up his mind about Eulenburg. His friend, he said, was a man of "abnormal instincts," "perilous inclination," and lack of "erotic integrity." The fate of "poor Phili," he said, suggested "an obvious comparison with both the fate and the abnormal inclination… of Oscar Wilde."