The name of Philipp, Count zu Eulenburg, later Prince zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld (1847-1921) is associated so closely with the history of the Wilhelmine period that one could call him the Wilhelminian par excellence if that were not at best only a half-truth. It is certainly correct that Eulenburg, perhaps more than any other individual, acted as crisis manager for the Prussian-German monarchy in the long governmental crisis following Bismarck's fall; that he prevented a reversion to the status quo ante 1866, and averted the twin dangers threatening the Reich's future, namely a dictatorship of either a military or Bismarckian character, or else parliamentarisation; and that he was the intellectual founder of the so-called ‘personal rule’ of Kaiser Wilhelm II, established in 1897 on the basis of Sammlungspolitik and Weltpolitik. On the other hand it is equally true not only that this system soon became trapped in a blind alley under the pressure of massive armaments costs, but also that, just ten years after the victory of his strategy, Philipp Eulenburg suffered human and political destruction at the hands of a second generation of Wilhelminians. However, this bourgeois, liberal-imperialist generation (Albert Ballin was born in 1857, Friedrich Naumann in 1860, Maximilian Harden in 1861, Bernhard Dernburg in 1865 and Walter Rathenau in 1867) similarly failed to achieve decisive influence for themselves. They intensified the expansionist tendencies in the Kaiserreich by means of their economic might and their ‘world power’ aspirations without being able to break the power of the court and, most important, of the generals who stood behind it. On the contrary, they paved the way for an increase in the political influence of the military by overthrowing Eulenburg and by seriously undermining confidence in the Kaiser in the Daily Telegraph crisis of 1908, and in this sense they aided the self-destruction of the Prussian-German monarchy as well as the collapse of the old order throughout Europe.

Philipp Count zu Eulenburg stood out in contrast to this second Wilhelmine generation by virtue of his age and also his social standing. He was born in Königsberg on 12 February 1847, the first son of an officer of one of the oldest aristocratic clans of East Prussia.