The Fall of the Eulenburg Camarilla: At the Intersection of Accountability and Unaccountability in Politics

THE EULENBURG SCANDAL plunged the German ruling elite into a crisis, since it exposed a profound weakness in its legitimation to govern. The constitution of the German Empire did not envision the existence of a camarilla or individual favorites at the court and provided no way to deal with them; Wilhelmine Germans associated such roles in the exercise of power with absolute monarchy and believed they had long since been overcome. In the columns of the Zukunft Maximilian Harden opened a panorama of the power effectively wielded by Philipp Eulenburg as the “favorite” of Emperor Wilhelm II:

Finally Harden learned that Kuno Moltke had once declared, “We have now formed a ring around the Kaiser that no one can break through”; it was then that he realized, as he explained to the court, that “the camarilla was doing damage to the state as a whole,” and that he had to act “as a politician” and intervene himself.”

The Spanish term camarilla had established itself in the political vocabulary of Europe after the reign of Ferdinand VII of Spain. Like the “cabinet” where government ministers and officials met, the room gave its name to the institution.

The Eulenburg Camarilla: Francophiles, the Pro-Peace Party, and “the Homosexual International”

FROM TODAY's PERSPECTIVE it may seem strange, almost grotesque, to view entire institutions such as a diplomatic corps or the military as sexually suspicious. The Belle Époque was the age of prestige politics, however, and the Eulenburg scandal had introduced sexual morality as a category available for interpreting the tense international relations of the time. As I will show below, this was only the culmination of a whole chain of incidents involving national prestige, from the Schnaebele affair in 1887 and the seizure of a German mail steamer in 1899 during the Boer War to the Venezuela crisis of 1902. All these apparently simple local events developed into questions of national honor, and for this reason they help to focus attention on the social dimension of international relations, which has not yet been thoroughly studied.

When political and military historians seek to identify the origins of the First World War, they frequently mention a “pro-war” party within the leadership of the government, armed forces, and diplomatic corps in the German Empire. Although this term makes little sense without a counterpart, only the bare outline of a “peace party” has been made out until now, if at all. At the same time, contemporaries suspected the existence of these two influence groups and believed they conducted important debates within the arcane sphere of government. “This one wants peace,” observed the anonymous author of “Unser Kaiser und sein Volk” critically in 1906, “while that one considers a ‘bright and cheery little war’ a national necessity.” Here, too, Maximilian Harden succeeded in establishing the framework in which the European press discussed and interpreted the question. He declared that the Wilhelmine peace party was in fact the Eulenburg camarilla and made this seem plausible in the columns of his journal Die Zukunft by claiming there was a link between a desire for peace damaging to Germany's national interests and homosexuality: They “don't dream of a world in flames, they are warm enough already.” Harden expressed himself even more clearly in court in late 1907.

From Duels to the Courtroom: A Gentleman's Sense of Honor and the First Moltke-Harden Trial

IN THE SPRING OF 1907 drastic evidence appeared to show how badly the German monarchy was adapted to the era of the mass-circulation press. While international newspapers had been debating Harden's campaign against the Eulenburg camarilla for a long time, there was one person who for months had heard nothing about the disaster threatening to engulf him and his best friends: Emperor Wilhelm. German journalists published desperate appeals for someone to enlighten the monarch. Everyone believed that containment of the scandal depended on the sovereign receiving a comprehensive explanation quickly. Since the country's top-ranking officials, the chancellor and the chief of the Imperial Military Cabinet, had no desire to deliver the catastrophic news, however, in the end Crown Prince Wilhelm had to inform his father about the allegations. It was the first political act performed by the heir to the throne, for which he was duly praised by the press, although significantly he had become aware of the scandal himself only by accident. Much too late and under enormous pressure from a waiting public, the emperor held one crisis meeting after another with Chancellor Bülow, Military Cabinet Chief von Hülsen-Haeseler, Secretary for the Interior von Bethmann- Hollweg, und Superintendent of Police von Borries; as a result of these meetings Eulenburg and Moltke were relieved of their diplomatic and military duties with immediate effect. This step had great symbolic significance for the public, which felt it signaled that royal favor had been withdrawn from the two men in an appropriately formal manner. At the same time it looked like a prejudgment of the moral issue at stake, for if His Majesty had dealt so mercilessly with his closest friends then “there must have been something” behind the reports.

At this point Maximilian Harden had achieved his original political goal, namely destroying the influence of the Eulenburg camarilla. He told Friedrich von Holstein that he intended to say nothing more. The scandal could now have been over, for the entire European public was not yet up in arms over it. A handful of individuals had the power to end it, or at least it would have gone down in history by another name than the “Eulenburg scandal.” Presumably the peace offer made by Harden did not reach the court.

The Collision of Male Aversion and Female Desire: A Marriage Becomes a Political Issue

THE HEARING OF EVIDENCE in the first Moltke-Harden trial provided revelations that caused a sensation throughout Europe, and in its wake marriage, friendship, and sexuality became politicized to an extent previously unknown. The union between Kuno and Lilly von Moltke could hardly have been more “Wilhelmine” in character. At their wedding on March 12, 1896, Emperor Wilhelm II served as best man for his friend and aide-de-camp. The monarch was also head of the state church in Prussia, and at the court in Berlin there was elation that another “confirmed bachelor”—a status that society did not rate highly— had embarked on matrimony. The jubilation was short-lived, however. To general astonishment the 52-year-old general filed for divorce from his 29-year-old wife, who was considered a great beauty, in November 1899. The failed marriage did not become a subject of public attention until years later, however, when she served as a key witness in the first Moltke-Harden trial. There she was called to testify about whether Kuno Moltke was “sexually abnormal,” as Harden put it, or “particularly antipathetic to the female sex,” in the words of the court. Wilhelmine society attached considerable importance to preserving personal honor, but establishing the truth took precedence over other legal interests—fiat justitia et pereat mundus. An insult was not a punishable offense if it could be proved “demonstrably true.”4 That the court permitted evidence to be heard on this claim rested on two important assumptions: first that an allegation of abnormal sexual behavior was insulting, and second that it could be proved or disproved in a court of law. From the vague nature of Harden's allegations concerning sexual abnormality and the legal logic of how truth had to be proved, it necessarily followed that Moltke's marriage and indeed his entire private life would become the subject of forensic scrutiny.

If the decision to allow debate on this aristocratic marriage to take place in open court was sensational, what the chief witness had to say about General Moltke's sexual qualities was no less so.

Fuzzy Words and Real Men: The Press Campaign against the Eulenburg Camarilla

IN THE SUMMER OF 1906 the term “camarilla” dominated German press reports. It referred to an unknown group at the center of political power in the Empire, a clique that was allegedly trying to bring down the chancellor and then steer German politics in a new direction. For the chancellor in power, Bernhard von Bülow, who was fighting for his political survival, this nebulous menace cropped up at an opportune moment. In a widely noted speech in the Reichstag he indirectly confirmed the existence of the camarilla, calling it an alien and poisonous plant that had always been planted in Germany “solely to damage the ruler and the nation.” He stated, though, that there was no cause for concern about the emperor, however, who was not a “philistine.” This seemed a peculiar term to use in the context of the speech: only a few months later was it understood as a reference to “Phili,” the nickname of Philipp zu Eulenburg, Wilhelm II's best friend. The Berlin journalist Maximilian Harden took up the theme of general concern that the German Empire was steered by a camarilla. On 24 November 1906, his weekly Die Zukunft published an article containing the following passage: “November 1906. Night. An open field in the Ucker region. Harpist: ‘Have you read it?’ Honey: ‘On Friday already.’ Harpist: ‘Do you think there’ll be more?’ Honey: ‘We have to reckon with the possibility; he seems to be in the know, and if he's seen letters that mention “sweetheart” …’ Harpist: ‘Unthinkable! But they’ll print it everywhere. They are out to get us, no matter what it takes.’ Honey: ‘The devils! It's over! It's all over!’ Harpist: If only HE doesn't get wind of it!’” Only political insiders recognized the meaning and full implications of these allusions. The “harpist” was Eulenburg and “honey” referred to General Kuno von Moltke, a count and military commander of Berlin. Their “sweetheart” was none other than Emperor Wilhelm II.

These clearly sexual insinuations that something other than hearty masculine friendship was rife in the emperor's immediate vicinity were a political threat, one that Eulenburg and Moltke understood at once. With the rise of academic research on sexuality starting in the 1880s, knowledge about homosexuality had increased.

Transnational Dimensions of the Eulenburg Scandal

WHAT IS EUROPE SUPPOSED TO THINK?” exclaimed Max Bernstein at the Central Criminal Court of Berlin in October 1907. If historians have occupied themselves with the Eulenburg scandal, to which he was referring, then they have seen it until now in a national context or even treated it as an event of purely local interest. Bernstein was one of the most noted criminal defense attorneys in the German Empire, however, and—as co-owner of a Munich newspaper, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten—quite familiar with how the modern mass-circulation press operated. He knew perfectly well that his words would reach an international public beyond the walls of the courtroom in Berlin-Moabit. The other participants in and observers of the scandal spoke in terms of Germany, Europe, and the world, even evoking later generations. Swiftly the “German scandal,” as it would soon figure in newspapers everywhere, crossed the borders of the Empire. For roughly three years, from the end of 1906 until well into 1909, it engaged journalists from all over the world. Dozens of foreign correspondents descended on the Criminal Court in Berlin-Moabit where most of the sensational trials took place, and it is on the basis of these trials that the scandal became an event of interest to historians.

This background makes it seem logical to examine the Eulenburg scandal as an international media phenomenon. Although the concept is relatively new to historiography, it was self-evident to contemporaries that the scandal unfolded before the eyes of a watching world and—perhaps even more importantly—that the interpretation of what it revealed had to be fought out on an international stage. This does not mean the exit of the Eulenburg scandal from the stage of recent German history. On the contrary, many of the people, topics, and subjects of controversy involved became freighted with nationalistic associations precisely because a large public abroad was following the course of events.

Abdication or Restitution: The Journalist and the Chancellor Make a Deal

FOR THOMAS MANN, the Eulenburg scandal meant that Maximilian Harden (and hence intellectuals) had defeated feudalism, which was losing ground in any case. It was a victory, even though it “never went into force legally for very German reasons.” Today we know that Harden demanded a high price for agreeing not to take his case again to the supreme court of the Empire (Reichsgericht)—a payment in symbolic capital. No other German intellectual achieved the same level of success. The journalist insisted on and received a document from the government stating that his fierce attack on the foundations of the political order was motivated by patriotism. Its contents were not intended for publication, but he was permitted to show it to anyone he wished, as long as that person kept it confidential. Even though Thomas Mann was a friend of Harden’s, he clearly never had the pleasure of holding in his own hands this document, in which the government of the Empire symbolically went down on bended knee before Harden. If he had, he would no doubt have omitted the qualification he added to intellectuals’ victory over the remnants of feudalism.

Chancellor Bülow and Harden had come to this arrangement in the spring of 1909, and while it brought a formal end to the Eulenburg scandal, it came too late to save the prestige of the Prussian-German monarchy. The fact that the chancellor agreed to a compromise with the most controversial intellectual in the country was a political necessity. In his memoirs Eulenburg deplored most of all that the government had not tried to reach an “understanding” with Harden in the early phase of the scandal. Now he regretted having urged Wilhelm II to stand firm and not attempt to buy off Harden and his attack journalism in 1888, as soon as he had ascended the throne. Eulenburg alleged that Harden had made such an offer to the Kaiser before he joined Bismarck's opposition against Wilhelm II. Even if there is no proof for this claim, it remains clear that Wilhelm II and his closest advisers were never prepared to be this flexible in the political arena; they remained stubborn until the empire went down in defeat in 1918.