Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  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, Bülow 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,80 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 kind81 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 hinged entirely on Ernst. “Harden sent 145 printed accusations82 into court against me,” Eulenburg wrote to Bülow. “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 years83 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.

  Bülow, 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 Bülow’s behavior: “Only one thing84 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, Bülow oozed condolence: “My dear Phili:85 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, Bülow appeared to make up his mind about Eulenburg. His friend, he said, was a man of “abnormal instincts,”86 “perilous inclination,”87 and lack of “erotic integrity.”88 The fate of “poor Phili,” he said, suggested “an obvious comparison89 with both the fate and the abnormal inclination... of Oscar Wilde.”

  Eulenburg lived at Liebenberg in seclusion until his death in 1921. From time to time, during these twelve years, court-appointed doctors burst in on him unexpectedly to see whether he was strong enough to return to court. Always their verdict was “Prince Eulenburg is not fit90 to stand trial.”

  The scandal horrified the Kaiser—but William missed his friends. In October 1907, as the first Moltke-Harden trial was beginning, William suffered a nervous collapse and went to bed for two days. At Christmas that year, he wrote to Houston Stewart Chamberlain: “It has been a very difficult year91 which has caused me an infinite amount of worry. A trusted group of friends was suddenly broken up through... insolence, slander and lying. To have to see the names of one’s friends dragged through all the gutters of Europe without being able or entitled to help is terrible;” William never saw Philip Eulenburg again, although from time to time he was heard to sigh, “Poor Phili.”92 In 1927, nine years after his abdication and flight to Holland, ex-Kaiser William II wrote to Eulenburg’s son that he believed Philip Eulenburg had been “absolutely innocent.”93

  fn1 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.

  fn2 Immediately after the Moltke-Harden trial, Bülow 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 Bülow’s behalf. Bülow’s name was rapidly cleared and Brand was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. During the trial, Bülow testified that he “considered the practices in question78 loathsome in the highest degree and quite incomprehensible.”

  Chapter 37

  The Daily Telegraph Interview

  At the end of October 1907, as the first Moltke-Harden trial was beginning in Berlin, the Kaiser—ordinarily eager to travel, especially to England—faced an English trip he dreaded. William had been shocked and infuriated by the alleged actions of his intimate friends, and was mortified that these charges had been published in newspapers throughout the world. What were the English thinking? What must his English relatives be saying about him behind his back? The questions were urgent because he and the Empress Augusta were about to set out on a state visit to Great Britain. The trip, scheduled to begin November 11, had been planned months in advance. In June, William had written to his uncle King Edward VII that he looked forward to seeing Windsor Castle and to “good sport in the dear old park1 I know so w
ell.” Then, on October 31, William telephoned Chancellor von Bülow to say that he had had an accident. An attack of giddiness had forced him to stretch out on a sofa; there he had fainted and rolled onto the floor. “My head hit the ground2 so hard that my wife was alarmed by the noise and came rushing to me, terrified,” he told Bülow. Because of this, he continued, he could not possibly think of undertaking the exhausting trip to England; already he had wired this news to King Edward. In fact, the telegram to the King described the illness differently: “bronchitis and acute cough3... a virulent attack of influenza.... I feel quite unable to meet the strain of the program so kindly prepared for me.” The King was furious: “I cannot say how upset4 I am,” he told Knollys. Sir Edward Grey immediately telegraphed Sir Frank Lascelles, the British Ambassador in Berlin, that “there is little doubt5 that this decision would be attributed to the recent scandals in Berlin and nothing that we could say or do would alter the impression.” Lascelles delivered this message to the Chancellor and added, “The worst of it is6 that about an hour ago I was in the Tiergarten and met the Emperor, who is alleged to be so seriously ill, galloping along... with a group of his aides, in very good spirits.”

  In his Memoirs, Bülow said bluntly that William was too embarrassed to go to England. After seeing Lascelles, the Chancellor sent a sharp note to the Kaiser. William immediately changed his mind. He invited the Chancellor to join him that evening at the theater, where he informed Bülow that his indisposition had disappeared, he had taken a refreshing gallop, eaten a hearty meal, and now was ready to go wherever the Chancellor wished. Bülow informed Lascelles that the Kaiser would be coming to England as planned.

  On November 11, an unusually thick fog hung over the Channel and southern England. As the Hohenzollern approached Portsmouth, reported The Times, “the German squadron7 and the Admiralty were practically engaged in a game of hide and seek.” Later that day, when the German party reached Windsor Castle, the fog was so thick that from a window in St. George’s Hall, it was impossible to see across the Quadrangle as the state carriages arrived through the Royal Entrance. William, wearing his British admiral’s uniform, nevertheless was ebullient. “It seems like coming home8 again to Windsor,” he told the Mayor. “I’m always glad to be here.” At a state banquet for 180 guests the following night, King Edward inserted a mischievous dig into his formal welcome: “For a long time9 we had hoped to receive this visit, but recently we feared that, owing to indisposition, it would not take place. Fortunately, Their Majesties are now both looking in such good health that I can only hope their stay in England will much benefit them.”

  The visit’s public climax was a reception in London. “Sunshine and breeze10 and cloud-flecked blue sky, more reminiscent of April than November” greeted the Kaiser as he drove through cheering crowds and waving banners from Paddington Station to the Guildhall. One large banner, “BLUT 1ST DICKER ALS WASSER”11 (“Blood is thicker than water”), touched him especially and he added the expression to his speech later that morning. His address to the Lord Mayor referred to his first visit as Emperor in 1891, when he had been given the Freedom of the City: “Sixteen years ago,12 I said that my aim was above all the maintenance of peace. History, I venture to hope, will do me the justice that I have pursued this aim unswervingly ever since. The main support and base for the peace of the world is the maintenance of good relations between our two countries and I shall further strengthen them as far as lies within my power. Blood is thicker than water. The German nation’s wishes coincide with mine.”

  Haldane, whose German was fluent, was called upon for extra duty, as some of the German guests did not speak English. One day, he escorted General Karl von Einem, the Prussian War Minister, and other members of the Kaiser’s party to London, where he showed them the War Office and invited them to lunch at his house in Queen Anne’s Gate. (Afterwards, he noted, they wished to visit, not the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey, but Harrods.) Einem had special reason to be grateful to Haldane. After the Windsor Castle banquet, when the gentlemen were sitting in the smoking room with the King and the Kaiser, Haldane, “next to General von Einem13... noticed that he was in pain.... [I] tracked the source of his discomfort to his feet; his pumps were too tight across the instep. As soon as the two sovereigns left, I turned to the War Minister and said it was the custom of Windsor Castle as soon as royalty left to kick off our shoes, and I set the example. He looked at me gratefully.”

  It was understood before the visit that political issues would not be discussed at Windsor. The Kaiser, however, was incapable of compartmentalizing his conversation and, while talking to Haldane, brought up the matter of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway. Germany had obtained a concession from the Sultan to build the Turkish section of the new line; the project was delayed by British concern that the railroad would open a potentially hostile approach to India through the Persian Gulf. What did England want? William asked. “I said I knew14 we wanted a ‘gate’ to protect India from troops coming down the new railway.”fn1 “I will give you the ‘gate,’”15 William replied. That night, during the theatrical performance which followed dinner, Haldane sat behind the Kaiser. Leaning forward, he asked William whether he was serious about “giving us a ‘gate.’16... Next morning, a helmeted Prussian guardsman, one of those the Emperor had brought with him, knocked loudly on my door and handed me a message from the Emperor that he had meant what he said.” That evening, the Kaiser invited Haldane to his apartment after the theatricals. Haldane went at one in the morning and discovered William talking and smoking with Baron Wilhelm von Schoen (the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs), Einem, and Metternich. Haldane bowed and began to withdraw, saying, “I feel myself an intruder17 because it is like being at a meeting of Your Majesty’s Cabinet,” he said. “Be a member of my Cabinet. I appoint you,” William responded. At three A.M. Haldane left the Kaiser’s apartments and groped his way down dark passageways back to his own room in a different part of the castle.

  Politicians in both countries were pleased by the visit. “I wish to express my satisfaction18 at the welcome of the Imperial couple by the King and people,” Bülow told the Reichstag. “I believe that when the history of the last decade is written... it will appear that the tension between England and Germany which has long oppressed the world was due in the last resort to a great mutual misunderstanding. Each attributed to the other purposes that it did not entertain.... I am certain that I speak for this House and the German people when I say that such peaceful and friendly feelings are shared by us.” Sir Edward Grey agreed: “It is bound to have19 a good effect.” Morley hoped that “the visit of the German Emperor20... will much improve the chances of a little decent calm in Europe.” Esher, writing in his journal, introduced a discordant note: “Our King makes a better show21 than William II. He has more graciousness and dignity. William is ungrateful, nervous, and plain.... Grey had two long talks with him. At the first, he declaimed violently against Jews. ‘There are far too many of them in my country. They want stamping out. If I did not restrain my people, there would be Jew-baiting.’”

  The state visit lasted a week. At the end, the Empress Augusta returned to Germany. William, delighted by his enthusiastic reception, so different from the murky atmosphere of Berlin, decided to prolong his stay on a private basis. He rented Highcliffe Castle near Bournemouth in Hampshire and invited the owner, Colonel Edward Montague Stuart-Wortley, a Regular Army officer, to stay on as his guest. William delighted in these surroundings: “The great British people22... received me with warmth and open arms. During my stay, I sampled, as I had long wanted to do, all the delights of English home and country life. Comfortable affluence, excellent people in all walks of life, with all classes giving clear evidence of culture in their elegance and cleanliness. Pleasant intercourse between gentlemen on an equal footing without all the ceremonial of royalty. I found it immensely refreshing and soothing.”

  During this happy sojourn on the British coast, William talked freely to Colonel
Stuart-Wortley about his desire for England’s friendship and his frustration that England constantly misunderstood and rejected his good intentions. Stuart-Wortley took careful notes.

  During the week in October 1908 in which Austria precipitated an international crisis by annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bernhard von Bülow was at his seaside villa on Norderney, a Frisian island on the North Sea coast. “Overwhelmed with work,23 absorbed from morning to night in these difficult problems,” Bülow “received from the Kaiser, who was at Romintern, a bulky, almost illegible manuscript, written on bad typing paper, with a covering letter asking if I saw any objection to its publication.” The manuscript, written in English, was the draft of an extended interview with Kaiser William II on the subject of Anglo-German relations. Using remarks William had made during his three weeks at Highcliffe the previous autumn, Colonel Stuart-Wortley was asking permission to publish the interview in the London Daily Telegraph. In Stuart-Wortley’s view, if the English public knew the extent of the Kaiser’s Anglophilia, relations between the two countries would greatly improve. The Kaiser, too, wished for publication, but, in accordance with the German constitution, was asking the Chancellor’s advice and approval. William demanded only that Bülow “on no account forward it24 to the Foreign Office in Berlin.”