Bismarck: A Life

by Jonathan Steinberg

  The shrewd political general, Alfred Graf von Waldersee, saw what Bismarck had accomplished, as he recorded in his diary on 11 March:

  Things goes excellently in the Reichstag. The Septennat went through smartly and there are distinct signs that the Zentrum has begun to fall apart. Without doubt Bismarck has against all the doubters once more done one of his master strokes.212

  In foreign affairs, Bismarck had apparently achieved another ‘one of his master strokes’, as Holstein reported to his cousin Ida von Stülpnagel on 14 March:

  Two days ago ratifications of various treaties between Austria, Italy and Germany were exchanged. Above all we now have a defensive alliance with Italy against France. There is in addition an agreement between England and Italy, loosely knit it is true, concerning ‘attempts to preserve the status quo in the Black Sea’. Hatzfeldt telegraphed yesterday evening that Austria had adhered to this agreement. Thus my exertions of the past six months have been crowned with success … After a long gap I have been seeing the Chancellor in recent weeks. He has become an old man. The days when he could claim to think of everything are past: now one has to try to help and support him whenever possible …213

  The Chancellor had secured this complex set of agreement only by conceding to Austria and Britain a set of assurances about Russian expansion into the Mediterranean, the issue which had nearly caused Britain to go to war with Russia in 1878. The so-called Mediterranean Agreement had been concluded two months before the Three Emperors League was about to expire. The gap between Russia and Austria had now widened to such an extent that the Tsar would no longer renew the Treaty. During May and June 1887 Bismarck and the Russian Ambassador in Berlin drew up a separate agreement that has come to be known as the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret agreement signed on 18 June 1887. In it Bismarck promised ‘to give moral and diplomatic support’ for any measures that the Tsar might deem necessary to defend the entrance to the Black Sea.214 The complexity of these diplomatic ties, according to Herbert von Bismarck, had an ulterior motive, as he explained to Holstein:

  The secret treaty, nowadays called the Reinsurance Treaty, had existed since 1887. Prince Bismarck eagerly indulged in his treaty spinning in every direction. The more tangled the mesh, the more difficult it was to find one’s way about in it without Prince Bismarck. ‘My father is the only person who can handle this business,’ as Count Herbert Bismarck used to say.215

  The treaty—whatever its merit or demerits—shows that Bismarck no longer had room to manoeuvre. All the squares on the board had now been blocked and no Bismarckian combinations could conceal that. His victories in domestic and foreign affairs rested on unsteady conditions which must change and soon. The next Reichstag election returned the Reichstag to its balance which the temporary war scare election had upset. The cartel parties lost a catastrophic 84 seats. Windthorst’s Centre returned 106 deputies and became the strongest party in terms of seats in the Reichstag. The hated Social Democratic Party raised its share to 19.7 per cent and won 1. 4 million votes. It became the largest party in the parliament measured by numbers of votes. Bismarck’s ‘enemies of the Reich’ now controlled its parliament. Thus in both foreign and domestic politics the Bismarckian system of government had ceased to function.

  11

  Three Kaisers and Bismarck’s Fall from Power

  The year 1888, ‘the year of Three Kaisers’, changed Bismarck’s position in Germany and the history of Europe. Within the space of a hundred days, William I died, his son Frederick III died also, and a 29-year-old became Kaiser William the Second (1859–1941). This accident of heredity undid Bismarck because he had always depended on royal favour, and that favour no longer sustained him. The way he fell showed up the destructive features of his grip on power in the most lurid of lights. He fell victim to exactly the kind of palace intrigue which had made him great: the secret operations of an unofficial camarilla composed of young Prince William, Philipp Count zu Eulenburg, Friedrich von Holstein, the ‘grey eminence’ of the German Foreign Office, who owed his career to Bismarck, and the ‘political general’, Alfred Count von Waldersee, Moltke’s successor as Chief of the Great General Staff. Bismarck, who had always disdained those in his entourage, now became their victim.

  The first link in the conspiracy came about by accident at a chance meeting at the hunting lodge of Eberhard Graf von Dohna-Schlobitten in Prökelwitz in East Prussia. On 4 May 1886 Herbert Bismarck’s friend, Philipp Count zu Eulenburg (1847–1921), scion of one of the most important Prussian dynasties (his uncle Fritz had been Bismarck’s long-serving and long-suffering Minister of Interior; his first cousin Botho had succeeded his uncle in the same office; another cousin August would become Household Minister to Kaiser Wilhelm II) went to join the hunting party. There he met the young Prince William of Prussia and in effect ‘fell in love’ with the Prince. From 1886 to 1900 when the relationship cooled, Phili and William had a relationship so intense, on Phili’s side ‘boundless love’, that nasty tongues began to wag.1 They had something to wag about when on 8 May 1908, ‘Philine’, as Axel von Varnbüler called him in a letter, was arrested on his grand estate Liebenberg and accused of ‘abnormal’ sexual relations with two fishermen on the Starnberger See near Munich. Phili and his close friends in the high aristocracy had an intense set of interlocking relationships and, though many were married with children (Phili had eight), the surviving correspondence shows unmistakable signs that the group belonged to a clique of what would now be called gay men. They called the young Kaiser ‘Liebchen’ (little Darling) in their correspondence. Kuno Count von Moltke (1847–1921), one of their group, which came to be known in the press as the ‘Liebenberg Round Table’, had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General, and had become a General Adjutant of the Kaiser. He was ‘outed’ in 1907 by the journalist Maximilian Harden and at a series of trials lurid details of his activities—and, with his wife of nine years, non-activities—titillated the taste of the new mass public. There were several suicides in the group of friends around Moltke and Eulenburg and six officers in exclusive guards regiments also committed suicide during the early years of the twentieth century, as homosexuality became a public theme in European societies.2

  On 4 June 1898 Axel Freiherr von Varnbüler, son of the former Württemberg Prime Minister and brother of Hildegard von Spitzemberg, wrote to Kuno Moltke that he had met Kaiser William II recently. ‘Liebchen stopped me in the Tiergarten and, after he had suitably admired my yellow boots and the matching colour tones of my riding habit, he asked me: “what do you know about Kuno? I cannot get anything out of him nor Phili”.’ In the course of the conversation the Kaiser emitted ‘a few strong expressions not to be repeated here’, which showed Varnbüler ‘that he is completely informed and has no illusions any longer’.3 Isabel Hull provides a remarkable portrait of the Kaiser recorded by Walter Rathenau (1867–1922), the businessman, intellectual, and foreign secretary who was murdered as a liberal and a Jew on 24 June 1922 by the right-wing secret military ‘Organization Consul’:4

  There sat a youthful man in a colorful uniform, with odd medals, the white hands full of colored rings, bracelets on his wrists; tender skin, soft hair, small white teeth. A true Prince, intent on the impression [he made], continuously fighting with himself … neediness, softness, a longing for people, a childlike nature ravished … This man must be protected, guarded with a strong arm, against that which he feels but does not know, that which pulls him into the abyss.5

  None of this would have mattered, had Phili Eulenburg not made himself into Bismarck’s most insidious foe by becoming an unofficial adviser of the young Prince. Phili poured gushing streams of extravagant, romantic, and exaggerated flattery over the young man and eased his friends and allies into positions of future power. Eulenburg had many real gifts. He preferred the arts to the barracks and after brief military service in the Prussian foot guards, chose a diplomatic career. He rose fairly rapidly, though Bismarck neither trusted him nor set much store by his abilities. B
ismarck wrote to Herbert that ‘I like him personally. He is charming but in political matters he has no judgement for what matters and what does not; he lets himself be influenced by carping gossip, which he passes on and causes annoyance without reason.’6

  Phili indulged in all the fashionable irrationalisms of the late nineteenth century—spiritualism and séances, nordic mythology, and racism. He wrote song cycles and poetry set in the imaginary swirling mists of Nordic antiquity, and played and sang them to the Kaiser; he had a close and possibly intimate relationship with Count Arthur Gobineau, one of the founders of modern racism, and admired late, overripe romanticism in the visual arts. His politics expressed an equally romantic conservatism, contempt for the masses, mixed with great sensitivity and shrewdness about people, and a light and charming prose style and manner.

  At this time, Eulenburg made his first contact with Friedrich von Holstein, the most senior, non-ministerial civil servant in the Foreign Office, and the third member of the camarilla. Holstein, a secretive bachelor, had once been a devoted admirer of Bismarck but had become alienated from his former master. He believed—not without reason—that Bismarck’s foreign policy had become too complicated and had no other purpose than to buttress Bismarck’s power by making it impossible for anybody to replace him. Holstein had no other life than the Foreign Ministry. He worked long hours, read everything, knew everything, and now began to spin intrigues against Bismarck and even more against his immediate superior, Herbert Count von Bismarck, Phili’s close friend. If Phili in Bismarck’s eyes lacked judgement and listened too much to ‘carping gossip’, Holstein had judgement enough for both of them and provided Eulenburg with informed opinions on policy and personnel as well. Holstein wanted neither promotion nor honours, so, in the simple sense, he served without fear or favour. On a deeper level, he knew that he was right, that the Bismarcks had become power-mad and utterly self-involved, and hence a danger to the state. He was thus a principled traitor, powerful and invisible, a kind of spider in a web of intrigue. Holstein flattered and patronized Eulenburg in equal measure, because he saw that the triumvirate—William–Eulenburg–Holstein—could give him the power that he needed to rectify the errors of the late Bismarck Era.

  Holstein and Eulenburg wanted to enlist the full-time intriguer and future Chief of the General Staff, Alfred Count von Waldersee, to work with them. They first had to overcome Waldersee’s suspicion, as this frank extract from his diary makes clear.

  In the great game of intrigue, more clarity emerges. It concerns, as I correctly supposed, power in the future royal house. Bismarck father and son intend to rule alone. They imagine they can control the Crown Prince. They make the mistake of alienating everybody with whom they might have worked together and show that they do not understand the Crown Princess. I am certain that she will soon tire of her new friends. In order to rule alone everybody in the way, who has influence or might have it, must be eliminated. In that they use contemptible methods. One of the worst agents is Legation Councillor von Holstein. He is so clever as never to show himself in the world so that lots of people are scarcely aware he exists. I too am on the list of the condemned! This is particularly strange since up to now I have belonged to the group who stuck immovably to the Chancellor and intervened on his behalf.7

  It took Holstein a year to recruit Waldersee for the camarilla but on 31 May 1887

  Waldersee joined the plotters, as he recorded with satisfaction:

  Today I was at the Foreign Office and restored the old friendly relationship with Herr von Holstein. Third parties seem to have had an interest in this reconciliation and assert that there were misunderstandings in the way. That may be so. I took the hand offered gladly and had the impression that a weight fell from Holstein’s heart.8

  He who rises by camarilla will fall by camarilla seems to be the conclusion here. Bismarck comprehensively and systematically betrayed his chief Otto von Manteuffel in the 1850s. He sent secret dispatches written for Manteuffel first to Leopold von Gerlach and only then to the Minister-President. He wrote frequently to von Gerlach, a key figure in the camarilla around Frederick William IV, behind Manteuffel’s back, and tried to influence policy and to advance his career. With his one-sided morality he could not see the irony in his situation in 1888–9. Holstein justified his treachery with more claim to our consideration; his intrigues had nothing to do with personal advantage. The letters flowed regularly and confidentially between Holstein and Eulenburg. They discussed personnel and policy with equal frankness but had to be careful. On 16 June 1886 Holstein wrote to Eulenburg that ‘Herbert writes me that he has asked you for letters and if they are sufficiently factual and objective, as is to be expected, he will send them unchanged to His Highness. So be warned. With best wishes, your devoted Holstein.’9

  The time for the camarilla to grab the levers of power had not yet arrived but it moved closer when, on 6 March 1887, Dr Gerhardt, Professor of Medicine at the University of Berlin, diagnosed a small growth on the left vocal cord of the Crown Prince. He failed to remove it surgically so he tried to burn it out but also without success.10 The Crown Prince Frederick, the most successful field commander during the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, had been gradually losing heart and equanimity. He had written to Stosch:

  In the present regime … every capable person is subordinated. They can only obey; they no longer think independently. There is the further consideration that I feel little inclination to do business through a major-domo [Bismarck] … I am resigned. I lack a joyful or assured spirit. I am inspired by no other wish than to spend the couple of years that yet remain to me as quietly and as retired as possible in my household and be swiftly placed in the background by the new sun [William].11

  On 4 May 1886, Stosch wrote to von Normann:

  he [the Crown Prince] began to unburden his heart. Bismarck, father and son, treat him simply with scorn. He feels so isolated; only Albedyll has taken up with him, because he is in bad with Prince William—What could I reply? I have sympathy for the Prince in the depths of my soul. You must have attended the Good Friday Lamentations in a Catholic Cathedral. They have always deeply moved me. I had exactly the same feelings at the unending laments of this poor weak soul. I do not know any help for it.12

  What had happened to the confident and successful soldier of 1870? That Frederick had energy and curiosity. On his free days he went off to look at French cathedrals and châteaux with his guidebook. He intervened vigorously in debates and confronted Bismarck. By 1887, the Crown Prince had become a ‘poor weak soul’ and may have been what today we could call clinically depressed. In March of 1887 it became clear that he had cancer of the throat.

  There began a desperate struggle between the Crown Princess and the German medical establishment over his treatment. On 29 April 1887 the Crown Princess wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria, from Bad Ems:

  His spirits are far better here than at Berlin, and his throat seems daily improving. All the irritation, swelling and redness is fast subsiding, he never coughs, and has not the feeling of soreness, but part of the little ‘granula’ which Professor Gerhardt could not take off with the hot wire, because the throat was too much irritated, is still on the surface of one of the Stimmbänder [vocal cords] and will have to be removed when we go home.13

  The royal couple then moved from Bad Ems to San Remo on the Italian Riviera for the winter. Everything she did was wrong and earned her criticism, as she wrote to her mother on 27 October 1887: ‘I am driven quite wild with the newspapers of Berlin and dear Ct Radolinsky keeps writing that people are so angry with me for choosing San Remo and for not calling in another German doctor. Really it is excessively impertinent of these people.’14 On 6 November Sir Morell Mackenzie, the most famous English oncologist, arrived in San Remo to examine the Crown Prince, who asked if it was cancer. Morell replied: ‘I am sorry to say, sir, it looks very much like it, but it is impossible to be certain.’15 The struggle became embittered because Bismarck and h
is captive press had waged a campaign of vilification against the Crown Princess for years, which she recognized and described in another letter to her mother:

  To return to Prince Bismarck, he has so much that is brutal and cynical in his nature, so little that is noble and upright, he is so completely a man of another century than ours, that as an example or ideal he becomes very dangerous. He is a patriot and is a genius, but as a school there could not be a worse one. Opinions such as William holds are very much the fashion nowadays in Germany—they have half created the immense power Bismarck possesses and he has half created them.16

  Bismarck planted spies in the royal household at the Neues Palais to watch the Crown Princess. Hugo Prince von Radolin (1841–1917) was appointed Marshall of the Palace in the entourage of the Crown Prince. Radolin, a Germanized Polish prince, belonged to the Bismarck connection and rose through Bismarck to ambassadorial duties in due course. Lady Ponsonby (1832–1916), the wife of Sir Henry Ponsonby, private secretary to the Queen, watched the situation of the royal couple at close hand:

  I don’t think the Queen realizes what an extraordinary state of things exists in Germany in the way of espionage and intrigue. They, the foreign office, which means Bismarck, wanted to put a man of their own about the Crown Princess so as to more effectually control the Crown Prince when he became Emperor. Seckendorff refused to play the spy … then they appointed Radolinsky (Court Marshall to the Crown Prince) with orders to get rid of Seckendorff … Radolinksky’s manner of defending the Crown Princess simply consists in spreading these reports and trying to detach her family from her.17