Kaiser Wilhelm II

by Christopher Clark

  Other setbacks occurred when Wilhelm attempted high-handed interventions in the sphere of civil society. In July 1890 he refused point blank to ratify the election of the left-liberal Max Forckenbeck as mayor of Berlin because Forckenbeck had voted against increased military expenditure in the Reichstag. But the ministers insisted unanimously on Forckenbeck’s ratification and Wilhelm was forced to back down. The point at issue in this case was not simply ministerial power or solidarity, but the inviolability of Berlin’s municipal autonomy. Wilhelm ran into similar trouble when he tried to have a young physics lecturer at the University of Berlin sacked on the grounds that he was a Social Democrat. The result was a storm of protest in defence of academic freedom by liberal and conservative professors who, though authoritarian in their institutional politics and staunchly anti-socialist, valued the autonomy of their university more than they feared its infiltration by revolutionaries.67

  It is true that division within the ranks of the ministry could enhance the monarch’s influence on the policy-making process. John Röhl has shown that after 1892 the increasing indiscipline and factional strife within the ministry created opportunities for monarchical intervention by encouraging ministers to appeal to the sovereign in disputes with their colleagues.68 But intervention of this kind was inherently reactive rather than creative; its timing and context were dictated not by the sovereign, but by the high politics of inter-ministerial rivalry. Nor does Wilhelm appear, during the early and mid-1890s, to have made systematic use of placemen in order to implement a specific programme. His allegiances were too diverse and the ministers too independent to permit the consistent application of influence. Wilhelm certainly had the power (and the inclination) to intervene in the resolution of specific issues by backing one minister against another, as when he supported the Cartel element in the ministry against Zedlitz’s confessional school policy, or when he backed Botho von Eulenburg against Caprivi over the anti-socialist law. Ultimately, however, such adventures merely revealed that beyond the ministry there lay the even more formidable – because public – barrier of the Reichstag and its sceptical majorities.

  The emperor’s friends

  Faced with such opposition from his ‘responsible’ ministers and cut off from the policy-making process by increasingly frequent journeys and erratic work habits, Wilhelm turned to personal assistants and friends for information, advice and moral support. By 1890 one figure above all had come to exercise a decisive influence upon Wilhelm: Count Philipp zu Eulenburg, Prussian envoy to the small German state of Oldenburg. He was the fixed star at the centre of a loose coalition of figures including Holstein (in the early 1890s), the Grand Duke of Baden and (in the later 1890s) the diplomat and subsequent chancellor Bernhard von Bülow. It has often been noted that courts are places where rank and office matter less than proximity to the person of the monarch.69 But Eulenburg’s closeness to Wilhelm was emotional rather than spatial – he discouraged efforts to place him physically at the monarch’s side by giving him an office at court, and generally saw Wilhelm only at intervals, during recreation together.

  The two men first met in May 1886 during a hunting holiday on the estate of a mutual friend; Eulenburg was thirty-nine, Wilhelm twenty-seven.70 From the beginning of their relationship, Eulenburg singled himself out as a ‘friend’ whose intercourse with the monarch was focused on loftier things than politics (music, literature, the occult) and unsullied by ulterior motives. Some months after their first meeting Wilhelm wrote to Eulenburg:

  When I come together with people, my instinct generally informs me what manner of man it is that I am consorting with and [this instinct] has rarely let me down. In your case I did not need long to see that you are a sympathetic, warmly feeling character such as one rarely encounters in the world and of whom especially princes have such a need. Unfortunately, our kind are all too often condemned to hear nothing but flatteries and intrigues… […] Incidentally, my judgment has been endorsed by Princess and Prince Bismarck, which made me doubly happy.71

  In view of the intimate tone of their (though more especially Eulenburg’s) correspondence and of Eulenburg’s bisexuality, later publicized with disastrous effect in the national press (see below), historians have pondered on the possibility of a sexual relationship between the emperor and his friend. In the light of what else we know about Wilhelm (his conventionality in sexual matters; the one-off character of the Eulenburg connection), this seems extremely unlikely; nor do we need to postulate such a relationship in order to explain the character of the connection or its political significance. Eulenburg was quite simply a master of the art of friendship and a supremely able courtier. His letters deftly combined the frivolous with the political, sycophancy and declarations of love with affectionate but earnest criticism. With their studied informality, Eulenburg’s letters constantly drew attention to the personal, unmediated nature of the relationship: ‘I truly detest having to approach [Your Majesty] in diplomatic buckled shoes, instead of with a shotgun over my arm or a songbook in my hand…’72

  Eulenburg understood instinctively how to break rules by degrees in order to deepen intimacy. A characteristic letter of February 1894 presented sketches of life at the Bavarian court during the Fasching season – ball-guests with fat stomachs and dripping faces, the capacious bosoms of the older ladies ‘taking flight’ in the heat of the française, the Countess Osten-Sacken ‘whose lower lip dangled almost to her brooch and whose hair hung in long strands over her wet brows’.73 Another letter described in detail a Munich military parade at which proceedings were disrupted by the misguided efforts of two bulls to copulate in front of the royal princesses. These letters were masterpieces of controlled transgression. Naughty enough to tickle but not to offend, and peppered with a camp misogyny, they placed writer and reader in a privileged, conspiratorial sphere above the ludicrous antics and vain show of the courts. Small wonder that Eulenburg refused a post at court on the grounds that his relationship with the Kaiser could be better conducted through letters than daily personal contact.

  In fact Eulenburg’s affection for the Kaiser, though genuine, had never been entirely untainted by an ambition to exert influence. As early as August 1886, Eulenburg reported to Herbert von Bismarck that he had spent a five-day stint with Prince Wilhelm in Munich using ‘the confidence he has in me […] to battle against his English antipathies’.74 Eulenburg provided Wilhelm with advice and support during the struggle with Bismarck; after the chancellor’s fall from power, he emerged, initially with Holstein and later with Bernhard von Bülow as a behind-the-scenes adviser of unparalleled influence, supplying information for the Kaiser, recommending candidates for senior offices and steering the monarch through political crises. It was Eulenburg who proposed his close friend Bernhard von Bülow, first for the Reich Secretariat of Foreign Affairs and later for the chancellorship. As we shall see, moreover, it was Philipp Eulenburg who guided Wilhelm through the titanic clash with his ministers that broke out over military justice reform in 1895. He was, according to John Röhl, nothing less than the architect of the Kaiser’s ‘personal rule’ after 1897.75

  The importance of such advice to the sovereign can hardly be denied. But we should remember that the relationship between Wilhelm and his behind-the-scenes helpers incorporated an important element of dependency. As Carl Schmitt observed, the distribution of power between the sovereign and his adviser is always equivocal: he who has power needs advice, and he who proffers advice shares power.76 The political work of Eulenburg and his sometime collaborators is a case in point, for they acted as often to ‘handle’ and curb, as to reinforce, the initiatives of the Kaiser.77 In September 1890 it was Eulenburg who persuaded a furious Wilhelm to back down over the election of Max Forckenbeck to the mayoralty of Berlin. Eulenburg had sometimes to rebuke the emperor for his tactless public behaviour, a task he undertook with surprising verve and candour. On occasion, the Eulenburg connection could operate in a way that curtailed the monarch’s freedom of action by m
anipulating the options without his knowledge. In autumn 1892, for example, Holstein on the one hand, and Wilhelm and Caprivi on the other supported different candidates for the ambassadorship to St Petersburg. A complex intrigue was set in motion in order to circumvent the monarch’s initiative: Holstein asked Eulenburg to ask the Russian ambassador in Munich to ask the tsar to express formally to Caprivi a preference for Werder. At the same time Eulenburg worked on Wilhelm, persuading him that to turn down the tsar’s request would be tantamount to an insult. This extraordinary manoeuvre was a success. A similarly ramified intrigue had to be launched in 1893 to prevent Wilhelm from giving the ambassadorship in Rome to one of his favourite military attachés. Wilhelm’s relationship with the little group of friends was thus of a characteristically equivocal nature: empowerment and support were coupled with the restraint and management of the sovereign.

  Kaiser vs ministers: the Köller crisis

  In Wilhelm’s view, the fundamental problem of the Caprivi chancellorship had lain in the chancellor’s unyielding temperament. During four years in office, Caprivi had submitted his resignation no fewer than five times, ‘as soon as the Kaiser wanted anything decisive’.78 The appointment in his place of Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst promised to inaugurate a very different relationship between the sovereign and the foremost minister. As John Röhl has pointed out, Hohenlohe’s advanced age (seventy-five), his conciliatory manner, his dependence on the Kaiser for discretionary financial support and his close blood ties with the royal family (Wilhelm addressed him as ‘Uncle’) made it unlikely that he would adopt the kind of distant, confrontational stance that had been a hallmark of the Caprivi chancellorship.79 In a letter to Philipp Eulenburg, Wilhelm expressed his satisfaction: ‘I am so delighted with old Hohenlohe, and everything goes so beautifully and nicely. We have no secrets from one another and I feel as though I were in paradise.’80

  Once again, however, the honeymoon was to prove shortlived. Within months of the new apppointment, Wilhelm was locked in serious conflict with the government. The reason for this now lay less in the personality of the chancellor than in the growing dissatisfaction of the ministry. The ministers had two main grievances. Firstly, they felt they were being circumvented by influences closer to the throne. Wilhelm made no secret, for example, of preferring the advice of Hahnke, the chief of his Military Cabinet, over that of Bronsart, the Prussian minister of war, who, unlike his ‘irresponsible’ colleague, had to explain and defend government policy in parliament. Secondly, the ministers felt that Wilhelm’s openly anti-Centre attitude was compromising their effectiveness in parliament. Several ministers, notably the imperial foreign secretary, Marschall, and Bronsart, took the view that a more constructive relationship between government and parliament would come about only if a ‘complete state of peace’ were established with the Catholic Church through the fulfilment of its legitimate wishes.81 But Wilhelm – reinforced by elements in his entourage – continued to argue that concessions to the Catholics would create turmoil within the educated classes of the nation. He also obstructed a rapprochement by souring the atmosphere with public remarks and behaviour calculated to alienate the Centre’s leadership. ‘The position of the ministers is becoming utterly impossible,’ Bronsart complained in February 1895. ‘One wears oneself out in parliament trying to achieve something, and then anonymous advisers come along and ruin everything. Things cannot go on like this.’82

  In the spring and summer of 1895 a major clash over proposed reforms to Prussian military law helped to focus ministerial ill-feeling against the monarch. The most contentious aspect of the proposed reform concerned the admission of members of the public to courts martial. In France, Italy, Britain and even Russia, provision was made for public hearings in at least some military trials. The same had applied in Bavaria since 1869. The Reichstag had passed motions calling for reform in this area in 1889 and 1892. But Prussian military justice was still administered under the antiquated code of 1845, and did not allow for public hearings under any circumstances. Trials were secret, judges were always officers, defence counsel were often barred, the initiation and often the outcome of proceedings were at the whim of the local commander. Reform was clearly long overdue, and it was strongly supported by Bronsart and Hohenlohe.83

  Wilhelm’s adamant refusal to countenance such reforms led to the most serious political crisis of the 1890s. His intransigence owed much to the influence of the military entourage, which emerged during the crisis – uniquely – as a political factor in its own right. Like all his nineteenth-century predecessors, Wilhelm was surrounded by a crowd of military personnel: wing-adjutants, adjutants-general, generals à la suite and members of the military and naval cabinets. This uniformed retinue was a fairly loose and disparate body. However, as Isabel Hull demonstrated in a classic study of the imperial entourage, the threat of military justice reform generated an unprecedented political mobilization.84 The chief of the Military Cabinet, Wilhelm von Hahnke, led a formidable campaign against the Bronsart proposals, in which the entire retinue, down to the most unassuming wing-adjutant, closed ranks against the ministry. Indeed they did so with a unanimity and single-mindedness that seems to have forced Wilhelm’s hand. Wilhelm was certainly opposed to the draft bill at the outset, largely because it included clauses designed to water down his right to confirm or quash court verdicts, but there is much evidence to suggest that he tried at various points during 1895 to extricate himself from his commitment to secret trials, and was prevented from doing so by the peer group pressure that operated within the retinue. In the words of the Grand Duke of Baden: ‘The Kaiser, after he has discussed such questions before his entourage, feels himself bound on certain crucial points. In such a situation, it is doubly difficult to modify his decisions.’85 Here again, we encounter the dialectic of empowerment and constraint that was so characteristic of Wilhelm’s experience of sovereign office.

  Throughout the spring and summer of 1895 Wilhelm faced a ministry that refused to shelve the proposed reforms. This deadlock set the scene for the Köller crisis of autumn 1895 that some scholars have seen as a turning point in Wilhelm’s reign. Essentially, the crisis blew up when it emerged that someone had been leaking details of confidential ministerial deliberations on the military justice question to the Kaiser and members of the military entourage. Suspicion immediately fell upon the arch-conservative interior minister, Ernst von Köller. Ever since his appointment in the autumn of 1894, Köller had seen himself as the Kaiser’s man in the ministry, and had championed a number of Wilhelm’s quixotic personal causes, including a proposal to criminalize disrespectful references to the person of Wilhelm I. Köller’s zestful support for such initiatives had made him unpopular among the ministers. There was thus outrage when enquiries into the leak revealed that it was Köller who, in his zeal to thwart reform and uphold the autonomy of the throne, had begun informing on his colleagues. After some hesitation, Chancellor Hohenlohe was persuaded to present Wilhelm with a formal demand, in the name of the entire ministry, that Köller be dismissed. Wilhelm blankly refused, on the grounds that the demand constituted an assault on the royal prerogative: ‘I dismiss my ministers myself.’86

  Astonishingly, the ministers stuck to their guns and, having prevailed upon Köller himself to resign, pressured the emperor into accepting his resignation. To add insult to injury, they turned down the candidates Wilhelm favoured as possible replacements. This frontal attack on the monarch’s freedom of action in an area – appointments – so crucial to the exercise of his power left Wilhelm shaken and enraged. He told his cabinet secretary Lucanus:

  Twice I let it be known that I had not lost faith in Köller, and that therefore I had no reason to dismiss him, yet this was simply ignored by the ministry. Instead they answered by boycotting Köller and presenting me with the alternative of dismissing Köller or all of them. The case is without precedent in Prussian history. If we allow it to pass unreprimanded, we shall create a very dangerous precede
nt.87

  In the short term, the Köller crisis looked like a victory for the principle of collegial government over the capricious interventionism of Wilhelm II. But victory was shortlived. In the longer term, the ministry was far too disunited to practise solidarity in the face of monarchical interventions. Its cohesion was undermined not only by divergent views on policy, but also by the political ambition of individual ministers such as Miquel and Posadowsky, who continued after 1895, as they had done before, to exploit imperial favour for the advancement of their own projects and careers. A further, structural, reason for the docility of the ministers lay in their peculiar position, suspended, as it were, between parliament and the executive. Upon whom could the ministers depend, if not upon the monarch? It was quite impossible, as Hohenlohe later remarked, to ‘govern against public opinion as well as against the Kaiser. To govern against the Kaiser and the public is to hang in mid-air.’88 Precisely because the political scenery was so fragmented, and because ministers were not, by contrast with contemporary Britain, connected by party membership with a parliamentary majority, they were all the more dependent on the executive, which is to say upon the personal favour of the monarch. By the spring of 1896 the ministerial fronde had broken up and the crisis was over.

  Following the setbacks over Köller, Wilhelm and Philipp Eulenburg worked on a secret strategy for restoring the authority of the monarchy. In an extraordinary memorandum of August 1896, Eulenburg listed a menu of options that included a coup d’état, but was carefully weighted to steer the emperor towards a constitutional course.89 Eulenburg’s goal was to strengthen the position of the monarch by avoiding open confrontations and establishing a more harmonious and hierarchical relationship with the ministry. The key to this strategy was to be the dismissal – at an appropriate juncture – of the self-willed foreign secretary, Marschall, and the appointment in his place of Eulenburg’s close friend Bernhard von Bülow, then German ambassador in Rome. After a decent interval it would be possible to see Hohenlohe off into retirement and appoint Bülow to the chancellorship.