Embellished with a gilded iguana and a bouquet of fruits topped with a pineapple, an ostentatious piece of queer history sold on April 24 for €300,000 at Lempertz in Berlin. The 116-centimeter porcelain vase is thought to have been made as a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, to his friend Prince Philipp of Eulenburg-Hertefeld.
Little known today, the relationship between the Kaiser and the prince lay at the heart of the Eulenburg Affair, a scandal historian Norman Domeier says shook Europe and transformed public opinion on the monarchy.
Wilhelm II became Kaiser in 1888. He built a reputation as a feckless, insecure and erratic leader obsessed with his own press coverage and prone to authoritarian tendencies. Eulenburg, a diplomat, rose quickly to become the Kaiser’s most important extra-parliamentary advisor. He hosted hunting and artistic retreats for a close circle of friends at Liebenberg Castle north of Berlin. As later court revelations showed, members of the circle called Eulenburg “Phili” or “Philine” and the Kaiser “Liebchen” (“sweetheart”).
Historian Robert Beachy notes their correspondence was filled with seemingly homoerotic attestations of friendship, and the group cultivated a neo-romantic cult of male friendship. Critics framed them as sycophants abusing proximity to the Kaiser to influence policy.
One such critic was influential nationalist journalist Maximilian Harden. Convinced that leaked information from a Liebenberg hunting party had helped defuse French bluster during the First Moroccan Crisis (1905–06), Harden set out to scandalize the circle to bring it down. On November 17, 1906, he published “Prelude” in Die Zukunft, accusing the Kaiser’s entourage of weaving invisible threads that made it hard for the Reich to breathe and singling out Eulenburg as corrupting. He used “warm,” contemporary slang for homosexual, to insinuate their sexual conduct.
Eulenburg fled to Switzerland “for health reasons” but returned in 1907, enraging Harden. What followed were courts martial and public trials that drew worldwide attention, creating a scandal comparable to the Oscar Wilde trial in England and the Dreyfus affair in France. Domeier emphasizes how the episode exposed fissures in the outwardly pompous but inwardly fragile German Empire.
One sensational case involved General Kuno von Moltke, city commandant of Berlin, who resigned and sued Harden for libel. Harden alleged von Moltke, known within the circle as “Tutu,” donned rouge and “striking costumes” like kimonos and long skirts at home. Von Moltke’s ex-wife, Lili von Elbe, testified she believed his close friendship with Eulenburg ruined their marriage and that he refused to share a bed with her.
Harden called sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld as an expert witness. Hirschfeld, who had founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897—the world’s first homosexual rights organization—assessed von Moltke as exhibiting a feminine side and “unconscious homosexuality.” Harden was acquitted. Hirschfeld’s testimony publicized his then-groundbreaking view that sexual orientation was innate, not a choice or illness—an early version of the “born this way” argument later echoed by emancipatory movements.
The affair also thrust Berlin’s queer scene further into public view. Long before its Weimar-era prominence, Berlin had been known for a vibrant queer nightlife even while male homosexual acts were criminalized under Paragraph 175. The city even maintained a police unit tasked not with stopping homosexual activity but protecting high-ranking figures from blackmail.
Yet the Eulenburg Affair ultimately produced harsher consequences for queer men. According to historian Frederik Doktor, it intensified homophobia and the notion of “degeneracy,” fueling debates about tightening Paragraph 175—measures the Nazis later implemented in 1935—and constraining queer men’s freedoms. Homosexuality became associated with a lack of patriotism or even treason; in 1908 the New Yorker Staatszeitung suggested a “bright and cheery little war” to rid Germany of homosexuality. Press attacks also took an antisemitic turn against Harden, his lawyer Max Bernstein, and Hirschfeld, with newspapers railing against what they framed as Jewish defamation.
The scandal destroyed Eulenburg’s reputation. In a defamation case brought by Harden, witnesses including an elderly fisherman and a petty criminal testified to youthful sexual encounters with the prince. Eulenburg collapsed in court in 1909 and was repeatedly declared too ill to stand trial; he lived in increasing isolation until his death in 1921.
The Liebenberg circle nevertheless continued to orbit Wilhelm II, who remained no stranger to scandal. In 1908, Dietrich Graf von Hülsen-Haeseler, head of the Kaiser’s military cabinet, died suddenly of a heart attack while waltzing at a hunting dinner at Donaueschingen. Some accounts claimed he was dressed in the hostess’s ballgown and a peacock-feathered hat; others said he wore a pink tutu and crown of roses. The incident, and the Kaiser’s subsequent nervous breakdown after making undiplomatic remarks about the British, further weakened the emperor’s standing.
Wilhelm was ultimately sidelined by the military during World War I and abdicated in 1918. He died in exile in the Netherlands in 1941. The Eulenburg Affair remains a pivotal episode in queer history and in the political and cultural unraveling of the German Empire. Edited by: Cathrin Schaer