General in Wilhelm II’s entourage whose libel suits against Harden drove the Eulenburg affair
Named as homosexual by Harden in 1907, he resigned as commandant of Berlin and sued for libel; the trials became the centre of the Eulenburg affair.
A Prussian officer born a count of the old noble Moltke family in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He was aide-de-camp to Wilhelm II from 1893 to 1897, became a major general in 1904 and city commandant of Berlin in 1905. He belonged to Eulenburg’s Liebenberg circle around the Kaiser, and when Maximilian Harden named him as homosexual he stepped down as commandant in 1907 and sued Harden; those trials became the core of the Eulenburg affair. He died in Breslau in 1923.
Also known as: Cuno von Moltke
Activities and affiliations
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1893–1907
Germany state institutionsMain
Military command
Related historical events
The Eulenburg affair
In 1896 he married the widow Lily von Kruse-Neetzow, but they divorced in 1899 when she discovered his years-long affair with Philipp zu Eulenburg, then ambassador in Vienna; in 1906 she passed his letters to Eulenburg to Maximilian Harden. Harden blamed the Liebenberg circle for the Kaiser’s refusal to risk war with France in the First Moroccan Crisis and attacked it again and again, and he became one of the intimates accused of offences under Paragraph 175. When Harden declined his challenge to a duel, he sued Harden for libel in June 1907. At the first trial in October the expert witness Magnus Hirschfeld testified that he had a homosexual disposition “unconscious to himself”, and Harden was acquitted. On appeal, with Hirschfeld withdrawing his testimony and Eulenburg repeating his sworn statement, Harden was sentenced to four months, but the verdict was quashed for a procedural error in May 1908. At the retrial on 20 April 1909 both men declared that Harden had never meant to impugn his honour or call him homosexual; the court nevertheless fined Harden 600 marks, and when Harden withdrew his appeal the judgment became final.