Diplomat and Wilhelm II’s closest friend, the head of the Liebenberg circle
Attacked by Harden as homosexual from 1906, he was tried for perjury in 1908; his illness halted the trial, but the Kaiser dropped him.
A Prussian diplomat born into the noble Eulenburg family in Königsberg. Befriended by the young Prince Wilhelm in 1886, he became the Kaiser’s closest friend and led the circle of intimates that gathered at his Liebenberg estate in Brandenburg. He was ambassador in Vienna from 1894 to 1902 and was made a prince in 1900. From 1906 Maximilian Harden attacked him as a homosexual and head of a “camarilla” leading the Kaiser astray, setting off the Eulenburg affair. His perjury trial was halted by his illness; dropped by the Kaiser, he died at Liebenberg in 1921.
Also known as: Philipp zu Eulenburg-Hertefeld · Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg
Activities and affiliations
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1877–1903
Germany state institutionsMain
Diplomacy and international organization
Related historical events
Diplomat and imperial favourite
The eldest son of a Prussian officer, he joined the Gardes du Corps, fought in the Franco-Prussian War, took a doctorate in law and in 1875 married the Swedish noblewoman Augusta Sandels. A familiar guest of the Bismarck household, he was also a composer whose Skaldengesänge and Rosenlieder were popular in his lifetime. Entering the diplomatic service in 1877, he served in Munich, Oldenburg and Stuttgart and became ambassador in Vienna in 1894. At a hunting party in 1886 he met Prince Wilhelm, twelve years his junior, and formed a homoerotically tinged friendship that gave the prince, estranged from his parents, an emotional refuge. He played a key role in Bismarck’s fall in 1890, pressed for Hohenlohe as Caprivi’s successor in 1894, and Chancellor Bülow was his protégé. His preference for peace and compromise in foreign policy put him at odds with the Foreign Office and earned him a reputation as a “weakling”. The Kaiser made him a prince in 1900. In 1902 he gave up the embassy and withdrew to Liebenberg, yet the public still saw him as head of a “camarilla” around the Kaiser. In the trials that followed Harden’s attacks from 1906 he was tried for perjury from 29 June 1908, but the trial, interrupted by his illness, was adjourned indefinitely in 1909. The Kaiser dropped him, and shunned by his friends he lived at Liebenberg editing his political correspondence until his death in 1921.