Transnational Dimensions of the Eulenburg Scandal

WHAT IS EUROPE SUPPOSED TO THINK?” exclaimed Max Bernstein at the Central Criminal Court of Berlin in October 1907. If historians have occupied themselves with the Eulenburg scandal, to which he was referring, then they have seen it until now in a national context or even treated it as an event of purely local interest. Bernstein was one of the most noted criminal defense attorneys in the German Empire, however, and—as co-owner of a Munich newspaper, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten—quite familiar with how the modern mass-circulation press operated. He knew perfectly well that his words would reach an international public beyond the walls of the courtroom in Berlin-Moabit. The other participants in and observers of the scandal spoke in terms of Germany, Europe, and the world, even evoking later generations. Swiftly the “German scandal,” as it would soon figure in newspapers everywhere, crossed the borders of the Empire. For roughly three years, from the end of 1906 until well into 1909, it engaged journalists from all over the world. Dozens of foreign correspondents descended on the Criminal Court in Berlin-Moabit where most of the sensational trials took place, and it is on the basis of these trials that the scandal became an event of interest to historians.

This background makes it seem logical to examine the Eulenburg scandal as an international media phenomenon. Although the concept is relatively new to historiography, it was self-evident to contemporaries that the scandal unfolded before the eyes of a watching world and—perhaps even more importantly—that the interpretation of what it revealed had to be fought out on an international stage. This does not mean the exit of the Eulenburg scandal from the stage of recent German history. On the contrary, many of the people, topics, and subjects of controversy involved became freighted with nationalistic associations precisely because a large public abroad was following the course of events.