German aristocrat Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg was BOTD in 1847. Born in Königsberg in Prussia, the eldest son of Count zu Eulenburg, he was privately educated, and joined the military during the Austro-Prussian War. During his military training, he became the friend and probable lover of Count Kuno von Moltke. He later studied law, joined the Prussian civil service and married Augusta Sandels, a wealthy Swedish aristocrat, with whom he had eight children. Like many of his class, Eulenburg embraced ideas of white racial supremacy, spending much of his life promoting racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. A keen poet, he also wrote a sequence of kitschy but highly popular love ballads. A close friend of composer Richard Wagner, he became a member of the Bayreuth Circle, a sinister group of opera lovers who promoted nationalist German politics. Eulenburg became the intimate friend of Crown Prince Friedrich, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. The two became inseparable, declaring their (manly) love for each other in correspondence, and enjoying hunting expeditions and seances. Promoted to an ambassadorial role, Eulenberg was instrumental in the downfall of Chancellor Bismarck and the promotion of rabid nationalist Bernhard von Bülow. His reputation was destroyed when his rival Friedrich von Holstein outed him as gay, followed by newspaper articles exposing him and Moltke as lovers. Moltke sued the newspaper for libel; the subsequent trial became a national scandal, with sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld testifying that Moltke was gay. Eulenburg was charged with perjury for denying his homosexuality and was put on trial, in which dozens of young working-class men testified that Eulenburg was a sexual predator. Friedrich, now Kaiser Wilhelm, wrote Eulenburg a chilly break-up letter, banishing him from court; the heartbroken Eulenburg never saw him again. After collapsing in court, Eulenburg was declared medically unfit to stand trial. He formally retired from public service, but remained behind the scenes, enthusiastically promoting Germany’s path to war. Depressed by Germany’s humiliating defeat in World War One, he died in 1921, aged 74.